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But theoretically speaking, would it be ok to save Yule instead of Christmas?

Yes, JuuL, that would be OK. I take it by Yule you mean the pagan celebration of the winter solstice. As Yule once was *the* winter festival in countries where Christmas now plays that role, I don't see any reason why not, provided it's set in a pagan context, of course.

I've been to a restaurant once that had "roast lamp" on the menu. I ordered something else...

Was it a Greek restaurant, Radiant? I've seen this in English translations on menus in Greece. I think they make that mistake because "mb" is written as the Greek equivalent of "mp" in Greek. And "mp" in Greek is pronounced like "b", so you would actually have been eating "roast lab"

Wow, I'm surprised. With all the effort Akatosh and FSi put into their game (bonus levels, arcade-style shoot-out, etc) I was sure they were going to win. Congratulations to them too on an impressive game.

Thank you to everyone who voted for me. Time to put on my thinking cap for December's rules.

Um, I've played FSi and Akatosh's game, but

Spoiler

I didn't see a tooth in the inventory...

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Did I miss something?

For those people who are not familiar with the show "Heroes" and so might not understand what is being parodied in the game, below is a summary of the plot that is relevant to the game.

Much, much more than this has happened in the show - this is just an outline of what you need to know to make sense of the events and conversation in the game.

It's probably not a good idea to read this until after you've played the game, as it gives away a lot about the game. You might then want to play the game again so you can understand all the gags.

Spoiler

Ordinary people from various parts of the world are discovering that they have special powers. This has dangerous implications for some, and as these "heroes" begin to explore their powers and meet one another, it becomes clear that there are dire consequences for the future.

Chandra Suresh, a biologist, is doing research into the biological cause of these powers. When he is killed, his son, Mohinder, decides to take up his work and follow in his footsteps. Over time, he comes to meet and investigate many of the heroes.

At the same time, the mysterious Mr Bennet is looking for the Heroes, although it is not yet clear why. More menacingly, a serial killer, Sylar, is also tracking down the heroes and killing them off one by one.

There a few dozen characters in the show, and not all of them are Heroes. Those parodied or referred to in "Anti-heroes" are the following:

* The Petrelli family (the Patchoulis in the game) - a wealthy family who live in a mansion in New York. Nathan Petrelli (Ethan Patchouli) is a politician running for Congress. His superpower is the ability to fly, although he tries to keep this secret. One of the first time he flies, he is barefoot and scorches his feet when he lands. Nathan's brother, Peter (Dieter), is able to take on the power of any Hero he comes into contact with. He wears his hair flopped over his right eye. Their mother is Angela (Andrea), who is intent on making her son president. (What is out of character for Ethan, my player character, is acting corruptly and revealing his secret.)

* Mr Bennet (Mr Bonnet), who works for a mysterious agency called "The Company" but makes out he works for a paper company, has an adopted daughter, Claire (Chloe). She is Nathan's biological daughter, but Nathan keeps this secret. Claire is able to regenerate her body after any injury, no matter how serious, even to the point of spontaneously coming back to life after being killed, which has happened to her several times.

* Hiro Nakamura (Niro) has the ability to stop time and teleport through time and space. He believes that he requires a samurai sword in order to be able to control his power. Hiro is an eternal optimist who often reacts to positive events by throwing his arms upwards. In one episode, he met a waitress in a diner who had incredible learning abilities. She was able to learn Japanese merely by reading through a "teach yourself Japanese" book in a single sitting.

* Isaac Mendez (Isaiah Menders) is an artist who has the ability to paint future events, which almost invariably relate to one or more of the Heroes. He is only able to do this after taking heroin. His eyes glow blue after injecting himself, and it is only after he comes down from his high that he able to see what it is he has painted. Isaac learns from his paintings that in the future he will be one of Sylar's victims. (Isaac is actually quite a normal character, but his parody, Isaiah, is somewhat of a stereotypical junkie.)

* Sylar (Silo), a watch-maker, initially has no powers. He kills a Hero who has the power of telekinesis, and finds that he takes on that power by doing so. He then sets about tracking down the other Heroes so that he can steal their powers. He does this by slicing open their heads telekinetically and then extracting their brains. Both he and Peter come to acquire many powers over time. At one point, he tries to steal Peter's power, but Peter takes on Sylar's power of telekinesis and is able to push him away. Sylar kills Peter with a shard of glass through the head, but, as he already has Claire's power, he is able to come back to life once the glass is removed.

* Claude (Clyde) is able to make himself invisible. He misuses his power by stealing things from people. He is played by the English actor Christopher Ecclestone.

