Didn't know that could happen! Certainly never happened to me, and I do it all the time, ask sellers who don't ship internationally if I can bid on their games. I've seen some red lettering warning me before bidding that the seller might not ship to my country, but that was just a warning, I could always place my bid.

The article only says Discworld and doesn't mention DW2, so perhaps the purchase was not a wasted one. I know I put "part 2" in the subject header, but I didn't carefully read it.

Perhaps a mod can edit the subject and simply change it to, "Discworld to become freeware".

Oh, ok. But I'll still be buying the first Discworld as well as I'm a massive fanboy of it and I gotta own this stuff. Hopefully when the game is released as freeware the price of the game willl drop at ebay.

Kyrandia is progressing rather well, as a matter of fact.

See http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Kyra, and download a development build to see what it looks like (not that much to look at at the moment, though).

Now, the really exiciting thing about ScummVM is The Feeble Files, as that one refuses to run on XP. :9~ But development has just started there, so it's not going to be playable any time soon...

Well, those guys are doing a fantastic job. :)

Agreed. I'm not sure what those bidders want to achieve. Seems like wasted energy for me.

Cause it sucks when you get outbid by a few cents :\

I think Ebay changed that recently, because I remember bidding on a US-only auction before, without any problems. They probably want to support the sellers better.

--Erwin

In the past I've bidded a maximum of, say, £20, only for someone to come along and keep raising their bid until they win (on, say £21). If I hadn't bidded, those people would only have gone up to £10 or £15, and I'd have won.

Believe me, it sucks, but I've experienced this, so now I always wait until the end. And suddenly I'm winning more stuff at an acceptable price.

Thanks! Best news of the year for me, as far as adventure games are concerned. (yes, I live in the past :) )

Ebay is a tricky thing. It's a shame there are no other sites that sell such a high degree of rare items.

On the topic of SCUMMVM, it would be great if 'Blazing Dragons' became freeware. i don't know how many of you have played this but it was never released on the PC (Saturn and PSX only).

The game was made by Crystal Dynamics, who went under or got bought a long while ago. They made the first Gex games too.

Conversation over at JA+ about naughty easter eggs in DW1 and 2.

Eric Idles says "F**K*


oooooowwwww Naughty:D

http://www.justadventure.com/cgi-bin...num=1128210100

The following is quoted from the MontyPythonPages Dot Com (can't link to the actual page where this one is on, so I give the link, and quote).

Read it:

And he got away with it too!


- :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

You have been able to download Discworld 1 and 2 from 'thehomeofthe underdogs' for ages, That's where I got my copies from, i had no idea it wasn't freeware. well nevermind.

The Underdogs is an Abandonware site, and abandonware isn't legal. Of course, not legal isn't the same thing as immoral...
To each his own, but in any case, for your information, this site policy is not to tolerate abandonware links.

New and quite excited
 

Hello,

My name is Mike and I am an adventure game fanatic. I have played almost every game created dealing with the adventure genre. I love the noir genre and have been studying it in college as I am going into a film career. I am actually stunned that their are so many collective fans of noir AND adventure games here. Interesting enough, there has been a fair share of noiresque type games released in the last decade or two. I have a few questions concerning Discworld. Has it been established that only the first will be or is out on freeware? Also, Orange Brat, you are creating a game currently? I am so glad to see an independent game created by a movie lover. This tends to make a good and exciting plot.

By the way, for those of you who are unaware of the noir genre in games, here is my little list of games touching the genre. (Some are adventure/other mixed genres):

Discworld Noir- Already been established above.

Grim Fandango- My favorite of them all, and perhaps my favorite game, period. I really don't need to go into how excellent this game is, because this is an adventure game site and all.

Moment of Silence- Not quite noir, but does explore some political corruption in a lighter fashion. It could be tech noir, which is a genre unto its own. Great game, fun and well done.

Anachronox-This game could possibly beat out Grim Fandango sometimes, as it wages a war in my head for the best game ever. If you have not played this game, http://www.planetanachronox.com/ please visit this website, for which I am a moderator. We can help you decide that playing it will be the best decision you could make this year. This game is definetly tech noir as well as cyberpunk. It is rpg as well as a strong adventure genre, were it plots battles in turnbase agianst some task running and THE BEST dialouge/script I have ever witnessed in a game. PLEASE try to buy this game for the PC, it is very inexpensive and worth 10 times as much as you will pay for it. Its story of failure as a game is a sad one because of Edios' very poor ability to advertise when an out of the ordanary game comes out. It was made by Ion Storm, yes, that Deus Ex Ion Storm. I think its better....

