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I feel like this conversation has taken the kind of turn where I should keep my nose out and let the adults talk.
But I want to add my two cents anyway. 

Considering people have to purchase a commercial game in order to play it, and people generally don't vote let alone nominate a game that they've never played. I've always thought that commercial games are at a severe disadvantage compared to their freeware counterparts. The fact that they make up for this disadvantage with much more polish (aka professional graphics, music, ect), in my mind, puts everything on a somewhat level playing field.

And besides, there's different levels of commercial games.
I mean compare Captain Disaster to Unavowed. Both are great commercial games, but it's a bit unfair to only compare them just because they're commercial games. 
(What I'm trying to say is that some commercial games are made by just one guy in his spare time, not unlike most freeware games, while some commercial games are made by a team working full time.)

https://twitter.com/abbythelibb_/status/1708214738750972097

That's not funny.    That just sounds like what all of the political American nutjobs scream about nowadays. Heck, I've seen the reverse of this exact quote (where supposedly left wing women blame all men) more times than I can count. It's just nutters screaming at nutters. I think it's safe to say we come here to get away from those kind of people and their insane ramblings.

So at the risk of sounding like an SJW. Can we not promote an "Us VS Them" mentality in a thread where we're supposed to be sharing funny images.

Speaking of which:

["Nomination and voting"]

"Nomination and voting"

I think I mentioned this before, but opening a dropdown menu with 100+ games, find and pick a game to nominate, then do it again *9, until you filled the first category up

If the goal is to get more nominations, one solution would be to grant some people the power to nominate a game on their own, without getting the 5 (?) votes necessary behind it. This could be the moderators, the organizers, some anonymous committee appointed by the organizers, or a combination.

These two quotes just gave me an idea to help streamline the nomination process.
What if the dropdown box for nominations, only includes the games that were posted in the "For Your Consideration" thread, and only for the categories that the person has listed in their post.

Then the organizers can fill out the list by adding any additional games that weren't posted in the thread, but that they personally believe should have the opportunity to be nominated.

It's not a perfect solution, but it might help get more nominations by streamlining the whole thing.

It'd be a shame if the ceremony stopped. It's such a big event, and I absolutely love it because of that. 
My brother is always there watching with me, so he must feel the same way, despite not even using the engine.

But if it's become that much of a chore to setup, then like Crimson Wizard said, is there anything that could be done to streamline things?

I mean, would it be possible to just change the pictures used for the nominees, and then reuse the rest with no major alterations?
I don't think we need new avatars or new functions. And while it would be nice to hear the music of the games that are nominated for best music, I think it'll be ok if we don't hear it.

Then again, I've never even so much as helped with the award ceremony, so I don't know how difficult it is to use for even the simplest of tasks. 

Wecome back jwalt!
Looking forward to see what you've been cooking up.

Hey! Welcome back stranger 

Now I feel ashamed for having never realized that jwalt hasn't been around in awhile. 

I suppose it's better to be late than never though. So welcome back jwalt! 

I agree that this would be a bad way to stop you from solving the problem in that way. But I think it's almost worse if the game repeats the exact same problem and expects you to use the exact same solution

And that's why you don't use the exact same solution.

Perhaps you'll see the problem that somethings high up, remember you solved it last time by throwing something, but the only rock you can find is locked behind a glass case in a museum. Suddenly the puzzle is about getting the rock. Which is something you wouldn't have even tried to get if you didn't have the similar puzzle from before.

Alternatively, you could already have a rock, so you try the solution as before, but it knocks the high up item somewhere else where you can't reach. Like behind a metal fence with a vicious dog.

Or perhaps you could just have the high up item clearly too heavy to be easily pushed off by throwing a rock, and have the player character explain as such.

In other words, you setup it up as before, but add another step. It'll make it feel like the player is building up knowledge of how to solve these puzzles (aka a feeling of getting better at the game), while keeping the difficulty the same (if not outright increasing it, if we're to assume that some players might not realize the obvious solution that they did last time).

Also, having puzzles that callback to previous puzzles, is just good story writing. It's what the final puzzles of the Monkey Island games did.

I haven't ever used anim8or, looks... Different.

Same here, so I downloaded it and tried it out.
Wow is it easy to use. 

It's not perfect, but it's certainly much more user friendly than Blender.
That being said, it also very clearly shows its age in some of its design decisions.

