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heh. cool puzzle, though given that logic it means DG was the first of anyone to get it right. Although he didn't explicitly say the letter 'a', he did give the game away. And is it just me, or is it weird to have a word game where the whole point of the game is to realise that each of them contains the letter 'a'?

Either way, it was fun to think over.

Uh.. get some more sleep and then re-read the posts. That wasn't the puzzle key. 

Minimi, are those dragon like chess pieces you made, Trogdor?

Can't be, no big strong arm or caption that says, "Burninating the villiage down."

I was thinking of drawing these for him, and then I realised that my idea of a 'floppy' may be different then his, and then I re-read his post and realised that yes, it is very, very different.

Actually I could see how someone (especially you Rode) could re-read his post and still have the same idea, for instance:

I dont know the measerments exactly but they need to be pretty small.

About Blender.. it was made in the beginning for video sequencing and effects and later added some capabilities for great stills.. then the game engine. The game engine is an afterthought and is in its infancy compared to the rest of the program.

You can definately use it for animations and sprites, but you'd have to learn to use it first. The download is only 3mb and the manual is available freely at blender3d.org. Volume I tells you how to use Blender and Volume II is a hotkey reference.

I've only recently learned how to use it for videos. It's not as hard as it seemed to me at first.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, you can save movies in almost any format from Blender. It can render every AVI codec you have installed on your machine, as well as WMV or MPEG and more. You do have to add the sound in another program - in Blender you can import your audio file for animating but you cannot save the file with the sound internally for some reason.

I really wonder what gave you the impression that Blender is only used for realtime games. Just look at the Blender3d.org site and you can see the galleries on the front page that prove otherwise in one glance.

EDITEDIT: If you do decide to use Blender, my contact information is in my profile. If you ever have a question, I'm here to help. I can answer general 3d questions but Blender is the only application-specific topic I can cover.

condratdiction thereÃ, 

I seriously doubt this would happen any time soon and in 100 years Im pretty sure we would have got it sorted (fingers crossed)

No, in 100 years it will be considerably worse, most probably.

But it's a movie, not a factual demonstration of what would happen.

The ice caps will probably melt within 300 years at the rate we're going, but the Ice Age would be a while after that, seeing as how we're in a state of global warming.

haha, yeah evil. looks a little like the ol' midwestern us

It's a little more hilly in places here in OK - but yeah, here too. I was thinking the same thing. WTF lgm, haven't you ever been to the US?

What is xbox?

No, seriously. The only reason I'm not getting an xbox is because you have to PAY for the live-thingy. Why can't you just plug it into the cable?

If anyone still wonders about this, you can hook it up through your computer and use a program called XBconnect (I think that's what it's called). Huge network there.

What about the greatest of classics, Larry Vales?

isnt OSU the 2nd biggest college in the world?

I know OSU has the biggest Student Union in the world, but NOT YOUR OSU! HAHAHAHA. Ha. ...

I live in Oklahoma, more specifically, I'm an Okie from Muskogee.

Actually, I think Crystal Space is the only one that doesn't use Python that I listed.. I thought it used C++. I may be wrong, I don't use it, I'm only developing models for a demo game they're making.

Python is supposed to be one of the easiest computer languages there is, even easier than Java. That's why a lot of engines use it for scripting.

Also. Please explain to me why someone would be willing to wait for CJ to implement all this stuff into AGS when there are engines out there that do it already? Because you like AGS? That's not good enough.

Because the game engines I've found ask for a lot of scripting for simple things like message boxes. The answer is that it would be ease-of-use. The point and click interface would already be programmed, the message boxes would be a simple matter, no scripting a pathfinder, and more.

Timewise, it's not really practical without people to help or source code to rip from somewhere else.. but 8 years? Come on. That's overkill, single people have programmed good 3d engines from nothing in less than two.

A good way around the open-source hinderances would be to use a plugin and make it opensource. I don't know how this stuff works though.

For anyone who wants a free engine that isn't made specifically for any genre of game, just search and filter out words like "quake." Seriously, there are a lot. Blender, Crystal Space, Panda3d (developed by Disney), and others. Just search.

