A background for my cop-game

[Sonny Bonds]

Hey all,

I've just finished my first background, and I'm quite happy with it as it is, however, I need advice on how to improve the water graphics and the police car, I've tried to get a Police Quest 2 style background, but it just doesnt feel quite like it yet, I know a lot of you here are pretty good at this so all help is welcome.

and the man in the water seems a bit too AGI style though, any ideas on how to make this into a more PQ2ish look? Are there any Photoshop tricks for this?

[CoffeeBob]

Looks nice, but it would've looked even better if it was all AGI-styled.

[Reptile]

Indeed you may have the neck for AGI art, even though some people think AGI is crap and is soo easy. I've mastered it in picedit and it was hard. Try to add a sky, and dont use to bright colours.

[Mozesh]

Here I added a simple sky, a very simple one. But then you'll get a sea behind it. So my point is that your one is good, maybe you could make a bit land behind. If its supposed to be a small river that is.

[Sonny Bonds]

Looks nice, but it would've looked even better if it was all AGI-styled.

lol, Its true, some parts (the road, the bushes, the drowned man) are AGI styled and other parts (the tree's and the car) are more PQ2 styled, (except for the fact that my police car looks a bit amateuristic)

Indeed you may have the neck for AGI art, even though some people think AGI is crap and is soo easy. I've mastered it in picedit and it was hard. Try to add a sky, and dont use to bright colours.

I've also downloaded this picedit programme, but damn, I had a hard time drawing with that stuff, sometimes it just doesnt draw lines and fill colors and stuff. But when it works it's rather handy for making AGI backgrounds though.

Btw. I love AGI games, it may have simple textures and easy to make, yet it still brings up many memories from the good'ol days. (How do you call the graphic style used in games like Leisure Suit Larry 2, Quest for Glory 1 and 2 and Police Quest 2 ? Is that also called SCI? Because I always thought games like Police Quest 3, LSL 5, QFG3 and 4 were SCI games)

Here I added a simple sky, a very simple one. But then you'll get a sea behind it. So my point is that your one is good, maybe you could make a bit land behind. If its supposed to be a small river that is.

Good point, when making a sky like this, it'll make it look like looking out over the ocean, but when I, for example add a another island to the picture, (on the top of this picture) it makes it look more like a river, which im aiming for, Ill try and edit my pic and see what happens, Ill post the result later, thanks for the pic and feedback guys.

[DCillusion]

I agree with the other posts.

I think you should go EGA-all the way; or add more advanced colouring to your image.

Right now it looks like a Turbo-Grafix 16 game.

[Sonny Bonds]

I know it looks kinda weird, and believe me, If I could make it all-EGA, I would, but somehow I just cant get it right, no matter how many times I try.. (Is there a tutorial for this or something? I know there's a EGA room in AGS Studio Edtor Demo Quest II, but no tutorial there.)

Anyways, I've edited the picture into something better, but that damned ugly police car is bothering me like hell, anyone, tips?

[Ozzie]

The white dots, who you can see especially on the road and at the right tree, there on purpose or didn't you just fill it out? It sticks very much out at first.
And the bush at the right looks strange, like mud and then some leaves sparkled over it, mabye it should like the branches, but it has not this effect.
The left bush then for example looks like he is built out of small boxes, but maybe that is caused through the picture compression, I can't judge. You should use "Irfan view" to convert into JPEG.

Hope this gives you some hints how to improve the picture. 

Not to forget, this straight diagonal line you can see through the cut from the left bank to the water looks odd, not natural, especially compared to the other side of the bank.

[Reptile]

Very nice. But please dont use such bright colours. *my eyes!!* 

[Sonny Bonds]

The white dots, who you can see especially on the road and at the right tree, there on purpose or didn't you just fill it out?

Heh, I didnt do those on purpose, I did notice the white-ness in the trees but I left it there to work on later, I didnt see those white spots in the road at first though.

And the bush at the right looks strange, like mud and then some leaves sparkled over it, mabye it should like the branches, but it has not this effect.
The left bush then for example looks like he is built out of small boxes, but maybe that is caused through the picture compression, I can't judge. You should use "Irfan view" to convert into JPEG.

True true, the bushes look weird to say the least, (especially the left one) and I will work on that.

Hope this gives you some hints how to improve the picture.Ã, 

Not to forget, this straight diagonal line you can see through the cut from the left bank to the water looks odd, not natural, especially compared to the other side of the bank.

Also very true, altough this is a minor problem I can easily fix.

Thanks for the pointers, I will try to work on it some more, any ideas on how I can improve that police car though? Because drawing those cars can be a bitch, (Oh how I long for the drawing skill to make a police car just like in PQ1 vga or PQ3)

Very nice. But please dont use such bright colours. *my eyes!!*Ã, 

I guess I could turn the brightness/contrast down a little bit.

[trylle]

mmm agi style

i think it looks nicer if it's scaled to sci ega resolution and with proper colours. kinda like this.

[Sonny Bonds]

Yes!

That's the style im looking for! Please tell me how to do this. I want all the details (Remember im a noob when it comes to paint programmes, so how do I scale it to an sci ega resolution?)

[Chicky]

resize to 320x200,

decrease colours to 16,

then clean up pixels.

[Sonny Bonds]

Ok, but how do I get the colors decreased to 16? We're talking about photoshop here right?

[trylle]

My method was slightly more involved than what the above poster wrote, but it is basically correct.

What I did was I added some outlines (and a few stripes inside to get a little more bushy look) to the trees (should've done this with the bushes as well) to better separate them from the background.

Then I converted the picture to indexed (without any diffusion/noise) using a colour palette I grabbed from a ega screenshot.

Did a little clean up, then I converted it back to 8-bpc, resized it to 320x190 (the 10 pixels above are used for the title bar) with bicubic interpolation. After that, I did two separate conversions to indexed (one with no dithering, the other with noise dithering) and used a mask to decide where I wanted noisy textures and where I wanted solid colours. Easy!

[DoorKnobHandle]

in photoshop you simply click on image -> mode -> indexed color and then choose palette -> local (perceptual), colors to 16 or as many as you want, forced -> none and uncheck 'transparency'. if your image features more than 16 colors and photoshop has to kill and replace colors automatically, you could also change matte -> none and (important for agi/ega look) dither -> pattern...

[Sonny Bonds]

Ok, Thanks for those instructions Trylle and [ ... ],  Im trying to make this background look like Trylle's now, altough I must say that it's not very easy to do so. (at least not for me )