* Mohinder (Rajinder) is the geneticist searching for the biological cause of the Heroes' abilities. Mohinder has a map of the world on his wall that he uses to keep track of the Heroes he has discovered. At one point, Sylar discovers that Mohinder is tracing the Heroes, and befriends him so that Mohinder will unwittingly lead him to them. Mohinder comes to realise who Sylar really is, and attempts to kill him by knocking him out with drugged chai (Indian spiced tea) and then shooting him when he regains consciousness. Sylar escapes by stopping the bullets and breaking out of his bonds using his telekinetic power.

* Mr Linderman (Linda Mann) is a mysterious figure who is mentioned many times in the series but not encountered until the last few episodes. He is a very powerful person who has great control over what happens to the Heroes. He is played by Malcolm MacDowell, who is best known for his role in "A Clockwork Orange". (He's a transsexual in my game only so that I can make a pun out of his name.)

* Ted Sprague (mentioned in passing only as Chloe's "radioactive friend") is able to manipulate radiation. He can send out pulses of heat, radioactivity, electromagnetism, etc at will. In one episode, while at the Bennets' house, another character goads him, and he becomes angry. He starts giving off energy that sets the house on fire. Claire manages to sedate him, but the house is pretty much destroyed.

The game's aim is explained by another major plot element. Early in the first series, Peter is visited by a future version of Hiro, who tells Peter that he must "save the cheerleader, save the world". This he eventually does by saving Claire, who is a cheerleader at school, when Sylar attempts to kill her. How this leads to saving the world is explained in a much later episode.

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As we're still before the deadline, I've tweaked my game slightly... the final puzzle was too much of a pixel hunt, so I've added feedback, as well as fixing a couple of bugs and typos.

Stajp

Spoiler

I wonder if there is anything in the drainpipe on top of the roof?   

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No, there's nothing else there:

Spoiler

it's just the clickable areas are a bit small, I'm afraid, so you might think you're clicking on the gutter when actually you're clicking on something else.

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What sthomannch says is correct, though.

This is the official Hints and Tips thread for Anti-heroes.

Be nice to others:

* When mentioning anything that gives away the plot or gives hints on solving puzzles, please use spoiler tags, like this: [ hide]your hint goes here[ /hide] but WITHOUT the spaces before the "hide" and the "/hide". This gives:

Spoiler

your hint goes here

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* Please do NOT post solutions or walkthroughs.

The game's pretty easy so I imagine most people shouldn't have much trouble completing it.

Paolo, the game link just redirects me to the newly added games section..

That's funny - it doesn't work fo me, either, but the download URL is correct: http://www.freewebs.com/paoloags/Anti-heroes.zip http://www.freewebs.com/paoloags/Anti-heroes.1.1.zip Funnily enough, though, if you click on the link I've just mentioned, it takes you to this thread. Something wrong with the AGS forums software, perhaps? Or am I doing something wrong?

You can of course download the game by going to the website.

So, no entry so far? Too bad, it was the perfect competition theme.

Have patience... they tend to come in at the last minute. My entry is nearly complete.

EDIT:

OK, it's here!

"ANTI-HEROES" is a parody of the TV show "Heroes".

Join Ethan Patchouli and the other Anti-heroes in his quest to save... well, you'll see when you play the game.

* The game takes place on Thanksgiving Day.
* One of the characters brings a weird date.
* See Ethan do something (or possibly two things) that's out of character for him!
* There is a tooth in the inventory.

Download link: see the listing for the game in Recently added games

Like any other parody, it won't make much sense unless you've seen the original, It should still be fun to play even if you've never seen "Heroes" - it's just you won't understand the jokes.

Apologies in advance that some of the clickable areas are a bit small. I hope this doesn't put anyone off.

I did everything myself, so don't expect graphics as good as those in "Trance-Pacific". They are halfway decent, though.

Oh, and by the way, here in the UK we're just coming up to the end of the first series (episode 20 was this week), so some of the gags might look out of date to those of you who are watching the second series.

UPDATE: The download link isn't working for some unknown reason. Click on the "Visit website" link (http://www.freewebs.com/paoloags) instead and scroll down to the bottom of the page to find a link that does work.

I really don't know why we are having this conversation. I can only reiterate what other people have said:

* If it's relevant to the game, then go ahead. Ben Jordan 6 had breasts in it. Big deal. No one made a fuss over that, as far as I am aware. Just make sure you set the ratings accordingly when you upload it.
* If you want to make a porn game, then go ahead. Just make sure you set the ratings accordingly when you upload it, and make it very clear in the description that it's a porn game.
* Like lo_res_man said, no one turns a hair if a game is full of gore and death (and many computer games are based on maiming and killing). I'd far rather a game showed the naked human body in a natural context (which, of course, includes sex) than suggested that massacring 1000 people is somehow a good thing to do.

Ditch the "modesty stripes" across the characters. We all know what's underneath them anyway.

As noted in earlier posts,it should be impossible to return to the hall in part two.

Ah, I didn't see that. Sorry for the noise.

