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Haven't tried it myself yet and I use Wordpress so there's probably a WP widget around anyway, but a quick Google gave me this:

http://mashable.com/2010/06/09/twitter-update-display-resources/

After some examples, the resources section has links to some tools/tutorials. The first is the official Twitter widget. Just put in the username, fiddle with the settings, test it, and grab the code:

http://twitter.com/goodies/widget_profile

Yay for donations!

I don't have a lot of experience with AGS to date because of that life stuff so I don't feel qualified to comment, but I wholeheartedly want to see AGS continue and flourish (if only for all the projects I have on the backburner at the moment!)

I think alot of people are assuming that 'open source' means that CJ is going to just punt it into the wilderness. It doesnt work like that.

CJ would still control the trunk but people could get hold of the source code and do one of two things:

a) make modifications and release their *own* game with that version of the engine.
In this case no one else knows or cares that the engine has been modified in some way.

or b) make modifications to the engine and *submit* the patch to CJ or whoever who then decides if it gets added to the main trunk.

The latter of these two scenarios simply means that the addition of this feature has been done by someone else and not CJ.
the programming conventions of AGS still need to be followed and if the patch doesnt conform to those conventions to his satisfaction then CJ simply doesnt accept the patch into the trunk.

If it actually works out like that rather than splintering off then i'm all for it, so long as CJ is happy with that approach. But, while I do like the collaboration and flexibility promised by OS projects - and i'm sure AGS would thrive with the coders in this community - I do also like the stability, consistency and trust worked into a piece of software with a dedicated author(s).

Whatever form it takes going forward, CJ and AGS have my full support, and I will try to contribute in what little way I can.

Woo! Land of the Giants=)

Seems i'm late to the party again - the server's been reset - time to find me a nice beachfront property..

Perfect Blue is one i've been meaning to watch so thanks for the reminder!

No worries, hope you enjoy it when you manage to finish it=)

Wow that's huge, no wonder I couldn't find my humble little castle! I've managed to find it on the map though: smack bang in the centre of all the rivers and lakes on the main landmass with an almost visible giant 'S' that I built nearby to help me find it. It's actually not quite as out in the wilderness as I thought it was. Amazing how a change of perspective alters things=)

[properly]

BTW: I finished the Cowboy Bebop series. It was great. I'm lacking the movie, but the series was great!

Good on you Sir! It is indeed FANTASTIC. The only disappointing thing about the series is the English subtitles don't match the English audio - it must be transcribed from the Chinese/Japanese audio or something - so it just doesn't come across the same for my partner. It's on my to-do list to subtitle properly. I usually watch anime in Japanese, but this is one I first experienced in English and I like it that way=)

The movie's worth a watch too. I'll happily send you my copy of the movie if you want? It's region 2 so should play over there I think, and has Greek subs if you need them. I will accept all the anime recommendations you can throw at me as payment;-)

Oh no! Shock! Horror!

Well it is in my Top Sites;-)

Cookies didn't fix it and I actually just Google the main site and click through to the forums from there rather than using a bookmark. Just one of those things I guess, hopefully it will go away on it's own. Thanks.

Haven't been able to connect myself for a few hours, I get a timeout when logging in. I assumed it was just me and took it as an excuse to be more productive elsewhere, heh, but must be a bigger problem then=S

Anyone else having problems? I keep getting "your session timed out" as soon as I hit the post button. Had to switch to another browser to get this one through so maybe it's a Safari issue, but it's never happened before.

Has it worked okay for you before? I've read that adding minecarts can cause crashes so I hope it's not my two that are causing problems, I still havent managed to remove them=S No one seemed to have any problems yesterday however.

Is the server being reset today? Not that I mind, I would actually welcome it since I just discovered minecarts are buggy in multiplayer.. AFTER digging a looong tunnel through a mountain=S

Pick some books on film theory and see where they crossover to get an idea of the popular topics. Then see how you can apply these to games. Two big, obvious ones I would suggest are gender representation and auteur theory, the latter of which has been covered plenty in games already, however.

I had the pleasure of being taught by, and studying the book by, Jill Nelmes. While my film studies class was presented as distinct from my games design classes - there was no games discussion at all - i'm pretty sure there's plenty to compare/contrast if you look deep enough. It's all subjective anyway. I did a piece on gender representation in the film Boy's Don't Cry and found more links between the film and the theory than I expected.

Good luck with this, i'd be interested to hear how it turns out.

[One final thought:]

Here's my humble little opinion...

While I think a restricted entry would give developers a bar to aim for - polishing their games to meet the standard - I don't like the elitism that suggests and the overhead involved in deciding whether a game qualifies. It's important to me that sharing our creations is made as easy as possible, on a level playing field. Everyone has a right to express themselves and I don't think it's fair to take that away. I would rather have no entry requirements beyond providing the games files in a specific package (zip or whatever) and supplying a readme or completing a form that Nexus can pull the metadata from.

A filtering system is a given - genre, setting, length etc - since we need some way to explore the huge list of games, and the more Nexus lets me sort that information, the better. But as for a ratings system, personally it doesn't play a big role in my decision to try a game. I'm more swayed by what the game itself promises - the blurb, artwork etc - than an abstract number or star/cup rating that doesn't really tell you what the game is like since we all rate a game highly for different reasons. Slightly better is breaking the rating down into categories - gameplay, puzzles - to better direct the gamer's focus when deciding on a rating.

That said, I have nothing against rating systems and will always rate a game if the system allows. The important thing to consider is why you want a rating system? Is it to allow the 'best' games to bubble to the top, at the risk of burying niche titles? or is it to allow recommendations amongst friends? what else?

