Messages

[shouldn't]

Also, any interaction shouldn't trigger a response because all games are not the same and should not all be compared with the same requirements.  As it stands, Craig recorded nearly nine hundred lines of dialog for this game, and by the end we were both quite insane.  How many games do you know of that will have multiple different recorded responses for multiple interactions, anyway?  Try having limey talk to himself, for instance - he says hello in about 5 different ways!  Also, if anything there were too many responses for interactions, far more than is necessary to complete a game, anyway .

Maybe I phrased this wrong. You did have the scan-a-tron say 'no data' in a few places.  You could set it as the fallback interaction that would be used every time no specific interaction was set. The same way you could have just a single line (say 'nah') that would be used as a fallback for Limey every time there was nothing else to say. (I presume you must know about this AGS feature, anyway).

The fact that absolutely nothing happens when I try something is, from my point of view, purely a bug that can be easily fixed. I certainly wasn't trying to say you should record like 3000 new lines for every possible thing Limey could do .

Anyway, I hope you didn't take it as me trying to pull your game in pieces, I was merely trying to point out what were- from my point of view - bugs. That doesn't change the fact that I enjoyed the game very much.

Kudos

Oh my, excellent work guys! I've already finished the game and it was extremely enjoyable, the atmosphere was perfect!

Great graphics, cool music and very decent voice acting. (You didn't credit the TTS that did Panda's voice, though... licensing issues, maybe?  ).

It will be ultra cool if there is a sequel. In case you really get to it, some suggestions from my side. (These are really tiny nits, the game is excellent..)

• There should be a 'talk to' button in the GUI... I got stuck at the beginning and had to go to the help thread just to find out that there is actually another type of interaction - the space bar.. who would think of that? You cannot expect people to really read the docs...


• There was hell of a lot of missing interaction responses, especially in the later part of the game and a great part of them included the scanatron. Any interaction should trigger a response, if it only was Limey shrugging his shoulders or saying "That didn't do anything"

Fortunately this was not enough to ruin the enjoyment. Thanks again guys for all the fun!  If you expand this to a series, it will become a classic, no doubt about it!

- Use stickfigures to try out animation, do not render until you're happy - saves 90% of your time!
- use an animation program to be able to judge and correct your work immediately
- 10 frames/walkcycle is an overkill, I beleive 4 frames are more than enough
- the problem with AGS is that it doesn't let you specify the exact amount of translation of the character in each frame - this can cause 'gliding'
- when walking, all parts of the body move - the shoulders, the pelvis, the head. do not hesitate to exagarate a bit

[TheJBurger]

Sorry I forgot to wrap this up last night. A huge thanks both TheJBurger and cat for their beautiful entries. It looks like our winner is TheJBurger. A huge applause, please! 

[votes]

Alright, two entries so far... If anyone is still working on an entry or wants to enter, please say so until, say today 20:00 GMT and I will make an extension (of up to a week). Otherwise I will announce the start of voting.

EDIT: Ok, nobody asked for an extension. So now start voting! You can vote until tomorrow (August 10th) 21:00 GMT. August 11th. Come on people, let's have some more votes!

The categories:

Idea - The underlying idea to the background. Doesn't
necessarily have to coincide perfectly with the theme of the
week, just strike you as interesting/amusing/inspiring; a place
you'd really enjoy visiting within a game.

Atmosphere - How well the image manages to evoke a certain feeling or mood.

Design - How well the elements in the image are designed,
such as landscapes, buildings, decorations, clouds, doorknobs,
etc.

Composition - How well the elements in the image work
together/are positioned in relation to each other.

Functionality - How well it would work when adding sprites, i
ncluding appropriate walking distances, a good angle for
character sprites, clever walkway solutions, easily understood
exits, etc.

Technique - How well the ideas are executed in form of
rendering.

[Fantastic shipyard]

Welcome to this blitz, the theme of which is

Fantastic shipyard(TM)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipyard

Draw a shipyard that is extraordinary in some way. For example:

   - steampunk-style that builds flying ships or airships [steampunk's great for industrial buildings!]
   - sci-fi planetary or space shipyard that builds space ships
   - underwater shipyard that builds submarines
   - extraordinary landscape design (think of Cape Suzette from Disney's TaleSpin)
   - anything else, use your imagination!

References: (cool worlds with docks, ships etc.)
   - Star Trek The Motion Picture - space dry dock
   - Disney's TaleSpin universe
   - Alpha Shade universe
   - Mysterious Cities of Gold
   - Ulysses 31

Images of shipyards:
   - google images
   - "Dry" dock from Star Trek the Motion Picture

Images of spaceships:
   - Spaceship Jupiter from Lost in Space
   - Pride of the skies II from Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors


It's supposed to be a background so don't forget to put in enough space for the character to walk (and not extremely far in the distance). You don't have to portray the whole place, just part of it is o.k. It can be a building or just outside structure or a combination, as you like - but I would like to see some ship(s) or part of.

