More to come..

So what did you miss in 12 hours?

-Empty Mind is not Dead Empty Anymore

Well, Nergal, fell insulted by an email, sent by someone that didn't like the game. Well, we probably all get those. At least I am. Anyway, but as fans always prevail, he put the game back. Downloading and checking it out, I have some things to say about it.

Empty Mind-Blank Fate:

First of all, the intro is very short, but not necessarily bad. The words are chosen carefully, thus making the game very interesting from the first minutes. You find yourself in a warehouse, reason unknown to you.
The music is quite good. The background art also seems to be given a lot of effort into. Though I must say, that I definetely think the ones in Quiero Morir were of a better quality(at least I like them more). Comparing it with the first game of Nergal, the character walks a bit weird on this one. As for the puzzles, they seem to be mostly based on logic, except for a few occasions, but well there's always a walkthrough. Since Nergal is having a way of telling a stories, so unique that you can't stop playing, I suggest you give this a try.


-Recent Newbie Activity(I'm not calling anyone a noob):

This is usuallly done by SSH, but I'm posting some info on the guys I've picked up.And a similar article was last time down in June...

Clarvalon:
Well, he's actually trying to give a different approach to game development(XNA). Remarkably, even for a newbie, he took some time to read the rules.

Pilferinloot:
Well, she's been there for a while. But we've known her for a much longer time. She's Sylvr's sister and if you want to meet her, you should check the competitions or just enter the AGS Stickam Room because those are the places where she lurks most of her time. She's also hosting the current sprite jam Seasons.

Cheerios:
He came,he made a game,he posted it. Talked about it on my previous article, see the MAGS site, or the MAGS topic, he double-posted on his second post, but he seems to respect the rules.
Some of which fail to.

-Things to Check Out

Certainly, I'm not a fan of Yahtzee in general, but well, we should admit, that he can really make some excellent games. So cruising the internet, I found two cool videos. One is called ask a demon about himself and features 3d models of Trilby,Chzo, ecc.. and the other is called 5days contains a couple of fan art.

XNA in action

A new video of the XNA Adventure thingy in action is over at their blog.

Assimilation

Well, Dualnames posted some interesting articles on his blog, so I contacted him and he's agreed to post his AGS-related stuff here. Woo! My empire will rule the whole earth BWUHAHAHAHAHAHA. Errr, I mean more content for my beloved readers...

Dualnames View on what's New

Le Woltaire Strikes Back:
A Second Face-Eye of Geltz:

This was dead for a while, but from the man that has one of the five games that have a 5 blue cup rating, you can't expect less. Quality needs time. This is definetely something that I'm waiting for. The graphics are outstanding for an indie game, the plot is definetely worth(at least I can imagine it as so), and well, this game has style.




Empty Mind just go totally empty..:

Well, as I was about to make a short review on this, checking it out, for some reason, unknown, to me and probably the most of the community, Nergal has deleted the game. I do however hope that this will be back soon. Concerning to Nergal's previous games, I'm sure this one can't fail.


Ace Quest: the world is not big enough..literally:



Ace Quest:

Well, it appears that one of the most favorite AGS games of all times, is about to get resurrected. Or at least we can hope for it. Originally created by MillsJRoss , who still is going to work on it(at least I hope so), the game's audience bothered to dive in and post . Progz even drew the wonderful fan picture; a parody to James Bond. I suggest you go and check out the game and MillsJRoss's website.

MAGS News:

Well, I praised Buckethead's entry. But then I saw Cheerios(yep, like the cereals) entry, who only joined the forums to post his game and enter the MAGS. That's definetely one thing to consider. Anyway, to his entry; I find Man VS Fish very cute and charming, as you play from the view of the man and the fish changing at your own will. Seems like a solid idea, and definitely got me.


Visit the MAGS site and pick your favorite one(2 entries so far).

Local Celebrity Enters Competition:

Well, it appears that Thomas Regin has entered the AGS Music Competition, check his entry here.

He recently achieved an honorary mention award for his song "Take Me Home" in one of the world's largest songwriting contests, Unisong. Surprisingly that's the music he posted at the competition..

Things to Check Out:

Ghost's deviant art page. One of my favourites. There's a Ulysses deviation. WOOW. Ghost seems to be a likeable folk everywhere he goes, regarding the comments he got. Carry on.

So let's have a look at what competitions are running at this point at the AGS forums:

Competitions on the Fly:
MAGS:

Buckethead posted a wonderful entry on this one, and as far as you can read from the topic it seems that it's probably the only legitimate entry.

Musical feud! - 18/11/08 -- 02/12/08 - Threeway:

Well, this is an entry I'm trying to enter, but I probably won't. You can select from three ways(Threeway), either a pop song, a detective theme or a mexican song. So far Funkmast and DKH have posted and they both selected the 2nd theme. And Thomas Regin has also posted..it's getting popular.