It'd be nice if you could just save and load the text parser words to and from a text file.
But unfortunately you can't. 

I guess it would be possible to improve the workflow in the editor itself, but frankly, text parsers are not very much popular nowadays, so this feature has not been updated in AGS for many years.

Is it possible that text parsers aren't popular in AGS, because it's difficult to use?

I mean, I'm willing to bet that even if it was an absolute dream to use the text parser, it still wouldn't be super popular. But I think that the difficulty in using a parser due to it not being updated, has made it less popular, which in turn has meant that it hasn't been updated, which in turn has made it less popular. 
A text parser template doesn't even come with the engine, and the template you can find, could use some major refinement in my opinion (such as some basic words already included in the list of parser words, like the words that all of the AGI games typically include).

This reminds me. I need to floss more often. 

Reminds me of Populous.
Hmm... I wonder if anyone has ever attempted to recreate something akin to that game in AGS. 

I'm absolutely loving hearing all of these first encounters with AGS. 

I'm just enraged at parents letting their offspring act feral and then having the gall to judge people for calling them out on it.

In just one sentence, you perfectly described all of the kids near to where I live.
I feel your pain. 

[Bog's Adventures in the Underworld]

If I recall correctly, I think it was Bog's Adventures in the Underworld.
Although I never did manage to finish it. 
If I'm remembering correctly. I think I was searching for a full length game which had an artstyle and premise that I thought would be entertaining.

I think A Christmas Blunder was possibly the second. 

As for how I found AGS. Well that was the result of it being on a list of RPG game engines I found. What kind of idiot made that list, I have no idea. But hey, I found AGS through it. 

I feel like this is a reference to current events, and that it's flying over my head. 
Not that I'm complaining though. Living under a rock is rather lovely. 

Yes, it is. The escalation in Israel/Gaza should be all over the news for over a week now 

Oh yeah, I've heard about that. I still don't get it though. 
I thought Gaza was a city not a strip?
Like I said though, it's flying over my head. 

Anyhoo, is everybody ready to start paying to use TwiX?

Is it wrong of me to hope that he does it, just so I can watch Twitter close down, as everyone stops using it? 

Just wanted to share, as I think it's definitely one of the better in- and outputs I had with ChatGPT.

I feel like this is a reference to current events, and that it's flying over my head. 
Not that I'm complaining though. Living under a rock is rather lovely. 



Well, it's been nearly a year. So I wonder, did Musk ruin Twitter?

Let's see... he ruined the access to the API, he ruined the verified badge, and he ruined the actual name of Twitter. But other than that, everything seems to be functioning exactly the same. For now at least.

[Two Birds]

Maybe it's because I'm a sucker for rhymes, but my vote goes to Two Birds. 

Gives me Zak McKraken vibes! Looks fun! Nice clean look, easy to read the rooms.

That's good, because the bedroom has the same exact layout as Zak McKracken, and there's quite a few references to Zak McKracken throughout the game as well. 

Thanks. 

Since AI learns from texts and pictures and then again creates text and pictures, I wonder when the moment will happen when AIs train mostly on AI generated stuff. What will this result in?
I just have to think of the Habsburgs, interbreeding for generations with a questionable outcome...

I think we're all wondering that. Presumably it won't be as catastrophic as one might first think, because the text and pictures generated by AI that make their way online, tend to be curated by actual humans. For example, someone generates a hundred pictures using AI and then uploads the best one.

Still, what do you get if you keep feeding AI it's own output?
...
Ugh, I think I just answered my own question. That sounds like what they did to that two headed goat on Futurama. 

I just want to let you know that The Klaus Strikes Back is my favourite Maniac Mansion Mania episode, and I'm glad to see that even after all these years, you've still gone back and improved it.

I only know a bit of German, but I think I'll actually play it again now, just to hear it with the voice acting. Who knows, maybe I might pick up a word or two. 

I'm in the unique position where I have both problems next to where I live. A very quiet road where people slow down for you sometimes when you could easily just pass behind them. And a crossroad a little further down, where trying to cross is like playing a game of Frogger. 

Everyone in this town have been wanting traffic lights at that crossroads since forever.
And when they did put traffic lights down... they put them at a different crossroad where there were never any problems. And now no one waits to let you pass at that other crossroad thanks to those traffic lights, therefore making everything worse!