http://etaby.bandcamp.com/album/beneath-a-frozen-cloud

This is two years old, so have at.

It'd be interesting to see what I have already started doing differently, and what problems I haven't realized I still have.

you're the second person to ask so i'll dive into the concepts behind the effects. i'll avoid an acutal tutorial because that would take way too much time and people using other languages will be left out. andrew brophy got me into this stuff and it's actually super easy.
...

Cool beans.

Thanks!
It should be fixed now.

[is]

I and have been unable to work sincerely on anything new for a very long time, because I'm sinking all my time into one project I've been chopping away at for about two years. I can't give it my full attention because I have to do other work full time to feed and shelter myself. I have no serious assurance it will be particularly well-received when it's finished. This is still what I love doing. But I'm learning "love" doesn't produce automatic satisfaction.
I have been reduced to "lurking" status for quite a while now; I only occasionally come here and browse, and when I do, I find myself (to my own annoyance and self-disappointment) grumbling, "Who are all these new kids? Where did everyone go?" Then I feel dissatisfied with the community as a whole, asking things like, "Why is everyone in their midtwenties, probably white, and male?" But I am all of these things, so I can't ever be part of the solution. And, anyway, there's nowhere better to go.

All that depressing rant to say:
I know I'm not the only one out there feeling disconnected and unfulfilled in his work. Everybody, everywhere: Keep working. The future is always different; I feel time and change are inextricably glued together. And if you're at the bottom, "different" means "better". But to get to different you have to work.
Or maybe you have to work because it's all you know anymore. But there's pride in that, too; you still have a choice, and if you're choosing to keep pushing forward, you're doing the best possible thing -- best of two is still best.
Either way, you're winning. Not prettiest. Not happiest. Winning. And in this life, little league advice from fathers has cut short its application: Winning is what matters. Because it's not people with feelings vs. people with feelings. It's those "person vs. environment" and "person vs. self" struggles you remember from fiction analysis in school. We're all "person". We're winning. It's enough.
 

Peace and hope,
OK

My roommate has an Xbox and I had played Fez on it some, but I have spent a fair bit more time with it since purchasing it for my own PC.

Everything about it feels -- uneloquently, but accurately: just... nice. The atmosphere is pretty, and it's fun to play. I sat for maybe twenty or thirty minutes trying to figure out one thing and wasn't even upset. The whole game just makes me smile, and few packaged entertainment pieces in recent memory have been 100% joyous experiences for me.

Drew pictures.
Didn't post them.


More here.

You should talk more of what witchcraft you are doing to the screen.
Or if it's really witches I guess I don't wanna hear about it.

Ooh. I like the colours, weird visual effects, etc.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-roger-ebert-dead-20130404,0,602338.story

 

Since nobody has posted real words on this:

I will miss Roger Ebert and his opinions -- all of them; the movie reviews and the other things, most notably for people here his rejection of games having any real validity as a medium. I used to be pretty bitter about that; I take games seriously and it's always angering -- or at least depressing -- when someone says, "Hey, this thing you really care about and want to use to impact people is totally worthless." He also said some other things I thought were stupid and crazy in his blog; I remember one post in particular saying "women are better because they're gentler and more compassionate", which I found to be harmful both to men (obviously, since it suggested we are less capable of kindness) and to women (because of the inevitably carried implication that women are also more fragile, and because the statement rejects more bold or aggressive personalities in women as not feminine). He was critical of certain religious beliefs as well, and he wasn't very polite about it, which bothered me, as a religious person; some people believe some things, others don't believe in anything, and nobody is better or worse for it; I think it's pretty childish to go around making fun of people about their worldviews.
But at some point, I realized something: he was writing all these things on his blog, and they upset me, but I was still reading his blog. And at this point in my life, I was far past reading things to get angry on purpose. I was getting something out of this. So I gave up the bitterness. And when I heard he had died, I was sad about it.
Roger Ebert was a person. He was a person and he had opinions, just like the rest of us. And even though I disagreed with many of his opinions, I still found them interesting enough to read, and they made me think, so I benefited from them. And I might not be able to say that about some people I like, so that's a commendation.
And, of course, all this is skips entirely the importance of his actual career and the significance of the rest of his life, but plenty of people have already covered that better than I could.

dont move to los angeles this place is miserable

Haha, well; I'm not exactly moving there for the smiles and good times. But I am optimistic about making those happen anyway.

I'm planning to move to northern California in July, where I will be staying (because it will be free) until I have a job in Los Angeles, after which I will be moving to Los Angeles. So, ideally, I will be in LA some time this summer -- I will definitely be interested in meeting up if this turns into regularly occurring events!

I'm just about finished with all I'm going to try to do for the competition build.
This thread is now the "motivate Shelby" thread.

Sadly, we have little to show right now, but I thought I would show up anyhow just to say we are making progress on this, and we still hope to have something vaguely game-esque by the deadline!

Thanks, guys!

(Also this idea sounds much more manageable and focussed like what we attempted for the versus compo! And much easier to make fun!)

Ha; yes. If nothing else, I feel like that was one of those valuable what-not-to-do learning experiences.

Sounds pretty ambitious. The artwork looks great!

Thanks for the interest, everybody!

I didn't get any tweets from you, Shelby; I don't know what happened there. But, yes, we should do this! I will message you or something later today after I get home again.

Joey- Thanks; maybe some different time down the road we can do something. Since more than one person expressed interest (I guess I wasn't really expecting that), I'd prefer to work with Shelby as I already know him. No hard feelings!

This sounds like a good time -- looking forward to seeing how it turns out!

Ha; oh, boy. Making this an actual game could be an interesting challenge.

I think I know what we're doing now!



This would probably be a game for two local players, unless somebody out there is ambitious enough to do AI or online multiplayer.
Basically, the objective would be to stick knives in the posts on the opposite end of the field. Each post can hold, say, two or three knives. Anything else bounces off the already-stuck knives -- so there's a maximum number of possible points that can be scored. Maybe a match is divided into two or three rounds, and each round is timed.
Players would be able to deflect oncoming knives with their own, so as to defend their posts.
Hitting the opponent directly with a knife is a foul (free throw or something like that), but injuries are sustained (injured people move slower and throw with less accuracy), so players could elect to play by an alternate strategy of trying to harm the other player just slightly in order to have an advantage overall. If somebody is injured too much and is incapacitated, however, the other player is disqualified and forfeits the whole match.

I'd like to make the bare-bones game first, but make it highly polished, with all the shadows and footprints and suchlike you see in the mockup, full audio (including voices for the characters?), et cetera.
Beyond the competition, though -- assuming the game is fun enough we want to keep working on it -- it would be cool to add more characters, different knives with varying attributes (speed, accuracy, ease of deflection), doubles matches, and things like that.


I'm going to keep working on visual assets, but obviously if I don't find a programmer this game won't actually happen. If anyone is interested, let me know!

This idea... might be the best idea.