That's gorgeous.

I think the hand needs to be on the other side of the face. It's a bit weird, why would you put your left palm on the right side of your face?

I dislike the idea of blocking them images, because then my block list becomes cluttered with them. But if you people are not going to care about me at all, I guess it's the only choice I have.

Also, funny the Esc thing on Firefox. I never knew about it either.

I'm afraid I have to agree on that as well.

Thing is, when you're trying to read the thread and concentrate on the issue discussed, it's extremely distracting when something's flashing/spinning/wiggling in the corner of your vision.

Lately I've been seeing a lot of animated, quickly flashing avatars from my fellow board members. I'd like to point out that these are very annoying to look at, and greatly distract one's concentration on the thread one is reading. Thus, I plead you to use static avatars.

Actually I don't think that's entirely true. You can influence this by embedding spider-friendly meta-information in your site. I don't know the specific values however. I'll try to find them...

Edit: Ah it's not standard but rather Google-specific. What you're looking for is here, referred to as a Google "Sitemap".

It is not the frequency it is the turnover rate of the pixels.

2 ms is pretty damn quick. I only notice a very subtle ghosting effect when orange and cyan move around. But true, CRTs have that better.

CoreXii

CRT has greater refresh rate than LCD and is much heavier.

How much faster than 75 Hz do you need?

Yeah the viewing angles are pretty good, especially horizontally. But vertically, I could wish for a little more. Specifically the top of the screen darkens if I view it from too low.

My old CRT was of really good quality. But they tint to yellow over time. A new LCD was a bit of a shock - I didn't realize the technology was so different that I couldn't, for example, even change the resolution!

But in hindsight, I like my LCD. It's flat, light but large, and I got one with good contrast and a 2 ms latency, so it works very well for gaming.

As someone who loves older games, it really irks me when I play something at a low resolution and It gets all mangled and blurry looking!

That's the one annoying thing... But really it's the games' fault. Also I can switch the scaling mode from my display control panel - I've set it not to scale at all (rather just surround the small window with black)

Core Xii, I can understand where you come from, but like it's been said, taunting people by saying you have great ideas and then saying you can't reveal them is not very good manners.

I suppose that's true. But I didn't blatantly refuse to share my ideas, I simply noted that I'm hesitant to do so; Perhaps with the notion in mind that someone might persuade me to do so. But thinking back on it, yea it was probably not that smart.

I don't understand what all these counter-arguments about one-sentence ideas are. Who said my ideas could be summed up in single sentences? It's not like they're just "<A genre> game with <a twist>". Try explaining Chess or Tetris that way.

Actually I'd call it more like thresholding.

[Your game design is simply a starting point]

I'm not a huge fan of Lost Garden, but here you go.

Wow, those points are really stupid.

Your game design is simply a starting point
A game starts out with 1% game design and end up 100% production and polish.

Exactly, and as an indie, someone else might have significantly better resources for production and polish than me. Thus their implementation of my idea would overshadow mine.

Unique mechanics are almost never copied
At this point, many people claim that their design possesses a unique ‘hook’ in terms of the game mechanic. Take for example the Sims. This game had a great game design with some very unique and innovative mechanics. Holy crap, if only “I could have thought of it first” I could have made millions. Wouldn’t you love to go back in time, create a copy of the Sims and sell it before the Sims brand was established?

...and since I haven't made the game(s) yet and established said brand, someone else could do that before I even get the chance to try.

If your design ideas are similar to another title, there is a good chance you are both cribbing from the same cheat sheet. Relax. Your super clone isn’t going to win or lose based off the game design anyway. Brand, polish and production values are more important.

...which are exactly what indie developers lack and make up for in uniqueness and experimentation of new ideas.

It's just implicit type conversion. Many other languages have that as well. It's not a bad concept IMO, it simplifies the learning process.

I'm hesitant to announce my original ideas to the public since, they are by definition, original ideas, and therefore of high value.

While GML is no where near as bad as VB for teaching people bad habits, it still has things which you will have to unlearn in order to move to other languages. E.g. freely converting from integers to sprites.

...what? Integers to sprites? Maybe it's just been so long since I grew out of GM, but I have no idea what you're talking about.

Yep. This is why GML is great for learning general programming - It's easy to pick up other languages.

- Larger filesize. A 5-track song will use up 5x the filesize and memory of a 1-track song unless you're using midi.

You might want to consider modules/trackers. They're a fair compromise between waveform audio and midi.

- More work. If you don't have a good audio engine, it'll take a little work to keep everything in sync with each other. Flash does a good job at this if you start them at the same time, but I found with Aether that lag can sometimes offset the times they start at, so I had to counter that effect and start each song at the playhead position of the background track which was started first.
- Can't use premade songs unless you track down the person who made them and ask them to split it into tracks for you. Not a problem if you're getting a custom soundtrack or doing the music yourself.

There are always going to be issues with dynamic music. There's nothing you can do about it.

There is another way, which is to create 'blocks' of tracks, then stitch them together. Before the last one ends, pick a new one that fits the current game situation. You may need to make a lot of different transitions though.

Edit: That's weird, did I screw up the quotes somehow?