Messages

1

AGS Games in Production / Re: King's Quest: Fool for a Day

« on: 16 Mar 2012, 20:35 »

That long already?  :o
It felt like this thread was made back in November.
Sorry for that huge bump then.

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AGS Games in Production / Re: King's Quest: Fool for a Day

« on: 16 Mar 2012, 20:27 »

Are there any news about your progress on this game?
I would have loved to play it. 

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AGS Games in Production / Re: King's quest 4

« on: 28 Jan 2012, 20:07 »

These models really have personality and look very realistic without being victim of that weird uncanny-vally-phenomenon, but the shiny, glittery rendering and that hairstyle make it look a little barbieish. 

But thats not a problem at all... except his smile. Looks a little like a sinister version of this:
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Media/Pix/pictures/2008/10/15/WallaceGromit460.jpg

 

But still, your skill at all this is incredible. Keep it up!

edit by darth non-game image removed

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General Discussion / Re: Ghostly experiences (ooohh scarrrryyyy)

« on: 28 Jan 2012, 19:56 »

Something super creepy I experienced:
Half a year ago, I had one of these weird moments when you wake up, but can`t move and your brain is still creating hallucinations. It is some kind of weird stage between dreaming and being awake.
In my case, I saw the door to my door slowly open and heard footsteps from the living room, even though nobody was in the house at that time. I noticed that the footsteps were getting faster and faster, to the point where it sounded like some super insane step dance. The footsteps were getting louder as they progressed to my room. Trough the door that had slightly opened, I saw a black being jiggle towards my room trough the hallway. It didn`t even look like it was walking or running, it jiggled left and right incredibly fast and moved forward that way for some reason. As it entered my room it started to jump left and right in front of the bed and made noises that sounded like a whirlwind. It moved faster and faster and soon I could only barely see it any more because of its speed. I remember that I felt the wind it made in my face.
It stayed like that for maybe 15 seconds, and after that it suddenly disappeared and I could finally move again.
But it still freaked me out pretty bad.

The funny thing is - I knew about experiences like this because I read it on the Internet at some point. I even thought something along the lines of "Oh no, this must be that weird thing I read about!" while it was happening.

Well...  There were a few nights when I woke up in the middle of the night and saw things that weren't there:

One night, I saw an arm sticking out of the floor holding a golden, bejeweled chalice.  I watched it for a while and it sank into the ground.

The next night, I saw a gun pointed at me.  I waved my hand at it and when my hand went through the gun, it faded away.

The third night, I saw a person wearing blue jeans and a white t-shirt standing in my room.  When I noticed him, he started to advance on me.  I sat up and he backed away and disappeared when he touched a chair.

I remember having these all the time at night when I was little, so I don`t think that this is something you should worry about.   Sometimes I also heard and saw something that sounded like a thundering rain of thrashcans falling from to sky and landing next to my bed.  

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Completed Game Announcements / Re: Living Nightmare: Freedom

« on: 26 Jan 2012, 19:11 »

There was a new game in the series? Damn, I had no idea. 
*goes downloading*

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Adventure Related Talk & Chat / Re: Fan Remakes and Fan Games - Complete List [Sierra-LucasArts-Infocom]

« on: 24 Jan 2012, 18:41 »

I remember enjoying these ones a lot:

Monkey Island: The Devils Triangle
http://www.boxofmystery.com/games/dtsite.html

M:I-2
http://www.boxofmystery.com/games/mi2complete.html

Do non AGS-fangames count too?

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Completed Game Announcements / Re: Space Quest Incinerations!

« on: 24 Jan 2012, 17:20 »

I remember seeing youtube videos of this one or two years ago. I had no idea that it would be finished by now. Awesome!  :o *goes downloading*

BUT WAIT A SECOND. [off-topic mode ON]
Are you the one who made these Klikn-Play games called Devils Triangle and MI:2?
Oh god, I remember how awesome they seemed to me when I was looking around the internet for monkey island stuff when I was 11 in 2004. I remember showing them to my parents after I downloaded them all.  
They were pretty much my first inspiration for making my own games.

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Critics' Lounge / Re: Game Music (another song)

« on: 24 Jan 2012, 17:14 »

I listened to them both and I can`t find anything that bothered me. They sound pretty awesome. 
The first one made me think of playing megaman or sonic.
However, I could not really hear anything that that couldn`t be done as a normal midi. The only thing that I noticed was that you added some reverb to the instruments, but that could also be done in a midi.

