At 10/24/06 07:13 PM, TheHappySheep wrote:

At 10/24/06 07:04 PM, Jesus wrote: God's probably not original at all. I bet before anyone believed in god, people believed in some sort of higher being. God just copied that.

You'd know....Jesus

Can I say in all randomness that I've always loved your sig?

At 10/24/06 07:22 PM, orb wrote:
Can I say in all randomness that I've always loved your sig?

You may! Thanks, I should probably do a "Number of people who like my sig" thing like Coaly.

yours is pretty sweet too

A question at Mogly. Why the name change?

Nevermind, I worked it out. Hmmm I might join in actually.

I recommend Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist, by Stephen Peck. Its teh shit.

Its how i got so good overnight.

At 10/24/06 08:25 PM, Jamrock wrote: I recommend Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist, by Stephen Peck. Its teh shit.

Its how i got so good overnight.

Someone forget to log out? =)

onPress{
gotoAndPreserve ("identity");
}

/end

Very incognito, Lu

At 10/24/06 09:02 PM, Luis wrote: onPress{
gotoAndPreserve ("identity");
}

/end

we'll all have an edit button one day, then you'll see!

At 10/24/06 09:07 PM, 23450 wrote: we'll all have an edit button one day, then you'll see!

I hope it never happens actually. I hate reading an old thread and not knowing what the fucking is going on because people keep changing their posts.
Probably wont happen either.

At 10/24/06 09:13 PM, TheZombieSheep wrote: I hope it never happens actually. I hate reading an old thread and not knowing what the fucking is going on because people keep changing their posts.
Probably wont happen either.

yah...agreed. THANKS FOR RUIINing THE JOKE!

there are alot of times when it would be useful, but the bad outweigh the good in this case.

At 10/24/06 09:21 PM, 23450 wrote: THANKS FOR RUIINing THE JOKE!

Sorry. One day we'll have an edit button and then this wont happen anymore.

about origonality. ive never seen an online connect 4 game before. maybe we'll see one here soon. ; )

At 10/24/06 09:45 PM, 23450 wrote: about origonality. ive never seen an online connect 4 game before. maybe we'll see one here soon. ; )

There's been one..
And I don't think presenting something in a new medium is really too original :(

At 10/24/06 09:45 PM, 23450 wrote: about origonality. ive never seen an online connect 4 game before. maybe we'll see one here soon. ; )

So its exactly like the game connect 4, but on the internets?

How is that original, lol. =)

At 10/24/06 09:48 PM, NegativeONE wrote: There's been one..

show me. i will kill it.

And I don't think presenting something in a new medium is really too original :(

lol. its funny because thats how most games are made these days. look at FPS's. is that not a game of Paintball or Arisoft?

not the same thing, but you get the point.

http://games.crossma..sh_play/connect4.htm
http://www.2flashgames.com/f/f-581.htm
http://www.flashgames247.com/play/132.html
http://www.novelgame..games/game.php?id=37

At 10/24/06 09:54 PM, jmtb02 wrote: http://games.crossma..sh_play/connect4.htm
http://www.2flashgames.com/f/f-581.htm
http://www.flashgames247.com/play/132.html
http://www.novelgame..games/game.php?id=37

It was a figure of speech. > : (

At 10/24/06 07:25 PM, TheZombieSheep wrote: You may!

Heh, I'm kinda drunk right now, and your sig makse me even more happy than it usually does! HAPPY!!!!

At 10/24/06 12:22 PM, jmtb02 wrote: But even today, we are still seeing the platfomers and racing games that we have seen 20 years ago, and not only in Flash, but in next-gen consoles. Sure, we have a "3rd dimension" and better sound, but the gameplay still works on the same prototype, as many games still do.

Fewer and fewer original concepts are being developed, and it is shrinking even further.

On the consoles, it's a symptom of every game being made on a budget of millions and not as many chances being taken.

Generally, I think it's a result of there being a finite number of distinct permutations of any finite system.

At 10/24/06 03:26 PM, pirateemoninja wrote: Add too many extra twists, and your players may feel lost. This is the problem with creativity in games - people like easy fitting genres. They like to be able to say "That's a platformer", or "that's a GTA Clone" or "That's an FPS" when describing the game thier playing. They don't want to have to think about that answer - if it's rocket science, then it's no longer a game.

