Makes me want to finally play all the way through Cave Story

[Rental Pickup Premise:]

Rental Pickup Premise: It's your first week working at a "Specialty Vehicle" rental shop.  Your new job: to go pick up the vehicles when the clients are finished with them. The game is a side-scrolling platformer.  The goal of each work day (each stage is a work day in the week) is to go locate the used vehicles for that day, then drive them back to the shop.  When not in any vehicle, you can use your trusty jetpack to get around. Every vehicle will be controlled and handle in a different (often counter-intuitive) way from the others, and controls will have to be learned from labeled buttons/levers/etc in the vehicle's cockpit. Some stages may require you to use one vehicle to get another, and other such puzzles. I'll post more screens as the game develops. A major goal for me with this game is to emulate the feeling of "crap, I have no idea what I'm doing" when you first start a new job. (I'm mostly posting this thread to give me more incentive to actually finish this.  I've intended to enter every TIGS compo.  All of them.  And I never have finish my entry in time)

I'm getting pumped about this

Hey, I just checked the doodle page, and we seem to be up to 7 people for the first weekend of May, which is quite a jump from before.

So if IA can make it, then we're really set! 

Yep!  Just a few more people need to be good for the first weekend of May and we can really get started setting this up.

Haha, no worries about messing up months; I'm a really smart guy, and yet I think it took until high school to always remember month order.  Now I'm just trying to get month numbers in my head; I still have to think for a second if April is 4 or 5!  :D

Oh I don't have months tied to numbers in my head at all.

Plus it took me 20+ seconds of processing to interpret analog clocks until about grade 11, although I was on the honor roll all through highschool I just never had to use them haha

Maybe not till mid April?

Would probably be better for me, too.

I think he was talking about when he'll know his availability.

And I wouldn't be able to help out much if it was in April, due to finals and all.

To de-vague it as much as I can at this point: I''ve got my heart set on the first weekend of May. 

...but if it turns out that 10 new people sign up and none can make it then, we'll set the date for later.  That's the point of the Doodle page right now.  Since demand isn't as high as it was for the Arizona Jam, I can't just pick a date and trust that enough people will make it

I'm planning to do another difficulty update soon (mostly for Simple mode, but a few Regular changes too).

There's two reasons FireCage is so difficult:
1. It is optional for a long time (you can get quite far before having to beat it - it's actually entirely optional on Simple mode I believe), so it's possible to have quite a few hearts before attempting it.
2. One thing I was experimenting with when I made AUS was making the difficulty spike when the storyline had a major "climax" - the idea was that the player would be more drawn into the story if the difficulty rose and fell with it.  And FireCage has a pretty major plot happening when you beat it.

That said, I'll probably tone it down just a bit on Regular, and more so on Simple, in the next update.

people will watch the movie on DVD like how they read a comic... pausing, rewinding, jumping to different points to see different details. I think a more and more people are re-watching digital copies of movies this way. (I know I tend to)

See, I would like to watch movies like this, but I can't bring myself to do it. It's kind of like the way I refuse to skip tracks on an album, and must listen to the whole thing in one sitting, or how I will never read passages from the middle of a book.

I agree.

I mean, making a movie out of Watchmen is the best example I can think of of forcing art into a medium it just shouldn't be in.  Pausing/rewinding/skipping through a movie is a kind of cool idea, I guess, but it's counter to how the medium really is.  If you're pausing and rewinding and skipping through the whole movie, you might as well just read the novel, right?  At that point you're basically turning the movie into a graphic novel with sound anyway.

(Although, I haven't even seen the damn thing yet, so I could be 100% wrong)

Why a Watchmen movie could never live up to the graphic novel was summed up perfectly by Brian Vaughan (creator of Y: The Last Man):

"It's like making a stage play of Citizen Kane.  I guess it could be okay, but why?  The medium is the message."

Watchmen wasn't just made for the graphic novel format, it used the format as an integral part of it's artistic message.  Like (as was mentioned way back), Rorsharch's symmetrical chapter, or how Dr. Manhattan views reality like we view a comic book (time is nothing to him, he can jump back and forth and exist in any moment).  Plus the comic within the comic (the pirate story), which I hear was simply cut altogether from the movie.

