Not to derail this thread or anything, but...

i should mention that by pixel art i mean the intentionally bad "pixel art" that passes by the name on this forum, i don't mean stuff that people put actual time and effort into, like, say, the pixel art in samurai shodown 2. i mean 90% of the stuff in the 'show us some of your pixel art' thread.

really?!?! 90%?!?! that's a bit harsh

SuperJoe: Unlimited continues?

Adam, I'm curious, is FlyTrap selling well? I doubt your prospective customers are to be found here, but is the aggressive(I'm not using it as a pejorative here, you just seem very active)promoting-comment/forum postings defending your game getting higher sales? I'm wondering if the 'developer/personality as a brand' is a somewhat valid marketing strategy for indies.

CASinclair:   I think it would be possible to go past the gimmick the wii is right now, and make some decent games with proper design and not just quick warioware type experiences. When I played Thief:Dark Project for the first time, I was bending my head in front of my monitor as I was leaning closer to a door, as if I could hear better what was said on the other side. Can you imagine playing thief with the wii controllers? You would make the purse grabbing/picklocking experience totally different-the sword fighting wouldn't change a lot, but you could add some depth with some more moves- knocking on a wall metal gear style to attract the guards; holding your cape over your face to hide better in the shadows, relying on your ears to decide whether to come out of hiding or not etc...

aeiowu: This is interesting. Was it the name 'graphic novel' that grabbed you, or the actual format- comics being usually sold or presented as very thin fanzine like things with the corny name of some superhero in bold wacky script on top, and an action scene (sometimes with text) as an incentive to read further, while graphic novels come in various shapes, some of them adopting a more respectable book shape, with more mature covers and smaller font size. They also are not limited to superhero stories. I think you have the same thing going right now, with old school retro-arcade games being the comics and the new, often not-challenge oriented more story/cinematic immersion driven titles that appeal to a wider audience being the graphic novels.

I think your arcade vs art gallery analogy doesn't work too well, because you get different crowds in those places regardless of what you would present there. 

aeiowu: Well, I think the public downloading/buying software to load on their console of choice is not really interested in having semantic debates about what they're interacting with, as much as they are with the interaction itself.  . Debates about terms and their usage is usually limited to those who are active in the concerned field.
 

Thomas: Labeling your work anything other than 'game' won't change the public's perception of it. If you interact with software through keyboard/pad/stick/wiimote/misc peripheral/mouse and are not working, it's a game. Else -> it's an application.
As a side note, I bought my nephew a Wii for christmas, so I got to try a game(sport island resort thing) using a new better motion sensor. It made me a bit pissed no developer is seriously using it to make good fighting games. I mean, can you imagine, playing mount and blade, swinging your sword around while ordering your troops pointing at targets(charge!) and shooting your bow(the archery game is pretty neat).

Also, the word 'art' as interpreted by the modern world is taking away the foundation upon which I have built my life. Screw you, urinal in a museum!

Ben- Yep. I tried it, unplugged my connection. It brought up the splash asking me if I wanted to go pro again. Closed it, plugged the internet back on. It loaded normally.

  Skofo might be right on this. I just bought it. The alpha channel in the sprite editor is nice(you don't have to make an additional sprite sheet for alpha masks). But the softwrap - having to be plugged-in to be able to use the pro version is pretty abusive. I either have to crack it to be able to continue working on the go, or keep using version 7 on my laptop. On the up side, 25$ is not that expensive a screw 

My hate for you is so strong i couldn't keep it in me.

Street fighter quote?
You're a programmer Akumagaki?

Akumagaki: The way criticism is handled sometimes depends on how it is delivered(ie: 'this sucks, do this instead' usually doesn't yield the best results). Sometimes the recipient of criticism decides to stick to his original idea to see it through, and that's his prerogative; if he's wrong, he'll be able to learn from the mistake in due time. But no one is ever stupid for refusing to listen to criticism. Stupidity comes when you're proven wrong after the fact and refuse to admit to it, continuing to go down deeper in the error.

I understand how you can get under people's skin with forceful opinion; I'm like you, very passionate when I express ideas, which means I usually think about how my words would impact on someone after I post them. In a real life conversation, it's not such a big problem, because you can watch a person's reaction and empathy helps you understand when you're getting in 'hurt' territory. You can also smooth harsh things up with proper intonation which is near impossible with typed word(you got smileys, but it's not the same).

