Topic: New GFX set for AGS default Template (based on Sierra games)

[cat]

I replaced the suitcase in selmiak's version with CaesarCub's shopping bag:

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[Danvzare]

I like the flipped hand. Still don't like the suitcase. To really judge the colors I'd have to see it in a game.

My bad, I'm left handed XD

Me too.
Which is probably why I didn't notice the hand being a left hand.

I replaced the suitcase in selmiak's version with CaesarCub's shopping bag:

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The suitcase might not be the best idea (although I musy admit I like it), but I think a shopping bag is worse. Wouldn't a box be better?

[Snarky]

I don't find that a box conveys the notion of carrying something with you, and its geometric blandness doesn't make for a good icon. A suitcase is also visually bland (just a rectangle with a little hoop), can actually be a bit hard to read (in some of the original proposals I just saw it as a square shape with some diagonal lines overlaid), and IMO is anachronistic, certainly in the visual designs we've seen. To me, a bag is the least-worst of some not-very-good options. But also, this is just a default template, and I would hope most game makers would (1) not use the Sierra interface in the first place, and (2) if they do, customize it. So whatever.

[selmiak]

but geometric bland is exactly what these stipped down pixel icons already are and need, there is only so much information a few pixels can transport thus the icons are just symbolic representations of an idea or a real world object depicting an idea, in case of the inventory icon transport of items. The speech bubble seems a bit crowded with the !? too, but it's still in balance with the arrows on the folders.

What about we just force CC to pick one final overhaul thingy, he won this contest.

Speaking of contests, I'll do some research and start another thread in the competitions board for whatever part of the template seems good to do next, like some quit menu or inside the damned inventory so we can backtrace that form or save/load or so... we'll see

@Github: I'll look into that, I never maintained a project there yet though.

[CaesarCub]

@Github: I'll look into that, I never maintained a project there yet though.

It's been ages since I touched Github myself, but since I had some time I decided to put the icons in the bar to check how it looks: https://github.com/caesarcub/AGS-SCI-Template

If you want I can add you as a contributor, or transfer the project to you.
Same goes to anyone else that wants to lend a hand.

I was not sure about which License does all of this fall (or who has to be credited for the previous work on the template).
I'm guessing it uses Artistic License 2.0 just like AGS, and that the template is by Chris Jones, but I don't know how accurate that is.

As for the inventory icon, I kept the suitcase temporarily.
Whenever we decide for a different one, I'll change it.
Personally I would have gone for the open box, since it's the less setting-related, or the suitcase because it's the most sierra-like one.
Either way, if someone makes one that is readable and stays consistent with the rest of the icons, I have no problem to replace it.

I reused the examine and interact buttons on the inventory GUI, but we can change them as well.
I also modified the status and inventory GUIs backgrounds to match the colors of the menu. But I think we could benefit from having some nice sprites with better borders, and maybe in the case of the inventory, an inner border to delimit where the items will be.


Separate question:

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Who is the author of the "New Roger" sprites?
If/when we add it, we should credit him/her (and also make sure they are ok with adding it to the new template and about the proposed recolor to make him less Roger Wilco looking).


I added the cursors (I made them black and white versions of the iconbar verbs) to the project:

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[selmiak]

I watch this repo now, if you see me there, send it over to me, let me see how this works for a day or two, then I'll transfer it back to you if you want to maintain it, or maybe I decide it's easy to maintain, also I wouldn't mind sharing this responsibility

about that license, if noone else minds, what about a wtfpl license. if github doesn't have this, I'd use the least restrictive license ever. besides the wtfpl, this is a template after all, no sophisticated module.

any chance to see the spritesheet of the the icons on github directly? I haven't checked out the whole template yet...

@Rogersprite:
No idea who made it, abstauber should know!

The cursors look nice. Can AGS handle animated cursors? I'll make an animated hourglass then just because it's fun.
Can we have on click animations? I never used this in AGS, but is it possible? Like, the hand grabs something on click (actually it grabs nothing because there is nothing more in the icon, but you get the idea). The look icon could grow bigger a bit on click, it is a magnifying glass after all. Shoes be walking and talk icon could have one more !? set coming in from right to left (like reading or talking) and end where it was before.

[CaesarCub]

I watch this repo now, if you see me there, send it over to me, let me see how this works for a day or two, then I'll transfer it back to you if you want to maintain it, or maybe I decide it's easy to maintain, also I wouldn't mind sharing this responsibility

I invited you as a collaborator and transfered the project to you (you have to agree on both accounts).

about that license, if noone else minds, what about a wtfpl license. if github doesn't have this, I'd use the least restrictive license ever. besides the wtfpl, this is a template after all, no sophisticated module.

I don't mind, but we are basing it on the previous default template, so we would have to check if it is ok to default to the wtfpl or any other less restrictive license.

any chance to see the spritesheet of the the icons on github directly? I haven't checked out the whole template yet...

If you want I can add them on a different folder as pngs. I guess github should be able to preview those.