Sorry to post a bug report here, but there's no thread in Completed Game Announcements, as far as I've been able to determine.

Spoiler

In part two, if you come straight back downstairs after the introductory cutscene, the cutscene replays and "PART TWO" is still partly visible floating in midair above the guards.

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The neon sign is looking much better in the new pic - the blue light reflecting off the building is good.

A couple of tips about making lights look realistic. Obviously you can't use a lighter colour than the lightest colour available in the palette, but you can deceive the eye in a couple of ways.

* make the light diffuse beyond the extent of the bulb/tube, blending this diffuse light gradually into the background as you get further from the light source
* darken the area around the light (the area into which you are blending the diffuse light, and the area immediately around this) to increase the contrast and give the illusion of increasing the brightness of the light

This could be used for the light coming from the windows as well as the light from the neon sign, although the light from the windows is probably less bright than the neon sign.

Sorry, no pics of my own because I'm no artist, but here are some photos that illustrate my points:

* Pic 1
* Pic 2
* Pic 3
* Pic 4

And don't worry about the number of colours - Trance-Pacific was a 32-bit game and had 65536 colours, and I had no problem with the palette in that game, so you're well below that limit.

I hope this helps!

gms

The tags are [*hide] and [*/hide] (without the asterisks) but you probably realise that now.

Here's a hint...

Spoiler

If you want Nick to impersonate the captain, he needs to know what he is meant to say.

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Thanks, guys. Ben304 did the graphics - if I'd done them the game would have looked terrible

It's an honour to be Pick of the Month. Whew, there have been about 250 downloads in the past couple of days - I hope the server can take it!

It would be nice if you could vote on the game when you've finished playing it and maybe write a short review to let us know what you thought of it.

Thanks for your comments, Lucifel. It's interesting to see another point of view.

I don't want to repeat what Ben has said, but it's worth pointing out that this was a MAGS game, and the first time either of us had ever written a game using AGS, so there were bound to be one or two things that weren't quite as good as they could have been.

Some of the hotpoints (such as light switches) are small, but it's always clear where they are. They all cover the full extent of the relevant objects.

Regarding the red herrings... sometimes the obvious answer doesn't work, and you have to find another, just like in real life.

We had a few items in the game to give some variety. If every puzzle could be solved by hypnotising someone, it would have made it too easy and a bit boring, I think.

I think all the puzzles require wit to solve, and all of them are logical, I believe. If you're finding you're using every item on every hotspot, then it's likely you've overlooked something that's happened or been said. It's worth remembering that there are a lot of spoken clues in this game.

Thanks again for the feedback. It will help us make our next game even better!

OK, here's my translation...

=========

Prima parte

Per l'amor di Dio,
Gli do tutto, tutto ciò che ho,
Poiché senza le sue benedizioni, non c'è niente,
Sono dolce,
Spero che
Sono fiero,
Ho fede,
Il corpo che mi hai dato.
L'anima che battezzasti.
Sono grato per sempre, sono grato.
Poiché desidero vedere il giardino del Signore
e c'è la felicità .

Seconda parte

Campi verdi e cielo azzurro intorno a me,
Ma so che niente sarà  paragonabile al paradiso,
Semmai io rompessi la nostra promessa,
La pena così terribile; mi sento la tua rabbia.
Il fuoco dell'inferno mangia la mia carne e brucia la mia anima.
Semmai io cedessi alla tentazione,
Non meriterei il tuo dono.
Sei il solo, il grande, farei di tutto
Per l'amor di Dio.

=========

Note that if the person reading these lines is female, then these words will change:

fiero -> fiera
grato -> grata

It's a bit literal, and not very operatic-sounding. Opera would probably invert some subjects and verbs, like this: "Semmai la nostra promessa io rompessi".

The good news is that if you want rhymes, these are fairly easy to do in Italian, because the language is regular and most words are stressed on the second-to-last syllable. This will however require some rewording that will change the sense, but a good translator will give you something that conveys the the same meaning even if it doesn't use the same form of words.

Here's a rhyme for free, taking advantage of the ending used for the imperfect subjunctive and using the subject-verb inversion I suggested:

Semmai la nostra promessa io rompessi,
[...]
Semmai alla tentazione io cedessi,

It doesn't scan, but the number of syllables in the two lines is the same.

Oh yeah, I forgot that opera often uses the "passato remoto" (past historic), a literary tense not used in spoken Italian.

Translating poetry or lyrics and maintaining the rhyme scheme, metre and meaning is very, very difficult. Fortunately, the English version is in free verse, so only the sense would need to be translated, unless you want the Italian to rhyme and scan as well.

Let me see what I can do (although I'm sure José Luiz will be able to do better, with his knowledge of opera).

The Italian, she is a bellissima language

Did khnum do a translation for you after all, vertigoaddict?