Add to that the fact that  the movie was edited down from an original 3.5 hours, and I'm thinking I'm going to have to get amnesia and forget the comic before I can see the movie :D

Anyway, I'll probably go see it sometime soon just for fun, and with as few expectations as I can manage.  I'll treat it not like a "film version" of the comic, but as a sort of unofficial tribute to it (which I guess it is, since Moore distanced himself from it).  I think I'll go into it with a similar frame of mind as if going into playing a Super Metroid fangame.

I suppose that for my project, which is more of a community website with a game embedded, looking at the EULAs for YouTube and YoYoGames might be a good idea.

If you were doing something where the users plays a game, and within the game you go online and share content with others, Spore would probably be better.

Sounds like you really need a lawyer perhaps?

Yeah, I was afraid that'd be the only (trustworthy) solution.  Was hoping there'd be someone here with experience or knowledge on the matter 

My grandfather is a recently retired lawyer (and real life English gentleman  ).  I don't think he had too many cases related to this kind of thing, but I'm sure he'd know where to look, or at minimum have a very basic knowledge of it.

Just let me know if you'd like me to ask him about it; I'm sure he wouldn't mind.

That'd be cool!  Just ask him what special things I should be careful about, in writing an EULA for a game based on user-generated content.

I'd really appreciate it man Thanks!

Sounds like you really need a lawyer perhaps?

Yeah, I was afraid that'd be the only (trustworthy) solution.  Was hoping there'd be someone here with experience or knowledge on the matter 

If you seek legal advise, go to a lawyer.

Random people on an online forum are unlikely to know better, and if someone does, YOU are likely not knowledgable enough to weed out the good advise from the bad advise.

Oh, I wouldn't take anyone's word here as gospel for something so serious.  Just wondering if anyone has any experiences to share with writing EULAs, pitfalls, whether doing it a certain way was worth it for them, etc.

Wrote a blog post about this: http://mattmakesgames.com/blog/

I'll PM Derek about the frontpage

Sounds like you really need a lawyer perhaps?

Yeah, I was afraid that'd be the only (trustworthy) solution.  Was hoping there'd be someone here with experience or knowledge on the matter 

Well, you probably could open it just like any other file and interpret it yourself.  Just Google "MIDI file format" and I'm sure you'll be able to figure out how exactly they store the audio info.

That's pretty unrealistic a task to do in GM though (to interpret and play a MIDI with GML).

You could go into the MIDI file, put all the notes that play at each beat into a list, then play it regularly and use that list to do whatever action you want to do.  The only problem with this is that if anything happens to desync the MIDI from the list (ex: the player drags the titlebar to move the window, freezing the gameplay but continuing the music) you're screwed.

EULA is necessary for any service and product provided to customer. This is the contract between you and your customer playing your game.

I know what an EULA is, but an EULA for a web 2.0 application (ie: one based on user-generated content) is especially tricky it seems and I'm not sure what I need to say exactly to cover myself.

[What's the best way to go about this and do I even need one?]

What's the best way to go about this and do I even need one?

Basically the game is online and browser-based, with database integration for public sharing.  Think YouTube, but instead of videos you watch, it's game content you play.

I guess the things I would think it has to convey correctly:
1. The user retains rights to their level designs, but the assets used within (the pre-made graphics, gameplay code, story and theme) are the property of their creator(s).
2. I'm allowed to use any user-created content to advertise the game/community.
3. The user who created the content is responsible for any offensive material they create and any damage it may cause to any viewer of the site (?).  Basically I can't get sued for someone making a level shaped like Muhammed or whatever.
4. Users are responsible to know and obey the rules, and any content can be removed at any time with or without warning by the site staff.

I really don't even know where to start.  Do I need to use certain language for it to be acceptable legally?  Do I even need to worry about an EULA?  What's the worst that could happen if I don't include one?  Web 2.0 is such a legal gray area (though I'm not exactly educated on the subject).

Rather than make a new thread, thought I'd just post this here: I just finished redesigning my site

http://www.mattmakesgames.com

hey guys, we use this for scheduling stuff, particularly jams:

http://doodle.com/

people filling it out don't need to register, just type their name in a field. It works out pretty well as the barrier to entry is lower and it gives you a nice calendar to figure out the optimal days to plan for.

Thanks!

Okay, I set up a page.  Right now it includes all of May (so just check all the boxes where you can for sure make it, and we'll use that to pick the date).

Go here to find it:
http://doodle.com/cggpde5p7qyyy3h5