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The way you mixed the blue into the floor dither on the right is chef's kiss.

I think at this point you have an acceptable base, but the BG seems a bit empty. If it's not going to be shown for very long, I guess that doesn't matter, but otherwise, I'd say some stuff to fill it in would be useful: a couple of cars, posters/notices on the walls, manholes, maybe some silhouette in the foreground, etc.

This is not for a game.  I was just doing it for fun based on the photobash I started 15-ish years ago.  I fully intend to add cars.  In fact, what I asked was, besides cars etc, what else is it missing?  Posters is a good one.  Oooh yeah, a manhole for sure, or a grate or some water draining out of a pipe.  Maybe a vent with some smoke coming out of it? I dunno maybe from the AC system? It was the 80s so it's probably super unhealthy ha.  I also think the sidewalk could use detail in the surfaces are too clean.  Also I haven't done the planters yet, there's nothing in them.  I'm not sure when I'm gonna do that, got Omicron at the moment so I'm stuck in bed.  But thanks for the ideas, Babar, those are what I'm after.

You need Keith in the upstairs window puffing a smoke. Kidding of course. Your art looks great - totally faithful to the original vibe. PQ2 was one of my faves back in the day. Definitely my favourite in the Police Quest series.

Hah, I definitely think him or the Captain outside licking ice cream.  "You're late again, Bonds!"

The roofing above the doors sticks out but its shadow on the floor  doesn't.

Thanks arj0n, didn't even see that.  I tried to fix it, turns out I really didn't have the building shadow right.  If I'm following this guide to render shadows correctly, and I might not be, not Scott Robertson's fault, then the shadow for the overhang is so far off the page anyway.  I'm not sure why that makes any sense, but that's what his book seems to show.  The dark bit on the glass is supposed to be a reflection from the underside of the ceiling, but in hindsight it just looks like a drop shadow and makes it confusing.  It's probably not gonna be quite right, but I'm happy with it I guess.  Any paintover to show me a better shadow render would be super cool but not required. 

I attempted to address Babar's critique, had a go at repainting the tree. 

Then I added some happy little flowers and spruced up the grass.  At least, I think it's spruced up.  I dunno, it's something!

Ah, that is true.  Thanks Babar, I'll address that!

Ugh I just need to do the plants.  I tried a really colorful flowerbed, but I painted it on my phone and somehow shrank it 2x and now it's garbage.  So I'll do those tomorrow.

Anyway.  Here's the update.  Flagpole shadows, woo!

It looks gorgeus, Moresco! Just, i'm not sure about the shadows... the flag poles don't have shadows?

_

Ah man! you caught me! Yep forgot the shading on the flag poles.  I'm kinda redoing a large chunk of the building, and I can safely say I have shaded the flagpoles this round.  I'll post it soon-ish.  Thanks for pointing that out! 

Hey Mandle!  Yeah I can see how that might feel weird, I'm gonna try a change to that bit and I'll repost today.  Thanks so much!

No, I'm not remaking it again, first off. lol.  I ran into Ben on Twitter and thought back to this AGS stuff, and of course, the defunct Police Quest II remake of epic proportions that never proportioned itself.  I've updated it today and it's kinda been like, 15 years or something... I think? Jeez. Anyway, I know it doesn't have any cars yet...but what else is missing? Have I forgotten anything? What would make it feel more, police quest-y? Does anything look like total garbage crap? I know the doors kinda suck and the glass could be a bit more glassy.  It definitely needs more enticing plants.  This is just for fun.

I like it enough.  I'd be more worried about the game being fun.  I love the Dragon Quest series of the 80s+ and they've almost never had a good interface, but damn if that game isn't fun.

So my question is this.  Does the interface appear wherever you click, or always in the middle?  Because you have stuff appearing on the left/right of the fella's head, and if you click on the left of the screen, how do you keep this interface from being wonky? And if it's always there in the center, that would feel super odd to me.  But I guess I'd really like to see this interface in a gif or youtube clip showing how you intend it to flow.  I think that would help me understand it better. 

Cheers!

Just chiming in, if you're still around.  I'm choosing to critique your more spaceship-like backgrounds.  I guess the two towards the bottom.  The very first thing I'd say you should do, is try to incorporate more stuff from existing tech. I know, not very fun to invent stuff using stuff that we've already got, but it's kinda important.  If you just create only from imagination and don't tie in anything a viewer might be familiar with, they'll get pretty lost and go "what am I even looking at?"

So for example, your rooms with the fridge and the middle-finger chair (lol'd at that, by the way) are easily digestible because we've all seen that stuff before - well maybe not that chair but I hope I'm getting my point across.   The only thing about your spaceship I get, is that it's supposed to be a spaceship or something.  Grab some spaceship reference from SpaceX or NASA images and start adding some of the little details you see, it will go a long way to making your made up spaceship feel more like a real spaceship even if it isn't.

That's all I've got for now. TLDR = use photo reference!

