Portrait AND Handdrawn art AND Limits AND Curiosity :)

[Rayearth]

Hi, This is my first post so dont get mad if these are really stupid question!, anyways...

ISSUE ONE

i find that the portrait boxes in sierra games look a bit ugly coz the portraits are often kept in square boxes. so i was wondering if i i had two characters on screen talking to each other, is it possible to have say a large picture of my character appear on top of the screen with the dialog? if i'm not explaining myself very well, i mean something like in this playstation japanese rpg - see following examples:

http://media.ps2.ign.com/media/016/016203/img_1274948.html

http://media.ps2.ign.com/media/016/016203/img_1274946.html

http://media.ps2.ign.com/media/016/016203/img_1274952.html


SECOND ISSUE

I notice that a lot of games made on AGS have backgrounds and characters drawn on computer art programs. However, is it possible to draw images by hand (pen/pencil and paper), scan them into my computer, and use them as backgrounds/characters?


THIRD ISSUE

Exactly how "big" can a game be on AGS?
Is there a limit on the amount of dialogue?
Is there a limit on the number of "rooms"?
Is there a limit on the number of characters in the game?


FOURTHLY

Not really a technical question, but curious to ask - do people prefer the old school point and clicks where half the screen is taken up with the interface and interventory; or do people prefer full screen games with interface/inventory which can be made to pop up/disappear?

Thanks
xxx

[scotch]

ISSUE ONE:  You could do that, yeah.. big sprites can be slow but you can pause the game when text is on screen so that doesn't matter.. I'm not sure if you could do it with the default speech options because I've never used Sierra style myself.  Maybe someone who knows more about that can help...

SECOND:  Yes, any image is fine however it is produced, to produce art in this way may require a bit more technical skill because you have to worry about antialiasing and animating is harder.  But there's no problem with anything hand drawn.

THIRD:  Game can be hundreds of mb if you want.. you can split off data into seperate files if the main exe becomes too big and slow, but it's not usually necessary.  There are limits on things, 500 dialog topics (2000 dialog messages), 299 rooms, and a limit of 150 characters.  Even if you made such a large game there are ways around them and most probably aren't too hard to increase.


FOURTH:  I'm not sure which is more popular, I prefer a less intrusive interface personally.


Here are all the other limits by the way:
  20  objects per room
 100  messages per room
 500  global messages
 299  rooms per game
 300  inventory items
15000  imported sprites
 240  sprites per folder
 400  views
  16  loops per view
  20  frames in each loop
 150  characters
  40  GUIs
  30  controls on each GUI
 200  total GUI controls of each type
 500  dialog topics
2000  dialog-script messages
  30  options per topic
  10  screen overlays at a time
 500  text script GlobalInts
  50  text script GlobalStrings
 100  interaction editor global variables
   5  background frames per room
  20  mouse cursors