Troels Pleimert

As far as I remember, there's actually THREE solutions to that puzzle. 1) Rock, but no jockstrap. 2) Rock and jockstrap, but bad aim. 3) Rock, jockstrap and perfect aim.

Best guess: probably just a background character that reminded the programmers of Clark Kent or something, and they gave him that nickname in the code. Doesn't necesssarily refer to THE Superdude. :)

What PCJ said. We're working across states and continents here, and it's important to have our stuff in a central database so we don't end up with multiple iterations of the same script. Also, this way, we can very quickly go over each other's lines and give pointers directly within the Narrative Editor's comment field, instead of going the roundabout way of emailing it and hoping someone will notice. Once the script is final, it's locked down - and, as PCJ says, it'll only be tweaked when the actors come up with stuff during recording.

Nemesis ruined Trek for me. Insurrection mauled me badly, but Nemesis had me in therapy for months. I'm very wary of new Trek.

I'm peonpleimert. I'm also very rarely on Skype.

I agree, sitcoms are usually stale and formulaic to the point where they're vomit-inducing. And they always have been. The old 60's sitcoms are offensively stupid, but they're a product of their time. They weren't castrated; we just discovered that they weren't funny anymore. Big Bang Theory is just as offensively stupid, but not because it bucks sexist/racist stereotypes (which, by the way, it doesn't; at least not with any aplomb or finesse). It's just transferring the stereotypes we usually pick on -- race, disabilities, gender -- and turning it onto nerds and social classes. And my beef with BBT goes even deeper, but I'm not going to let myself be derailed. I'll gladly espouse why I hate this piece of shit another time. However, I have been watching a fair bit of 30 Rock lately -- yes, much later than everyone else; that's how I roll; I didn't get into Seinfeld until way into the 2000's -- and 30 Rock brilliantly holds no prisoners. It's written and created by a self-proclaimed feminist (Tina Fey), but she is more than willing to poke as much fun at her own beliefs as anyone else's. You could call it cynicism for laughs, but to me, it just captures our failings at upholding our own ideals when faced with real-life situations exceptionally well. Her character on the show claims to be a feminist as well, but is easily swayed by money and she liberally takes advice from her overtly sexist, conservative boss (Alec Baldwin). And female characters on the show get hit in the crotch just as often as male characters. My point with bringing up 30 Rock is that we can argue about how we all should think until the cows come home. Forcing kids to attend a gay pride parade in the name of equality? Stupid. Arguing that women are better than men, or the other way around? Stupid. This is why we have ideals. Ideals are not reality. They are what we would strive for, if we were somehow perfect creatures. But we're not. (Edit: Here's a great article about "Liz Lemonism" and how feminists erroneously lambast it for failing to live up to their ideals: http://www.genders.org/g55/g55_mizejewski.html) That said, your idea of "the four big B.S." can still fuck right off. Gareth said it absolutely right: You are clearly oblivious to how ironic you sound when you call us the "P.C. police" (a misnomer if ever there was one). If we're going to play that game, it should at least be "the five big B.S.". And I can't speak for Gareth or Frederik, but I definitely don't consider myself politically correct. I consider myself a humanist. But I am also a cynic and I think there is truth to Carlin's words that we will never attain our ideals. The peaceful world of Star Trek where everyone is united in peace with no money and a military hierarchy that somehow works will never happen. We're too far gone; we've already fucked it up for ourselves beyond repair -- there has to be a cataclysmic event where we nuke the site from orbit, final-scene-from-Fight-Club style, just like a drug addict has to hit rock bottom, before we're going to get anywhere. Which is why I think everyone and everything is fair game for lampooning, satire, comedy and cynical remarks. I might even get thrown out of Frederik's apartment for telling an obviously racist joke, however ironically I might be telling it. I also think everyone deserves the right to live their life however they want to. Yes, even homophobic racist dickwads -- go ahead, live that way if you choose, but I think those people are wrong, they are sad and wretched, and I reserve the right to call them out on just what a homophobic racist dickwad they are. And I also reserve the right to call you out for being full of shit with regards to your accusations of wolf-crying, because you're doing exactly the same yourself.

I don't know if I should congratulate HappyCockHead on a piece of trolling well done, or if the dude's actually serious. As a guy who works with Photoshop on a daily basis, I think the technical execution of the poster is nigh flawless. Very impressive. Content-wise, eh, everyone has their own opinions. :)

PCJ is right. I apologize for letting myself get suckered into this. It is a hot-button issue and we all have very strong opinions about it. But it has its place and I think I've made my point. I'm out. For what it's worth, I also apologize for calling your statement dumb. It was a knee-jerk reaction. I still think you're wrong and your point of view saddens me, but that's my opinion.

