Messages

Can you post the artile mods?  I guess that would be the UK PC Gamer?

Don't you mean the other way around?  Like putting the shading layers above and then fixing the opacity?  Or does it not matter.  Probably doesn't.  I see what you mean.  I guess my other quandry is just general color theory...like when it's "darker" down my hallway my off-white walls are not necessarily just darker off-white...if there is a orangish lamp the walls will look dark orange.  So how to take all of these things into account when trying to shift a daytime image to a nighttime one.  Do you really just have to start from scratch and use different colors...

Here's something I've been wondering.  Is there an easy way to alter artwork to coincide with changes in time and weather?  I've been spending a lot of time doing textures and hand-drawn gradients to line up with nighttime scenes.  But what about when it's daytime?  I really enjoy games that feature dynamic environments, but will including night-time and day-time backgrounds mean twice as much work?  Somehow I feel like if I just lower the darkness of the background using psp, it won't look quite right.  Are there strategies people employ to approach this problem, or is it just a matter of doing it the hard way?

-Logan

Thanks Darth!  You're screenshots for Nataly Buchannon have been a real inspiration!

There shouldn't be any loss what-so-ever from saving over to png.  At least I don't think so.  I don't know what to tell you about that.

It's not a jpeg, it's a .png.  At least as far as I know. 

Darkseed has been a big influence, even though I hated the game.  The graphics were definitely rad though.

I'd love to show you some character art but I haven't done any yet, sorry!  I was planning on doing that next since I've got a fair number of BGs done.

As for the GUI, I think it will be a standard Sierra interface in the right click to cycle through the walk/interact/use item options.  Though talking will largely be unavailable, so that won't be in there.  The box at the bottom of the GUI is for text narration.  I plan on a lot of the game being narrated, similar to Darkseed actually.  Character speech will still be above the characters. 

the gui is dull or the whole room?

ok, here's one with a few more details.  Dirt, clothes, some damaged walls.  Hopefully it looks better.  Taffytom, I really like the gui the colors that it is...though i have noticed that in older monitors the colors look way too dark.  I'm not sure how to compensate for that when I've got it looking just how i want it on the monitor I'm using.

Ok, sorry about that.  I was going to just post a new image but i overwrote the old image, so the new one is posted above.  It also includes a GUI I'm working on...any comments on that would be welcome too.  I'm going to add some stuff into the drawers next.

Yeah, i'm going to make some dents in the walls along with some random dirt, and messy up the floors a bit more.  It looks a little too clean.

I fixed the doorway and it looks better.  Is that really the perspective of the bureau in the mirror?  I wasn't sure, and i redid it your way and it looks a little off...

I see what you mean, the door shouldn't be so recessed.

Good call on the baseboard.  Done and done.  I switched around the knob on the door...is that all you mean? 

Glad you like it, thanks for the suggestions.

Thoughts on this bg?  I think it looks a little busy and it's hard to figure out what to focus on, but I wanted the room to look like a nasty mess.  It's not exactly where I want it, so any suggestions would be helpful.  Thanks.

I've actually spent a bit of time trying to replicate loom graphics, just to see what it is that they did.  I didn't figure it out, but the results are beautiful.  'Tis the glory of EGA.

Helm, I think you left out two really important games to the AGS community--Tierra's KQ1 VGA (released August 7, 2001) and KQ2 VGA (released December 3, 2002).  Although remakes, they were some of the first professional-quality (and professional-length) releases to come out of the AGS community.  When I came across AGS I was impressed with Permanent Daylight and some others, but KQ2 VGA really convinced me of the engine's potential.

I think Pete's appraisal of the '03 period is apt, i.e. The Era of Games that Never Were, though the same could be said going up to the present (Dan Clarke, Bernie, Petteri, I'm looking at you!  ). 

This is a fun topic, let's keep it up.

I like that last one a lot and you shouldn't have a problem with scaling.  However, with that reflective floor it looks like the characters are floating...

I don't know, I think you're right about the walk animations...with only 4 views it will look wierd when walking through those hallways.  I used dynamic  backgrounds for most of the BG's on my last game, and while sometimes it looked fine...a lot of times it doesn't.  It's just the nature of adventure games, AGS, and low-res graphics.  The character looks all distorted half the time and the scaling often looks choppy as hell.

Additionally, with a lot of dynamic backgrounds, you'll rarely get to see the full size character.  You'll spend a lot of time doing careful drawing and then once you play the game, you'll notice that it will be full size when he/she is right up front.  Other times it's just a messy blur.


I'm trying mostly front-on perspectives for my current project and while it might not seem as "exciting", it will help limit gross character scaling.  Sorry for the rant, but I've been thinking about this a lot lately.

[edit] but whoops: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=24402.0

big brother shows how to do it well.  The perspective makes it interesting and yet there is plent of space for the full size character to walk around without the need for scaling.

Defective Yeti has rendered the Iraq Invasion into a text-adventure.   It's pretty funny...

http://www.defectiveyeti.com/archives/001561.html

I think it looks great too, and I look forward to its release.  I have really enjoyed some of the AGI games released, namely Enclosure and that Space Quest fan game that came out.  The graphics are "outdated" but so is pretty much everything that's released w/ AGS.  The nostalgia factor is what gets me, I love playing games that remind me of sweet precious childhood.