When I run Test Game, it loads up and the whole screen is blue. When I move the mouse around or make my character move, the blue disappears as my mouse or character gets to that area. I could move the mouse around for 5 minutes clearing it away but that just seems like a waste of time. What is going on and how can I fix this? ???
Seems to be a driver problem, try updating DirectX and/or your graphic card's driver.
Also, try running your game in windowed mode, is it the same?
I changed the depth to 16-bit and the blue didnt appear (good) but I really wanted to use 8-bit for my game (bad). How do you change it to open in a window?
There's an executable called winsetup in the Compiled subdir of your game dir.
Run that and check "Run in a window instead of fullscreen".
As a side note: it's more reliable to not use the Test Game option but to run the game.exe in mentioned subdir instead.
How do you make sure the colors you are using for your game are in the 256 line, every time I import a background (drawn in Paint, the only drawing etc. program I have) it says it will be unusable as it is a hi-color picture. What do I do?
Try saving it in GIF format.
Save it in M$Pain using 8-bit format (which can make your pic looks like crap), or use apps that can edit 8-bit images natively.
However, for most users it's easier to have the game set in hicolour so they don't need to mess with palettes.
Doesn't hi-color make the game run less smoothly? And how do you make a Paint pic 8-bit?
Depends on the resolution and how consuming your game is. Normally, most semi-modern computers should be able to handle 640x480 hicolour games quite well.
I'm not sure, availability of 8-bit modes probably varies with versions of M$Pain bundled with different versions of windows, if there's an file format option like "256 colour BMP" use it (since I'm not using English windows I don't know exact wording), GIF works also, though I'm sure that not all versions of M$Pain can save images as GIF format.
I tried gif, but to no avail. Do I just have to draw a background in paint using the colors from the palette?
Did you mean your M$Pain didn't have the option to save as GIF, or AGS refused to import GIF?
AGS refused.
To summarize: The effect you describe is caused by using a 16-bit room background image in a 256 color (8-bit) game. I think unless you downconverted your game from 16-bit to 8-bit, AGS should have told you that the room will be unusable.
To avoid this, make sure your image is in 8-bit format before you import it and be sure to re-import it if you lowered your game's color depth.
If Paint doesn't work for you, try using another paint program (http://www.americangirlscouts.org/agswiki/index.php/Paint_programs) to save your image as a 256-color bmp.