Critic this room, please.

[aventurero]

Is the living room of the player character's house. It took me a few hours to put it together. Hope you like it. 

[Ryan Timothy B]

I don't have much time right now, I'll respond later today if no one else does. 
The two biggest issues are color, and perspective.

Colors.  Unless you're making Mickey Mouse's house, those colors are very MSPaint standard pallet colors.  How often do you see a bright pink carpet, and bright red couches, chairs, and bookshelves?

Lots of issues with perspective.  The left side of that dinner table has more of an angle than the right side, which is clearly backwards.  If I were you, I'd Google up: One point perspective.
The shelves on the bookshelf are angled downward because the sides aren't parallel with the ground.
The tv and bookshelf have no depth, neither do the windows.  I'm really not sure what those black lines in the windows are.  Are they supposed to be bars?

The height of the railing (not to mention the bright orange color and solid panel) is very high.  It's almost the same height as the door.

One thing I've always disliked in this style of background, is when someone grabs a jpg image from google and slaps it in for a painting/picture on a wall.  It clearly isn't drawn in the same style as the rest of the background, therefor it's the first thing I look at and it stands out like big red target on a white house.


Out of all the AGS games I've played, the one who's graphics I remember and liked the most were actually the simple ones.  This one is definitely one of my favorites.  It's from the game A Cure for the Common Cold.
Now just take a look at the coloring in that background.  Everything has a realistic, cartoony tone.  Simple textures on the walls, simple creases in the fabric.  It's so simple to do, yet it looks great.

Anyway, I'm not trying to sound like I'm being rude or anything, but you did ask for my criticism.

[kconan]

  Looks very symmetrical and a bit empty except for the umbrella holder.  Maybe add some character here and there, like some objects lying on the table, a few books in the bookcase, a tree in the distance outside the window...etc.  I like the basic layout though.

[aventurero]

There you go
Now, if you don't like it, go to hell!  
Just kidding.   I really aprecciate you took the time to do such a review. I hope it's good now, or at least better. What do you recommend to improve the colors? I just don't know how.

EDIT: Oh, I almost forgot. I'm not gonna remove that picture. It's a picture from the character (because my character is based on a real life friend). So if I erase it, I'm gonna lose a lot of laugh from my friends, because he actually has that picture in a frame in his house (this is a recreation of his house, too). Well, I know it doesn't fit very good, but I don't think it ruins the room.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Your friend has a photo of himself playing harmonica on a toilet?

Anyway, you really haven't addressed the perspective problems Ryan pointed out.  The couch, the tv, the right door in particular are wrong.  Erasing items from your room isn't a solution, it's dodging the solution.  There's also a weird M.C. Escher effect going on with the stairs.  If the stairwell starts up along the wall, all you're going to see is a small doorway at the top left at best where it cuts into the wall and continues.

Read up on perspective and horizon lines and you'll produce a much more satisfying background I assure you.

[SpacePirateCaine]

Ahoy there,

I've taken a look at the room, and I don't really think the color scheme is nearly as hard to deal with as others have said. The problems I've noticed with the room, primarily, are some perspective issues here and there, that if fixed, would make the room feel a lot easier on the brain.

Your table shows some perspective, but generally speaking most of the items in the room are a bit out of whack and could use a little tweaking. The biggest issue I see is in the staircase - it looks as though the bottom flight is nestled right up against the wall, but then it inexplicably turns left to create an almost escherian 'impossible' extra flight of stairs. Unless your wall is curved or very oddly cut, you wouldn't likely be able to see the stairs beyond the turn.

Aside from that, a lot of your objects have parallel lines when they should be all going towards a consistent vanishing point (If you're not familiar with this term, let me know and I'll elaborate).

Sometime back in the first quarter of '09 I drew up a pair of animated tutorials about linear perspective, that might help you see where the problems are:


Simple One-point Perspective


Bookshelves in one-point linear perspective

The image seems to be coming from a pretty high angle, so it's not a problem that you can see the tops of most items, but some things - like the top of the couch, for example - you should be able to see the top of but can't. If you get stuck with any of those points, let me know and I'll see if I can whip up a paintover sometime soon.

