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The entry by PixelPerfect
"Dark Adrenaline" by Candall

When does voting officially finish and are only entrants and yourself allowed to vote? I didn't realise you would be allowed to vote in a competition you were in so I kept myself from mostly reading other people's entries until now, I've got through some of them but it's getting late over here.

How exactly does voting work? Is it up to the public, or the entrants, or some 'judges', or what?

I have a feeling there aren't many people with the patience and devotion to read every single entry, weigh their merits as a piece of creative writing and make a perfectly unbiased judgment.

Not mention that if the whole point of a 350 word limit is to encourage people to cut away the excess rhetoric we use and leave a glittering gem, having the public decide seems like an odd juxtaposition. The public are idiots -- the Da Vinci Code was one of the top-selling books of all time for chrissake...

Those idiots are the ones that make or break writer's careers, like it or not if you publish a novel your sales and books popularity are based a lot of the publics interest in it, not some bunch of so called experts, a book is written for an audience and that is the public, I'm not saying I agree with some of the public's favourite shows and such but it's reality. If you want to have a more real idea of whether an audience likes something you need to let them choose, it doesn't mean you agree with them. And then if not the public who should be considered qualified enough here to be a judge and why? However these issues need to be dealt with for this competition to be successful, how the voting system works is important regardless of how you feel it should be conducted so I'm not attacking you.

I will be very interested in this program will it's released, I'll even put myself down as a beta tester if you need any.

I only saw one comment, Alarconte, so don't worry.

I'm getting fed up with the captchas, too, so I've disabled it for now. If I get a flurry of spam, I'll re-enable it.

Cool, now I can comment without needing a google account, I hate needing to get an account to leave blog comments but I use LiveJournal and just set all my entries comment settings to needing to be screened first but then again that blog's not nearly as popular as yours so I'm far less likely to get spam for it than you.

It varies with me, for my big game in progress I just had a general theme to begin with, then worked out a vague plot that worked for the first few rooms but could easily be changed if I changed the plot. I did do such a thing and needed only to adjust my backgrounds slightly if at all, mainly it required a bit of game writing(including coding) changes.

However for my second and much smaller work in progress I had most of the plot figured out really early on but to me a plot is the bare bones of a story, enough to establish the beginning, middle and end of a game but not enough to need to know all the characters nor locations, however of course certain ones of each are needed for a working plot. The reality as I see it is different people have different approaches to how they form a plot, advice from others is great but you should consider trying various methods and if you feel you have a style that works for you even if others think it's not the correct way consider at least trying it. Unlike maths, writing is not clear cut and dry and can involves trial and error to find out your way of doing it sometimes.

[Author's note]

Author's note:
i think i've passed the limit a little bit. But reading the story will give you the point.

It's 376 words, I use Microsoft Word to check word counts for these sort of things, since it's only a bit over the limit I'd be inclined to allow it but then that'd be unfair to other people who might have left out other things they would have loved to have put into their entries but followed the rules so even though I'm probably going to sound like a bitch I don't think this should be a valid entry, however since you're only over the limit by 26 words if TwinMoon agrees it's not valid than I think you could find some way of limiting it to 350 while still maintaining the main part of your story and having a real chance of winning.

I realise this is the second time I've mentioned that someone in this competition should have their entry invalidated for breaking the rules but I entered a short story competition for acclaim and money once and if I'd broke the rules I'd have been disqualified and not even got a chance to try again, then again my entry didn't get any prize but I will say from the little of the entrants writing I've read(I didn't want to know too much about what I was up against) I think lots of you guys have real writing talent!

It's as obvious as it seems, I'm a chick and I like rock music.

I am a wannabe novelist who has had some short fiction published, I am willing to help in plot design, themes, genres and some but not all dialogue for games. I am more at this time in the area of helping inspire and bounce around ideas about these things and in some cases if I really like the game idea directly provide such services. However as I am currently working on my own project(s) I may edit this post to announce I am no longer offering any or all of these services but would continue to try and help those I am already working with.

