I take it you never took acid or any psychedelics.  They are the opposite of escapist drugs.

I'm taking it more than half the people here who are expressing overly negative opinion of drugs have never tried them. 

That's probably a good thing though. They are not for everyone... to say the least.

i believe more answers are found when one is completely clear headed and though there are many who believe some drugs can reveal things, i dont think thats true in the slightest.

I partially agree. Though drugs aren't magical and are often used recreationally by many who use them. However with the right intentions, such as deep self introspection, they can be very productive, if nothing more than to experience something completely alien from anything you've ever experienced. That in and of itself is a worthwhile experience, albeit a potentially horrifying one.

Personally, I'd say marijuana is about as potentially destructive as World of Warcraft. It won't necessarily kill someone, but it can rob them of a fruitful life, or at least what I would consider fruitful. Of course, there are plenty of people that play WoW in moderation and lead productive lives while getting something positive out of it. The same goes for drugs.

(This metaphor can be used for anything. Food, television, sex, cleaning. Here, a WoW addict might be a little more relatable.)

The only thing the press does is make mountains out of molehills.

What actually makes something great? That depends on the individual. It's a subjective question and I can't answer it for you.

Why does the general public consider something great? If a large number of individuals consider something great (or, in some cases, a small number of outspoken and influential individuals), then society as a whole will likely consider it great.

That's basically it, it's all a matter of opinion. If you think a lot of the things you mentioned "aren't all that great" well then maybe you're looking in the wrong places. Maybe you're just jaded, i dunno...

A good example of all this is the Mona Lisa. Done by DaVinci, one of my heroes, an excellent painting but it doesn't really strike me. I saw the original in person but it is kind of ho-hum to me.

Wikipedia tracks its fame: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa#Fame It's a brief and incomplete history as to why it's so famous and perhaps "great" but you get the idea. Sometimes the hype has to reach a critical mass until people start over-analyzing the shit out of something. My personal opinion on the Mona Lisa is that it's universally "great" because it's been common knowledge long enough. Personally, I think DaVinci's life and research were truly "great", not so much his paintings. But the dude can draw, yet for his day, Michelangelo had a way deeper understanding of color.

In the end though, does it really matter? Some great things never see the light of day, and other unremarkable ones get so famous that they are famous for their fame. That's the world we live in.

i'd say 100-250 minimum.

check out: http://www.overnightprints.com/ they are pretty cheap, the quality isn't great but it gets the done job. Even though it's "Overnight Prints" i'd order the stuff ASAP.

does anyone here disc? as in frisbee golf, disc golf what-have-you.

I'm bringing my disc, and I haven't played since September. Everyone else who discs or is interested should bring one and we could meet up whenever and throw the ol' peanut around.

courses: http://www.sfdiscgolf.org/

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.

[great]

sounds cool!

But to me, the grand prize is less appealing than the other two prize points. Essentially, you could score 4-5K for a week-long prototype, but if you got the grand prize you'd be looking at 24K total for what may very well amount to be 7-8 weeks or more of development time. Not really proportional...

Since the game's scope could be huge, if it takes a number of months, 15K could screw the dev over. Also my pessimism reads this as the 15K contract being a binding agreement, although I'm guessing the dev could decline, however that'd look pretty bad if the dev didn't want to make their award winning game idea come to life. Unless of course it's negotiable, then it should be written as "minimum 15K". Why not just leave the contract open to an unspecified amount and let things get worked out after the confetti and streamers have fallen?

That said, this is a great deal for up-and-coming devs who want to get some experience prototyping and possibly getting that initial payment that could lead to a start of their career in game dev.

The Apple Dumpling Gang?

I don't have anything to show for it, but I wrote a pretty kickass UDP-based network layer and client/server structure this week. Soon there will be alot to show for it though

awesome

More pictures! The game started looking *really* good today I think so I'm excited to share pics. This is a team project at uni btw, a shortish demo for an RPG.

Vignettes are just like screen-shake, they make everything better.

