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MS are limiting DX10 to Windows Vista. There are no DX10 only games yet, but when there are they will only run on Vista, that's what he was referring to. I can't really see a PC developer limiting themselves to DX10 for a few years, though, for a number of reasons.

Are you trying to run the games from within WinRAR? Just as with zips, this is a bad idea. All it means is the program will extract all the files to a temporary location and delete them later. When downloading an archived game, whatever format it's in, you should first extract it to a folder, and then play it from there.

Try a different mirror if the download time seems unreasonable (for 49MB), they have three on that site, and there are other places you can get this.

Generally windows patches, updates, and so on are available in redistributable form, for non internet connected computers. You can try that: http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/OS-Enhancements/DirectX-9.0c-Redistributable.shtml

I didn't mean there should be only one rating level, CJ (3 or 5 is fine), just that in my opinion this would work better if it's openly subjective, based on how much the panel personally like the games as they play them, and how much they estimate the gaming public would enjoy them. Rather than based on a checklist list of things that are meant to be indicative of a good game. The list of what makes a worthy game is subjective in any case, and not well agreed upon, so it seems better to leave it.

It's either "We think X, Y, and Z = good" and going to test all the games against X, Y and Z, or simply going and testing all the games on if we think they are good or not. The latter seems less likely to get weird results, to me. Especially if more than one person is testing each game.

I also think it would make the review process better for whoever volunteers. Reviewing when you aren't meant to influence the score seems like a pretty mundane task.

On the whole, I do hope the cups system comes into effect soon, even if it isn't quite as I'd like. If possible I'd like to avoid the situation where lots of games that people like will be ignored simply because they don't fit a definition of what a game should be, whereas some games that few actually enjoyed playing would be included, just because they do.

My own view is that there should be one criteria: "we liked it". With a short elaboration attached to each award.
The main problem people have with this is that some games that are good, but not to the taste of the small panel, won't get awarded as they deserve. That's definitely true, but I can see many more good games being ignored under the proposed systems than this one.

Because I don't think most people will agree with me on that, I'll suggest something else. If the goal is inclusiveness, and we don't mind a few false positives, then how about a combination of these approaches? If a game has well rendered backgrounds, competant writing, original music, 60 backgrounds, etc, then this will qualify for at least the level of cups described in the rating document. Aside from that, any game the panel happens to like for whatever reasons will be awarded more cups at their discretion. An instagame game that the panel loves wouldn't be disqualified from getting full cups if they want to award it that.

Seems like a decent compromise to me.

I think most people that criticise the game have played it. I personally think it's better than the average console RPG for a few reasons, but unfortunately each version is pretty near identical to the last. The formula needs a massive overhaul.

No, they can't be connected.

Flash is able to export frames to gif/png sequences, which is handy for when you're using it for character animations. It could also export an entire movie to an image sequence, for conversion to a FLC cutscene. For non 256 colour games, AVI export is the best option for an intro or cutscene in most cases.
It would be possible to incorporate one of the open source flash players into a plugin, to provide some limited swf playing ability, but not worth doing in my opinion.

Unlocked on request, because manored wanted to publically discuss it.

Yes, it's obviously a Hitchiker's Guide quote, any nerd should know it. I did, and I've never read anything by Douglas Adams. It's just one of those often repeated quotes nerds know.

It's slightly misquoted, the original being "So long, and thanks for all the fish.", of course.

There are a lot of stock nerd phrases from sci fi, and comedy, and comedy sci fi. I know the entire dead parrot sketch, yet I've never seen it performed by the Pythons, sad.

AGS is very unsuitable for this, I'd suggest using Game Maker. Take a look around on the Game Maker forums for pokemon type examples, there should be a few available, because clones of Nintendo console games are a very popular choice.

Was that a joke? It's 2007! It's 3d like any other RTS now.
http://www.gamebrink.com/pc-games/2858-Starcraft_II-video-2.html

I'm not a big follower of their products, but I'm impressed how much hype blizzard can generate still.