Final point of critique, which has been mentioned also by Kconan, the room looks very empty - I think you went in the wrong direction taking the umbrella holder out - what the room could really benefit from is more clutter and items sitting about - books on the bookshelf, maybe a magazine or two on the table, potted plant - bring back your drapes over the windows, just play with them a bit until they seem more drapey, and so on and so forth. At the moment it doesn't really come across as lived-in.

[Ryan Timothy B]

Something like this instead of the colors you have.  It's a little washed out cause I did it quickly by mostly just desaturating the image, but you get the idea I hope.  I didn't touch the perspective issues whatsoever, so I hope you don't think that is correct still.



And I quickly painted a dude in that painting because I refuse to upload an image with a resized jpeg in an MS-Paint style background.

[aventurero]

This is my last edit. If something else is wrong, well... I guess no one is gonna judge my game for its graphics.

[Ryan Timothy B]

This is my last edit. If something else is wrong, well... I guess no one is gonna judge my game for its graphics.

Well taken that you've completely disregarded what we've, and especially SpacePirateCaine, have mentioned and pointed out on perspective issues.. I can't see you improving any background if you're going disregard those suggestions because perspective is a very important part of an adventure background.

Your color choices are much better and I like the little objects laying around.  Makes the background much more entertaining.

[Khris]

Here are a few corrections, based on a horizon at approximately eye height, assuming the table is drawn correctly.



It's really very easy once you get the hang of it, and it'll prevent people from having epileptic seizures just from looking at your game

I've also constructed a wall with a door that's as tall as the front door.
Drawing perspectively correct stairs is a bit of a pain btw, so I left it at correcting the main flaws.

You might want to look at Google SketchUp also.

[kq5_gamer]

Quick question regarding perspective - should each ROOM have it's own vanishing point?  Or should the world as a whole have one vanishing point, or could it be anything inbetween.  Eg, if you had a 2 screen scrolling background, the 2 screen background would have 1 vanishing point.

How important is this to the overall feel of a game?

[Ryan Timothy B]

Imagine a vanishing point depending on where the camera is.  If you have a non scrolling room with a vanishing point to the right side, that means the camera is to the right side of the room (assuming this is a dead straight view of a back wall of a room).  If the vanishing point is to the left, it would mean the camera is the the left side of the room.

It's a little more difficult with a scrolling room, because technically the camera isn't standing in one spot and panning, it's actually following you.

So if you really think about it, none of the scrolling rooms in AGS have accurate perspective due to technical limitations of it being a 2D background.  Once it becomes a scrolling room, you pretty much have to 'fake' the perspective.  It's sad, I know.

Edit:
Actually there is a cool forum where these guys were trying to figure this out, I bumped into this after posting the above message.  Here is how you 'fake' panning of the camera (which would be the camera sitting in one spot rotating around and around):

Read more here.

[Layabout]

Quick question regarding perspective - should each ROOM have it's own vanishing point?  Or should the world as a whole have one vanishing point, or could it be anything inbetween.  Eg, if you had a 2 screen scrolling background, the 2 screen background would have 1 vanishing point.

How important is this to the overall feel of a game?

In a word, yes, every room should have at least one vanishing point. Ideally, it would be at the centre point of the camera, although it is ok to have the vanishing point to the left, right, up, down. Depends on the mood. Realistically, you should have this on eye level, or just above, since your characters are unable to shift perspective due to their 2-Dimensionality. But 2 point perspective (ideal for outdoor scenes) will have 2 vanishing points, 3 point will have 3 (ideal for creating a sense of scale with tall buildings, etc, commonly seen in comics, not so much in adventure games. YOu can have more points (like what the other Ryan is showing), but I wouldn't recommend it until you know the rules of perspective backwards.