You're absolutely correct, BlockMaster - the Keronian Ale is not an inventory in the actual SQ1VGA. Maybe they thought they were doing an homage to the whiskey puzzle in LSL1 at one point. (Although probably not.)

It hasn't. Show me where. Where is this committee of politically correct standards and why aren't they doing their job? All kidding aside, show me where. The person making the comments does.

Joking aside, I know Scott and Mark are acutely trying not to repeat what they call "mistakes" of the past. Such as dead-end scenarios, blindsided deaths without the ability to respawn, and, yes, leaving huge chunks of plot un-wrapped and unexplained. (Imagine if there never were any games after The Two Guys went their separate ways the first time. What kind of cliffhanger would SQ4 have been? :D )

This is probably the dumbest thing I've read today; pardon my bluntness. Are you actually suggesting that we shouldn't care about racism, sexism, bigotry or homophobia? To me, writing "big four of BS" about these topics is just self-servingly ignorant. Don't get me wrong. I'm not intent on upholding some PC standard for behavior or to encourage self-censorship in any way. I'm just going to reiterate the point that I already quoted Carlin on in the "damsel in distress" post, which is that it's the intent behind a statement that's offensive, not the words or wordings themselves. Your "intent" here, however, seems to be that anyone who decries racism, sexism, bigotry or homophobia is by default trying to control your thoughts and force you to conform to a certain world view. Not so. You can tell me a racist joke if you're not racist, because I know it's not coming from a prejudiced mind. You can tell me a sexist joke or a gay joke, too, if you fundamentally believe in gender equality or gay rights. If you don't, however, and tell me a joke on either of these anyway, I'm going to assume that you're just a bigoted a-hole who thinks it's funny to pick on people different than yourself. That's the fundamental difference between being PC and being able to joke about things. It's not self-censorship. It's not about giving up your freedom to say what you want. It's about having values that don't demean or belittle other human beings.

Oh, crap. I installed this on my phone. You know how hard pixel hunting is on a 5x8 inch screen?

I just wrote Scott to make sure the cliffhanger we had planned is still in there and just as infuriating as we had hoped it would be. ;)

Wow, amazing! I'm downloading this puppy now.

My new favorite quote. :D

Haha, that's awesome! :D

I like the double-click-to-run mechanic myself -- the Blade Runner game used this especially effectively where repeated clicking made the character run faster. I also really like the double-click-on-exit to change rooms mechanic, too. But some games, I feel, also took it too far: in Torin's Passage, you could right-click anywhere on the screen to instantly teleport there. And after a while you start getting lazy and just zip all over the screens instead of leisurely exploring the game world. And in Beneath A Steel Sky, turning up the game speed also increased the speed of everything around you, not just the main character's walking speed. Those are, I think, some of the pitfalls to watch out for.

For some reason, I'm proud of this.

Exactly. George Carlin made the same point. Words are just words. It's the intent behind them that matters. If you say or write something that's gonna push people's buttons, they're going to want to know what your true feelings on the matter is. Therefore I think it's important to have self-reflection, especially in the creative arts -- because what you put in writing or other creative outlets IS going to outlive you, and thereby your means of personally defending or explaining it.

Agustín Cordes, the Scratches/Asylum/Serena guy, tweeted something about Indiegogo being a horrible platform that withheld on promises and mismanaged people's funds. He did not provide a source other than citing other devs that had experienced problems, though. Anyway, I suppose with any platform that manages so many donations - and, in the case of Purple's example, managing people with, shall we say, alternative creative ideas - is bound to run into some difficulty at one point or another. This is still a burgeoning field, and it has to do with that tender concept of money. No one's gonna get that right all the time. ;)

I'm going to quickly jump to drslash's defense here, because I think you guys may have missed his point somewhat. It was not a point of "you should censor your thoughts and deeds because it might be construed as sexist." It was a point of "if you're going to do or write something that could be perceived as sexist, look into yourself and ask if you are able to defend this decision intellectually." I think a lot of this "cry wolf" mentality from both sides comes from a fear of change and fear of realizing that things might be more complex than they were in the 50's. "Holy shit, women are people, too? And not just the obedient door mat who fetches my slippers and cooks my dinner?" We have finally progressed to the point where we can make fun of these unfairly skewed gender dynamics, but some people who are stuck in this fear of change see that as an attack on their "values." Even though their "values" in this case basically amount to lazy misogynism because it's easier to treat a woman as a "wife" rather than a "person." Also, fuck the 50's. At no point in modern history do I think contentment has been a shallow veneer masking our collective fears of change more than that hellish decade. "What, there are other races than white? What, women want to vote? Dear god, when will the atomic bomb turn us all into giant mutants? We are so fantastically dumb."

Hahaha! The lens flare joke completely redeems you.

Nice one! And I gather someone's a Firefly fan. :P W-wait, directed by who? (quiet, threatening voice) Get off my lawn.