Official Off-Topic Thread

[.TakaM]

Youtube pixelart section in 5, 4, 3...

[Dr D]

I actually like that some of these sites are creating sections for Pixel Art. It's getting us more recognized across the internet, is it not? Thus I'd like to think that Pixel Art is prospering instead of dying.

[Rydin]

My brother and one of my best friends and I have this cover band where we do country, rock, and pop covers, and tonight we learned a bunch of new songs for practice. Some Pink Floyd, a Distillers song, "Someday" by the Strokes, just kinda for shits and giggles, and we can pull it off exactly like the recording--it's a not very complex band and it's not a very complex song. But yeah, we were mostly just messing around and having fun. My brother and I  taking our mind of things.
You see, early this morning my grandma on my mom's side died. Everybody in the family has been expecting her to be dead for years already. Cancer. She was a machine though, I swear. But it wasn't a very big surprise. All the family was at my place today--everybody going through old photo albums of her and discussing the good times. It's a big family--7 kids. But yeah, it was getting late, everybody had gone home, but we were still practicing, and my mom came to tell us she was going to bed, and that she had a long day. So we were like, let us play a song for you, we've learned some new ones. She says sure and listens. And we play the Strokes. And we just fucking nail it. Not a single note out of place. It was completely crystal perfect. The most soul and heart I ever put into a performance ever. Ever. And somewhere during the middle of the song I glance up and my mom is teary eyed, and my brother and my friend both saw it too, and they gave it their all. We played as a perfect unit, and I felt every lyric sting from my soul, nearly teary eyed myself. We keep playing, and I look up again and my mom is just sobbing, turned away from us.  She lost her mother. She works hard for 40 hours a week at this factory that's going out of business. And it's a wonder that my parents have been able to stay together for more than twenty years. Every lyrics struck a chord for her.  I don't think anybody in the room will forget this evening, or this song. All said, my grandma had a good life.

If I didn't have a headache right now, I could describe this more accurately. But it was the most magical, celebratory, perfect song for the day.
I want to say though, if you think all pop music is just about money, you're wrong.

[Scribblette]

Glad you could give her that.

I don't care if it's not appropriate, I'm passing on giant hugs and birdie snuggles (and the snuggles of my birdies are awesome) to your mum.

*looks up the song*

[Dr D]

Sorry about your grandma.

My grandma (on my mom's side as well) was diagnosed with lung cancer, just a few days ago, as well. Yeah it's sad. We're going to see her (she lives in a different county - Germany) soon. She doesn't know she has it yet.

I'm glad you were able to have such a nice and memorable day, on that day, though. Sure your grandma would have been proud.

[Sherman Gill]

I like that song. The Strokes are really great for a pop band or whatever.

Sorry to hear about your grandmother.

[Helm]

My condolences, Rydin.

[Shrike]

That's touching, Rydin.  I...  it sounds like..  a nice end to a day.  Relatively, at least.

(For those of you who are Mario fans, please enjoy a remix I made for a friend: http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/252415 )

[Rydin]

Thank you guys.  Sorry to be the downer in the off-topic though!

Happy Fourth of July! *insert fireworks here* 

[saimo]

Hello pixellers!

I'm here to present you a finished game of mine which might be interesting to you for a number of reasons.
The first and foremost is that, even if it targets PCs (AmigaOS, AROS, Linux, MacOS and Windows), the game is totally oriented to pixel art: it uses a resolution of 320x240 and allows anybody to create his/her own graphics.
More precisely, the game is based on themes, which allow to redefine the audio/visual aspect in every detail. Making a theme is very easy: it all boils down to creating a directory and putting there the custom data files (f.ex. the tiles bitmap). The full instructions can be found in the freely downloadable developer's manual in PDF format.

To give you a quick idea, I'll shortly illustrate the 7 themes I made myself:
 * the theme "default" presents a military/sci-fi scenario;
 * the theme "warm" is basically the same as "default", with just minor graphical variations;
 * the theme "C64" is the theme "default" re-drawn using only the C64 colors and with a C64-evoking interface;
 * the theme "castle" changes things radically and takes the action to a medieval/fantasy setting;
 * the theme "vectors" again changes everything, as it is inspired by vectorial graphics;
 * the theme "underground" has a military/cave setting;
 * the theme "pyramid" transports the player to the ancient Egypt times.



I decided to present the game here because:
 * I'm sure that, unlike most of today's gamers, you won't be scared away by the low resolution;
 * I hope that somebody will have fun with fiddling around with themes (that would be a way to share the passion I put into the game);
 * it would be great if more themes were made by others;
 * I'd love to see what real artists can make out of my game;
 * I'm trying to build a small, creative community around the project;
 * of shameless advertising

I also have to state clearly that the game does not come for free, as it's a commercial product (but the demo doesn't put any restriction on themes, so it can be used for development).

If you are interested or just curious, you can see/try the game for yourself at http://www.bohthegame.com, where, besides the developer's manual and the demo, you can find plenty of other information, screenshots, videos and more.

Finally, big thanks to all the moderators for allowing me to make this announcement on Pixelation!