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Spoiler

The stairs . you couldn't use the stairs as they would not be safe after a fire anyone should know that .
The stove can't move if the fire is burning as it would go up the pipe so have to put the fire out .
The fire extinguisher ran out putting the stairs fire out .
The fudge made the broom handle sticky to grab theÃ,  fire extinguisherÃ,  .
If you don't pull the blue lever the stove will not move .

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Thats All I will take about this . if you need help with the game fine other was I'm done talking about it .

I'm just trying to help you make a better game. And I was mostly thinking of in-game explanations. Like:

Spoiler

When I try to use the fire extinguisher on the furnace, the game could display a message saying: "it's empty", or if I try to put out the fire in the furnace first it could display:"Well that would sure be fun, but this extinguisher is destined for greater things." or: "Yeah sure, and afterwards let's find a barrel of fish for shooting practise".

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You didn't see why you had to do a sword fight with the pirates but you insulted each other and not sword fight in EFMI.

There was a perfectly good explanation of the insult sword fighting in the Monkey Island games. People you meet in the game tell you that the secret to winning a sword fight is to stun the opponent with a powerful insult, and that great wit usually wins more fights than actual fencing skills. You also learn that you can counter insults with witty replies.

In real life you couldn't win a fight like this, but since there's an explanation for it it seems perfectly logical in the game. The motivation for picking fights in the first Monkey Island game was also clear; you needed practise to eventually take on the sword master.

Here is some real criticizm:

Try giving the player some reason for his actions.

Spoiler

Explain why the broom can't be used to get the fire extinguisher without applying fudge to it. (for instance; when the player tries to grab it using the broom you could display a message explaining why it doesn't work).

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You should also add messages that are displayed when looking at things, describing what you're looking at.
There should also be a reasonable explanation for the following things:

Spoiler

Explain why you can't use the stairs even when the fire is put out.
Why should using a snow scene on the furnace cause it to move?
If the snow scene is supposed to put out the fire, why can't the fire extinguisher be used?
What's with the blue lever that seemed to do nothing?
Why did I smash the vase?

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If you just have a good explaination why something should be done, you can make almost any absurd action seem like the most reasonable and logical one. Computer game logic doesn't have anything at all to do with the real world.
Another big problem is that all your hotspots are way too small.

Anyway, looking forward to seing some improvements in your next game. Hope I'm not to hard on you, don't call me an asshole because I'm trying to help you... Unlike that "dissapointed" guy I actually pointed out some weaknesses of the game that can be improved instead of justÃ,  trolling.

Well I, for one, would like to see some more pro mistakes if anyone has screenshots.

my suggestion is that you first make the BGs  with no shading, then add the shading/ color scheme adjustment on a separate layer. working with layers is easy if you have a program like PSP or photoshop. If you use a program without layers you'll just have to save one version of the BG without shading anyway. You should probably post some screens on the forum for more in-depth help.

Wow. That's quite an improvement. I see you also figured out a few things yourself, like the shading of the stairs. Nice. I'm not sure if I want to nitpick any more, but someone else probably will.

By the way, maybe you should add a drop shadow on the ground. There seems to be a light source to the left somewhere so maybe the tower would cast some sort of shadow to the right, right?

Still, great work so far.

Try making it look less like a cardboard cutout and more like a three-dimentional object  .
Some tips: I'd do away with the black outlines and instead maybe try to antialias the edges or something (unless every building in your game has black outlines, of course. You should stick to a uniform style for the backgrounds in your game). Then, consider the base of the tower. Should it be circular or square? Since the point of view is slightly bird-perspective, the base line of the tower should be slightly rounded if the tower is round. If the base is supposed to be square, I'd suggest you draw it from a different angle to give the player a better impression of the tower's shape. Details are also always fun and give backgrounds a more genuine feel. So add more of them. The pipe thing for once is a nice touch, but needs some touching up. Also, the shading of the door doesn't match that of the wall.
More comments later.

Not bad at all. The shading is minimalistic and nice (except I find the highlights on the bottom of his hoodie pocket a bit strange...), and the character is pretty ok in general. His head shape may be weird and he seems to have his entire forearms in those pockets, but if you don't want to change it you shouldn't have to.

I think the most important thing about game graphics is that you find your own unique drawing style and stick to it. Let's just say that you for instance drew your main character with a grotesquely oversized head and really short legs. If you then drew all the other characters with oversized heads and short legs it would totally match the style, but if the others were normally proportioned the main character would stick out far too much.

Bottom line: If you want to change anything, you couldÃ,  reshape the head, adjust the facual features, make the shading more consequent, adjust the farthest leg's shape etc, but the character also works fine the way it is right now.

Thanks. That's just about what I was trying to say. I'd also like to point out that neither I nor anyone else have described abandonare as "legal".

Abandoned wares, most of the time, is just an alternative name for warez, it just makes the people who download them feel better. That a company didn't charge someone for downloading its commercial products doesn't mean it's legal (it's just probably they don't want to care anymore).

