Messages

Stupot,

Spoiler

You need the vase from the back of the hall
and use it on the wet tiles and you will also need the soap

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Thanks Ian,

Spoiler

I could have sworn I had tried picking up the vase, but I guess not.

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How in the world can I

Spoiler

wet the sponge? The only water I can remember seeing is the dripping tiles in the basement but trying to use the sponge on them tells me it won't get wet.

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Edit: Nevermind, got it.

Spoiler

I'm also trying to wet the sponge. Neither of the two taps in the house are giving me water and it says they must be closed at the main valve, but I can't find the main valve.

Or is there another way to wet the sponge using the dripping water?

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Last few days to vote, folks

Congratulations to the nominees.

Here's a condensed alphabetical list of all the nominated games:

Beat the Buzzer
Beyond The Edge Of Owlsgard
Castle Dornstein - DEMO
Challenge of the Tentacle
Clotilde Soffritti in: Never Double Park your Spaceship
Don't Give Up the Cat
Highland Spirit
Menial; a Utopian Bagel Simulator (demo)
Mr. Tijerakis
Nightmare Frames
Perfect Tides
Rock 'n' Roll Will Never Die!
Signal & Echo: Iris is Missing (demo)
Snow Problem
Space Quest: A Son of Xenon - Full Version (2022)
SPHONX
The Excavation of Hob's Barrow
The Witch's Lullaby
There's Something in the Pipes
Where Did the Humans Go?
Zid Journey (demo)

That David Wolfe has been putting out nonsense since the early days of Facebook. He's one of the pioneers of chucking out absolute bollocks that he probably doesn't even agree with just to get people to interact with it. Nowadays, that's just what everybody does. It's exhausting to scroll through the teams of absolute bollocks. Obviously staged pranks; magic tricks where you can clearly see what they did; deliberately bad parenting advice; deliberately disgusting food recipes, which invariably include some unhygienic element; deliberately terrible craft ideas, with obligatory disregard to taste as well as safety; and the purposefully melodramatic videos of people reacting to all of the above.

These are bad on purpose because they know more people will comment about how bad they are, and it's the number comments that matter to them, not a sense of pride in their own work.

I grind my own gears for allowing myself to see this shit.

Faceplant

No-one was home, but James locked the bathroom door through tears and washed his face. This time they'd thrown him face first into a pile of fertiliser for the hell of it. He rinsed and noticed a tuft of fluff on the space above his top lip. His first moustache? Running his mum's leg razor over the fluff, and still half crying, and still stinking of shit, he celebrated this milestone inwardly.

But it seemed he had missed a patch. He applied foam, shaved and rinsed. The patch was gone at first but it quickly returned, faster and thicker than before. This was not right.

James dropped the razor and started desperately yanking at the tendrils now sprouting from all over his panic-stricken face. But he couldn't keep up as a thorny tangle of vines and nettles wrapped themselves around James's head and squeezed.

True, and after playing for a while you quickly get a feel for what consonant clusters are possible.

I sometimes will choose a word that could eliminate multiple clusters in one turn. For example let's say I have _ _ A _ _.  I might try "shack" because not only does it eliminate ck at the end, but also sh (which is common at the beginning and end of words, as well as within). Plus using the S can eliminate all of the many clusters which use that letter.

As for today's puzzle:

Wordle 626 6/6*
⬛⬛🟩⬛🟩
⬛⬛🟩⬛🟩
⬛🟩🟩⬛🟩
⬛🟩🟩⬛🟩
⬛🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

The AGS Facebook page is being inundated with spam posts about Fake celebrity deaths.

[Uplifting]

This month's theme is:Uplifting
Theme set by: Stupot

The winner is Elevation by Rootbound. Well done.

	The Gift by 4KbShort
	Elevation by RootBound

Ladies and gentlemen, get ready to lift off! We're here to announce the most uplifting MAGS contest of the year, so pack your bags, grab your metaphors and similes, and get ready to take flight on the wings of creativity. This time, we're not just aiming high, we're reaching for the stars, and we won't stop until we've crafted the most uplifting games the universe has ever seen. So whether you're as light as a feather, as strong as an ox, or just love puns about helium, this is the contest for you. We're looking for games that will lift our spirits, tickle our funny bones, and leave us feeling like we're floating on cloud nine. So what are you waiting for? Let's soar together and create some truly uplifting games!