For me personally, the important thing about having a rating system is so that I can tell a developer that I liked his/her game. Everybody likes to feel appreciated;-) This could be a simple Like button, but it's probably more useful to the developer if i'm able to say specifically what I liked about it. Of course, that's what reviews are for but there are many times when I want to write a review but never get around to it - Eternally Us being a case in point - and that's where a quick, easy ratings system is useful.

A popup reminder is a little too invasive for my tastes and only really makes sense if the ratings system has some important bearing on the way games are presented in Nexus, requiring that all games have be rated eventually. I like the "If you liked this.." idea and this doesn't need to be based on ratings. It could be displayed on the games page itself before you've tried it, just showing other games from that genre, or it could be based on downloads like Amazon's "Customers who bought this item also bought". Having an icon for broken games is a good, quick, visual reference and might encourage developers to fix their games.

It all comes down presentation. I think the more you can do to showcase games and encourage people to try games the better, both for players and developers. Whether a ratings system is the way to do that, I don't know.

One final thought: whenever makes sense in Nexus' development cycle, maybe you could start a competition thread to design Nexus' interface? Just simple graphical mockups or, if someone feels the inclination, a 'working' demo (button rollovers, menus etc). You wouldn't have to use it - and I know nothing about the development environment you're using - but it might give you ideas for layout/features. Maybe set some guidelines of things the interface must accommodate at a minimum and let people take it from there.

I was aware of the different stages of grief - most likely from the stuff that pours out of the t.v. - but I didn't get the connection immediately. Yes, it's a well-worn plot device and obviously it's not original, but personally I didn't have a problem with it. It might be somewhat formulaic, but the delivery was superbly executed in my opinion. Everything in the game - from the characters to the backgrounds to the voice acting - just made it for me. I didn't mind that we knew Fio was dead before Amber had realised it. That's story development 101

I think you get out of it what you want to. It's an artsy game, yes, and won't appeal to everyone because of that, but I didn't feel it was forced. It's a truly beautiful game, and not just graphically. I'm not sure whether Calin and Ben were aiming for something that resonated on a deeply emotional level - probably not, lol - but for me personally the game was emotionally rewarding and for that i'm thankful.

Oh and McCarthy may have been a bit wordy but there's nothing wrong with that. I loved it

Ah they finished it, great! Thanks for reminding me of this one. I've added it to the list of games i'll be trying this weekend=)

[Idea -]

Idea - Kelma
Design - loominous
Technique - loominous
Functionality - Mad

Outstanding entries, everyone=)

I had a lecturer who said "gooey" and it bugged the hell out of me.

I can't stand it either. I always say it and read it as, "GUI".

I say "gooey" which is the right way to say it=P

Of course, my friend says "gwai" like "mogwai" which just sounds odd to me. It was two to one against last semester so "gooey" won the day;-)

Ah the internet. I could start a whole topic on how we say all these acronyms of ours. There are some I simply avoid speaking in real life because i'm sure i'm getting it all wrong as usual. Such as (and smoothly stepping closer to the original topic) MMORPG, which can either come out as "em-em-oh-arr-pee-gee" or "mi-mor-peg" for me..

Sounds like a sensible head on those shoulders of yours, Nexus is in safe hands=)

I think it sounds like a great idea so long as it's not to the detriment of the forums. Personally I look at the forums at least every day, even if I don't post anything, but I can imagine there are whole swathes of people who only visit the games pages. A standalone app might help more people get involved, gradually moving up from rating a game to writing reviews and taking part in the forums.

Unless Nexus would simply act as a download manager, I can see some crossover with the forum with some of the features suggested. Rather than see the forum become a ghost town, I would rather if Nexus pulled in content from the forums AND allowed you to use the forums, right from within Nexus itself. That way you wouldn't have to use one or the other and possibly we could use our forum IDs without having to make a new one.

Following the Steam approach, I would have a Games section where you can see all the games and filter them by various categories, just like the Games page. This would also be good for highlighting new games and offers on paid games etc. Each game's page would have the description/features/genre details blurb, screenshots and links to Hints and Tips and reviews.

The Library would be where you could see all the games you've installed, again with filtering options, icons, ratings etc and any other metadata that Nexus can get from the game. That in itself would satisfy the collectors urge in me. The games could include a link back to their games page or direct links to Hints and Tips and reviews (by right clicking for example), also updates and patches as suggested by Snake. Looking at iTunes for ideas is the right approach imo.

You could copy Steam's tools section and include a download of AGS itself, but also links to plugins and modules and any tools the community has developed. There could also be a section for the tutorials people have written.

A Community section would basically be the forum, maybe with chat integration. It could be as simple as a mini-web browser within Nexus that defaults to the forums, or a custom interface that pulls in the content and styles it to suit the Nexus interface.

Personally, I tend to arrive late to the party when announcements are made on the forums since I don't always look beyond the Most Recent Posts feed (today's response being an example!) Being able to filter through all the different threads and having highlighted games or news popups like Steam would be a big help.

I'm not big on the whole Social Networking thing either so lets not make an AGS Facebook, please. But stuff like ratings, reviews, developer profiles, studio profiles...all those are things i'd like to see. We have a lot of it already but the possibilities for manipulating and presenting that information are virtually unlimited in a standalone app.

Developers could have their own page listing all their games and pulling in their Twitter feeds and links to their blog if they have one etc. You could also have a subscriptions thing similar to YouTube where you can follow certain developers and receive their latest updates.

The hands off install process and organisation of games you've downloaded are the features that sell it for me. Also, I hope some integration with Peder's work comes to fruition as I wouldn't like to have to choose between the two=)

I would like to see you at least attempt this and would be happy to help out in any way I can.