Score: 7

"Short tutorial, but I got a benefit out of it."

submission: GTFTN1 - Scanlines

date: September 8, 2008

Although you mention it in the comments and - for a couple of seconds - in the intro, I think you should list the required program(s) in the main menu, with the start button.

Even though I knew about defining patterns, I hadn't considered using them to do scanlines. Thanks for reminding me what a wonderful thing the pattern-defining function is.

The fades work well.

For the first screenshot, circling the important info would help. Maybe darken the irrelevant parts, with a mask letting us see the relevant parts at original brightness?

And more than one example of the technique's usage would be nice.

These might be more useful if you explained the techniques - here, for example, explaining how patterns work, so folk could try their own. Even an extra paragraph would have sufficed, pointing out that the defined pattern is tiled, maybe illustrated with a zoomed in example, with squares surrounding 'tiles'.

To stop music, use:
stopAllSounds();

Short tutorial, but I got a benefit out of it.

-Review request Club-

Score: 6

"Made me smile a bit despite my grumbles."

submission: Oooo A Tankie

date: September 8, 2008

The starting intro and purple bg work well. The buildings in the bg are nicely reminiscent of the NG header.

I'm not a fan of the art style. I like the self-shaded lines around the shirt and trousers, but black lines around the face look odd to me. And your hands need more work. I guess if you do some life-drawing, it'll eventually come to you.

Also, there was a flashing white line on the left and a white line on the bottom - make sure your bgs cover the entire stage.

Basic plot was funny. And it's cool to hear the MC.

Made me smile a bit despite my grumbles.

Score: 4

"Like most tutorials, a bit dull."

submission: Being a Helpful NG'er

date: September 8, 2008

Like most guides, this suffered from being essentially just a lot of text with no interactivity and few images.

The examples of reviews were a nice 'break' from reading your voice all the time.

In 'method 1' of how to write good reviews, surely listing things you disliked and things that could be changed are almost synonymous? Here, for example, I'm stating that I disliked that element, implying that the two 'steps' should have been merged together.

As long as your disliked are clear, the suggested course of action should be easy to infer.

I was disappointed to not be on the 'great reviewers' list. :-(

It was generally easy to tell what was a link, but you could improve your hitboxes. the 'hit' frame shouldn't be empty or just the text again - instead have a rectangle so we can still click on the counter of the 'e' or between the stems of 'M' (for example). They could sometimes feel tricky to click.

Heading typography could be improved - between the two bgm icons, it doesn't stand out as much as it could. Perhaps an alternate font?

I like the icons by the way - they fit with the geometric font.

The 'good posts' section seemed really sensible and fairly well written.

The NGDD account is 'closed'. Linking to it seems pointless.

To be honest, I still have no idea what any of those clubs DO. After checking out their threads, I came to the theory that chit-chat is the bulk of activity and nothing particularly 'helpful' or influental actually happens.

The RRC seems like it deserved a link.

I was suprised to see 'animation' credited. I mean, I saw graphical work, icons that were drawn and basic typographic choices. But no animation. :-/

Anyway, this suffers from being nothing more than 'linear' text and was a bit dull. More pics, more exciting typography... these little touches would have helped.

As far as tutorials go, though, it was fairly well written and you give a quality overview of everything.

-Review Request Club-

Score: 5

"A typical 'guide'"

submission: How to write good reviews

date: September 8, 2008

I didn't really expect to learn anything here, but watched it out of curiousity and a willingness to learn your opinion.

The bulk of the text - in which you talk about your personal style of reviewing - doesn't seem all that potentially useful. Once you reveal that you split up your review into those sections, there doesn't seem much reason to elaborate so much and give examples. It's self-explanatory.

Showing examples of helpful/unhelpful/abusive reviews was really cool though - works well as a quick aid. Maybe that should have gone at the start?

'drawings were done pretty good' is grammatically incorrect. It should be 'done pretty well'

in the paragraph immediately below, you say, 'proves it's point' where you should say, 'proves its point'. Remember: 'it's' means it is. The posessive form is just 'its'.

When a flash is basically entirely textual (as this is) it might be an idea to double-check such things. Or ask someone to look over it before you submit.

I really liked the forward/back buttons - kinda like the old NG buttons.

The music was cool, but not really conducive to taking in info - something slower paced would have been preferable imo - and I'd have liked a mute button.

Not a bad tutorial as far as tutorials go, but after your 'how to help NG' guide, I was hoping for more than just text.

Why not let us guess whether a review is helpful/abusive/unhelpful and then let us check whether we were correct? Or bring in interactivity some other way...

-Review Request Club-

Score: 6

"Better than your average guide."

submission: Newgrounds Helpful Guide

date: September 8, 2008

I played it, got 35, read the 'explanations', checked the max. score (50), then answered again, deciding that my reviews probably count as 'long' and that the RRC probably does 'succeed' at helping. Got 40.

This works both as an ego-boost for those of us who help out a bit and also as a tutorial for those who don't, getting them to consider things they could do differently when answering and spelling it out in the explanations.

However, spammers are still unlikely to pay heed.

Regardless, this was actually slightly fun - something I can't say about other tutorials or 'guides' - mainly thanks to the interactive questionnaire format.

I love the music. Classic NG.

Featured Item works well on any NG game. However, it's quite a decorative font - to improve readability, keepin 'Featured Item' to headers and titles, using a simple sans serif for the body text, would have worked well.

The instructions are specially hard to read - white against a light bg? - and the end rankings and 'explanation' text could have been better organised for readability.

Maybe with a simpler font, the end rankings could have been split up into a few rectangles with icons beside each and the explanation could have been squeezed in beside smaller options, without overlapping them (but of course, the options would be darkened).

The NG-style 'windows' also work well as does the starburst.

Besides a few typographical complaints and the fact that the music resets when we restart the quiz, I have no complaints. Good job.

- Review Request Club -

Score: 6

"Best yet. Got me interested."

submission: The Last Hour: Chapter 10

date: September 7, 2008

You scrap the intro altogether. The movie is of a decent length. Things happen.

These are things that should have been in all your movies.

The dripping after the alien's torso was shot was way cool.

'Noo! Chinese man! Nooo!' is such a ridiculous, cheesy line. I mean the American barely new him - such histrionics are excessive. And the Chinese accent is messed up. Specially near the end, it becomes obvious that you did it in one take, with you keeping the 'chinese' accent when Malcolm X14 is speaking and using a skewed British accent for the chinese dude. Use a different take for each character, so you can keep accents and 'stay in character'.

It's a big step up from your previous efforts. Nothing brilliant, but there's a foundation here and as long as you step up your game and put the work in, you'll continue to improve.

- Review Request Club -

Score: 3

"Too-brief animation; too-long intro."

submission: The Last Hour: Chapter 9

date: September 7, 2008

"Find out as the adventure continues." the intro said.

"I bet I won't," I thought to myself. And yep - I was right. Once again, you've got an episode where the text tells us more than the animation. Where the animation shows nothing you haven't already stated.

I did like the gradient on the ship's window and the planet looked good.

But the brevity was ridiculous.

- Review Request Club -

Score: 3

"Silly but not funny."

submission: The Last Hour: Chapter 8

date: September 7, 2008

In the intro, it should be 'anti christ's'. Not 'anti christ sis'.

The drawing of the aliens was cool and I liked the silhouetted shapes on that green.

My main complaint is again the stupidly short length. Why on earth didn't you stick these in one movie?

Overall, it was yet another movie that failed to create any real effect.

Score: 3

"No animation, silly voice acting, no plot advance"

submission: The Last Hour: Chapter 7

date: September 7, 2008

Again, another episode with minimal animation, bad gollum-ish voice over-acting and no plot advancement.

I was pleased that you didn't have a stupidly lengthened intro this time. Good call if you want the series to be taken seriously.

The animation was non-existent - a couple of near-identical frames and that's it. Even if you wanted to hid the guy's face, you could have moved the camera around, drawn his back from different angles, maybe even drawn his profile in silhouette or drawn a mouth, with the rest of his face in shadow.

The 2 characters sound identical and both sound just like the narrator. Use different voices for different characters - not just a silly gollum-type voice for each. Aren't these guys meant to be human?

Given the fact that you didn't even bother to re-take the audio after your mistakes and the minimal amount of graphical work, I'm wondering if this is spam - some sort of joke.

Score: 6

"Unintentionally funny."

submission: The Last Hour: Chapter 6

date: September 7, 2008

The whole intro seems unintentionally funny with the overacting when saying 'The Last Hoooooooooooooooowwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaar...', the mess-up when going through the titles... and how is it award winning? Just because the previous episode got a daily 3rd? Do you need to harp on about it so much? And why is it 'legendary'? It just seems like needless hyerbole to me.

The spaceship, asteroids, starfield and planet looked decent.

The 2 frame 'lip synch' smacked of laziness though, as did the way you refuse to change the camera angle when the father speaks.

We've already seen him, so there's no tension.

And if you're showing a frame for so long, like you did with the guy/nun, it might be an idea to spend longer drawing them. The noses specially look kinda awkward - don't have lines around the entire noses - just around one side and around the nostrils. And maybe add in some shading.

It seemed like you were just trying to do the minimum amount of work but all the cut corners show.

Maybe if you cut out the intro, got better voice actors and spent more time doing animation that's not just simple tweens, I might be able to get wrapped up in the story. Currently, it's just ridiculous and made me chuckle. Probably not in the way you want, but there you are.