I've taken a liking to doing simple concept stuff with 2X or 4X pixels using the pencil tool in PS. I can test out colors easily and get an idea for proportion and scale really quickly. This is a concept for a platformer idea we've got.

The unreal/UT series had some pretty epic shit going on for their time

pun intended? 

awesome paul. That hits the nail on the head.

I think I only disagree with number 7, but that may be because I like to keep track of what I've done. Maybe the point is that you shouldn't go back to what you've already finished, in which case I agree.

I think it's a state of mind type of thing. Simply moving on to the next thing isn't enough. The idea being to retain the knowledge and experience from completing the project and discarding the physical project itself in order to move on to something better. For instance, if someone deleted everything I ever did from everywhere in the universe it wouldn't matter since they haven't taken all the experience. Like a character level versus the gear they have equipped.

But there are a few new things, 3, 4, 7, 8, and 12, which I don't know if I agree with off the bat but I'll certainly think about them! Personally I think perfection is rad. Especially if you can do it quickly.  Then it's skill, and it's one thing I strive for.  But come to think of it I do Imperfect just to be able to do something else a lot and that's something.  Imperfection is a part of perfection? 

 

Perfection doesn't exist, i think that's the whole irony there. #4 is especially important to becoming a badass IMHO. The sooner you realize it's time to just jump in, the sooner you'll get your failures out of the way. Those are inevitable.

EDIT: oh, and I focus by staying up all night and listening to ELUVIUM - Copia on repeat.

Incidentally, for some reason nobody seems to have picked up on the fact that the river you cross is supposed to be Styx, heh. I decided against the whole boatman thing latish in development because I thought it would make it too obvious...

I don't see a problem with making something like that obvious. A boatman would have driven this home for me.

I know where you're coming from though, it's easy to get wrapped up in the conflict between creating a hamfisted theme vs. telling it with an elegant subtlety. Too often, after you've worked on something for so long, the elegant subtlety seems to win out. It makes sense, so I try to balance this by seeing if people that should "get it" actually "get it." If they don't then it's time to add a little more ham.

this is awesome.

If you decide to have any tools/interface stuff in the core engine itself, I'd love to help with the graphics/design for it, as well as any other visual needs. If not, then it'd be great if we could have some kind of framework for scripting tools somehow in order to extend functionality to artists.

 

man this is awesome. i just beat the fireball boss dude. super intense

EDIT: just finished. really genius game terry, great job!

[a lot]

I'm not sure where to post this, but I think this board'll work. Feel free to move it.

I've been wanting to write up a post-mortem for Dinowaurs since we launched 'er, but everytime I listed out everything, it became waaay too big. So... in summary, we did a lot wrong and we learned a lot from those mistakes. Today I started writing a response to some naysayers on kong on their forums, but I realized that it turned out what I was writing was more of a review than a response. So I took what I had and expanded on it.

I think going this route was actually very useful, as it's kind of like a more digestible post-mortem. Rather than just saying, "the tutorials are boring" and "the matching was poorly executed" I tried to talk about the why. I also think reviews focus too much on "music, art, design, misc. category" and too little on actual critique. So I cut to the chase and got to what makes Dinowaurs suck, and what makes it good. In my bias opinion of course...

We may still do a post mortem, but that might turn into a novella quite quickly.

Here's the review

Furthermore, I'd encourage more self-reviews as I think they can offer an interesting insight into the developer's perspective as well as perhaps gaining a more critical eye for your own work that can in-turn make future works better.

control scheme needs a little work ... but the demo is so early that you are probably aware of that.

i kinda like how it's a little janky. feels more like a chicken. i know what you mean though, turning left and right with A and D feels weird, especially with no mouse look.

i'm feeling bejeweled

[Fan]

Was just going to post that, I'm a Fan of his!

Craig Mullins was mentioned already, yet he's wrongfully lesser known for his badass watercolor figures:


I don't ever really know what to show when mentioning Chris Ware, but seriously, just go page through one of his books in the graphic novels section of your local library:


Caravaggio:


The Laocoön: (statue discovered during the Renaissance that influenced Michelangelo to bring back ancient badassery)


Szukalski: