HamsterSpeak #12 Online

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Fieron
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Post by Fieron »

i read the comic with me in it, all i can say is ouch XD
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Pepsi Ranger
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Post by Pepsi Ranger »

Rouroni Catholic wrote:Pepsi Ranger's article was excellent. I read it all in one sitting.
I'm sorry. I mean, thank you.

Did anyone else manage to get through the whole thing? Yet? I haven't seen anyone discussing it on any of the forums, so I'm curious if it'll help anyone (or if anyone else finished reading it, which I had to do several times, so I don't want excuses here). Did any of the segments strike a particular chord with anyone? Anything anyone wanted to add to the Appendix? For that matter, no one's really talked about Surlaw's "Bad Game" article, either, so discussion on that would be cool.
JSH wrote:
RedMaverickZero wrote:
Yeah, did anyone like my comic? I plan on doing another one for the next issue.
Honestly, I thought it was better than Fenrir's comics have been in years. (No offense Fen) Good job.

Xerian's was funny too.
I suppose I'll reveal my dirty little secret here:

I never liked the comics. I thought they were well drawn each month, but could never figure out why they were funny, or supposed to be funny. The ones this round were better than usual, granted, but still I thought they were trying too hard.

All in all I think I'm tired of seeing personal assaults on people, which the comics are notorious for. I'd rather see monthly installments of a unique character, or if asking for originality is too much, monthly installments of Bob the Hamster doing crazy things. As it stands, though, monthly commentaries on talking dogs resembling OHR users that lead nowhere (or to a punchline I have to sift the writer's mind and a bunch of forum threads for) leave me wondering "Am I getting stupider as I get older, or does this just naturally not make any sense?" Either way, I don't think they're clever, and comics need to be clever. Or at least serialized so that they lead to something clever.

Again, the comics this round went further in the wit department than usual, but they haven't found that balance between being too vague and being too spelled out for the reader. I'd recommend reading Calvin and Hobbes to get an idea how the balance should be made.
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JSH357
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Post by JSH357 »

Yes! Less "satire," more funny (Satire is awful when you don't know how to write it). It's fine poking fun at a community member every now and then, but I'd like to see more than that in the comics.
My website, the home of Motrya:
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Mogri
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Post by Mogri »

I thought RMZ's comic was great, but the OHR Interview comic just felt like it was making fun of people, which isn't funny.

It'd be cool to have comics in the vein of the old Howard & Nester, the Nintendo Power comic where it would give you a tip along with the joke.

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kenecchi
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Post by kenecchi »

I wrote a Magnus comic years ago and I've thought of re-vamping it and making a series; I posted the character designs on CP awhile back. If there is enough interest in a monthly serial comic, I'd be up for it.
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JSH357
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Post by JSH357 »

Please do. A serial comic based on an OHR game sounds like a breath of fresh air to me.
My website, the home of Motrya:
http://www.jshgaming.com
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Newbie Newtype
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Post by Newbie Newtype »

Maybe the next Roulette Comic at Surlaw's place can be about an OHR game, and placed in Hamster Speak?

(Actually, that's not a bad idea considering the current Roulette we're working on is about an OHR character).
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Mogri
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Post by Mogri »

Depends which team you're on.
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msw188
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Post by msw188 »

I read all of Pepsi in one sitting. I felt that the newer articles were more well-written, but on the negative side, I didn't like the constant interruptions anticipating reader responses. What I did like was the overall "don't be lazy" message, although it seemed awfully one-sided dealing with presentation almost exclusively (visuals, sound, the concept of 'showing' a story). For such a long article, I would have appreciated some more nods to avoiding laziness in terms of map design, and gameplay balancing, especially while discussing playtesters.

I thought Surlaw's article on making bad games was pretty good, although it is not a particularly interesting topic to me. Still, the overall message hit home well about avoiding boredom.

I've never been a fan of the comics either, and actually these ones didn't seem all that much better. Comics that lampoon people and/or events don't impress me that much. Sorry. The roulette comics, in my opinion, would only be funny to people who understood how they were made. They're really not that funny or clever in their own right. As has already been said, comics are VERY difficult to do (most of the ones in newspapers are horrible, and those ones make a cut). I wish I could give suggestions about it, but I don't know anything about what makes good ones good.

I was really surprised to see Osmium in the top games of the last year. I just finished that demo, and I have my own thoughts about it, which I will hopefully put together into a review of my own. Suffice it to say, I didn't enjoy it much at all. Maybe my expectations were too high?

The plotscript of the month was okay, but I thought Mogri was going to add in a check for the hero being alive after the battle, and it wasn't in there. I also feel like it could be documented a little better if the purpose is to help those unfamiliar with plotscripting (emphasis on LITTLE; I don't think it was documented poorly by any means). Something as simple as this seems like it should aim at such an audience. I am going to try a PSOTM of my own for next month, I think. It will be a bit more difficult, but hopefully more generally useful.

The cover was the best part, in my opinion.
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The Wobbler
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Post by The Wobbler »

kenecchi wrote:I wrote a Magnus comic years ago and I've thought of re-vamping it and making a series; I posted the character designs on CP awhile back. If there is enough interest in a monthly serial comic, I'd be up for it.
If the art is up to the standard that you've posted on CP, this would be pretty great.
kenecchi
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Post by kenecchi »

Surlaw wrote:If the art is up to the standard that you've posted on CP, this would be pretty great.
I'd be re-drawing and re-writing mostly everything, so the art would be in my current style. I'll see if I can turn out the first installment before the next issue is released. :)
BE ATTITUDE FOR GAINS...
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