Messages

It's easy to make terrible looking machinima, using default content and stilted animations. Just write a script, have people come online and do their actions, record it on voice chat. Do the animation scripting in the level editor if you're feeling adventurous. Most popular machinima productions these days are done this way. Nobody watches them for the animation of course, but to follow a story, or for comedy. That's stuff like Red vs Blue, which is performed in Halo multiplayer. WoW is another popular engine for that style. As you'd expect because they're using real game assets, references to game stuff are common...

Back when the machinima thing kicked off that wasn't as big, and more people were scripting out custom animations in their game engine's level editor, usually mapping out sets, making textures, and using some custom models. I don't ever remember seeing anything very good, but everyone was sure it had potential!

Unfortunately making an original set of characters, new levels for sets, custom animations for the character, and so on, is very difficult. It's a little bit easier than say, making an original 3d game, because you only need a specific set of movements and scenes, but it still requires you to do a lot of 3d work. And when you are doing that much 3d work you start thinking... hang on... this would look a lot better if I just rendered it in my 3d program instead of trying to shoehorn it all into Quake.

If you're happy to use default game assets in whatever engine you want, then it's certainly an easy way to make an animated cutscene, but obviously then your game will have Master Chief as the main character or a pink haired dwarf with a battle axe.

DVD-RW support is pretty flaky, if you use decent quality DVD-Rs then it should be ok.

You don't care about all the people down the pyramid that will be ripped off because of you forwarding this? So what if it's only $15 each... you're still effectively tricking a whole lot of people into giving you that, if you make $15,000.

The only reason you can feel like you aren't scamming someone is because the people that give up and take a loss (assuming this goes "well") will be a few levels down and you don't talk to them directly. Of course it's more likely that you're one of the people that will end up not being able to continue the chain, and the people you sent money to will successfully rip you off.

Haha there are fees? :| Someone should arrest whoever those get sent to, this kind of scam is illegal in many countries.

Do it if you want... it seems some people will never be convinced this is a bad idea until they try it, and at least this lesson will only cost 25 dollars.

The fact is that mathematically it just can't work for long, so you won't make much, or any money unless you're very near the top of the tree. If you still think you can make money perhaps you'll be turned off by realising that even if you do make some money (and you won't), you're basically working for someone that is scamming the vulnerable?

The fact is that at the bottom of the "multi level marketting" structure, there will be people waiting for their money. As more people take part the number of people waiting for money increases geometrically. A lot of the people that take part in scams like this are desperate, poor, naive, etc. And by perpetuating it you're directly responsible for an ever increasing branch of that. When it all fizzles out the majority of the money you are meant to have will be taken from those people that have been ripped off. I wouldn't want that money...

I'm going to censor the blog link because it makes it look like you've already taken part in it, and want to sucker more people

Bestiality and pre marital sex are different things, but the authorities still used the equivalent ruling in this case. It's amazing how popular the original story was... it was on the top 5 most read news topics for days. It's kind of sad seeing real news consistently lower than the LOL! stories, but probably shouldn't be surprising.

Alright then...
DING DING DING!

The final round has ended. As usual, everybody lost. See you all in next year's religion thread...

I've read the entire Bible, yes, a long time ago... I was bored. And you'd have to be... it's a rambling collection of exaggerated history and a lot of mythology. I don't think many of the things in the Old Testament actually happened in any form close to how they are recorded in the versons of the biblical texts that we have today, no...

And I don't know if I've disagreed with you on any point... I was just saying that what yodaman said about the Bible not promoting murder could be seen to be true, because the only general rule about murder in there is that you should not do it, at all. God doesn't follow this rule at all, of course, and he uses people as pawns in his by our standards twisted and sick games.

I don't necessarily think you're meant to see the OT God's actions as fair, kind, good, or moral... I'm not sure what Yodaman thinks of his god, but if I believed in him I'd see him as something to be feared.

Yodaman appears to have a bizarre mixture of acceptance that God is a mass murderer who kills anyone that puts stuff in the wrong hole or happens to be in the same city, as well as the idea that he's a moral creature that is doing good. Which is a bit scary.

Yeah, as I said, when God specifically gives you permission it's condoned. God breaks a lot of his rules for humans, so it's obvious he's above them. I don't think that means that people are permitted to kill of their own volition... "playing God" is generally seen as a bad thing. Only he's allowed to be a bastard!

[Spaced]

I don't think there's as much of a distinct "british humour" as people make out, but there is at least a large number of comedy tv shows made, which means there are lots of different kinds, and some of them are watchable! (most are shit)

Right now I'm watching Peep Show (currently on series 4), which I've watched since the start, and like a lot. It's about a pair of flatmates lives... simple enough premise, but it's filmed from character's point of view (often with head mounted cams), with lots of internal commentary making their inability to do anything right all the more tragic.

Not as highly recommended but still surprisingly fun is Ideal. I've only caught this current series. A bit more of a typical sitcom, it is about a small time drug dealer and all the people that visit his flat. I don't think it's as consistent or clever but there so many characters coming and going that there's usually something to like.

As for stuff that has been and gone: Spaced if you like slightly unusual characters, Shaun of the Dead, or appreciate pop culture references; Brass Eye if you want some often bizarre but effective satire and by the same person, Jam if you want the most macabre, perverted sketch show; Black Books for fun drunken bookshop adventures; Garth Marenghi's Dark Place if the idea of a comedy based on terrible, cheap horror novels appeals in the slightest; Father Ted if you like jokes about priests that don't involve little boys; The League of Gentlemen, if you want character based sketches.

There are lots more I am leaving out, especially older things that people will no doubt mention, but I guess I am mostly fond of the more recent stuff that aired since I've been watching TV.