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AGS Games in Production / Re: King's quest 4

« on: 24 Jan 2012, 11:07 »

Even if the title screen and Rosella looks a bit too kitschy for my taste, all those backgrounds are amazing. They even look a little like photos taken from some handmade miniature world. For some reason, I could also imagine characters made out of modeling clay moving trough these landscapes, like in Wallace and Gromit. 

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AGS Games in Production / Re: Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Point-And-Click Adventure Game

« on: 19 Jan 2012, 18:26 »

This looks amazing so far. It`s very impressive to see how much of this huge load of work you already finished.
If you need someone to make some midi tracks for the game, I`d be more than happy to help you with that. 

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Critics' Lounge / My backgrounds: effective or ugly? :D

« on: 28 Nov 2011, 20:12 »

...or maybe both of these things?



Something you could call a graphical (test-)"re-interpretation" of my first game on AGS in 2005 that was never finished. Back then I tried to make a game with cutting edge animations and sierra-esque graphics and was way too ambitious about everything. I didn`t like it because it never came close to what I imagined. (I also was 11 at the time)

Nowadays, as my drawing skills have greatly improved, I just try to make everything seem like it was designed by a kid with little skills who just wanted to make a nice game and had fun doing it.  
I like this idea, because I now can make backgrounds and animations in a extremely short time and even get away with that. I myself like this style, it has such a childish and cheerful charme, which ironically I tried to avoid when I was 11.

12

General Discussion / Re: Sleep Quest II - Dream Land Crusade

« on: 29 Apr 2011, 19:16 »

I remember that I pretty much always had those lucid dreams. When I was little (maybe 4 or 5 or 6 years old) I had my own tricks to wake myself up or change the dream.

I had a dream back then about a huge, boar-like monsters chasing me around in front of our house, but everything was so pitch black that I could barely see anything, not even stars at the sky. And the door was locked. Suddenly I discovered that I could fly, but it did not work very well. I could lift into the air for like 10 seconds and see the roof of the house, but soon I made a crash landing somewhere else in our garden. I tried and tried and nothing worked, and everytime I made a crash landing I hoped that I landed as far away as possible from the monster, even if it always closely behind me. At last, I had the idea to just jump in the air, super mario-style, and land on my head to hurt me really bad. I did it and it worked - as soon as I hit the ground I woke up. From then on, I always ended my nightmares with that little tactic.
But in most cases, it just turned into a fake waking. Sometimes, when I woke up in my dream and saw my room, a creepy looking robot appeared in my lego box and dragged me somewhere trough the ground. Or sometimes it was a floating goat head on a stick (how could come up with something like this?) that appeared in my door and slowly moved towards me trough the dark room. CREEPEY!  :o

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Advanced Technical Forum / Re: Hit Key - Run Script

« on: 04 Apr 2011, 16:47 »

Wow, thanks so much for all those comments and ideas!  :o
You guys are helpful as hell!

I now see that the main problem is that the script should be stoppable at every time. But luckily, my script is extremely simple. Let me explain it here with this colorful kitschy background:


(This background is anything but pretty of course, it was just a quick test for the 2D-Style and I still have to tweak many things concerning the colors and the contrast between background and foreground. But it gets the point across)

Most of the background I want to use have a sidescroller-like perspective (mainly because its a lot faster and more fun to draw, also you don`t have to worry too much about perspective), but there is one problem - the walkable areas are pretty thin and placed along to topside of the "ground" silouette at the bottom. Clicking along the ground with the Walk cursor and hoping that you hit the walkable area to make the hero move is not very fun, so I thought about using the arrow keys to move left or right. This problem is not really present on this screen, but it will appear an screens where I have walkable "platforms" above each other and thus longer walkable areas that go across the screen (it also seems very unpolished and uneccesary to have a walk cursor in this optical style). AGS already has a built-in keyboard control, but it doesn`t follow the walkable area.

So I thought about a script that reacts when you hit the left or right arrow key.
Left = Character walks to Point A! Right = Character walks to point B!
The script would only consist of a single line like MoveCharacter which doesn`t stop the gameplay in any way. However, it would be cool if that command could be stopped by pressing the key again to trigger another script that makes the character stop walking.

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Advanced Technical Forum / Hit Key - Run Script

« on: 03 Apr 2011, 17:31 »

This question may be very easy to answer for some here, but I never bothered with scripts like these until now. 
Basically, I only want to achieve that a script gets triggered as soon as the player hits a certain key on his keyboard. The script should also stop if the same key is being hit again. Would be very awesome if someone here could show what the script should look like to work.

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Critics' Lounge / Re: Does using photos as backgrounds appear cheap?

« on: 28 Mar 2011, 21:33 »

Two things:

1) I don't like photos in AGS games. Not at all.
2) Your hand drawn backgrounds look cool! Of course they take longer, but they are original and personal.

