Messages

What you must realise is that in the end, so called "beautiful backgrounds" are not necessarily adding to gameplay. I more tend to enjoy highly unprofessional art since of it's naïve qualities. Graphics should contribute to gameplay. If you only strive to make the game look good, you miss the points. AGI games rock, but are they visually appealing? Yes and no. Yes because they are coherent and functional but No because they have a god awful color scheme.

Taking photos, yes, that works. It's great for realistic games quite frankly, and you can achieve good results.

Using photos for characters? Is difficult to pull off with good results, but try it, by all means.

Using 3d? Now, 3d is just another medium. Let's face it, if you, like most people, assume yourself to be artistically inept, then 3d doesn't automatically make you do great graphics. They are slick, yet soulless, and frankly, the biggest feel-killer of the century when done poorly. It is like filling your rooms with high saturated gradients, believing that this simulation of technical mastery somehow makes appealing graphics. You might aswell post a big lens flare over the room.

..yes, I dislike 3d. I've seen way to many poserdolls.. my rant is over now though.

I disagree, the stained glass looks nice, but it's  very meshy. Perhaps you could do it by hand or adjust the filter.

The reason it makes PNG's so big is due to PNG compression rates emulating the GIF LZW compression. This is lots of letter there, but basically, PNG are only useful if you have vast areas of the EXAKT same color. You have a gradiant fill throughout the picture and that makes JPG's unbeaten.

It is hard to really give input without knowing what you try to achieve. For a cartoony style, I think they work well. The main issue is, as mentioned, the legs. But these are your characters and should express what YOU wish them to express. And they currently have a very nice expression IMO.

Johnnys take shows nice tooned realism, but killed the characteristics. This is good when you use closeups or similar to show traits and expressions.

Progs took the toony traits and "Metal Slugged" them, making them slicker but a bad ass version of the characters you made. If your characters should be bad ass, then these are simply great.

Either way, note the use of contrast and colors

Faction: "inspired by the nice homoerotic ComfortQuest thread", yeah, that might explain the girly stance But I guess I fudged it up thoroughly since he has no shirt, nor vest. That'd be hair on his "manly" chest mind you. And the size stays. It's 50 pixels high. That's the classic height. But the legs bothered me aswell, so yea, a manlier stance it'll be.

Tiki: Perhaps I expressed myself poorly, I was interested in getting input on shading techniques rather than character design. Although, your piece is a nice view of lowcolor shading so that's quite usable.





Allright, take 2 and 3. Still unhappy with the shading. I try to make use of only 3 shades per hue (albeit in the third I wen't more for strict color theory).

I was actually supposed to be in South Africa, somewhere along the east coast but more inwards, in an exchangeprogram with my Uni. Half a year or a whole year in art school. Might be worth checking out but I can't remember the name on the SA uni..

Yeah, I havn't been pixelpushing in ages, and frankly, I lost most of TEH SKILLZ0r so basically, would those inclined please slaughter this piece thoroughly. It was inspired by the nice homoerotic ComfortQuest thread, and contitutes of about 5 colors. But I just have problems pixeling. Huge problems. And let us not discuss animation.. egh..

Also, don't bother about the sword, because I didn'tÃ, 

SSH: Yes, but my thesis was that some person seeing something that others can't is a occurance where the possible solution is that this person actually CAN see a figment of reality he/she shouldn't be able to. What I was trying to say was that people often regard the normal state of the senses as fallible AND at it's peak. Anomalies are regarded as limitations (colorblindness etc) but there is no reason not to assume that an anomaly could ENHANCE the sight.

"The idea of some people percieving things that others cant means that there is somethign out there that we dont understand is fallacious and assumes that our senses are infallible."

Because I don't see how this assumes our senses are infallible..

Kinoko: Apart from what I stated above, I'm aware on how throughly we can analyse in what way the brain works today - but note: not HOW. Tracking signal substances do give us an idea on how extrenal stimula is transformed into chemical reactions, thus spawning activity in specific parts of the brain, but to assume that an alteration in chemical balance does nothing more than falsify the input is still to assume the anomalies are of decreasing (or altering) nature only - raising our current set-up of input decoding as mans prime.

Two words made into one..

Kickass

Jezus, are you people for real? Do you honestly find a naked man offensive? And in contradiction to a woman?!

