Oh and have you ever thought about extending the deadline of the Winter Flash-Off into January sometime? or is that month already dedicated to something? I guess you want annual awards out of the way by December...

At 12/3/09 08:18 PM, TomFulp wrote:

At 12/3/09 07:39 PM, Starogre wrote: Well, I never really have time to do a winter flash-off submission because final projects and finals are due mid-late december and i have family stuff to do the last week of december. But I guess doing okay in school is my goal! haha

And what about that CONSOLE GAME you're working on too?!?!

Yeah of course that too haha I was just making excuses using annual reoccuring events, although, this game will probably take up part of my next december as well :P

wait are you suggesting i drop out of school? ;)

At 12/3/09 04:47 PM, TomFulp wrote:

Before we talk about goals for 2010, what are your goals for what is left of 2009?

Well, I never really have time to do a winter flash-off submission because final projects and finals are due mid-late december and i have family stuff to do the last week of december. But I guess doing okay in school is my goal! haha

At 12/2/09 11:11 PM, Nayhan wrote:

What made affiliates special? (apart from the blue name), NG history is fascinating.

They could make front page posts along with the admins and mods

wacom tablets are great free gifts.

don't hate! appreciate!

At 12/2/09 06:03 PM, Doomsday-One wrote:

I still haven't gotten my Google Wave account working.

I don't find it very useful outside the business side of things, doing collaborations on a project is the only thing i see where it could be useful.

but everyday conversation could easily be left to facebook, AIM, email, forums, etc.

it's really great to see Flixel being used. it's even greater to see Adam Atomic encouraging its use and releasing it for free. I think that's very important to getting the masses into creating their own original game ideas without needing too much complex coding experience, etc.

and with the releases of professional game engines, game design is really growing as an artistic medium

At 12/2/09 12:01 AM, PBass wrote:

Personally, I'm not entirely convinced on the existence of Germany.

Did the Holocaust REALLY happen???

If it is possible to create artificial universes, who's to say we're not living in an artificial universe right now? He said we needed energy to begin with since it's flat.

Or we could even be in the matrix....

At 11/30/09 04:30 PM, killerrob wrote:

At 11/30/09 03:32 PM, TomFulp wrote:

At 11/30/09 03:16 PM, Starogre wrote: Is Mindchamber doing another film for the Tank Awards?

Would you like to see another film for the Tank Awards?

Hell yes!

Seconded!

Is Mindchamber doing another film for the Tank Awards?

Do a quick sketch of each frame to get the animation down with like light grey color or something. Then go back and redraw the final linework (black?) over your animation sketches. That way you won't waste too much time if the animation looks wrong when you playback cus then you can just erase and redraw quickly.

Frame by frame doesn't mean redraw every frame. It means redraw the poses and extend them for however long you need vocals to come out of the mouth depending on the pose. for example, saying the word THERMAL, you would put your tongue between your teeth for however many frames you hear the TH sound. Then you roll your lips outward to make the ER sound, so redraw the mouth like that and extend that drawing for however many frames needed until he makes the MAL sound in which case you purse the lips together and pull them apart, possibly showing the tongue rolling behind your teeth.

Frame by frame just means redrawing what you have to depending on the situation, it doesn't always mean redrawing every single frame.

Generic anime style just move a mouth open to close per syllable then close it between words. extend the frames for an open mouth pose to close mouth pose depending on how long the syllables are in the vocal sounds you have.

At 11/29/09 04:05 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote:

At 11/29/09 03:31 PM, Deadclever23 wrote: On the subject of maths, what are the chances of getting into Cambridge to do pure maths?

I love math and my school luckily has a ton of advanced math in it.

But seriously be practical. Pure math will only allow you to do 1 thing in the future and that is teach math (since after a certain point math has very limited practical purpose, other than as a gateway to discovering possibly practical new branches of math).

Yea there's a surprising amount of mathematicians needed for engineering departments to manually derive equations and do research for the labs. If you really learn that much math, and apply that to VERY basic physics equations, you could probably do a ton with it. Sciences in general are mainly for research purposes and publishing papers as well as teaching.

At 11/28/09 02:50 PM, zrb wrote:

At 11/28/09 02:18 PM, Duchednier wrote: Bhaha, yeah you totally looked to Adam Phillips for the droplets, but its okay, he sets the bar :P So we all do it

Haha surprisingly I only looked at his animation after starogre suggested so. Before that I forced myself not to do so and looked at pictures like this :P
That one pic actually helped alot.

Yea my bad for some reason I saw orange in that water drop to the right :P
References are not a bad thing! You'd be surprised how many people use references for their professional work. It takes years and years of experience to draw things near perfect without a reference.

Also that sun reflection should be white, not orange, unless it is sunset in which case all the colors in the image would be different.

At 11/28/09 11:49 AM, zrb wrote: Water

Am i doing it right ?
By looking at those blobs do you look and say "oh that looks like water" ?

It looks like water, though typically the reflections in water are darker than their surroundings. Also, water has specular highlights and it's own shading/shadow. Watch the beginning of Waterlollies and you may see what I'm talking about.

Also, I do see your point about Photoshop being used to create graphics like Flash for website development, but Flash was created to make the animations for websites. Photoshop was created to edit photos but not because of websites or UI, just to make editions to photographs that were otherwise not easy to obtain in the darkroom.