You can watch most of these and probably a lot more shows that people might mention on http://www.tv-links.co.uk which is of course of dubious legality and I probably shouldn't link to it, but I did.

Preempting people arguing over if certain programmes are funny or not... please don't bother. It's to be expected that only a minority of people that check out a given show will like it. Tastes in comedy are quite particular.

The Bible doesn't support rape or murder as options for people under any normal circumstances. Certainly God uses those things as tools, but it's explicitly stated that people aren't allowed to do those things unless given permission by him.

The god in the Bible has flooded the world, destroyed buildings and cities, turned people into salt, asked people to kill their children, blighted countries with plagues, killed people for breaking seemingly arbitrary rules, caused people to eat their children, etc etc. It's even stated that he's a "man of war". Which is fine, because he's God and he sets the rules. I'd assume that SteelDrummer accepts this, because he has stated he thinks his God destroyed New Orleans because they hosted gay pride parades. Lots of things he does are terrifying, and by the rules that we're supposed to follow, immoral. Which just means that his rules are different to the ones that his followers are prescribed.

You have to admit that the stories of the old testament read like typical ancient folklore though, right? They don't even have anything to teach a lot of the time, they're just historical tales about good stuff and bad stuff happening. God getting mad and killing people. God being pleased and helping people. It's not surprising that God is such a scary unpredictable force when every big event gets attributed to him.

I've had lots of problems trying to get AGS to work in DOSBox. The windows engine from 2.21 works for me, with this game, but I'm on Windows 2k. I wonder what it is about AGS's DOS engine that makes it so hard to get working... almost every DOS game I've tried in DOSBox works (although some with speed issues).

Why use XP over 2k? There's no particular reason for me to upgrade, so I haven't gone to the trouble of reinstalling windows. I probably will install XP if I ever get a new windows PC, or do a full reinstall.

I upgraded to 2k from 9x when the 3d programs I use stopped working, and that hasn't happened to me on 2k yet.

AGS has always been fine for me in 2k, I do use the latest DirectX and SP4, though it worked on all the other combinations I've had.
I've heard people complaining about similar problems in XP, I don't think it's specifically a 2k issue.

PC: Nikujin, Dwarf Fortress, Sumotori Dreams, various indie things that my computer will run.
DS: Pokemon Diamond (Sorry), Ouendan (2 is out next month)
Wii: The waiting game (hurry up DHL)

Most games: I will guess SSH, who must be well on his way to 20 by now.
Best game: Nobody knows but it must be by Herculean Effort. It's not easy being the best.
Most AGS Awards: I think it's still Tierra/AGD, for KQ1 and 2 remakes, but it could be Yahtzee. Do we have a proper list of all the years?

Yes, CJ is well known to be an anglo-welshman

I made this in 4 minutes: http://www.caverider.com/temp/ags_shell.dll if you choose to do it from AGS. It lets you use the windows ShellExecute function. For example to open google.com:

ShellExecute("open", "rundll32.exe", "url.dll,FileProtocolHandler http://www.google.com")

anyway, I think a launcher is a good idea too, if you can find someone to make one.

I also think radiowaves is right... using low bitrage vbr ogg would be your best bet. I expect you could divide the filesize by three without anyone noticing the compression.

Fuzzpilz owns it, I don't think it'd matter if you use it as an alternate mirror, that's what it's for anyway. But as Rui said, it's not very complete. There's a lot of older stuff but it doesn't have an active maintainer right now.

Once I tried mirroring games automatically but people use all sorts of awkward non bot friendly hosting services (rapidsharealikes) or link to their websites, so it wasn't very effective.

It's only in the DOTT executable, the debug codes are apparently not emulated in scummvm.

http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/SCUMM/Debug_Codes

It's actually not the case here, his system is plenty powerful enough to run San Andreas on medium to high settings. Note that he did post the recommended specs, rather than the required ones.

The minimum specs are
1GHz Pentuim III or AMD Athlon
256MB RAM
8x Speed DVD Drive
3.6 GB Hard Disk Space
64MB Video Card

It's is a port from PS2, and quite playable on low end stuff like a Geforce 2 in my experience. His system is about the same as mine was, and I played at 1024x786, but with the shaders off and textures on high. I don't know what the problem is though. The degrading performance as the game goes on points to some not specs related issue which we'll probably not be able to guess.

Do try turning the shader settings off if you haven't. The shading comes in now and then such as on hot days when there's heat shimmer above the roads. That can be a framerate killer on cards that aren't good at shaders. Sounds like you have a more severe problem than that, but it's worth a try.

It almost comes across as if you're projecting, Fee. Your relationship's age differential is only a couple of birthdays away from a Matt-like situation. You probably realise that.

Just how mature is this 19 year old that looks like a 15 year old that you're sleeping with? If she's as grown up as my 19 year old sister then you're still sleeping with someone who is physically and mentally a "CHILD", in my personal, arbitrary definition of a child. You "pedo".

I didn't realise the community was full of child abusers. I suppose this proves that being a nerd leads to molesting little girls!
[/sarcasm]


See how ridiculous this kind of attitude is? Whatever your opinion on the best age for a girl to be, nobody here is interested in having sex with children, and most people would prefer a partner around their own age. There are no hard and fast rules with people. I can't see myself with a 16 year old girl, or a 17 year old one, and even most 21 year old girls seem a little stupid to me, but there are millions of people that don't fit my very generalised line of thinking.

All I can see in the Matt (or monkey) situation is a (probably) inexperienced guy that has fallen for a girl who is a bit too young for him, not amazingly seedy, but it probably won't work out because the age difference is too big, oh well. Nobody in this thread is a horrible, despicable person that deserves to be called names.