The cursors look nice. Can AGS handle animated cursors? I'll make an animated hourglass then just because it's fun.
Can we have on click animations? I never used this in AGS, but is it possible? Like, the hand grabs something on click (actually it grabs nothing because there is nothing more in the icon, but you get the idea). The look icon could grow bigger a bit on click, it is a magnifying glass after all. Shoes be walking and talk icon could have one more !? set coming in from right to left (like reading or talking) and end where it was before.

I know AGS can handle animated cursors. It would be nice to have the hourglass rotate and stuff.
I don't know about click animations, but I'm sure we could have the cursor briefly change the view on the process click with some code, thought that might make the template more complex to use for new users.
I think this would be a cool thing to add on a demo more than a template.


The next steps for me should be (in no particular order)

• Create a background for the template (maybe a competition would be nice).
• Create or use new fonts with 256 characters instead of the old 128 the template uses.
• Recolor New-Roger. (After finding out who did it, so we can credit them).
• Design the GUI elements:
  • A background image for text buttons on all states. (this one I could do by reusing the current border of the verb buttons).
  • Custom sliders (also decide if we want the sliders horizontal like they are, or vertical like the original Sierra ones).
  • One background to use as a template for all the GUIs (Inventory window, Restart, Options, Load, Save and Quit. This could be just plain or make a contest so people can get creative on the design).
  • Create a Text GUI border (derived from the other GUIs or original).
  • The status bar.(Not only design, but probably add hover text and maybe points?)

There are also things I think would be nice to do

• Create a Roger portrait, so the Sierra template uses the Sierra dialog.
• Add blink and talk animation to said Roger portrait.(I think this would be nice, considering AGS has built in talking and blinking animations).
• Modify the default items, so they work nicely with the UI and as cursors. (Should we use the built in cross-hair, add one, or create custom cursor item images).

I think we should also go through the code and check the comments and see if they need to be modified to be more user friendly, or if some parts of the code need scrubbing.
The template could use some basic interactions as examples.

[Snarky]

If my eyes don't deceive me, Nu-Roger is by ProgZmax (Shane Stevens).

[selmiak]

I don't mind, but we are basing it on the previous default template, so we would have to check if it is ok to default to the wtfpl or any other less restrictive license.

Where would we write down the license anyways? Within the Global script at the beginning? Add a readme.txt or license.txt to the files.
I'd say both. and then I checked the current default template and there is no license text within the global script or elsewhere I looked. Maybe I overlooked something but up to now I found no license for the default template we are  basing this on. Maybe hidden deep in the sourcecode of AGS? Again this is just a template, you want people to use it in the first place, either unchanged or improved or heavily modified or something else based on it without caring about licenses very much.
Though we could demand that people using the resulting template from this thread mention all (ALL) the contributors to the template in their credits. Would be fun, but a lot to type for noobs that forget about this anyways so, uhm, rather no. So in summary, I am in favour of the WTFPL for the template.

[Danvzare]

about that license, if noone else minds, what about a wtfpl license. if github doesn't have this, I'd use the least restrictive license ever. besides the wtfpl, this is a template after all, no sophisticated module.

I wholeheartedly agree with this, especially with how this template is likely to be used in the future.
Although just to be clear, this isn't the least restrictive license ever, I once saw one that permitted you to do anything with it regardless of universe or time period. I remember it was quite funny to read, although I can't remember which software had it on. It was definitely for a small simple tool, probably used for game modding.

[CaesarCub]

Where would we write down the license anyways? Within the Global script at the beginning? Add a readme.txt or license.txt to the files.
I'd say both. and then I checked the current default template and there is no license text within the global script or elsewhere I looked. Maybe I overlooked something but up to now I found no license for the default template we are  basing this on. Maybe hidden deep in the sourcecode of AGS? Again this is just a template, you want people to use it in the first place, either unchanged or improved or heavily modified or something else based on it without caring about licenses very much.

I was saying just adding a license.md on the project. Checking the AGS GitHub, you can see they have a license and a copyright files, mostly to document who worked on the project and what type of license it has for information purposes mostly.

I updated the GitHub. I added nu-Roger and some text I found missing on the status bar (@OVERHOTSPOT@ and @SCORE@).

I think we should open a contest for a background, it looks so empty on black:

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[selmiak]

I know AGS can handle animated cursors. It would be nice to have the hourglass rotate and stuff.
I don't know about click animations, but I'm sure we could have the cursor briefly change the view on the process click with some code, thought that might make the template more complex to use for new users.
I think this would be a cool thing to add on a demo more than a template.