About SupSuper's findings: that does seem odd, it's definitely trying to set an appropriate mode... should be fine if it works in DosBox etc. Does AGS do anything unusual when setting the display mode, CJ?
Still, we can hope that these issues will disappear with driver and OS updates. Luckily most people are waiting for SP1

subspark:
There's not much of a standard on gaming handhelds and mp3 players, but perhaps you're thinking of the squarer 320x240, which is a common resolution on phones/PDAs (it's called QVGA), and the GP2X uses it for example.

320x200 is pretty unusual because it's not a square pixel mode on 4:3 displays. I suppose exists because it fits in a neat 64kB of memory. I'd usually recommend against using it for AGS games (as well as 640x400), because people almost never draw the graphics properly for it, but it's not a huge deal I suppose.

You're right that Vista supports 320x200 for games, it's the classic PC resolution and every PC graphics card supports it too (although it's not accurate to say it's the resolution of the DS, iPod, or most handhelds, but I don't see why that'd make a difference to MS wanting to support it). Vista graphics card drivers are pretty new, so if it doesn't work right now, it may soon. However, I think the main problem people have is with their monitors not supporting particular combinations of resolution, depth and refresh rate. I know I have that problem sometimes. I don't think there's a good way to detect it and up the resolution automatically, unfortunately.

Sinsin: I expect maps and addresses will be posted at some point, it's in a small town north of the M4 north of Cardiff. If you're travelling by coach or train you can book tickets to Cardiff, it's easy to get the bus and train from there on the day. By car you'd drive to Taffs Well.

Yeah it shouldn't even be online anymore, perhaps it got uploaded from a backup.

AGS is slow, and it isn't.

AGS performs most of its graphics operations reasonably quickly, I think. A lot of people don't seem to understand how costly a bitmap scale or an alpha blend is. When you stack them up like a lot of the more adventurous people do, then you may well get some chugging. You'll find the same thing if you code it yourself in C.

When AGS is doing 256 colour, midi music, small sprites, minimal scaling, then its requirements are comparable to say, scummvm playing Monkey Island 2 on Windows. It needs a lot more of a system than Monkey Island 2 did in DOS, but that's to be expected.

You can of course push high res graphics way faster if you use GL or D3D, making use of 3D hardware. When you consider doing that you're probably talking about another class of game... high res, 32 bit, lots of animations and effects. It'd be great if AGS allowed for 3d acceleration some day. I think it could be done quite transparently (although it would have to be unavailable in 256 colour mode). It's something to think about for the future. If you wish to make an 800x600 game, in 32 bit colour, and to make use of the more advanced graphics effects, then for now, I do think AGS can be considered inefficient.

There are no psychologists on the forums, or lawyers, or doctors, we're not the best people to ask for advice or insight into your life.

But if you want an uninformed opinion, I don't think it sounds like a specific named mental disorder. You get divisions like this in a lot of families to a greater or lesser extent, I don't know what draws people to respect even abusive family members, but you have a lot of time stuck with people to condition yourself to accept the behaviour. You're lucky your mother doesn't feel the same way about him, that's the worst situation.

Idea: Zyndicate
Atmosphere: can't decide
Design: Zyndicate
Composition: nihiliyst
Functionality: nihilyst
Technique: Zyndicate

Sounds like you have anti glide mode turned on?
When it's enabled, the character only moves when the character's walking frame changes, which helps prevent any sliding about of your character's feet (as long as you made the animation consistent with the movement speed). It's often desirable... but if your animation doesn't have many frames, or you're using high resolution, and you're using the default scrolling, then it can create a noticably choppy scroll. You have a couple of options... 1: add more frames to your walk animation (ideally have 0 delay on the frames, but this is a lot of work). 2: turn off anti glide mode (but this could look a little slippery... up to you to decide). 3: decouple the scrolling from the character, instead of being locked to center on the character position, change it so that it smoothly scrolls to the character.

I don't think any of these options should be part of the engine, because the way it is now is the way most people would want it, I think.

In a hi res or otherwise modern style game I'd do number 3. It's very easy to do, just put the appropriate code in repeatedly execute. And it can be tweaked any way you like.