syntheticgerbil

Can we skip the baby scat humor? PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Two of four or so baseball cards I've ever owned owned were Nolan Ryan, so I suppose that says something. Go baby! Congratulations! (Well except for the hospital crap.) Geez, dealing with the same here. Unemployment decided to deny any benefits yesterday after nearly 7 months of "research." I'm going to try to appeal it because I feel like I was wrongfully terminated for all intents and purposes, so now I have to cite a bunch of labor laws on a phone conference in hope that the state will change it's mind. Feels hopeless either way. I hope you find something soon. What field are you in?

Yeah when I replayed that whole section when doing the SE I realized the same thing. It's definitely some of the best non-linear adventure design ever. You're just in this huge overworld of puzzles and many of the things you interact with are important in some way or another.

Well thanks! I think a lot of it is just cleaning up with the wacom to kind of make the outlines smooth enough, the Monkey Island stuff is a few years old has some line weight issues that make me cringe though. I don't have any other video game related art besides this terrible Mario Flash cartoon I did in 2005 where Luigi does cocaine. It's the worst. I think I need to make some stuff for this thread that rivals the brilliance of toblix and his whiteboard mastery.

Discogs is where you get rare acetate CD-Rs to give relief to your OCD!

Oh was it a code wheel? I have a cheapo published version from Paradise with the diary and manual, I didn't realize it may be different. I must have brute forced my way through finding the right grail when I was young, because our Last Crusade copy was pirated. I don't vividly remember reloading a save at the very beginning of the trials every time, but I do remember choosing a bunch of cups at random until I won the game. That sounds annoying, I'm glad I don't remember that.

Nah I'm lazy, I just mess with the levels on my scanned pencils until they look like half assed ink and then touch it up in photoshop, then it's also colored there too. I suck badly at traditional painting methods.

You've got it but you need to try goofing around some more.

That's all I've got, from years ago.

Shit that is pretty. I just voted on teh Greenlights.

Yeah, you definitely will feel very different about Fate of Atlantis. Choosing the right grail is part of a copy protection scheme that requires you to write down the names given to you from the wall etchings in the catacombs and then reference the description given in the grail diary printed with the game. The grail diary is lengthy and rather hard to read because of the sloppy handwriting, so I would actually be curious if anyone who played the game when it initially came out even understood when to reference the printed diary. Maybe the painting in the safe is a part of this but I have no clue as all Indy said is that it is glowing. Maybe it's a randomized element where sometimes the game will show a grail painting that is not glowing.

The problem I ran in to is if you ended up fighting even just one guard before hand, suddenly they would no longer believe your story even if you chose the right dialogue. Pretty ridiculous set up. Yeah, I'm not sure how important getting in to the vault is really. I did it for the first time in this playthrough but didn't see any real advantage outside of the points. You did end up skipping Berlin which is basically a one note fun section by giving the old book, but nothing major is missed outside of the opportunity to punch hitler. The biplane is another similar possibility to skip the whole zeppelin sequence and later a bunch of checkpoint guards if you fly right. Personally, I think the game flows better by getting on the zeppelin.

Rewatched Mimic because of this thread and I've had the blu-ray sitting around for a couple of years and I've got to say that was a pretty great experience. I don't remember it being so good, but what I saw before was the theatrical cut so I'm not completely sure what was fixed for pacing and what scenes were taken out or reentered besides the can't-get-pregnant subplot. Will have to watch the commentary to find out more.

In a way I agree that Del Toro makes way too many "popcorn flicks" (as he puts it) and is not really balancing it well with the more personal movies, but I don't think Pan's Labyrinth is a fluke in any way. The only movie I can say of his I truly find bad is Cronos, but that seems to be a movie everyone likes and now has a Criterion collection release, so go figure. Devil's Backbone is brilliant though, it shares very much in tone with Pan's Labyrinth but a much more harsh flavor, I do hope you've watched that one. Blade 2 is dumb fun along with Mimic, but I like them both on some level, Mimic much more as it's a more subdued movie. I'm biased as a Hellboy fan already, but I think he brought a lot to the Hellboy movies. The first movie stinks of studio interference (especially the addition of young man rookie kid, why the fuck?), but the second it very true to the comic as well as Del Toro's style and is something I can watch over and over. The imagination and pacing in Hellboy II are just perfect.