Bladerunner- An excellent game made into a decent game. Bladerunner is tech noir at its finest. The game has some interesting interactivity qualities and is very well done visual wise, the dialouge may fall short SOME times but is a must play for any diehard adventure gamers.

City of Metronome- Looks very much noir, though it is not out yet. The preview could be found on this website somewhere.

The Longest Journey- Yes, yes, I know, alot of this game takes place in Arcadia, the magical mystery tour of a magical and mysterous place. However, the other world, Stark, (comon, that name just even spells noir there) is completely noir. The slum of the world is found at the bottom of the zoo of a city, where people cannot afford to live in the luxuries of the towers in the heavens. Very noir. We will see if the sequal will have the same atmosphere as the previous game.

I know I am missing a few, but feel free to add on.

Thanks for reading guys and I hope to be around for a while, keep up the interesting topics!

Although The Underdogs has some abandonware games, they also have many games that are freeware.

The Tex Murphy games have elements of tech noir (or future noir). And Beneath a Steel Sky uses that kind of setting, although the story doesn't really conform.

Yeah. To me, abandonware includes freeware, while the opposite is not true.

Well, then your claim that "abandonware isn't legal" is wrong.

:shifty:

Leave me alone.

;)

Can't believe I forgot Beneath a Steel Sky, that's noirish, for sure.

Hm, and what about, er, Noir? :)

Also, A Case of the Crabs, The Goat in the Grey Fedora, Max Payne and Hitchcock: The Final Cut.

What are you trying saying?

Max Payne and Hitchcock are not freewares but Case of Crab & The goat in the Grey Fedora is.

I'm trying to say they have elements of film noir.

Oooooooooooooooh!!! I have a copy of Feeble Files that I cannot play due to XP and it's been in my book case for a year now! This is jolly good news indeed. The ScummVM team and DOSBox team sure are doing a GREAT job!

Well, you can add in those freewares if you want. Max payne is more crime/gangster but does have the New York setting and some of the corruption. Noir is a good call, I liked it to an extent, but it was borderline plotless and stereotypical. You can have noir and have a plot, and I guess Noir forgot that.

Beneath a Steel Sky doesn't contain any noir elements. No playing with shadows, no freaky camera angles, the plot is completely different, there is no femme fatale. The only noirish thing about it is that the main character wears a long coat, albeit one that doesn't resemble the coats from when Noir movies were made.

Right. It's more cyberpunk than anything.

Max Payne is definitely film noir. MP2, at least (which I'm convinced is the best thing Rockstar has ever done). Rain -- check. Gritty urban atmosphere -- check. Femme fatale -- check. Metaphorical storytelling from the main character's point of view -- check. Shady cops -- check. Twisting web of crime and corruption -- check. It's all there in spades.

No fedora hats, though.

No, but see, there's a reason for that. If they had put fedoras into Max Payne 2, it would have been stuffed with so much concentrated awesome that our puny brains wouldn't be able to handle it any more and our heads would explode. Nothing fancy, just a good old fashioned kapow and then brains all over your monitor.

Hate to be a nitpicker, but published, not done.

And yes, I'd say it's

http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/9...12a00dz0vz.jpg

...pretty noirish.

Well, you know what I meant. The best thing they've ever put out.

I know, just giving credit where credit is due and all that crap. :)

Are you sure Noir films had to have Famme Fatals? Also, I think Payne 2 is considered a 'Noir love story' because the Mona is an enemy he falls for. The game doesn't feel like a Noir, more action. But I guess, seeing that Noir films are a sub-genre then Noir-action can be a sub within a sub.

Depends whether they have gained permission, right? Anyway, I hope the underdogs site burns. They have enough pop-ups to crash the fastest of P.C.s and you can't even use the search engine unless you turn popup blockers off. Worse than that, none of their games will download from errors on my p.c. (the ones at my college work fine though).

And to top it off, they advertise sleazy porn and Internet singles lines. How low can you go!

Not necessarily, but like rain and fedoras, femme fatales were a staple of film noir. And if you ask me, "film noir" refers more to the kind of storytelling than the gameplay.

Also, I think of Mona as a femme fatale simply because she's half the reason Max is in the mess he's in. She's a woman who puts him in danger.

Haha, well it looks like I have some explaining to do.

A film is considered Noir when it deals with crime and corruption through the medium of the 1940's and 1950's time setting. Frequently the stories use of smoke-filled rooms, views of light filtered through venetian blinds, seedy downtown areas with neon lights, dark wet streets to heighten the noir effect. Brightly-lit scenes are not used in noir films since the desired effect is that of dreary hopelessness. The content of noir films keeps pace with the settings. Most noir stories feature main characters who find themselves embroiled in hopeless situations, fighting against a force that threatens to overtake them, the force being their inablility to resist temptation. Noir by definition is the underdog fighting corruption in the system. THAT is noir, although some movies/games may have NOIRISH qualities, it is not noir unless it follows the theme of a basic noir. On to the issue of the female characters.
Most often this main character is male, although there are some noir movies in which the main character is female. In any case, the protagonist always has a major character flaw which leads to ruin. It might be that the character is a small-time criminal, adulterer, thief, of a weak-will, etc. The character also may appear to be honest at the outset of the film. In these cases, as the story unfolds, the protagonist becomes tainted by some dishonest deed and is sent to his doom. In most cases, the protagonist, if male, is brought to ruin by another staple of the noir movie--the femme fatale.

It is NOT a requirment to have a femme fatale in a noir, though it is common. The femme fatale is most often depicted as a beautiful woman, cruel and dishonest, who is willing to do anything necessary to reach her ends. She uses the protagonist as a tool to help her accomplish some unsavory deed and the protagonist is powerless to refuse her. The femme fatale is often distrustful and even contemptuous of the protagonist but still holds him within her grasp by using promises of their new life together after the deed is complete.

Beneath a Steel Sky has noirish qualities, but is not a noir. You may not be able to tell, but a STEEL sky isn't the most pleasent conditions a city can be under. The color steel and the material is hard and stark, similar to a noir. The character is running from the law, and the city is a smoky wreck of violence and a facade for the rich to hid behind their own corruption. Albeit it is not noir, it is tech noir, or cyberpunk, or maybe a mix between.

Max Payne has noir elements and I probably would revoke my previous statement and deem it noir, because it fullfills what I layed out above.

I couldn't leave loose knots undone because I write scripts for a living and couldn't leave you guys hanging.

Oh, and the difference between tech noir and cyberpunk is that tech noir deals with the fall of mankind through technological advancements. It often deals with whether science is going too far. It portrays the world as a retrograding wasteland of death and destruction, instead of benifiting from technology. An example is Bladerunner, Minority Report, and other Phillip K. Dick novels. Cyberpunk often deals with the dimensions of reality and virtual reality. Cyberpunks try to define what reality really is, because by definition, reality is space and time. But what if you create those two dimensions technologically? The Matrix deals with a little of this topic. Meaning of the word 'cyberpunk' could be something like 'anarchy via machines' or 'machine/computer rebel movement'. Read Snowbound, Nueromancer, and New Latania for some novel sources. The technology of cyberpunk is ultratechnology, which mixes genetic material from animal to animal, from animal to man, or from man to animal. This technology raises human embryos for organ transplants, creates machines that think like humans and humans that think like machines. This is a technology designed to keep people within the 'system' that dominates the lives of most 'ordinary' people. This is the science of controlling human functions and of electronic, mechanical and biological control systems designed to replace them.

So, to put it simple, tech noir is the fall of mankind through technological retrogration, and cyberpunk is displaying the changes and perhaps flaws of technology (specifically computer AI and genetics) through progress.

We've been having discussions about noir in some other threads. I find your description a bit too restrictive (and inconsistent: if noir is necessarily set in the 1940s and 50s, how is Max Payne noir?), but am generally in sympathy.

Is there anything to say Max Payne could not have been easily done in the literal 1940-50's time period? The setting is still like it to a point, even the comic books are done in the old fashion style. So in a sense, new weapons, new cars, a helicopter, but in a totally old world.

Keep in mind that noir was created in that time period. Unlike sci-fi, fantasy, or mystery, noir nearly died with the 1950's. There are only a few like us to keep it alive in the general scheme of things. People found it too pessimistic in the 60's and wiped it out, reaching for new age cinema. In with color, out with noir, so to speak. Noir is so restrictive because it needs to be in that time period in order to be true noir. Here is an example: LA Confidential is a true noir because it A. deals with the underdog rising from the impossible to defeat crime. B. Sets in the 1940's. C. Creates the stereotypical staples of the original noir films. A movie such as Sin City, per se, is difficult to interprit because you really cannot say exactly what time period it is in. The weapons are new, some cars are new and some are old. Clive Owen's shoes along with Brittany Murphay's clothes are new. A tech noir is a media set past the alotted time period. It must be so because the with the end of the 40-50's died out the fashion, the jazzy-swing, and the hardboiled detectives. If you bring em back at a later time period it is tech noir because it deals with the future grit rather than the past. I can imagine it is hard to understand my point of arguement from your standpoint, but this is what it is generally thought of in the film world, and possibley the game world.