^{(Description powered by ChatGPT - I asked it to include metaphors and similes. I think it's actually taking the piss 🤦)}

This is looking great. Keep them screenshots coming x

Thanks for your comments Mandle.

Here's a little bit of brief feedback from me:

Baron

Spoiler

Your story was charming and humorous and reminded me of my own childhood searching for Christmas pressies with my sisters. My interpretation is that the magazines actually did belong to the dad, not the mum, but the kids didn't really understand what that would imply.

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Mandle

Spoiler

I enjoyed your anthology structure and the two inner stories were good but I wanted more from the wrap-around story. I could definitely envisage this as a larger work with 10 or so stories, with more space between them to develop the wrap-around characters.

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[Police Quest 4 SCI(ish) Demo]

Time to vote for your favourite demo:


(Vote using the poll above)

	Police Quest 4 SCI(ish) Demo by GOC Games
	Splendor Solis (demo) by tbook

Since ChatGPT was released there has already been a massive jump in self-published content labeled as "co-written" with AI. And those are just the people admitting it. I dread to think how many people are copy and pasting reams of this stuff and not declaring it.

I definitely consider that cheating as things stand. But it got me thinking about ways in which AI could be used in a way that is fair.

Of course, declaring it is the first step. As things stand, I think anyone using AI to write anything should declare it or make it abundantly obvious, especially if they're making money from it. But this is basically unenforceable.

But what other ways can it be used? Well, it could be used for proofreading. It's not really any different from a spell-checker or Grammarly that respect.

I also think one fair way to use it would be to simply ask it for feedback. In my recent Fortnightly Writing Contest entry I did just this. I wrote an entirely original piece and then asked ChatGPT to tell me what it "thought" about it. I asked it to tell me what was good, what was not so good and to provide me with suggestions to make it scarier. And crucially I specified that I did not want to to provide any re-writes, so that I still would have to implement its suggestions in my own words.

I think this is a good way to use it. Others might disagree, but to my mind, this is no different than asking a friend to have a look at a draft and give you some feedback. Granted this "friend" is infinitely more well-read than any human, but I don't think this counts as cheating.

What do other people think? Is that cheating or fair play? What other useful ways could it be used for writing that is fair play?

Is it Journeyman Project?

Sorry, @BowsetteGamer, I didn't mean to suggest your game was not original. I can see that you've put a lot of your own time and creativity into the project, and it looks like a lot of fun. My main point was that a game that has been in development for a year cannot be entered into MAGS, because it is a contest about making a game in a month.

Welcome @BowsetteGamer.

MAGS is a monthly contest in which entrants can make a game based on a theme or topic for that month. This month the Topic was "make a demo".

The idea is that members wait for the announcement of the theme on the 1st of each month and then get to work making their game. While it is considered okay to use pre-existing assets, the project itself should be original and intended as a MAGS entry.

We're not super strict on all the rules but I do think if you've been working on it for a whole year, it can't qualify as an entry for the contest this time.

Please feel free to look out for a future theme. You're more than welcome to join in anytime.

It sounds like you were playing someone's unfinished project. Might one of your parents or an older sibling have been having a crack at game design?

As well as not being posted in this thread (yet - there's still time), it seems as though Bowsette's demo was also started considerably before this topic was announced.

I'm inclined not to allow it this time but am open to change my mind if others think that is too harsh.

Waddup, y'all? Anyone working on anything?

Sorry for being unclear, it was an expression of sympathy towards Snarky.

Ahh sorry cat, that was a failed attempt at humour. I didn't realise your emoji was a reaction to Snarky's post. I thought it was a reaction to puzzle 614 being difficult:
(Spoiler for 614 below)

Spoiler

The answer was "vague", so "Can you be more specific?" would have been totally hilarious.

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