My concerns lies more in the fact that this guy is like the posterchild for fitness+steroids.. or a chippendale.. Some bodily fat'd be nice, or hair.. no need to add to the equality inbetween sexes by objectifying males aswell.

Prog: That leg shading looks SO cartoony lowres. Gorgeous!

How could an optical illusion prove that wrong. Your thesis are based that the mind unaffected sees the world as it is, and drugs fudge it up. This must also be taken into consideration.

Why couldn't mind altering substances make you see the world as it REALLY is.

Basically:

Mind 'unaffected' by drug - Sensing A out of WORLD
Mind affected by drug - Sensing B out of WORLD

Neither A nor B are truth. Only WORLD is truth.

The unaffectedness is still an affection, but by bodily produced chemicals, some which have mind altering functionalities.

In the same way:

Person X sees GHOST out of WORLD
Person Y sees NOTHING out of WORLD

Still, neither GHOST nor NOTHING true.. only WORLD

The main issue about why ripped graphics is a sore thumb is in the eys of 2 viewers.

1: artistic sobs and
2: people who recognize the sprites

I often find myself in the first category in which a shiver is sent down my spine every time someone use obviously ripped sprites and or "try for a 3d-ish looking game". This because graphics are not there to be slick, they are there to enhance the writing. Less is more, always. Why does Pleurghburg rock so hard? Not because of it's ripped sprites, nor because of how gorgeous they are. No quite the opposite, it's AGI quality baby, and it's all homegrown. Yeah!

The second category is when a specific sprite is used and someone allready has a relationship to it. Like someone using the hero-sprites from Chrono Trigger, and it usually makes me want to delete and tear out my eyes in sorrow. Or we see the same character portrait used for the 30th time, but for another character in which the SLP's are turned in to icons rather than actual characters, completely annihilating all immersion ("Oh this is a sad, shy healer.. oh well..")

Yes, someone may think and regard themselfs as much better writers than artists, but you must still realise that your work is different from everyone elses because it's yours! You are unique, and so is your styles. Ripping means inconsistency, and takes away from the overall feel of a game. It is like making a spartan room design, then putting a big LNES FALARE!!11! all over it to make it look better.

It does not.

Dude, do NOT QUIT your JOB. If anything, start working half-time, trying to establish a job in your field of expertise.

And don't move, because then you must find a job to work half-time on while trying to establish a job in your field of expertise.

Great skills ain't shit, all you need is contacts and openings. You hand your work out, and you don't even get an answer unless you literally walk in to an editors quarters asking in his face. Which is a quite nice way of doing it actually..

Yea, that's about it.

Speaking as someone who's actually been in this situation; I was 1) unmarried and 2) young. We had allready discussed the topic whether the situation would occur, and the choice was clear. Abortion.

But for some reason, people think that the pro-choicers have no issues with doing such. Abortion is a horrible thing to go through with, because you can dress it up in all the medical terms you like, but you end your childs life right there. That is what I feel. And it was not because of I didn't want to waste my youth, nor was it her reason. We were in a failing relationship, and issues such as "Can I even care for a child?" seem a bit more important than "I'm to young to pay for child support!". It is the worst thing I have gone through, but if I had a chance to redo it, I'd do the same thing. I see no value in life, only in living. And that goes for the child too. I feel shit for it, but no remorse. Come judgementday, I'll stand by my decision come heaven come hell because this was the RIGHT thing to do.

More on-topic, you may think it's the womans choice because it is the womans body. Fine, no man should force a woman to deliver a child, but he's got a bloody right to know. Sure, ignorance is bliss, and I'd be a lot merrier in joyful lack of knowledge, but I still had a right to know. If you're two in such a mess, you can atleast support eachother. And if a woman fears bringing this matter up to her spouse then what the hell is she doing with him in the first place. Fine, these things can end relationships, but so be fucking it. She shouldn't have to go through it alone.

But this is a question where the law has nothing to do with it. Because a law in such a way, not only makes sure the man knows, but the law knows.

shitar: The brain being the cockpit is a philosphical question at best. There's no reason not to assume that selfawareness and ethics are the result of highly complex chemical reactions, in which case we're nothing more but high-end biological machines. I think the real question lies in does it matter?