At 11/28/09 01:22 AM, PBass wrote:

Yes, but flash being used on a UI and flash integrating the options to create UIs are to completely different things. Perhaps in the beginning it could have supplied the graphics to create UIs, but then you just as easily have said that Photoshop was created for User Interfaces as well.

I agree they are different, I should have been more specific. I still have to say though, animated text or moving images on a website enhance the interactivity of the website, in my opinion. The animations would be created FOR the website, not AS CONTENT like the Flash Portal here. So I still consider it to be a UI tool.

Photoshop's first purpose was to edit photographs, not enhance websites.

At 11/27/09 08:12 PM, hesselbom wrote:

At 11/27/09 08:00 PM, Starogre wrote: Flash was originally created for UI so i wouldn't be surprised at all

Where did you read this? The original Flash (aka FutureSplash) was simply created for vector animations. [source]

Those animations were for Websites, aka UI. Animation doesn't have to mean Adam Phillips animation or game animations specifically for entertainment. it is simply moving text around as well, instead of using Java or javascript

Flash was originally created for UI so i wouldn't be surprised at all

I think for more 'cartoony' games or any game with unbelievable proportions etc. like castle crashers, it should have cut scenes using in-game graphics.

However, if you're doing something more detailed, like metal gear solid (lol) then the cut scenes should be detailed and show more detail (typically) than the game graphics.

People can put themselves into cartoony characters easier, and they don't typically want their own image of what the cartoon character looks like, run over by a more detailed animated cut scene. Whereas, if the characters are supposed to represent, spot on, in-game, what they look like in a more realistic setting, by all means animate the cut scenes realistically. It's like FF7 vs Mario. FF7 has simplified game graphics yet detailed cut scenes and mario has more of a style that flows throughout its 3d games (ie. not detailing mario anymore in the cut scenes than in-game).

It is good to have your work spread around in the end. If you were a larger company, yeah it would be a big deal if you owned a dedicated website to your high quality Flash content and some company just stole the .swf's.

The only problem I have with it is these website owners type up some php or maybe shuffle together images in dreamweaver and host tons of stolen .swf's. Then they end up making more money than the individual Flash developers.

It could be, however, that if your file is spread to 50 sites, and a site has 5000 games, you could make a similar amount of money. All depends on the ads you have in it. (I still think the website would end up making more money)

At 11/25/09 03:12 PM, Toast wrote: This "farmville" abomination is an insult to humanity.

Literally. Business men know a stupid easy game such as this will appeal to the masses (because maybe it parallels their stupidity?). It really is an abomination but the people who play it don't know it.

I think part of it is that everyone is obsessed with being on Facebook constantly when they're on their computer, or else they could step 2 feet away and play a game console, or even... GASP.... open a new browser window, cover up Facebook, and play other Flash games!

I don't see movie businesses making this much money off such crappy, low quality movies, but I guess YouTube covers that stuff so I wouldn't really know. Artsy film directors are probably as disappointed at Hollywood as artsy game developers are at huge budget game companies.

But these social networking games aren't even games. I think it's another form of receiving notifications and upgrades that make you feel good without having to annoy people directly and post on tons of pictures and walls.

@Bomtoons: those are some pretty awesome sound systems

i never found symbols to work very well as masks

Also, on the business side of things, it seems as though business representatives were the ones pointing the Farmville creators, etc. in a certain direction, as the driving force behind the design, rather than an actual video game designer. In turn, creating over 250 million dollars for that company in the past year...

At 11/24/09 02:50 PM, Luis wrote: The one interesting thing, from these little e-trends and gaming in general is how the 'gamer' is changing, how that persona and the traditional profile of what is a gamer is evolving. wii fit, Farmville, etc are all examples of like a different breed of gamer with games/apps that are 'dumb-easy' and accessible to that kind of gamer.

I have this little hope inside me telling me the more 'dumb-easy' games the mass population plays, the more they will be accustomed to different kinds of 'games', therefore eradicating the term 'nerdy' from the typical 'gamer' stereotype.

I'm not sure what the downsides are to everyone thinking video games are cool, but what's there to lose when we already have 'hollywood' video games on the market?

At 11/24/09 12:51 AM, Magical-Zorse wrote: Has anyone noticed that renaenae is now a mod again? I thought she stepped down from being one, and now she's back.

although I am happy she's a mod again, I think it's a little odd.

some people just like experimenting on both sides

At 11/22/09 02:31 PM, Deadclever23 wrote: Better?
http://spamtheweb.com/ul/upload/3309/700 28_Twist_on_Life.php

it's a lot better now. but there are a couple things until it's nearly perfect. i feel like there should be some max speed for horizontal movement so you can't run over gaps. And maybe make the moving blocks separate classes/objects because it could cause problems later on (right now you continuously are in a fall state while moving down so it limits your movement abilities). Also, it would allow you to do much faster up and down and left to right movement of the block so the block doesn't move into your character too fast while up movement is going on, and you can keep up with horizontal movement without having to run along with it.

sorry for run-ons, stream of thought

You probably would have had to install some kind of tracker hosted by mochi or something before releasing it to the internet. google usually works pretty well though.