Messages

Van Helsing?

Yeah, I didn't expect it to be very difficult â€" didn't check whether it was part of any of the trailers, though. (Of course, Sky probably cut their own TV spots.) For those who haven't seen it, it's a fun action movie of the "one last heist" variety. Jon Hamm is good in it, playing a charmingly sleazy, drugged-up gangster.

I expect some of you have seen this:

Limitless.

Sorry for the false hope, BCT-fans. I'm just bumping the thread to suggest another topic: Toolchains, debugging, and how to test a game in development.

When you're making a game, you often need to run it for testing/debugging purposes, e.g. to check that an animation looks right, or to test that an interaction you just scripted works, try to figure out why a bug is happening, etc. AGS has some simple debugging features built in (e.g. a debugger with breakpoints, teleport to a certain room, ...), and there are other tools and modules designed to help during development (like Monsieur OUXX's brand new Breakpoints/DisplayGUI module, or the SpeechCenter plugin to create voice acting scripts). I seem to remember seeing a devstream that showed a little control panel to adjust the positions of animations in-game (though I'm not sure how it was exported/saved). Do you use any of these? Do you implement any features of your own to assist you during the development, like ways to bypass certain puzzles? Are there any tools/features you're missing that could make your life easier?

I'm working on a game right now that has a bunch of randomness to it, and I'm thinking that for testing I'll need some way to bypass and control the results directly, so I don't have to try something ~100 times to check that the thing with 1% chance works correctly. Stuff like that.

Similarly, are there particular apps outside of AGS that you rely on to make your games, and do you benefit from particular tricks, shortcuts, plugins or macros in those apps?

No I haven't, but it's definitely on my to-watch list. In fact, let me see if I can reserve it from the library right now...

...Also The Lobster. I need to see that. And Evolution (2015). Art-house sci-fi FTW!

(After some quick internetting, I could get The Lobster through the library, but not Hard to Be a God or Evolution. Oh well, some other time...)

BTW, I watched Blade Runner 2049 last night, and was only moderately whelmed. As extensions to the original movie go, I prefer the Westwood game.

Hard to Be a God?

The Conjuring?

Blair Witch Project?

That sort of looks like Pablo Schreiber, but he doesn't seem to be in any likely candidates. (Obviously it's not American Gods.)

GLOW?

Correct

How about this?

maybe this helps?

It might, but we can't see the link. Looks like you need to be logged into your dropbox account to view it.

You got it dude!

With what's probably the most-often-guessed movie on this thread, that almost everyone has seen, and that is especially relevant this week with the release of the sequel, I felt I had to pick some tricky caps if it wasn't going to be immediately obvious.

The mountains are from the theatrical version (as you say, unused footage shot for The Shining).

The dove shot is used, I think, in all the old versions: workprint, theatrical cut and Director's Cut (but there exists a deleted scene of a different one – I'm curious why it wasn't used). I personally think they went a bit too far dystopin' it up for the Final Cut: I would have liked to keep a hint of blue sky to better maintain the symbolism of the shot. (This is my number one complaint about that version of the movie, to the point where I almost want to redo it myself so that I can splice it into the film at that point.)

The forest is from the unicorn scene, of course (which has been — incorrectly — rumored to be footage from Legend), specifically the shot used in the Final Cut. I wasn't sure whether the version from the Director's Cut or Final Cut would be harder to recognize, but personally it's the DC version that I visualize when I think of the scene.

The cuckoo clock is from JF Sebastian's apartment (it's right when Pris spraypaints herself with raccoon eyes). The screencap is taken from the Final Cut, but I'm pretty sure it is present in other versions as well (there's a whole bit where it goes off and she glances over at it). I thought this was the one shot that is arguably least misleading about the contents of the movie, and the one shot that anyone who has seen any version of Blade Runner was guaranteed to have seen, so it's funny that it's the one you couldn't recognize.

Spoiler

BTW, as I was taking the screencaps I came across a version of the ending I don't remember seeing before (though I must have, since it's from an extra in the box set and I watched all of those), where Rachael and Deckard actually have a whole conversation in the car as they're driving away (in this version they're just driving along a road in California, not swooping through snow-peaked mountains):


"You know what else I think? You and I were made for each other."

[close]

Edit: Oh, and also BTW, the accidental/spurious link with the last one was that in Blade Runner there actually is a special effects shot of a photo that comes to life for a brief second (Rachael's photo of what she thinks is herself as a child with her mother).

Nope, but you're circling around the answer, so let me just post this last one before someone gets it:

No...

No

Nope.

Yeah, it's one of the girls whose disappearance he goes there to investigate, right?

Any guesses for the latest? (There's an accidental/spurious link of sorts...)