HamsterSpeak 60 Online

The Wobbler · Post by **The Wobbler** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 2:13 am

http://superwalrusland.com/ohr/issue60/cover.html

This month we have a celebration of Bob Surlaw's birthday, the results of the Collaboration Contest (and reviews of its games), Game of the Year 2011, and more.

guo · Post by **guo** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 4:25 am

Great issue, good to see so much content. Congratulations to the winners of the collaboration contest and also to the winners of game of the year 2011.

8bifit · Post by **8bifit** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 5:21 am

Dude. Why did I just force myself to read a 1,500 word description about the history of forum posts?

HS is posted on this forum. In it, is a VERY long recap of a thread that appears in the same forum that HS does. This seems incredibly redundant. Why not, you know, just supply a link to the thread and call it a day. I mean, play-by-play and analysis are great for sports... but for internet forums? Not so much.

Other than that, great issue. Jack is the man as far as HS covers are concerned. I also like how the Sky Flyers story is broken up amongst three #1 issues. That is brilliant. As a life-long comic fan, I appreciate that.

Pepsi Ranger · Post by **Pepsi Ranger** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 6:08 am

8bifit wrote:HS is posted on this forum. In it, is a VERY long recap of a thread that appears in the same forum that HS does. This seems incredibly redundant. Why not, you know, just supply a link to the thread and call it a day. I mean, play-by-play and analysis are great for sports... but for internet forums? Not so much.

It's punishment for making me wait so long for my Entrepreneur music ;). The fact that others must suffer with you is unfortunate.

Joking aside, I wanted to try something new -- make a story out of a contest in a review. The links were provided for those who can see past the gimmick and would rather just read the reviews. I thought it was a funny idea at the time. Eh...break a few eggs....

I'll read the issue tomorrow. Ran out of time tonight.

8bifit · Post by **8bifit** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 12:42 pm

Eh...break a few eggs....

My brain is scrambled now.

The Wobbler · Post by **The Wobbler** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 4:52 pm

Be sure to leave an In Depth Analysis of the Sky Flyers comics so I know whether I should keep including them or if everyone here is awful, thanks bros.

mjohnson092088 · Post by **mjohnson092088** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 7:31 pm

i am both surprised and pleased to see that my salad did so well. fourth place isn't so bad. it's a lot better than i expected, though, considering the version most people played was an old, unbalanced, and in my opinion, pretty crappy. i'm sure some people would have enjoyed it more if the difficulty was tweaked to where i intended it to be.

i've recently looked at past issues of Hamster Speak, and i read Spoonweaver's article on salad design. i know what he meant when he said that people thought parts of his salads were too difficult. it's harder to balance the difficulty of a salad to where you want it to be if YOU are the one who made it, and thusly know all the tricks and secrets. i guess the only thing you can do is work with the feedback you get, and try to improve for your audience.

for example, i think Pepsi Ranger said that the beginning prologue was pretty annoying and that i should remove it. the reason being that, well, he died during it. a lot. he's not the only one. charbile said he couldn't recommend the salad for that same reason. even Spoonweaver, who actually enjoyed the salad, said that battles were too fast and brutal, and that not allowing pausing on spell and item menus was a serious design flaw (which is in fact untrue, but there is nothing in the salad to indicate that this feature exists, which is the true flaw along with balancing issues).

now, i had intended the prologue to be rediculously easy (even impossible to lose), and also a chance for the player to familiarize themselves with the battle mechanics and spell functions before the actual salad begins. for me (being the one who made the salad), this was true. i guess what i want to say is that this entire contest has been a learning experience, and there's nothing but room for improvement. not just for me, but for everyone. i'm very grateful for the Review Contest being run alongside the GOTY contest. so many salads could have gone unnoticed for another year.

also, the sky flyers is just as terrible and hilarious as i expected it, and i'd like to see more. in fact, i think it deserves a new word. "hilarrible".

Nathan Karr · Post by **Nathan Karr** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 7:36 pm

I was afraid I'd hate the Sky Flyers comic, but it was actually pretty funny. Definitely better than anything I was drawing or writing in 1992.

Maybe I should dust off a few of my old characters and throw them into some OHR salads.

FnrrfYgmSchnish · Post by **FnrrfYgmSchnish** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 7:43 pm

The Sky Flyers comics seriously reminded me of the old stories and comics I used to come up with when I was a kid. All the way down to the changed-after-the-fact titles (by erasing a name that was there before, or by adding on another line in blue pen)... the whole thing reminded me of stuff I did when I was really young.

I wish I still had some of the random comics I made back then... unfortunately the oldest surviving ones of mine are from around 5th grade, and very little of that time period's stuff is still around. I do have some stuff I wrote several years earlier than that, but I don't really even have "original" copies of those anymore because they were all edited at least a few times (to change names, switch species around, add in references to characters I made later, or even replace a character with someone else!)

NeoSpade · Post by **NeoSpade** » Tue Apr 03, 2012 10:35 am

FnrrfYgmSchnish wrote:The Sky Flyers comics seriously reminded me of the old stories and comics I used to come up with when I was a kid. All the way down to the changed-after-the-fact titles (by erasing a name that was there before, or by adding on another line in blue pen)... the whole thing reminded me of stuff I did when I was really young.

Same here. I remember making the weirdest comics when I was really little, looking through Surlaw's Sky Flyers brought back very fond memories and even reminded me of how I got into the JRPG making scene. I'd draw silly comics that parodied JRPGs like FF8 (by parody I obviously mean tried to make it with my own characters in a comic).

Please post more of these Surlaw as they're truely fantastic to read. And as Nathan said, these are way better than anything I could have produced in 1992 (besides the fact that when Sky Flyers #1 was made I was barely 2 months old ;) ).

Pepsi Ranger · Post by **Pepsi Ranger** » Tue Apr 03, 2012 8:12 pm

Surlaw wrote:Be sure to leave an In Depth Analysis of the Sky Flyers comics so I know whether I should keep including them or if everyone here is awful, thanks bros.

I was both mesmerized and confused by this comic. I can't say I understood what was going on, but I'm pretty sure I want to see more of them.

You know, Powerstick Man is also hitting 20 soon. Maybe I should follow your cue and post the remaining episodes of his comic sometime this year. I know I've got three of them posted on some back issue of HamsterSpeak already.

The Wobbler · Post by **The Wobbler** » Mon May 07, 2012 2:23 am

Issue 61 will be up as soon as possible, I've got a lot of stuff going on and I wasn't able to get everything ready this weekend. Might be a day or two.