syntheticgerbil

I think if you want really neat-o animations with the whole follow through, overlapping action, curves, ease, and etc., you'll probably not want to script them and instead do them on the timeline. But that all kind of comes with a crash course on animation principles. But it kind of sounds like you don't have to, so scripting is probably better. I don't really know the scripting part outside of handing things basic things set up in FLAs off to programmers to mess with. I general though, I hate flash for creating any kind of art. I import everything image based (which reduces lag but increases loading time) from whatever I can and I do all of my vector work in Illustrator first (which can slow exported swfs down but be very small in file size). What I'm trying to say is, I think I can help you with many things non AS-wise if you do ever need help. Also avoid shape tweens for anything except the most basic of any animation. They are the ass of Flash.

Goodness, the ending!

Finally played Oddworld Stranger's Wrath after such a long time and being such a big Oddworld fan. I swear I've waited for the HD version to come nearly 3 years now and have been holding out to not play the original Xbox copy. I found it a rather uneven experience actually and was both let down and thrilled in many spots. I also really don't have much fun with FPS games, but I did like the stealth elements in the first half of the game. I should probably post in some thread about this one soon as well, I have more thoughts.

I really don't. I really really don't. I think for all of the adventure games I played in my life, there's very few that I consider actually good. This forum seems somewhat founded upon that though. I agree, the games I played and liked, I found the articles very fair and balanced. I guess my perception of HG101 was foremost more of a list of games to play before you die. Now it's sort of a site that covers whatever obscure crap it could dig up. There's a few adventures there with articles that I can't believe anyone would happily suffer through.

Hey life, my company is going out of business possibly soon. Apparently the owner is aiming for a buyout from some British company who wants some Facebook games. I kind of hate it here though and feel like I don't get the same creative freedom as I did at the small company I was at before doing kid's games. I also understand Facebook games less than educational games with tons of text and voice over. Play for 10 minutes, wait for and hour, repeat. Sucks no one I know really cares what I worked on because of that obstacle. Trouble is, I love almost all of the people I work with. My art director is a joy and I have so much respect for a lot of the artists, programmers, and designers here. What makes it suck is there is just a ridiculous amount of micromanagement from a CEO who knows jackshit about games (Used to be a different guy, a coowner, who managed them all, but he bailed a month after I started) plus some people who are basically the CEO's yes men. Guess it's his company, but whatever. If you pay people to be experts in art or design, why not let them do it? It also sucks I got roped into doing a ton of Flash animation for a company that did not previously have any animation. That's fine, I find it easy, but I get really bored going through the motions and not being able to create art assets. Also no one here has any animation background whatsoever so they get confused when I'm trying to explain things or if programmers have to implement things I set up. Blah blah blah, I guess I'm still happy to be working in games. For all the bitching, this career still beats any other job I had before finishing school. Hooray for that.

I think if you just learn to play in that way where you do the windmill with your arm while you strum it then you will have reached the pinnacle of self fulfillment.

This is like the fifth thread on getting stuff, Yufster. This is not a bad thing, I want these to get more and more strange with every iteration!

I thought I'd just go ahead and start this thread before I ramble too much in recently completed. I really enjoyed Gunstringer for the most part. It's awkward and over the top cheesy fun. The sets are very imaginative and the humor is very off color. The shooting mechanics feel very smooth and are forgiving. There's a lot of variety crammed into such a short game though, it doesn't get tired. Somewhat different styles of play come in over the course of the stages. The major problems I had with the Kinect mechanics is that a lot of the game requires precision movement side to side, making the parts where you dodge stuff using your left hand very finicky. The lifting of the hand to jump also seems to only read about half the time. Maybe I just don't have enough lights in my living room? The idea behind the left handed movement is really cool though, as you control the marionette from the handle up top making it not feel so tacked on. As said, I got this game for free, so I think the biggest fault is that the game is basically a somewhat pumped up downloadable title sold as a full blown game in box for $40 luring consumers into thinking it's larger. That's not exactly a bargain, but I think Microsoft is starving for good Kinect game and so this is part of the reason they recently bought Twisted Pixel as well.