Yeah, you've just gotta try to talk your way through multiple scenarios or have the correct disguises. You can quick save with Alt 1 at the beginning of a conversation and reload with Crtl 1 in ScummVM. I've been doing that so much because for some reason Last Crusade makes it so I can't save during most of the game, but Scumm enforces it. I swear most Lucasarts games tend to let you save anywhere. But it is possible to finish the game with never fighting. The mechanics do suck though. I have been completing the fights during my point hoarding by ignoring the blocking, moving back one space and punching a guard in the head or stomach when he walks towards me. Then repeat that. This move pretty much ensures your power meter will be high enough for maximum damage every time you throw a punch and they are open. For harder guards I usually have to try over and over to win by dumb luck, since they block too much. Often when I run out of space to move back with I start mashing buttons and I win through soft hits even though my health will be depleted to some extent. Luckily in the castle there is a first aid kit hidden at some point should you need it. On my playthrough I have made it to the final temple, but I'll probably get back to it in a few days. I did more point hoarding during the plane/airport/zeppelin section for the series score to try to get that 800 at the end. If I did my math right I should be good for a perfect score in all categories (506 max is supposed to be the maximum current game score). The airport chapter was just obnoxious. Trying to get through the zeppelin maze without getting caught for the points at the end was mind numbing because all of the guards are randomized as far as I can tell. So if I restarted the part from the beginning, most of the guards would be in separate places. How stupid. The biplane part is a bunch of no fun, but I got all the points by taking the path of shooting down the 18 nazi planes with quick saves. Never did that as a kid. But for maximum current game score, you skip the zeppelin completely and crash your biplane on purpose so you can tediously go through 7 checkpoints doing one thing or another with every guard. That's no fun at all. I feel like the maximum score in a possible playthrough should reflect the most fun you could have, but I guess not. The checkpoint guards are incredibly boring. I somehow remember Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as having unique dialogue for each character you must get past, but this is simply not true. All of your dialogue for every gate guard is the same every time until you find the one dialogue path that works for them. For most guards in the castle your dialogue also tends to be the same, but at least you can talk to the drunk guard early on to get a few clues on what might make a certain guard tick. The checkpoint guards are just a matter of picking every dialogue option and hoping a fight doesn't start or knowing who will accept a bribe and who won't. If you fail, reload. I just gave up caring because I don't want to deal with reading all of the same dialogue over and over since the dialogue skip button in this game doesn't speed anything up and you just wait, so I just checked the choices on Thunderpeel's guide. Playing through this game again is just making me realize how little game there actually is in The Last Crusade. It starts out pretty strong but tends to devolve into systematic elements that are copied and pasted over and over throughout the rest of the game. You can skip major sequences by doing certain actions, thus making the game incredibly short. There are two major parts so far that are solved by failing, but it isn't entirely obvious that was what you were supposed to do. I do appreciate the amount of solutions in this game but many are easy to overlook if you did not get the right item much earlier in the game, such as pixel hunting for random books in the library. Also there's very little to click on unlike other LucasArts adventures and often if you look at the 2-3 hotspots in any given room, Indy will just say, "I don't see anything interesting about it." Did someone not have enough time to write? What happened here? Either way, I can see how Last Crusade led LucasArts closer to the philosophy of not being able to get stuck and never putting you in a dead end situation. Udvarnoky, you said there were parts where dead ends were possible, but I am not sure there are any in this game. The only situation I can think of is if you were to have low health and save right before you face with a guard that you can't talk your way through (or give the item to or did not have said item), causing you to be stuck in a fight you can't win.

There are no things.

I'm actually a bit annoyed at having to pay for these new Street Pass games. I'll participate in Find Mii for free, but what is the use in paying for a grindy game that takes forever to complete? Maybe if it doesn't take months to finish a level and constant resets of my steps to do it I might be interested, but otherwise, I don't need more of these things. And why the fuck does Nintendo cap the coin amount to 10 for a day? I'm a bit sick of never having an accurate time and date at this point. Maybe when I get all the hats and shit for Find Mii 2 I'll bother, but meh for right now.

It definitely didn't fail, but it squeaked by by $400.

I think it is the same, or at least it's some version of the same project. I actually have no idea how it plays honestly. My friend who was a backer and told me about the opening said that the gameplay style changed somewhat but I am not sure to what. The art is definitely much different than what is on the Kickstarter video. I guess that was placeholder art or a different artist? The sprites the art director has been making are very nice.

Recently completed nostalgia trips

Such brilliant use of texture.

I may be closer to job and restoring regular monies... I got a gig doing a few miniboss or boss characters for a game based on the Dr. McNinja webcomic. It doesn't pay very well at all, like below minimum wage if I factor my time hourly, but it's something to do at the moment and challenging because I don't usually work in pixel art. Not really familiar with the webcomic but they liked my art test, so there's that. Also for some reason the IGDA chapter head is now talking to people about getting me a job when I was asking him about a certain company. We've talked a few times over beers but he's really being nice to me and going beyond way what I'd expect. Hopefully that leads to something! I think I have decided I want to stall out for as long as I can burning money before trying to switch careers, go to school, or doing something else with my life. This time around looking for jobs, I seem to get responses at the very least but just there are no slots available. About a week and a half ago I applied to Stoic and the art director there said he loved my stuff, which made my day. Maybe when the game comes out they might want more staff. I can only hope, that would certainly be a dream job.

Yessssssssss Professor WaLuigi! It suits him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_3PUCDoMJvU http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnewarren/laika-believes-the-sun-at-night So there's this game being made about a dog in space. Plays like Cave Story or in Metroidvania style? I'm loving the art and tone on a lot of this. I'm not goot at marketing any of these things but I want to inform Idleforums about it. Yes, you should help Kickstart it! (Also I kind of want to work here if all goes well!)