I totally agree with you. Can these cursor animations be disabled by a simple click? Having to delete a lot of frames from a view probably works too and will teach the noob a lesson on how to use AGS... lol. Or we just keep it simple with just an animated hourglass.

about these next steps. I'd say we keep the background as the last thing to do. it is the most fun thing to do, maybe there is no more fun in the contests when we only have menus left to do. idk.
About the font, is this really neccessary. We could and should just use a free pixel bitmap font found on dafont with a very free license, preferably not needing and credit whatsoever or we need another credits file and have to maintain it and 5 people read it. Having a font contest could also be fun, but I doubt I would participate There are probably just a few entries and imho it sucks to create a whole fontset and not have any use for it afterwards as another entry won. It could also be fun to define some outline, guidelines for how the font should look like (like 3x5 px per capital letter, underlines (is it called like that in letters like pqgj?) 2px, etc, which letters are needed, unicode or ascii), then have a thread and whoever posts something posts the next letter in the alphabet, first entry gets added to the fontsheet, only one letter per post. Just a crazy idea or can this work out?

Also good job on that roger recolor CC!

[CaesarCub]

I totally agree with you. Can these cursor animations be disabled by a simple click? Having to delete a lot of frames from a view probably works too and will teach the noob a lesson on how to use AGS... lol. Or we just keep it simple with just an animated hourglass.

I'd recommend just the animated hourglass. It's simple, and shows the user that AGS does support animated cursors.

about these next steps. I'd say we keep the background as the last thing to do. it is the most fun thing to do, maybe there is no more fun in the contests when we only have menus left to do. idk.

Personally I don't think the order will affect the outcome, if people find making a menu boring, they won't participate no matter if the contest is before or after the background one.
The only reason I have not done the menus myself is because we talked about making this a group effort, otherwise I would have already started working on all the UI elements myself.

About the font, is this really neccessary. We could and should just use a free pixel bitmap font found on dafont with a very free license, preferably not needing and credit whatsoever or we need another credits file and have to maintain it and 5 people read it.

Well, honestly I wasn't thinking about people having to make fonts for the template. We already have a lot of fonts made by AGS users over the years. I think we can pick from the ones people want to offer.
Hell, I have made several fonts myself. And all these fonts need would be to extend the character range. So it would be more of a matter of picking a font, asking for permission and possibly extending it to 256 characters (I don't mind doing the extending myself).
Here are some of the fonts I made:

Also good job on that roger recolor CC!

Thanks, but I just reused the palette swap Hobo made earlier.

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[Snarky]

While you're palette-swapping the sprite, I wonder if it would also make sense to change the skin tone to something a bit more like the forum smileys (in turn based on CJ's Roger), and the hair color to match. Roger doesn't need to be so lily-white, and it would also serve to distinguish him from the Sierra character.

[CaesarCub]

While you're palette-swapping the sprite, I wonder if it would also make sense to change the skin tone to something a bit more like the forum smileys (in turn based on CJ's Roger), and the hair color to match. Roger doesn't need to be so lily-white, and it would also serve to distinguish him from the Sierra character.

Well, if someone is up to it, great. I think the hair and the skin share colors, so it would be a little more of work than just a quick palette swap to use the old Roger's skin and hair color.
I see if at some point I get the time and add the sprites to the github as well.

[selmiak]

I think we should open a contest for a background, it looks so empty on black:

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I see your point there, well, I see nothing except black and it indeed looks empty.

About that contest, we should limit the palette to the colors in the Iconbar, colors on the new roger, black + white and maybe some 5-10 more.

Should we have a theme? Like a spaceship like abstauber already started and it is fitting for roger. or no theme at all, just free creativity? Or something more down to earth like a living room or a bedroom? I'm all for freedom.

Should we enforce a keep it simple rule as this background is about to get changed anyways. this gets a probably not from me.

[CaesarCub]

I see your point there, well, I see nothing except black and it indeed looks empty.
About that contest, we should limit the palette to the colors in the Iconbar, colors on the new roger, black + white and maybe some 5-10 more.
Should we have a theme? Like a spaceship like abstauber already started and it is fitting for roger. or no theme at all, just free creativity? Or something more down to earth like a living room or a bedroom? I'm all for freedom.
Should we enforce a keep it simple rule as this background is about to get changed anyways. this gets a probably not from me.

I don't think we should add many restrictions. I mean, even on a 256 color game, you'd give the background artist at least a 100 color palette, if not more. I like Abstauber's background, but it is made for a SCUMM UI in mind (a lot of empty space on the bottom third of the screen).
I believe we should just give them nu-Roger, and ask for a nice 320x200 background that works for him without scaling.
I wouldn't add any other restriction than the size and having nu-Roger in mind for it.

If you are Ok with it, I will start the competition since I don't plan to enter it. I already won the icon bar one, and I think it would be nice to have different parts of the template made by different people in the community.

[[delete}]

Yes please. Since the Sprite Jam is on vacation, lets have a 'Lure of the Template' competition.

[Snarky]

KAnd when this is over, might I suggest another contest for a new AGS Awards client GUI?

[CaesarCub]

Jim Reed sent me this font he made:

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Unless anyone objects, I will be using it for the template.
Otherwise if anyone wants to offer a different font, we can set all the offered fonts and vote to decide which one goes.