The "Raiders of the Lost Ark" thread shows some great examples of how you base your backgrounds on photos and still come up with a believable Fate Of Atlantis style. I really like that.
http://www.bigbluecup.com/yabb/index.php?topic=42327.0

Thanks for the comment and the link. I am going to check that out. 
My bigges problem is my motivation that starts to vanish very fast as soon as the work gets too much. And thats pretty much my problem - I love being able to explore in adventure games, and exploration means that I have to use a few more backgrounds than other adventures. And drawing every single background is already too much work to maintain my motivation. /:

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Critics' Lounge / Does using photos as backgrounds appear cheap?

« on: 28 Mar 2011, 20:51 »

I have been planning an adventure game for so long now, yet I can`t really make proper decisions. My earlier projects teached me to set myself relatively little goals and better not think too big or too long about my projects.
However, right now I thought about using photos as backgrounds for my game. They are fast to make, but I wonder if they wouldn`t appear a little cheap - especially since I am going for a more cartoony style for the characters. Setting-wise, my games go in a very similiar direction as Kings Quest, with many fairytalish forests and fantasy landscapes to explore.

My earlier projects (around 2008) looked like this and had a huge amount of cartoon-styled animations:


My main character is a cat with a hat (the one Graham from KQ wears) and still looks like this:

(The furry thing at the bottom is a reference to that horrible horrible internet fandom that likes erotic pictures of animal cartoon characters. My character here pretty much carries two chainguns on his arms, ready to blast the one who calls him a furry - in case you don`t get it )

But, even if those backgrounds look simple, together with the animations they took by far the longest time at this ambitious project. With photos, this process would be unnecessary and the whole game making process would speed up. And as I already said, the problem with the clashing styles will appear.

So, just for trying it out, I made this little experiment using that (actually not very pretty ) sketch from the page above:
http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/3271/pic2jb.png

And I don`t really know what to think of that (aside from noticing that the character needs some shadow at his feet). I actually kinda like how the character in all its black and white glory contrasts with the surrounding. I think it almost has some kind of charme to it. If I animate him nicely and let the scenery cast shadows on him at the right places, it would look kinda nice.

It would be very awesome if you guys here could give me some advice on this.  
Or, do you know any other games where something similiar was pulled off right?

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AGS Games in Production / Re: Quest For Glory I: Extended Edition

« on: 12 Mar 2011, 21:18 »

I looked into every room with the debug mode and I was really impressed with some of the new backgrounds, especially the Dragon Mountain looked breathtaking. Its also great how you used backgrounds form Qfg 4 1/2  
Also, seeing your speech animation with such a high frame rate felt like watching a webcam video inside the game, very well done.  

But to be honest, I would like this a lot more if you just made a new QFG game that takes place in Spielburg once again, but with new problems, characters, missions and all kinds of changes that happened during the years of absence.  

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AGS Games in Production / Re: Arden's Vale - February Update including Generic Man(R)

« on: 03 Feb 2011, 19:13 »

This alreadly looks like a game I would love! Even if the graphics look simple, they give me such a wonderful Kings Quest-feel.
I WANT TO PLAY IT!

Are there other locations to explore besides the castle?

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Critics' Lounge / Re: Need help with the front view of (sierra)agi-style character

« on: 13 Jan 2011, 20:19 »

Don't give him yellow skin, please!

Why? There isn't much that you can do. The PC version of AGI uses the standard EGA palette, so choices are limited, unless you're more happy with gay pink (or... use dithering with such wide pixels which just make the character look as if he gets... pox):

As far as I can remember there is a relatively dark red colour in the palette that was always used for skin. Why not use that?

I really like the character and the colours you used so far by the way. Even if the pixels are huge, its pleasant to look at.

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AGS Games in Production / Re: The Curse of Monkey Island - Old School Edition (Demo v0.0.1.0)

« on: 05 Dec 2010, 09:40 »

Wow, doing such a project must be a HUGE undertaking. Monkey Island 3 is by far my favorite game of the series (especially because of the wonderful graphics), but I would still love to play this game.

However, I have one criticism:
The background style doesn`t really looke like MI1 or MI2. I would like it if you would leave out the Anti Aliasing and use pixels and dithering to get a look that reminds me more of MI1. 

Also, I think it would be a good idea to first finish the entire game by using placeholder graphics. This way, you have the "skeleton" of your game finished and you would "only" have to add the graphics. If you show that to people, they will see that there is a progress and that the game will most likely be finished someday. Also, I believe that many people (and me ) would then like to help you with drawing sprites and backgrounds.