I was thinking about originality in older games... there was certainly more variety in the concepts on the spectrum (with crazy stuff like lawnmower games) but even then, there was a ridiculous number of clones I think. Thing is, with the simpler stuff, a clone is more obvious - fewer variables exist to tweak (though as a result, I think each single element plays a more important role).

As the complexity of games increases though, I think changing details can bring about a great amount of diversity. The story, art, nuances of control, setting... maybe it's not that less is being changed in modern games - just that those changes form a smaller portion of the full package?

Another obstacle on the road to greater diversity is almost certainly the lust after realism. An element of realism does obviously help in instantly explaining to the player certain facts implied by the context. Rules don't all have to be explained. We know a car shouldn't crash. We know an enemy firing a gun must be stopped.

But any game constraining itself to a realistic setting is inherently limiting itself more than one set in a more abstract world.

Try any brainshatteringly original game, like Siboot, Façade or Game of Life

I don't know those. Format? Era?

At 10/24/06 07:00 PM, AloneInTheDark wrote: I dont really think completely 'original' exists.

I'd totally agree. Basically every idea comes from an existing concept. It's all about taking elements and combining, or placing in a new context... cutting and pasting basically. Like a collage.

'Originality' is just cutting the original material into smaller pieces before you put it back together and combining in ways others may not instantly think of.

my take on it is that all games can be stripped down to common building blocks.. I dont really get why theres a whole push for 'originality' when its all relative. You're a human being and your mind will always absorb things wether you like it or not, thats just how humans function, its comparible to the way deaf people usually have a hard time with speech... It used to baffle me as a little kid, how someone could be deaf and not be able to talk? and the truth of the matter is that absorbing the way other people (and you) speak and handle language greatly helps you grow and adapt to the environment. Its a similar situation in games, i think what really pushes creativity is when those common building blocks are adapted in an unusual application, i remember when luksy first showed me the classroom game, it was a simple concept but it was like huh, what an interesting approach to it. Same with Kenney's 'World Defense', simple concept unusual approach. It shouldnt so much be about what other game it reminds you of but just what makes it an interesting take on the concept.

Anyway, its also important to note that you are making games for people who dont have any sort of training or experience in the art of building games.. just as we animate for people who probably dont have the eye and work ethic of an animator, so its perfectly expected for people to moan and groan about petty things, you just gotta take it with a grain of salt. In the end we're all here because we enjoy the scene.

Jmtb's recent 4 second game extravaganza is a good example of my point on a very small scale, it shows people using basic concepts and sort of giving it a different context, may not be the most mind boggling approaches but it starts somewhere and with enough time people could probably tweak most of those mini games to having qualities that sort of give it its own personality.

-L

At 10/25/06 01:01 AM, Luis wrote: Jmtb's recent 4 second game extravaganza is a good example...

Yes, Jmtb's four second extravaganza that didn't get a weekly. Newgrounds can be such a fair place at times with everything ranked accordingly, but then others it all seems backwards. I'm not saying this is backwards, but I don't think it is quite accurate. This game had a 4.52 out of judgement and once it hit the front page, in a matter of hours it was down to a not so shiny 4.17. Other submisions can be on the front page and grow in score to a 4.30+ like this week.

Another example would be StrangeClock's Lord of the Clocks 1-1b (I think that's what it was called anyway...) which was an exellent movie not just for clock standards, but for any standards. It got weel;y first which it deserved, but since it was submitted after 9pm, it was to be put into the next days competition for daily feature. It was hammered that next day because it sat there at the number one position of all-time. Which leads to another point, the 4.24 score cap on the site, nothing stays higher than that score for very long.

I'm not trying to complain because there isn't much that I can do about it, I am merely stating my observations. Our roller coaster voting system is being driven by more than just talent. There is also a popularity element to it and other things.

My question to all of you, what other things do you think determine a submission's final score on NG?

At 10/25/06 01:18 AM, DingoEatingFuzz wrote: My question to all of you, what other things do you think determine a submission's final score on NG?