So please
PM
me if you are interested, I merely ask in return that if I work directly with you on a game or have provided a lot of the help in any of these areas that I receive an appropriate mention in the game credits depending on how I helped with it. Also keep in mind I am not offering to do any direct game work outside of dialogues and not all of it for any one game as I feel I am not currently able to make such a commitment.

Now that's hardly fair...

I agree, it's clearly way too long to be a viable entry, no offence but it's the rules of this contest.

[The reason for the edit was just to make a grammar correction.]

As I strolled along the shore I could fell the swell of the water hitting my bare feet, it was a relief from the more than tepid sand beneath my feet. I was watching the ebb and flow of the ocean but my mind was filled with other things. This was the first place I met Jordan, I had told myself to stay away from here until bittersweet memories of us were less predominant but I felt myself urged to return. I can still remember how he first caught my attention, he had this strong, powerful physique, it was hard not to notice it as he jogged past me like a surfer concentrating on riding a wave. I was not one to approach strangers but he had this magnetic attraction that drew me to him. I decided to abruptly stop him and ask some mundane question, a rather lame line about whether he frequented this beach often. He could sense I was nervous but smiled and to my surprise and delight he began a conversation. Little did I know that that day would forever change my life.

My memories were disrupted by the realisation that the water was making my feet almost feel numb with cold, for as I was reminiscing I had stopped strolling. I edged back to dry land and as I turned around to leave I saw Jordan, but he was not jogging. He was embracing what I assumed to be his new honey. I was torn between feelings of sadness and anger; I was clearly still in love with him and felt how dare he take this woman to our place? I manoeuvred my way back to my car, careful to avoid him noticing me, for that would have been too much torment. As I was about to drive away I realised that it was never our spot, it was where we met but it was never ours and the anger dissipated but the sadness stayed with me for months to come.

The reason for the edit was just to make a grammar correction.

Because of this quote I'm wondering why a person can win a MAGS competition more than once.[/quote]

Oh man, they've already started the comps and I just found out, I was the one who brought up the whole idea of having contests over there. Glad to see they're having them.

The only bug that has been reported where 3.0.1 is worse than 3.0 is that the Demo Game doesn't compile. I'd agree that this is a fairly serious issue, but I'm not going to roll back because of it.

I know this may have been asked before and the answer is probably yes but is this an issue you're working on? For me it's no big deal but it might be for people who've never used the program before or hardly at all.

I just thought all the reports of problems were probably bugs so that's why I said what I did, didn't realise they actually weren't.

Off topic but why did you feel the need to change the interface in 3.0 from 2.72 so drastically? I found the older one much more user friendly and involved less coding.

Just thought I'd let you guys know that I will be seriously interested in joining when the next one happens and this time I'm not planning on dropping out, not that I was planning to drop out of this one.

With this many bugs would it be a good idea to change the download version on the website back to 3.0 until this version is a bit more stable?

Also on a slightly unrelated note, I once imported a normal size background for my game for a room and it said it wasn't the correct size yet nothing seemed to be a problem but that was with 3.0, anyone else had this happen or is there a thread for mentioning these things for that specific version?

Don't want to be a nag but when the download page is updated will it say you're downloading the current version because even though the installer downloads are for this version it still mentions it as 3.0?

Hey I've never gotten a trophy for anything, I've had stuff published(unpaid), I suck at sports, science, maths, coding and drawing so I guess YES but seriously for the comp it doesn't matter!

Again this may not be the correct place to ask but I've looked at all the tutorials in the tutorial section in the Critics Lounge and few explain for newbie's on computer drawing(not sketching on paper and then scanning it and such) how to learn how to draw simple stuff and maybe then harder stuff but in a sort of step by step guide. I want to learn how to draw but few tutorials give you an idea of how to use the tools in even simple programs like MS Paint(most are based on Adobe products) to really help newbies at this grasp an understanding of how to draw properly in simpler programs, the bare basic is what I'm getting at.

That's great, I shall be very interested in entering when it starts. Will the winner of the comp get to choose the next subject and will there be any trophies involved, I ask that because so many of the others have them and it could just be one that never changes, also will there will runners up?

Now on to another older subject, is there any, serious interest in bringing back the Photoshop Biweekly competition?