Your background should be usable in AGS, but you can make scrolling backgrounds! For example 480x200, 640x200 targeted for 320x200 resolution are great. Since a shipyard is a big structure, you could benefit from the extra screen space.

Voting will start on the 9th of October in the same categories as the previous blitz.


Hope you like it,
Now go and start painting!

And seaduck takes advantage of the incredibly low number of competitors and wins 

Wow, I actually won  :o Thanks to everyone for their votes!

I'll announce the next blitz tomorrow morning. G'night!

Sorry, this is not a finished background, more like a 30-minute sketch. No time to finish it, but it was fun  Don't know how much 18th century it is, it turned out to be just your average european town square.. oh well

No reference pictures, it's completely from my head, but if it reminds you of something... well thats quite possible

My foremost complaint would be that you advertise this as some sci-fi or cyberpunk game, when it's actually a detective game.

At least as far as I got the game was not influenced at all by the setting (I don't remember if there was actually any hint as to where/when the game is set).

Perhaps the setting will become more important later in the game (I don't know, I quit because this type of games is not my cup of tea) but still it seems to be a detective game in the first place, and should be advertised as such.

Apart from that from what I've seen I think you've done a nice job, the graphics and sounds seem to be more than adequate.

Hi,

I like the desk, so I did a paintover, just minor fixes, really:



- gave the desk top some actual mass/thickness
- redrew the lamp (this is a typical office desk lamp used nowadays in Europe, perhaps except the color, I kept your green)
- fixed perspective on the keyboard

I also couldn't resist showing you how you can replace the black outlines with some very simple shading 

Well.. what I meant was:

- I toned the blues of the dressing gown down to look more natural
- I changed the pants color for two reasons:

(1) usually you won't have the same colour pants as your dressing gown (since they aren't parts of the same clothes)
(2) the whole character was too monochromatic which I didn't like and felt like it was straining my eyes

I know I overdid it a bit with the greenish slippers, but I stand behind the pants color. Anyway it all depends on your character and I obviously don't know anything about him, since you didn't tell us.

My first impression from the blue color was that he was not meant to be dressed very fashionably, so I went for the washed-out blue/brownish-orange combination. If I wanted to make him look like he still cares about his outfit, I would choose a completely different color scheme with more lively colors and perhaps some pattern.

Cheers

The background is definitely too dark and the lighting is a bit too complex to handle in a game. The rug doesn't look so good, partly because of the anti-aliasing atempt, which went wrong.

Overall it looks promising, could you fill us in on what kind of place this is, what style (present, futuristic, retro) are you trying to achieve etc.. ?

Looking good,

I just did some color tweaking.

Hm... how about adding some lens flares, too 

Now seriously, what this backgound really needs is some actual content... it's a corridor, sure... but there is not one single thing hinting to what kind of building, what era or country this is.

- I can see no materials, no decorations, not as much as a fly on the wall...
- the doors are just flat polygons... in which direction do they open? where's the handle or control panel or something?
- the ceiling is way off perspective
- the perspective is very aggressive, taking away screen area and forcing you to scale sprites beyond measure. Simple compositions are .. simple 

[Yup, I'm back, and meaner than ever ]

Ultra cool, another BJ!  Playing now, it's fun so far  8)

Nice paintover, still

- should have a leather apron if he's a blacksmith
- should be smeared black from coal
- still seems too tall with respect to his body area
- this also makes the arms look too short, since elbows should be level with the waist

Cheers

Hey, did you know that Fatman had a precursor, long time ago?

In a Czech comics from 1992 'Tajemstvi cerneho brouka' (Secret of the Black Beetle) there was a "superhero" called Bantam.. a fat Batman of sorts.


'I'm not a man, but a superhero. But I went bankrupt as a superhero. So now I'm working here as a janitor.'


'What d'you think you're doing? I'm a superhero! I can..'
'You know what you can?'

Thought it was an office of sorts, so I've put in a carpet to make it look more confy and let the eye rest.

Cool game!

I even got over the so extremely boringly overused "somewhere in the Carribean there was a gentle pirate", cause the game's just so sweet

Some puns are really really good (Vin Diesel and the iHook almost knocked me over) and music is great too (excellent work, M0ds!)

Btw, I just finished the game, and, by sheer coincidence, I got to meet some CUUTE spoonbeaks at the zoo today 

I think you have a bigger problem: The image size is 500x500 (aspect 1:1!!) How are you going to fit that on the screen?