I think the idea of states having more power is attractive; mostly for the fact that it would allow more diversity in legislation and give Americans more choices in living with a government they agree with while still living in the U.S.A. How much power to be gained is tricky though, because it can't be so much that separate states start to resemble separate countries.

I think I've seen that show on TV before. It's interesting stuff, but while watching it it's important to remember that it's still a TV program with either all or certain parts being scripted and edited.

That being said, I still think that the general idea of a higher group of string pullers is real, but the sinister intentions stated on that TV show seem fabricated to create ratings, IMO.
If anything, I believe that a group like that exists because they don't trust the masses of idiots in the world to decide on major issues, which in my book is a good thing.

Yes, I am these old adult swimmers you were looking for.

All of them, all my alts. Sent to the past on a mission.

Do you wish for knowledge from the futures? Yeah that's right, PLURAL.

Go on, ask away.

How do I know that you're really from the future? This is serious business

I was on Adult Swim, around 2006. I got banned five times because I was under 13. I forget how they always found out, probably because of some stupid non-subtle post insinuating I'm not over 13.

heh yeah... the adult swim forums are oddly strict considering the product. I tried registering a new account on there today to see what it was like now, and I couldn't because "BassCadet" contains profanity - "ass" -.-
I ended up finding my info for my old account, at least.

Great writing

It's completely true - Society as a whole functions much differently than most people really think it does. The two-party system? It's all bullshit to keep the mass population busy arguing with eachother and unable to realize that voting for a leader is irrelevant. And to a lesser degree, a lot of other things in society are also like that, unfortunately. The big picture is frequently masked by the superficial debates between superficial groups.

indeed...there are probably ridiculous laws of physics operating everywhere, even in empty space, that our current understanding couldn't even hope to explain, and despite the fact that we live in the age that is becoming more tech-savvy, we're still just primitive monkeys stuck on this planet unable to see what's truly out there.

Compared to the entire universe, we are even smaller than a single atom from our own perspective.



"The most astouding fact about the universe is the knowlege that the atoms that comprise life on earth, that make up the human body, are tracable to the crucibles that cooked light elements to heavy elements in their core under extreme pressures and temperatures. These stars went unstable in their later years. They collapsed and then exploded, scattering their enriched guts accross the galaxy. Guts made of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and all the fundamental ingredients of life itself. These ingredients become part of gas clouds that condense, collapse, form the next generation of solar systems, stars with orbiting planets. And those planets now have the ingredients for life itself.
So when I look up at the night sky, and I know that 'yes, we are part of this universe, we are in this universe,' but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact, I look up; many people feel small because they're small and the universe is big, but I feel big, because my atoms came from those stars."

-Niel deGrasse Tyson

hey guys!
I'm working on a flash game that is still in it's very early stages. basically its going to be an rpg with turn based combat, with a world to walk around in that more resembles a platformer. The theme of the game is comical and light - the story involves monsters spawning as the result of typos in the human world, and I'm trying very hard to incorporate humor into the game.

Ive done all the basic things in the game design and coding so far - the hero can walk around, change maps by going through portals, npcs say things, and the code is setup in a way that adding more content and maps will not be a difficult task. I also already have the graphics exactly how I want them and intend to keep adding graphical content at the same time as I add coded content (I hate using programmer graphics).

but now comes the part of what this thread is really supposed to be about. I'm trying to come up with a definite skill and stat system to use that stands out from all the cliche things that other games always use (strength, stamina, etc), and who better to ask for feedback than my fellow self-proclaimed nerds?

i've come up with a super rough draft of what I want this all to be like and I welcome suggestions to improvements, or even ideas for totally new features. After all, this is essentially going to be the most important aspect of my game as all of the combat will be centered around it, so I want to get it right before I start to code a system that I decide isn't good enough and change later down the road.

Here's what I have so far:
-there will be a basic attack button as well as skills. Only the hero can act (none of that companion BS lol...or maybe i will add some but i'm heavily leaning on not) but multiple enemies may appear. ie. 1vsX
-skills cost mana
-mana is set to full at the start of every battle
-mana is going to be balanced much more closely to action points than traditional mana (meaning the cost for skills will be quite high and so will the regen).
-some skills will have cooldown.