Anyways, in the end, we are all someone's idiot at some point in life. That's why we got pets- they don't judge!

Dan- It's not abandoned. The whole framework of the game is done, programming wise. Now I need to work on the graphical assets. The last month has been very busy for me, and I only had the time to sketch placeholders during my daily commute. Christmas vacations are coming though 
In the meantime:

Sketch research for the Kensai(brown blocking type)


Sketch research for another Kensai(there will be 3-4 different brown blocking types, each with a gameplay variant)


An almost finished keyframe for the basic blue bushi. I'm trying a technique where I finish the loose painted pictures using pixel art

 

Actually I would love to play the life of some kid in a video game.

Japan has the 'My summer vacation' serie. http://www.gametrailers.com/game/my-summer-vacation-3/4744 You should check it out. 

It really reflects poorly on them and makes me think the Mac delay is the result of incompetence rather than an accident or something else beyond their control.

I signed up for the Mac Beta, spent 2 weeks without being able to test anything because the runner wouldn't start on my version of osx. I gave up believing it would come out shortly after the second beta release, when I tried to run a simple game I made which used the 'draw' function. There were so many bugs, in the editor and in the game running, I couldn't see how it would be fixed in the short time before the 'planned' release date.

I was a bit bummed out, and then got to learning actionscript.

CAsinclair- Yes, I loved the immortal too. I loved the fact that it wasn't a typical 'save the world' plot, it happened on a much more micro-level. But the item interaction was a bit too limited- I would like to have multiple 'solutions' to get an ending. For example, you have a locked, closed wooden door- you can find a key, pick the lock, hack it to bits, make a path using bait to draw the green slime to dissolve the door, infuriate a large monster to bash it in etc- the player is mainly responsible for what happens next, the game only needs to support as many actions as possible.

Edit-Ultima Pagan also had some good ideas, which were ultimately(haha) ruined by bad implementation.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

Nah..I'm still pretty much on the 'arcade' side of things. But I have been thinking a lot about rpgs in the last 2 years. I used to love rpgs/adventure games. But at some point, I couldn't stand the grinding anymore. The bioware rpgs (Baldur's Gate, Icewind dale) showed me another way to present and interpret stats, but it still was in essence about having high numbers and grinding a lot.
Lately, I've thought about an old snes game called 'Young Merlin'. The gameplay was pretty abstract, like a mix of zelda and adventure game. You would progress through interactions with items and environment, and everything was pretty fluidly integrated, puzzles and everything.
I have a lot of rpg assets I did a while ago, floating around my pc, and I've wanted to use them in something, but I don't have the heart for a rpgmaker thing anymore. I'd like the game to progress in an adventure game style, without the inventory and verbs, only through interactions between items and characters. And have a story told with no dialog.
Someone earlier mentionned the shotgun

I'm not sure that the shotgun really works well with this game. You play as a child, and this helplessness adds to the game. Giving him a gun seems out of place, and adds that extra button as well.

I found it interesting that the shotgun was perceived as empowering the child, since there are no enemies in the game. Also, it is still treated as an action game item, and not in the adventure game sense. Try bringing the gun near your mom, then throw it. It was already implemented in version 1.5, but 1.6 corrects some of the collision bugs. Also, the bearded guy was running to get the log, but he got angry pretty quickly, hence the speed boost.

Joe- Thanks for the heads up. I had the same bug pop up. Actually, the crazy beardman was trying to beat up the stick. This is supposed to be fixed in this new version(1.5)http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=9488.0, where he is not supposed to attack inanimate objects anymore. I also made the shotgun more visible.

I have added a few more things. Some people talked about drowning, so I added a frozen lake. And a neighbor. And his daughter. Since I'm progressively adding stuff here and there, I removed all the loose links and somewhat organized the first post. So get version 1.4 there http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=9488.0

Increpare: I had to do some quick work on the camera to implement the full screen code, but I have little time to experiment with it and get the kinks out so I went back to making separate versions, and being a wuss

Increpare- I found one, I'm just not sure it is 'the code', as I had to modify a few things to make it fit.

mhh, I'll make a windowed version for those of you who have problems with the resolution resize.