The portal has its quirks and is by no means fair, no mystery here. You just gotta live with the system, dont know why people always make issue with it.

I think one of the most important concepts of the portal to understand are that people generally vote on instinct rather than truly sitting down and saying to themselves ok im gonna be completely unbiased for the next 20 movies/games.
Theres people that will vote high or low based on wether they like the genre, is this a game parody i like? if so ok, they've already determined it will get a 5 unless its trashing the game they adore or done clearly at horrible quality.

Then theres other people (my favorite voters :P) that vote on who you are, fanbases are important aspects of success in newgrounds. Movies/games with heavy fan following are 'sticky' and are more likely to be plugged and thus generating more votes. Its a nice thing to have users who get excited at seeing a username and will give you the benefit of a doubt regardless of what you make.

On occasion theres the pubeless mafia involved. They are users who vote maliciously so that their idols stay successful, this isnt the fault of LF or other authors who are affected by this.. its just little kids being... well little kids.

-L

"ill be able to learn C++ faster.. (hopefully)"

i just started computer programing first year at my college and we're doing c++ and knowing AS helped alot when trying to grasp c++, im not in the uber hard stuff yet but every little bit helps.

oh snap, i didnt relize i was looking at the first page of the thread haha myy bad.
nvm what i said b4 haha :$

My first flash (my only one, actually) has a score of 3,7. Then again, I cheaply jumped on the Steve Irwin bandwagon.

At 10/25/06 01:18 AM, DingoEatingFuzz wrote: Which leads to another point, the 4.24 score cap on the site, nothing stays higher than that score for very long.

I know this one, from first had experience with Decline 3. What I think happens is that something comes along and gets to the top of the top 50 straight away. Then people start to compare it to other top 50 submissions, thinking 'oh, I like prowlies better than this, so I'll vote 0 to make things right'. Once a submission drops into the 4.24 zone (most of the top 50), slight changes can shift it considerably, so as soon its below prowlies, that user stops voting 0. If its actually a good submission, other people will be voting high, so eventually it balances out, and once it get a large number of votes, its hard to shift it, so at 4.24 it stays.

Tom~

Hi, i'm developing an AS lipsyncer tool, which could potentially stop the need for lipsyncing yourself, and save hours of your time. Also, it's just as good as doing it yourself. (Here's an example of it in action).

It's not quite as easy as just putting a certain movieclip on screen and it animates all by itself, but it is very easy. All you do is type in what's being said. Although you have to do is phenetically (sp?) and leave spaces where there are pauses. For example, this is what was typed in order to achieve the example:

".......so...........wher we going now"
(The '.'s are meant to be spaces, but NG removes it when you put more than one space next to each other)

Anyway, here's why is posted:
Do you think this could ever catch on?

At 10/25/06 07:26 AM, Jesus wrote: Do you think this could ever catch on?

If its simple to use, and works as well as normal methods, then yes, definately. If you worked a Sound object alongside it so that it syncs up properly, that'd be great.

I know of one program that does something similar - it reads the voice sound file and gives you an array of nummbers that correspond to the volume at each frame. As you can imagine, its only good for simple 'anime' lipsyncing, where the mouth just flaps open in time to the voice.

I can tell you that lip syncing was the one thing that took up the most time in Declines 2 and 3. Anyting that gets the same result in even half the time would be awesome.

Tom~

At 10/25/06 07:15 AM, The-Super-Flash-Bros wrote: Once a submission drops into the 4.24 zone (most of the top 50), slight changes can shift it considerably, so as soon its below prowlies, that user stops voting 0. If its actually a good submission, other people will be voting high, so eventually it balances out,

It doesn't really balance out, though. A 0 and a 5 don't cancel out, unless your score is dead on 2.5 :P For higher scoring submissions the downvoting is much more damaging and upvoting less effective than with lower ones.

At 10/24/06 01:50 PM, fuzz wrote: Ive submitted my halloween game at last
im so happy :D:D

OMG I missed that :P

Good game, man. No way it should have gotten a score below 3.8. I fifened :)

Look out for my game later today (or earlier tomorrow).