-stats will have a primary attribute that gets raised significantly as well as a secondary that gets raised slightly.

-Courage, Sympathy, Cruelty, Artistry. these are what the player actually chooses to raise.

-Courage- P:Melee dmg, S:Physical defense, physical accuracy
-Sympathy- P:Max health/physical defense, S:dodge rate
-Cruelty- P:Magic dmg, S:Magic defense
-Artistry- P:Max Mana/mag defense, S:Mana regen

-skill trees will exist that have prerequisites of stats.
-Courage based skills will be mostly melee attacks
-sympathy based skills will include status inflicting skills, heals, self buffs, debuffs
-cruelty based skills are the mage bread and butter. fireballs, etc.
-Artistry based skills are mix bag and will have animations of the hero drawing things quickly and then using those objects to cause mayhem. some of these are magic based and some are physical based.

-skills will also have prerequisites of level, as well as knowing the previous skill in the tree.
-physical attacks/skills have a chance of missing based on hero accuracy and enemy dodge rate
-magic based skills can't miss on weak/common enemies but have a chance to be resisted by harder enemies.

here's my very rough draft of what the skill tree might look like. I kept in mind the physical and magical properties of the stats and how i might be able to mix those traits to give the player interesting build options. The boxes that are the result of two stat trees coming together means that the prerequisites for that skill includes both of its parent skills as well as the stats associated with both of them (possibly to a smaller degree than the "pure" skills?)

http://tinypic.com/r/23ueqkk/5

Again, I'm looking for feedback/comments! Do you think the game balance could be off? are there too many arrows and connections? not enough? etc. thanks!

edit: some typos... I hope this post all makes sense, I'm rather tired and copy/pasted most of it from my personal idea .txt file in which I'm not very concerned about proper grammer or overall coherence.

Yeah that's pretty sick.
I dunno, i'll probably stick with flash until the market significantly changes. i'm sure it will be a gradual change as well, because there are so many flash games already made. like were talking tens of thousands easily. It would be insane to limit support for all those outdated games, because I mean, people would still want to play them, or at least have access to them.

I'm very impressed, but this video


makes me feel like its complicated just to complete basic tasks. I am very impressed by those capabilities, and it's clever how people make games like that, but the big question is, is it Object Oriented?

Flash is actually moving to desktop. I believe adobe announced end of support for flash plugin for web (which is a good thing) because of HTML5 and lack of mobile support. Flash will still be around for AIR, though, and looks to be taking off with GPU support now.

And for the record AS is loosely C based (perhaps based isn't the right word - it shares similar form with most curly brace languages).

Hmm. that's interesting and I was unaware of that. I'm not at all familiar with HTML5 or even what it is capable of, but I'm skeptical to believe that it will replace flash on the web unless HTML5 is capable of producing high quality games mostly because the market for flash games is currently very strong and stable. I could definitely see flash being replaced in areas of the web not game-related, though.

Ah, that's really sad to hear :/

It's nice to see both of you again at least

Learn flash as3! It's based around OOP as well and is relatively easy to learn compared to C, C++, or anything similar (at least it was for me.)
the downside is that flash is only used in web browsers and as far as actually running complex or demanding code, it pails in comparrison to languages that produce .exe files as an end result.

But seriously, I love flash because creating games in it feels so simple and intuitive, yet the code still has enough flexibility to create just about anything you can think of that isn't too demanding on hardware. And besides all that, it's a great start to OOP even if you move on to more complex languages in the future.

hi guys,
some of you may have known me in the past as imscotthi. I guess my roots in how I found this website was that I used to be a signature maker in the [adult swim] forums, but that seems like forever ago. It's been at least a couple years. And then an email from spleen from out of nowhere just gave me a lot of memories of what my life used to be like back then and started missing that group of people a lot.

what ive been up to with my life is that I'm going to college now for music. I'm planning on possibly going to graduate school for performance when I graduate and maybe someday joining an orchestra.
But hey! i'm still a nerd. I started picking up flash game development as a hobby and hopefully a way to make a bit of cash one day. I probably couldnt code HTML anymore to save my life though, haha.

So, any of my fellow long time adult swimmers around still? Alie? baal? i'd love to catch up.
and for people i don't know, well you all seem pretty alright too. let's talk about nerd stuff!