Implementing 32 bit graphic support is a whole lot different than introducing 3D into AGS. You would essentially be changing the entire point of AGS. Instead of being a classic adventure game creator, you would probably be able to eventually make another Gabriel Knight 3. Personally, the game that I am working on uses pre-rendered 3D graphics. Why not just go with a regular 3D engine, you ask? Because it's a challenge. If I wanted to go the easy route and continue with a 3D game, I'd give AGS a pass and go with something else. But I stay with AGS because of the fact that it's 2D, and I love the challenge of pushing the 2D engine to its limits of capabilities.

Terran, this may sound harsh, but you are going the easy route, making a real-time game would be going the hard route. You can't use Poser to make any kind of unique (realtime) game characters.

I just don't understand why progress is so often seen as a bad thing. I can't even bother to argue it, because I think your minds are already made up.

Well, I use poser for one to create the characters. I also use Blender and the MakeHuman plugin and then I skin and export the model.

Well, actually, your method would not work for realtime gaming. I'll give a short description of why that is.

Programs like Poser and MakeHuman are for creating realistic people - and they use a high amount of detail in the mesh to accomplish this goal. However, game models are usually blocky and underdetailed in comparison to rendered scenes. The reason for that is simple. How long does it take you to render a makehuman model? Do you think a computer could do that 5 times in a second? (Human) Game models will fall in the range of 500-5000 triangles, depending on the computer they are made for (Games in production now are shooting for 3 ghz machines and use up to 8000). In comparison, the MakeHuman female model has 13,610 triangles. The last game model I made had just under 2000.

For me, this actually makes it easier to create models because there are fewer vertices to place and fewer faces to unwrap for UV mapping. Unfortunately for people who get most of their stuff from other people, it could complicate things.

One way to get the MakeHuman model down to par is to decimate it, but that gives IMO terrible results.

Here is a comparison, the model on the left is mostly Yufster's creation, and the one on the right is a generic MakeHuman model I nabbed back when they were programming it:

I haven't visited the site, but last time I used it it was actually very cheap for it's capabilities (it's pretty much just as good as Photoshop).

An entire game done in oil paints would be very cool, IMO. I think Quest For Glory I was done that way, but the resolution at the time didn't really show it.

You have and know how to use 3ds.. why not animate with it?

What? I thought Blender was just a 3D program. This is the first I've heard of this.

Blender has a lot of features most of you probably don't know about.. The game engine was only recently re-integrated though. The last version that was released before they went GPL had a game engine, but couldn't be put under the GPL license because the physics engine was written by a person who didn't/couldn't give up the rights. You could still download the old version for free and use its game engine, but finally they programmed a new physics system and integrated it into the last version (2.33). It's a bit buggy with older gaming tutorials, because they tried to make it backwards compatible but missed the mark with some infinite loops.

If you have broadband I'll send you some playable games, I have a really good one room MI demo. It's the best looking one I've seen graphically.. most of them suck because the game models are all made by amateurs (in some cases, extreme amateurs). It's akin to MS Paint AGS games. 

... or Blender. But for any 3d program you need to combine with a 2d app of course for texturing.

I believe the learning version of Maya is free, but renders with watermarks. If it were me, and I hated modelling in Blender but didn't want to pirate, I'd download Maya Learning Version and port the files to a free renderer like Yafray or Blender. Somewhat dishonest though.

I didn't realize I'd confused you. I never said clipping and compression where the same thing at all. Distortion in a guitar amp and digital clipping are two completely different things as well, I'm sure you realize.

Not really, some digital apps will by default compress instead of clipping. Otherwise the only difference is the perfection that is only possible in digital form. A digitally clipped wave will have a perfectly sharp edge and flat top, while analog clips will be a little rounded, depending on the circuitry. The imperfection that tubes produce is what makes them so desirable in guitar amps. In any case except for auto-compression, the clipping is still the same in concept, though the means to implement it perfectly aren't available in analog circuitry.