If we ever achieve true AI, we've reached beyond simple selflearning robotics to not a simulation of intelligence, but actual intelligence. This thing must in all aspects be regarded as a living thing, even though it by all means is a 'cockpit' in it's very construction. What the pilot constitutes of is no real issue if we have achieved actual intelligence.

In which case another thesis in ghosts pop up. Could we in the distant future have houses haunted by deceased robots? We've allready been fed with the idea of selfaware viruses spreading throughout the networks, which basically is a teknocratic haunting of multiplying proportions. The core is that an intelligence is unbound to a specific mainframe, but instead limited to the connections and powersupply. Is it then hard to assume that human intelligence could transcend its mortal coil, being fed by unorthodox energy supplies. The very reason specific buildings are haunted may be that the connections are limited to within the construction.

We're all basically robots with AI, so perhaps we can upload ourselfs in some way

Nikolas: By default, you OWN your material, and this does not alter much from country to country. You can sell this right however, and this should be stated in the contract and be priced accordingly.

Royalty however can be tricky. Does it pay from the first sold copy of ex. a book, or does the publisher cover their expenses first? Is the royalty just for the first print of the book, or possible re-prints later on?

My advice would be to discuss the matter with your contractor/hirer/employeer/whatever. Ofcourse, they'll try to rip you off, but they would surely have an attourney or likewise willing to atleast discuss and explain parts of the contract and/or form. If you do however get replies such as "No need to worry about, that just legal bullcrap" or "Nah, that doesn't regard you.." then you better find an attourney to look it through for you.

For not more than a couple of hundred years ago, electricity was regarded as witchcraft or bogus. Just because we don't have the tools to scientifically measure something does not mean it doesn't exist.

With those words, I'd still like to point out that I believe the usual "tricks" of catching ghosts on film or picture are baloney. What is troublesome is that we need to explain very abstract occurances, and the simplest way to do so is by making analogies to what we do know, which we don't know from the first place. Confusing? Yes..

It is basically religion, myths are tools to adress deep psychological aspects of human behaviour and life in comprehensible ways. Modern psychology succeeds in parts of these but fails in other. To give ghost the possible "unknown" materia thesis which reacts to light in unorthodox ways is to shoot yourself in the foot because first you must define "ghost" itself.

Does the soul constitute of this unknown materia, then what is the soul?

Since even materia is a form of energy (theory, not fact.. but on the other hand, everything we "know" are theories we havn't disproved yet), being that light manage to be particles and radiation at the same time, the so called ghost can be a vast range of possible, and completely scientific, phenomenons. Bodily echoes, subconscious manifestations of the psyche or even a glitch in time itself (making this "ghost" actually being a 90-years old LIVING man messing with "ghosts" in HIS appartment).

Now, your drop of physics is interesting, but still does not prove the existance of ghosts. Sadly, the established researchers are to convinced of the 'truth' that they've forgotten how false the truth is and disregard theories of the paranormal as bullcrap without adressing the matter from a scientific point of view. Hell, the occultists in late 15th century saw themselfs as scientists.

So basically, we can't YET prove the existance of ghosts without proving WHAT they are. And as far as I see, the thesis above gives a theory about HOW they may be, and not much more. But these HOWS may give us the WHAT later on.

Well my .02

It's a wellmade game albeit it has some problems. The main issue is what people has mentioned allready, the need to execute specific interactions in order to come further. I also find being runned over by a car very frustrating since it is almost bound to happen while leaving the bar, and some exits are hard to use since it is uncertain where the exits are.

Graphicwise, it is gorgeous, although I kind of pity the fact that the girl close-ups are high-res. It spoils the gorgeous lowres feel. All extra animations are wonderful and of top nothc quality. I admire your effort! 

Nope, norwegian if I'm not mistaken.. basically "Click yourself to [link] and [I have no idea]. Adventure games of the old kind.

Then he says that he uses AGS and seen alot of good games made in it.

The lowres is not only nostalgia, but a style of abstraction itself. Well done, it's great. Badly done, it's crap. Just like everything else. IMO, choose your resolution based on personal preferences, but if you do bother to ask others about their oppinions, my guess is that your desire for 800x600 is not based on artistic reasons but an idea on how better that is. Which it isn't.

And thus your obsessive collection is joy for all.. or perhaps just me..