[Laukku]

So if you really think about it, none of the scrolling rooms in AGS have accurate perspective due to technical limitations of it being a 2D background.  Once it becomes a scrolling room, you pretty much have to 'fake' the perspective.  It's sad, I know.

Edit:
Actually there is a cool forum where these guys were trying to figure this out, I bumped into this after posting the above message.  Here is how you 'fake' panning of the camera (which would be the camera sitting in one spot rotating around and around):

Read more here.

That's not "faking", it is how proper perspective acually works. Straight lines will look curved as they go past you. We of course mostly don't notice that, because we tend to focus on just a part of our field of vision.

[Snarky]

Laukku, the perspective is faked because in reality the bending of the lines should change as you pan around the room. The edges of the vertical lines should always bend towards the center-line of where you're currently looking. It's dynamic, while this image is static.

And Layabout, a vanishing point only applies to parallel lines. Since we build a lot of boxy things with straight lines and flat sides, it's an important special case of perspective rules, but there's no inherent rule that all backgrounds must have vanishing points.

Also, there are valid drawing styles like isometric perspective that don't use vanishing points at all, even for parallel lines.

[aventurero]

it'll prevent people from having epileptic seizures just from looking at your game

Was that supposed to be a joke, Khris? That kind of commentary just makes me wanna erase everything.

Thanks everyone, but I just don't feel in the mood to correct the mistakes in that room. Feel free to do it if you want, and I'll put you in the credits. Bye!

[Matti]

it'll prevent people from having epileptic seizures just from looking at your game

Was that supposed to be a joke, Khris? That kind of commentary just makes me wanna erase everything.

You didn't quote the smiley Khris posted. That Smiley should indicate that the phrase wasn't meant too seriously..

[Ryan Timothy B]

And Layabout, a vanishing point only applies to parallel lines.

Not really actually.  A vanishing point is used for depth, and angle of view.  Imagine a large cylinder type building (a water tower).  Just because the base of this water tower is round, doesn't mean you don't use the vanishing point to determine where it stands, and if you can see the top or bottom of this tower.

Edit: But technically you'd be making a square, on the ground (just viewed from straight on, the side, ect).  Therefor the lines would be technically still be parallel, to determine the how oval to make the base.

But if you were drawing a building or box in the middle of the room that didn't run parallel to the vanishing point.  You'd have to create another vanishing point along the horizon.  Unless the object is on an angle as well, then you'd have to create a vanishing point that is below or above the horizon.

[Snarky]

Actually, to know whether you can see the top or bottom of (flat-sided, horizontal) objects, you just need to know whether they're above or below the horizon. To draw a cylinder correctly, you don't need to use a particular vanishing point, you can pick any point on the horizon.

Vanishing points can be useful to help you construct other shapes or figure out relative scales, sure, but that's just because many people find it easier to think about space in terms of boxes or planes that they can fill with things. And when you talk about adding "a building or box," the reason you create another vanishing point is, again, simply that they are made out of parallel lines.

Vanishing points are a concept that applies to straight, parallel lines, whether real (the sides of a room or a box) or imaginary (e.g. a pair of lines showing the apparent height of equally tall trees at various distances).

[Ryan Timothy B]

This is what I was referring to.  And if the right box is on a side slope, one vanishing point would be above the horizon while the other would be below. (I did this quickly)

And yes, if it's above the horizon, you can't see the top of it.  But if it's below the horizon, you use vanishing points, no matter what the object is, to determine the angle you see the top at.

Unless you have some crazy gift that you can draw backgrounds without the use of a vanishing point and have them close to exact.

Edit: Let me rephrase this though.  You honestly don't need to do 'realistic' perspective on your backgrounds.  As long as it looks close enough to not be noticeable.  I don't always use perspective and vanishing points.  And when I do (my rooms or scenes are usually viewed from an angle), I toss my 2 vanishing points so far off to the left and right canvas that you'll never have to deal with scaling.