Sprite Jam-Seasons:

Theme: Pick a season, make a usable sprite personification of the season, and have fun with it! Could be a man, could be a beast, could be...I don't know. You think of something.

Ghost has my favorite entry so far, but Ben surely made me laugh,pslim also posted a very good looking sprite. There seems to be an argument about Sylvr's entry

Photoshop & Friends:

Go and see Progz entry, it feels like he actually drew it, but he didn't.
Abstauber added a totally gross entry. Eww.

Colouring Ball And Blitz have no entries, hope they get some.

Oh almost forgot, abstauber's hosted the animation competition(one entry so far)

Small Foreword:

We've yet to work the final details, but we've agreed that as a slave must do, according to global slave rules, I'm obliged to post frequently, so that the followers and believers of the Ol'Mighty Super Scottish Hero, get their fun.

Blogstars: The Rivals

My evil nemesis Dullnames has set up a rival AGS blog. Whatever you do, don't visit it and read his summary of the competitions and recent releases that I haven't done for a bit.

Double dutch

A dutch website have a review of some top AGS games, but it's all in dutch! But if you hail from the Netherlands you may enjoy it...

Beware Greeks bearing interviews

Over at Adventure Classic Gaming they have an interview with two greek AGSers: Alkis and Nikolas. Check it out for some diamond-in-the-rough-style action!

November fool?

Despite the April Fool CJ did way back about an XNA Game Studio, someone is now trying to do it!

Youtube is alive with sounds and music...

What do you do about a problem like Media? Well, coming to your aid(elweiss) is the latest in the series of AGS tutorial videos by densming. Fab stuff, that makes it as easy as Do Re Mi.

November Niceness

Well, here's a quick summary of the November releases so far:

Loftus and the Sky Cap

Despite sounding like the infamous Jude Law/Angelina Jolie movie, this is about a dragon kidnapping Inessa's master, who is some kind of wizard. This Ivan Dixon (The Sydney Finds Employment series) looks great and begins a new series of game from this grhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifeat artist.

AMTAG: another medieval themed advent.

Sir Galahad sets out to find the Holy Grail with the aid of some supposedly deliberate bad spelling.

Empty Mind - Blank Fate

Pre-rendered 3D adventure from the author of Quiero Morir poses the typical "wake up in a deserted basement and don't know what's going on" scenario, but there's a bit more to it than the standard fare.

Chronicles of Captain Cringe

From Montague, who wrote Cayanne Pepper and This Game, comes this short exploration of someone who helps people without asking anything in return.

Barn Runner 5: The Forever Friday 2

Detective Prick Peckard is back and this time he's lunch for the crazed citizens of Arc 19 who want him for their dinner. The usual Barn Runner fun ensues as you try and avoid being a cannibal's entree.

DoVaDuLa'S BuRn

A punk game which features the hero PuNKKoMmANDO trying to rescue the town of DoVaDuLa. You may find it as accessible as punk music, however, as its very graphically confusing.

Starship Poseidon

The Posiedon Adventure gets remade in space! Dualnames presents this non-Hitchiker adventure.

More bytejacking

Part 2 of the bytejacker video includes the revelation of the titles of both Ivy and Grundislav's new games. Woo! Blackwellbot Relics!

Misc AGS related stuff found on google

Interview with Ali, author of Nelly Cootalot on Curly's World of Freeware

An AGS game called "Snow"

Knock Knock, Who's there? Doctor...

Doctor Who fans may enjoy Strange Change a whovian parody written in Wintermute by Fireside 7 games.

Duck the flak

Indiegames.com chose Life of D Duck II as their freeware pick and got a whole load of flak in their comments! Head over and join the furore.

Bytejacker AGSfest

Well, Grundislav, Ivy and Dave Gilbert have been busy... they're in this episode of Bytejacker's Indie game picks and you can vote and win a part in Ben Jordan 8! Woo!

Scene this before?

This pic may ring a bell... Layabout, Ivy and Grundislav re-enact the Blackwell series!

More on Dave Gilbert's site.

Dec Pic Pol

You decide who is the game with the X-factor and deserves to be December's Pick of the Month. Choices on your left, choose one and cast your vote. Or you can discuss in the forum thread.

Pick of picks poll

Well, the Pick of Picks poll has closed, and Once Upon A Crime is the clear winner. I wonder if this a foretaste of AGS Awards?

Fountain of Youth and Charlie Foxtrot tied for 2nd, and Earl Bobby's Balls, La Croix Pan, Dread MacFarlane and Jessica Plunkenstein all made good showings too.