Hope everyone's well and keeping busy..

Yep! Making games over here!

I've been working during lockdown, so it wasn't much of a lockdown I guess.  Rent's paid, things are the same as they have been, really.   Not too many people here in Vegas seem to be taking the virus seriously, which I think is a mistake.  I don't worry because I literally go to the office, work on games, come home, work on games.  I never went out before! ha

Maybe I don't understand, but why do we need backward compatibility?  If I'm making a game with version 3.5, and version 4 does not support the code written in 3.5, then tough, I will either have to finish my game in 3.5 or upgrade.  I can accept this reality.  I prefer the engine/editor to continually improve, and I don't care if that means I can't upgrade from 3.5 to 4 without updating the code or the way I approached something.  Trying to keep bad code or bad practices in the engine/editor while also attempting to improve it has got to be exhausting. 

That's just my 2 cents, and 2 cents never made us rich. 

Not sure if this counts as a bug or anything, but when using DirectX 3D9, you can indeed switch using alt+enter, but only if you use the left alt key. Using the right alt key, which is how I prefer it in most games, does nothing.  Can that be fixed?

Also when using the Allegro driver alt-enter doesn't work, it attempts to switch to a window but then jumps back to fullscreen followed by the cursor "painting" in the graphics from a black screen.

Thanks for this, Moresco. I hadn't heard of this rule before!

No problem.  Most of what I know is from the industrial design school of thought, or concept design is another name for it, if you feel like looking into it.  You can learn a lot more about it here if you're curious:
FZDSchool youtube

This one he talks a little bit about value in the beginning, but I don't remember how much...they're all worth watching though.  He doesn't give too many fundamentals away though because, he has students who pay a lot of money for that.  Anyway check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mH_g_e-fIzo&feature=plcp

Since the perspective and proportion issue has been addressed, how about a bit more on shading and shadows.  For shading, it helps to understand value.  That is, the black and white and all gray values in-between that remain when you subtract all color from your image.  A great way to check this in photoshop is throw a solid black layer over top of your image and set the layer to Saturation.  For cast shadows, there is a rule called halfway to black that some people use to help determine what value to use for the core-shadows and cast-shadows.  Like this shows:



Ignore the top-left portion for now, that's just showing you some bounced light and it's pretty simple but focus on getting your basic values right first before you worry about that.

What you should also take away from this is something called a 1-2-3-read and this pertains to your choice of value.  So if you take a box like in the image, it's easiest to "read" the box when there is contrast between the 1:top of the box, the 2: left-side of the box, and the 3: right-side of the box.  Depending on what you want to be seen in the image, you can adjust this read to your liking by making two sides a similar shade, or make it "read" better by making the jump between shades larger for contrast. ***this is within reason here, you can't adjust it and ignore your light sources completely or anything, the light source will largely determine what you can actually get away with.

When it comes to your background as a whole, you should think about your values and try to emphasize or de-emphasize the areas of importance, which is a hard thing to do at first, but do many different lighting scenarios as throw-aways and see what works best.  Thumbnails help here to keep from taking a long time looking for values, but maybe for the first studies you might not do thumbnails.  Hopefully that helps in some way, I'm not a teacher so maybe someone has a better explanation or a better guide to explain these things more clearly if I've failed. Cheers.

I also like the four button display, but specifically that alternate version you posted.  This looks more interesting to me, the idea that they're flat, like a label on a circuit-board that you push as a button but it doesn't go down.  The changed colors and attempt to make the buttons pop kinda ruined that look as well, favoring more traditional "buttons".  So I'm in favor of the alternate, and not anything that looks like buttons or any modern styled tech.

Yup, that's what I meant perfectly! Looks more cohesive now.

For some reason when I see this it reminds me of Dizzy's Fantastic Adventure, etc...the various Dizzy games.  It's awesome, keep at it! I think if I had to give a critique it's the addition of shadows on the grass, whereas on platformers the side is usually just a sheer 2D clip.  Here you have the beginnings of some slightly 3D environment but the tree is flat against the surface like it's clipped off.  I hope what I'm saying makes sense, it just seems like you're trying to mesh the two types together and it looks strange.  Right now my biggest complaint is that you should either draw the tree and bush like they're not sitting on the top, or cut the shadows off and ditch the grass (or make it the very top layer of the side being grass, followed by dirt...or candy...).

Cheers.

it's not a not book

So it IS a book! Aha! problem solved.  AGS does not run on books.  Sorry, you will require a computer.   No, no, showering me with love for solving your problems is simply not necessary...oh stop it, everyone is looking!

In my opinion you could do without that elbow swing, it looks unnatural to me.  When I walk I hardly notice any elbow movement if any, it's mostly a relaxed shoulder swing.  Unless I'm marching all goofy-like and want to appear comical... =D  But yours doesn't look like a comical elbow swing, it's too slow to be funny, so it just seems unnecessary.  My thoughts. Cheers and I like the sprite!