Chapter One: A Band Of Merry Writers Assembled

[Matt_Kelly]

After having carefully pored over the submissions and having allowed plety of time for people to try out, I'd like to ask McPirate and Ryback to join me in order to work together on a design on our future amatuer adventure game. A lot of corresponding will be invovled so we should probably do this via email with only periodic updates posted here; please write to me at mq43@angelfire.com.

The care shown by Haggis and MancombSeepgood is noted and if we're ever stuck, or Ryback or McPirate has changed their mind about being on the team, we'll call on you.

[McPirate]

I thank you, for letting me join the team.

And I'm looking forward to beginning...









"Oh Jolly Oh boy! I'm choosen!"

[Dizzy]

Meh. I wasn't selected. I give a vote of no confidence in the leader.



Oh wait, I wasn't selected, so my vote doesn't count. Never mind.





Seriously, though I think I wasn't chosen because of personal reasons. I questioned the 'leader' too much, and he didn't like that, he didn't even give me an example of his supposedly vast talent when I asked for it.



I challenge the self-appointed 'leader' to tell me what was wrong with my two submissions. Oh, wait! I don't exist, I'm not allowed to question him. Never mind.





After much consideration, I have decided to vote in the 'Should Matt Be Project Leader?' poll. I vote 'no', which means there are seven votes for 'no', and only six for 'yes'.

[Matt_Kelly]

Please email me at the above adress soon McPirate to begin our correspondance. When I hear from Ryback, I'll pass on his adress and all emails should be sent to both of the others.

As for Dizzy: Sigh. I was worried someone not chosen would respond like this. The fact that you're only writing this after you weren't chosen and not beforehand smells of sour grapes rather than sincere doubts about me. Personal reasons didn't even enter my head. Your ideas didn't grip me as much as others, it's as simple as that. I ask you not to cut yourself off from this, but to help as a tester, or to offer suggestions or to contribute to art or programming if you can.

[Ryback]

Whee-hee! I'm in! I'll send you an email this evening, Matt.

[MancombSeepgood]

Thank-you.

[Dizzy]

As for Dizzy: Sigh. I was worried someone not chosen would respond like this. The fact that you're only writing this after you weren't chosen and not beforehand smells of sour grapes rather than sincere doubts about me.

I'll leave that to your judgement.

Personal reasons didn't even enter my head. Your ideas didn't grip me as much as others, it's as simple as that.

I'll leave that to your judgement.

I ask you not to cut yourself off from this, but to help as a tester, or to offer suggestions or to contribute to art or programming if you can.

Hmm... can't program, can't draw, what is a boy to do?



I think I'll just wait for the movie to come out.

[murry 84]

I wasn't selected? Nuts. I thought I was shoe in for sure with my Darwin Award idea. Ah well, Matt, I trust in your judgement



And one more thing, can I be a game tester?

[Matt_Kelly]

When we have something to test (could be a while yet), the first ten or so people who volunteer to will be our testing group, but I'll mentally reserve you a spot Murry84.

As for your Darwin idea, it is funny in a way but I think it would work better as an element of a game, something perhaps another character is doing, rather than the entire plot.

[Dizzy]

Okay, I'm sorry if I've come across as a bit antagonistic. It's not a desire to bring the game down, but to make it the best it can be, that has made me so expressive.



I guess I did over-react a bit at not being selected. Looking at the other submissions, I thought I was sure to be chosen, because my ideas, especially the first one, were more character based than plot based... they were romantic quests of self discovery. Most of the other ideas were either 'save the world' or 'travel from point A to point B', and very little along the lines of 'character development' was mentioned. And certainly mine were the only ideas with any kind of romantic element.



While I wouldn't watch a movie or read a book purely for the 'romance', it does help a lot. Where would Monkey Island be without Elaine?





Anyway. The reason I reacted the way I did is because I have continuously asked Matt for original proof of his talent, and have been consistently denied or ignored. It vexed me, because he said he had written 'quality original stuff', and I assumed he would give us access to it without delay. It seems odd that the project leader would be given control of artistic judgement of other peoples ideas without first having given proof of his artistic talent.



But I guess I'll have to wait for the game itself to be released before I can see proof of his talent...

[Matt_Kelly]

I said that you could look at my MI scripts for original stuff; there's plenty of jokes and ocurrences in there that are of my own invention. As for things which are entirely original and not based on other ideas, a lot of it's suprisingly experimental and black and not really relevant to designing an adventure game, plus none of it's on the net anyway.

I have done a complete adventure game design of my own invention, but it was written by hand and is not in electronic form. I used to think it was excellent, but it has been five years since I wrote it now, probably a bit rusty, my skills have improved since then.

[fazer]

I would be more than happy to help out in the programming part. The only problem is that I can't really create a game very similiar to Monkey Island in the graphics and lay out part...but if you have paid attention to my post earlier, I can hopefully do it all in discriptive text mode probably in C or C++ etc...



Regards,



Fazer

[Matt_Kelly]

Stay tuned Frazer; while we definitely want to create a graphic adventure and not a text one, your programming skills may come in handy somehow, but first we need our design sorted at least to the point where we have engine demands and interface requirements sorted out, so our programmers know where to begin.