The game actually suggests on loading screens that you may want to sit down if you are feeling tired.

Actually I also don't have room most Kinect things (at least going by the basic menu tuner stuff telling you to stand around the living room). So the awesome thing about Gunstringer is that it doesn't require a floor or a ceiling, it just reads your right and left arms and that's it. You actually stand closer to it than most games I would imagine. Talking to the Twisted Pixel employee, he says this is done on purpose because they felt Kinect is somewhat broken by default and they did a lot of designing around its faults.

I actually disagree with a lot of the games focused on for HG101's adventure series and the articles that subsequently appeared in the book. I think they give too much credit to really bad adventure games, which is what adventure sites have been doing for years. Les Manley? Phantasmagoria? Police Quest? I don't understand why those games get so much credit on the site. In general I feel like the quality of the site and the games it covers have just become bottom of the barrel in the last few years. It's overdue Another World article was just wordy, pretentious garbage that had a lot of blanks filled in for emotions or driving forces that Chahi didn't really ever state himself. It also takes a lot from the old amazing Idlethumbs interview. Anyway, to it's credit, I do enjoy some of the lost adventure gems it covers and I do like that is really gets at some of the most popular adventure series for their obvious shortcomings (King's Quest and Longest Journey most of all).

I thought Fez was never coming out. I remember being interested years ago. Still looks neat!

So far I have just beaten the main game, I do have the DLC downloaded, I should get to it soon. I was fortunate enough to get the game for free because my boss' fiancee works at Twisted Pixel, so it's basically my first Kinect game. I'm guessing the DLC will feel like Mad Dog McCree, which should be awesome in it's own awkward way.

I'm really sorry, Ben, I meant to get this to you sooner, but I have the scans now! I went ahead and just kept them at 300 dpi because I forgot that Evan likes to cram tons of stuff in each panel and there's the usual tiny writing, so the file comes in at 66 mb for 7 images. Hopefully that's okay. Here's the link: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=FLNSLXGF

I really like the old gallery of art that went at the top of the articles, nice to see that stuff again!

Haven't been updating this, but I think since last writing, I have beaten Prince of Persia 2008 (and epilogue), The Gunstringer (Finally got an Xbox 360), and Rayman 3DS. I should probably write somewhere else about all of these, so I will do so soon.

Holy shit, maybe I'm not informed, but how do you have a hernia for a year? That sounds excruciating! Good luck on the operation.

Into your birthday, Tanukitsune, into it. Joshi as well. Go into it.

I don't know what's with you guys, nothin' better than livin' phat. The fatta the land. The fat Tuesday. The fat's dominoes.

Ooo, fancy scribble type buttons with a circle and arrows. Neat! Are the old site archives completely gone now?

Hey you guys should do your 3DS friend codes. Mine is: 4725-8272-1788

Miffy Miffy, he'll be done in a jiffy!

Well, I will then scan at 100 dpi and scale it up in Photoshop for you.

I forgot to mention my girlfriend bought me a 3DS for my birthday (which was on Thanksgiving), and I've been screwing around with the free stuff since. I wish there were more people out or that the Streetpass stuff wasn't so ridiculous. Or maybe I could just get more than 10 play coins a day since I always use them up, but ultimately this stuff doesn't matter. I think it's a really fun system and I like carrying it with me everything. It is so much nicer than my former fat grey DS. Now all I need is a 3DS game to play on this thing. I'm really digging the free Four Swords in the shop currently. I played this years ago on my GBA, but half of the new levels really make this one enjoyable. Only problem is, I don't have any friends to play this with like last time, so the other half of the new levels are just sadistic. I wish they hadn't made them that ridiculous. You can spend upwards of an hour on one and just completely fail. Hour lost. Ugh.

My dad's going to give me his scanner when I visit him on Christmas (mine has kicked the bucket), but I'll throw this on my desk with the rest of the stuff I'm going to finally scan and get a zip file on megaupload or something. Is 150 dpi okay?