The Third Circuit - Part One (now with a couple of new photos)

[CosmoQueen]

Loving the graphics! So happy to see your two years of hard work so close to completion! Looking forward to it

[scab]

It's very nice. I like the "night-life" district.

[Pinback]

Damn that's pretty - you paint it all up in PS or are there some traditional mediums involved?

[m0ds]

Looks very nice! Best of luck. And the artwork had made me wonder if you had perhaps kidnapped Pinback, but it's good to see he's safe and well ^

[Snake]

My fancy is tickled, that's for sure. I LOVE (absolutely LOVE) the backgrounds, which is what drew me in to read about it.

I'm looking forward to this! Please keep us updated

PS
Personal opinion here: Mixed resolutions just don't work. It looks unnatural and always gives me a cheap, unprofessional impression which tends to ruin it for me. By the screenshots, cheap and unprofessional is not what you are, so why not keep the resolution at 320x200(or 240) or whatever resolution the BGs are made at? If you need the game to run in a higher resolution but you want to keep the pixelated look, there is an option in AGS somewhere that will scale all the text, cursors and sprites to the lower res... or something of the sort... it's been a while for me

Maybe it is the "smoothed scaled sprites" as Ben has suggested...?

[Adder]

Thanks everyone - great to get this feedback after so long in a virtual vacuum,

Adeel S Ahmed:  This first part of the game will almost certainly be free, although I am considering possibly putting up a 'donation' button or something - just to claw back a bit of remuneration perhaps?  Not sure.  But I'll probably put the paintings up for sale because:

Pinback: All the backgrounds are acrylic on paper.  Originally so were the characters but the amount of tracing paper I was using was just insane, so now they're on the machine.

And the artwork had made me wonder if you had perhaps kidnapped Pinback,

That is high praise indeed!

I hope to post up some new pics soon - I'm currently transferring everything into one single, unifying, pixelly resolution.  In the meantime, here's a portrait of one of the NPCs (not yet reolution un-mixed)

[Pinback]

@Adder Aha, I should have guessed! Wonderful stuff. Glad to meet a fellow artist who starts out on paper first, just like the good old days. Props for doing it ALL on paper though, major props man. 

@M0ds Hehe, nah I've just been busy with mad science.

[Adder]

Well, I've been steadily chipping away at the character animations.

Here's the main character picking something off the ground, or maybe exercising?



And here's an alien bartender pouring a drink:

[Armageddon]

Really nice animations. Bartender has some nice detail. Does this take place on earth with aliens or?

[CaptainD]

Terrific animations - also a good basis for a calisthenics workout!

Is it just me or does that bartender look like George Foreman?  Does he sell grills?

[Adder]

Thanks.

Funny point about the Foreman similarities (now that you've mentioned it, I can't help seeing an alien George Foreman from Outer Space ) - it wasn't intentional, although the character does actually grill things.

@Armageddon, the story takes place on Earth but there's a sizeable immigrant population from beyond the stars - when we were first planning this my friend and I loved the image of a sort of extra-terrestrial Chinatown, full of strangeness and excitement.  It won't really feature in this first part but will become more central later in the story.

[Adder]

My, time flies.

I'm still working away at this.  Unfortunately, I've been very busy with some other stuff lately and have not had as much time as I'd like.

But it's certainly coming along â€" I sent the paintings off to get nice professional photos taken which are much truer to the original colours (even in this age of technological whizz-bangery, I'm still atrocious at taking photos)


       

Here we have an old photo on the left, a new one on the right.  I don't know whether the difference is much noticeable to anyone else, but I feel the new one looks much better. I can get a bit obsessive like that (and I've re-sized them here to 800 width as they look like little thumbnails on my screen otherwise).

Anyway, this has been a good opportunity for me to re-size the whole thing to a proper 320x200 resolution.  This has meant that I need to add a bit to the sides of each background, but that's going okay.  It also means I have to restore all the walkable areas and co-ordinates etc etc but this Part One is pretty small, so I hope it won't take too long.

Most of the character art is done now, I just have to put them all in there.

Still working on the dialogue â€" just noticed the font I was using doesn't display commas (ah no, my favourite punctuation!), so two steps forward one step, back.

Sounds have started to come through from the sound artist.

Still chipping away.

[Armageddon]

I like the colors in the left one more, it's also not as harshly outlined. The blue and green and red just pop more and makes the room much more inviting to look at. And even though they are the same resolution it's a lot easier to read the text on the signs in the left one. They're both good though, I can see why you'd choose the newer one, it's just a matter of taste.

[Darth Mandarb]

If you want opinions on new vs. old please post in the Critics Lounge.  Thanks!

[Honza]

Looks awesome! Not only the backgrounds, the characters are great too. I'm impressed and a bit envious .

I was just wondering though, is the pixelated gimmick really necessary? It makes sense to me if you design it in low-res in the first place, but if you have big detailed artwork, why shrink it to a bunch of pixels just to be retro? I would much rather explore those glorious backgrounds in high-res. Or does it spare you work on animation? I felt the same about Primordia and The Journey Down (which went high-res for a commercial release later).

[Adder]

@Armageddon Thanks for the feedback and at the same time, 'd'oh'

@Darth Mandarb I'm sorry about that, it won't happen again.

@Honza Thanks very much.  It's a good question about the low-res thing.  I kind of see it more as a tribute than a gimmick - I've always loved, and have always wanted to make something like, the old adventures I grew up with.  Having said that, it *is* also way more forgiving with my animations .

[Adder]

I've just added a couple of new photos to the original post. 

It's been a long time since I've posted here.  It's coming together.  I feel like that's my catch phrase.  But it is, progressing I mean.  Little animations in the backgrounds are all done now. 

[Ubel]

Wow, the look of this game has improved significantly since you first posted this! It looks really awesome now that you've fixed the mixed resolution problems! The premise of the story sounds a bit mundane the way you wrote it in your post but I hope it actually turns out to have interesting twists.

[Lasca]

This looks absolutely gorgeous! Very impressive!

[Armageddon]

Oh man those new shots look good. I'm so excited for this game. Keep it up!