Only products that are officially announced abandoned (or had past its life period due to some laws in your place, or the owner of the rights no longer exists) can be considered really free and legal to download.

Abandonware is not the same thing as warez. I think it's natural to download a game if it's the only way to possibly get it. Abandonware is supposed to be a term for software that is no longer availiable through purchase. I have too noticed that some warez sites have begun using the term "abandonware" along with "warez" to get more search engine hits, but that's the internet for you. Serious abandonware sites like the underdogs take down their downloads as soon as a game is back in production since there's no more need for it, and I think they have a great policy behind what they do as well. The underdogs don't have any of the Larry games, though.

Also there are some famous AGS games in a series called "Larry Vales". These can probably be found on the games download page. As for the Larry games by sierra, I'm sorry that you're not familiar with them, as they are timeless classics. This is not a Warez forum though, so I don't think you'll get any advice on where to download them. The latest game in the Larry series is out now on PC, Ps2 and Xbox (i think), but I hear that in the new game they abandoned the adventure genre and made it more of an action/click on time game. If I remember correctly there was a fanmade point and click version of Larry 2 (the original game used a text parser) made with AGS that you can probably find in the download pages.

I think the robot looks cool. The fact that he has one big red glowing eye reminds me of HAL from 2001, another machine turning evil. The cool thing about using robots in a game is that (much like aliens), there are no limits to what they can look like. I think this one would look even funnier if you remove his legs and make his hips function as wheels, this will also make him shorter.
Short+evil=diabolic. Then again, if you are to include more than one robot in the game, it would be cool if they all look really different from eachother. Play Beneath A Steel Sky if you need some ideas for robot looks. That game has some bitching neat robots.

Yes, I'm only nitpicking here. I think it looks great. The perspective isn't that much off. I'm really looking forward to this game, man.

[Tutoring]

Tutoring
I'm not really that good with AGS, But if you'd like some suggestions or need someone to listen to your ideas you can always send me a PM.

Playtesting
I love playing adventure games. I've never been a beta tester before, but I'll try my best.

Music
I think I can make some music. Some may think otherwise.

Background Art
Hell yeah! Tell me what you need and I'll do an effort

Character Art
Yet again, tell me what you're after and I'll give it a shot.

Animation / Character Animation
Animating is loads of fun but very time-consuming.

Proof Reading
Sure thing. My english may not be the best, as I'm norwegian, but I'll look through your script anyway.

Story Design
At least I'll help, but I probably won't do it alone.

Iwant to beta test as well. I love the mood of the graphics, and I can really see that it's inspired from Berlin.  By the way, I know this isn't the critics lounge, but I think the perspective in the first screenshot looks a little warped... Not a big problem, but not hard to fix either.

I totally agree with the poster above me on all acounts.
As for the perspective issues, you might want to do a rough scetch of  your backgrounds before you draw them. And use some perspective guidelines in the scetches as well. Just keep the scetch as a bottom layer while you draw.

It all depends on what kind of game you are making. If over-the-top goryness fits in well with the theme of the game, then do it. The gushing effect in your avi file was nice, but things would probably look better if there were blood splatters left on the ground after the impaling, and some on the pole as well. But then again, one of my favourite adventure game scenes of all time is the one in loom where the villain is disintegrated and his head goes flying towards the screen, so I might not be representative of the general consensus.
If people don't enjoy bloodsplatter in computer games they should probably not be playing a game where the protagonist gets impaled anyway, so I recommend you don't worry much about that. A little blood is fine and adds to the impression that "Yes, that pole actually went through his body". If you do gallons of bloodsplatter flying in all directions you will instead achieve a more splatterfilm-like effect where the gore is so over-the-top you can't help thinking it's hysterically funny. This game seems to be a little more along the "serious" vein, though.

The first thing that came to mind about your main character is that his tail points upwards in the side view and downwards in the front view. Or does it wag up and down as he walks? because if it does, then that's cool. I'm also getting behind the previous suggestion that the tail should swing from side to side as he walks, like on a lizard.

Good point. I may use some sort of smoothing filter on it, but I'm not a big fan of blurring everything out so that everything looks totally out of focus, because then the characters and objects would have to be out of focus too. I know a lot of people think it's nice when backgrounds look like they're viewed through a thick layer of fog, but I'm not one of them. I guess I'll try to decrease the strawiness a little, though.

Here are some BGs I made just to have a few rooms to experiment with in AGS. It's not officially going to be a game yet, but I hope that that's what my experiments will eventually lead to. As you can see I chose an old school pixeldrawing aproach to these, instead of 3d or photorealistic imagery.
Being kinda new to pixelart, I would really like to hear what you guys think of these:




Everything you see here is handdrawn with a mouse, exept the illumination effects in the first image and the grafitti piece in the second (The grafitti is vector-drawn)