Holy Rapid Release, Batman!

CJ's keen to get 3.1.1 out quickly, as he's already on to release candidate 1! There's a few bug fixed from the new features here, that's about it.

AGS user stats

Hidden away in the Windows 98 thread (support for the editor in Win98 is discontinued in AGS 3.1.1, by the way folks!) is an interesting bunch of statistics about OSes and screen resolutions that the AGS Editor runs on:

Windows XP: 74%
Windows Vista: 22%
Windows 2000: 2%
Windows Server 2003: 2%

Screen resolutions:

1024x768: 14%
1152x864: 4%
1280x1024: 28%
1280x800/960 (widescreen): 19%
1440x1050: 4%
1440x900 (widescreen): 9%
1600x1200: 4%
1680x1050 (widescreen): 16%
Higher than 1680x1050: 4%

4:3 resolutions: 56%
Widescreen resolutions: 44%

Accessibility: it's everyone's issue

My article/interview on accessibility is up on AdventureGamers. We're all only one disease or accident or just a couple of decades of age away from being more disabled ourselves... so GO AND READ!

Playfirst guest blog

I missed this before, but Dave G gives a guest blog over on Playfirst's blog. Some inside info on the genesis of Emerald City Confidential.

Careering into the gaming world

Do you want a career in game production? Have you started on that path? If either of these is true, then the GameSetWatch article on game careers is worth reading: 5 things you can do to further your career.

Haiku Musical

Everything is more profound when presented as a haiku. Sorry, let's say that again:

Everything is more
profound when presented in
the form of haiku

For further examples, see Sylvr's haiku blog or the Haiku thread in the forums. Also, I wanted to get the High School Musical pun in.

The dialogue you always requested

CJ's released AGS 3.1.1 beta 1 and it introduces embedded scripts to dialogues, eliminating the need for dialog-request etc.! Woo!

Also, he's added embedded Ogg Theora video support and a few fixes and enhancements.

Ace in the Hole

Well, following on from Larry Vales's resurrection, MillsJRoss's classic work Ace Quest is reborn, too. Whatever next, the Pleurghburg sequel finally arriving?

Teen tutorial

Well, if you recall the video tutorials I mentioned a while ago (and I didn't recall them, thanks to IndieBoy for reminding me) you'll be pleased to hear that no less than the 19th one is out, and covers Text Overlays. densming is doing a great thing here, so a big thanks to him for creating this resource.

Bingwood Sings and Walt Disnae

Thanks to Edmundo for pointing out this non-AGS gem to me (although it looks quite AGS-ey and he wasn't sure!) Tales of Bingwood is 320x240 2D point-and-clicker (see what I mean about being like AGS games?) and has a free demo available on their website. Also on their website is details of their own Adventure Engine AWE and more about the making of the game. Well worth a look, methinks.

November pick

Well, after last month's accusation on the forums that I didn't choose enough 800x600 games for pick of the month, I decided to give Cosmos Quest II a try (since it seemed to be the best of those not already chosen) and see. And my experience pretty much matches the general buzz: great game, if you don't mind having to resort to a walkthrough now and then (or are very clever). Since I'm usually so pants at games that I need a walkthrough anyway then this was no big deal for me.

Every software developer should read this

Princess Rescuing Application is a set of slides on application design, game design and human-computer interaction and is well worth a read by anyone who designs games OR applications.

Vote

OK, my blog isn't going to change anything, but Americans please be aware that if you don't elect Obama today then the entire rest of the world and at least a third of your own population will regard you with contempt because you will all have been lying to the pollsters which only can mean that you are racist.

On the other hand, Sarah Palin is hot.

Final Notice

CJ has just posted AGS 3.1 Final. The installer is available in the beta thread and CJ says "if no serious problems are found, I'll upload it to the website along with a RAR version in a few days."

Beyond the Vales

Another development blog has started up, this time for the return of Phil Reed's 'burntastic creation, Larry Vales. Since Phil is a published writer, it may make better reading than some blogs which just bombard you with small, badly-written articles.

Fountain of News

The Indiana Jones and the Fountain of Youth team have sent out an update to those signed up to their forum newsletter. If you want to get these in future, head over to their forums and sign up, too. There's hints of a forthcoming Christmas animation and updates on the coding of the fight engine and the script writing (80 scenes of about 240 done!)

I've a feeling we're not in New York anymore

Dave Gilbert has finally announced his (reluctantly non-AGS) Playfirst project: Emerald City confidential, with heroine Petra, Dee Gale (think about it), The Lion and many others from the land of Oz. You can discuss it on the forums, too..

As a beta-tester, I've played it and its pretty amazing. And HUUUGE. And not at all like any movies of Oz you may have seen.