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Yep, too blurry.
Also, I tend to say this ten times a day, but...colour perspective.

The original background is contrasted, dark and sharp in the foreground, while it blends with the atmosphere in the distance.
Your background has nothing that indicates a depth, in terms of contrast and saturation.

I think you're definitely onto something, and you're improving drastically for every picture. So just keep working

Khrismuc hit the spot. Beautiful robot, mate

I might inform you that the first panel is filled, and the members in question will soon be invited.
Further applications now will fill empty spots from next month and forward.

Wow, congratulations, Lil'.
Your hard work paid off, it seems. Whenever I get my hands on some cash, I'll see if I can get a copy shipped over here.

Ben, too much pillow-shading. Your shading suggest that every little part of the robot has its own little lighting, and that the source of this lighting is somewhere between the viewer and the sprite (except for possibly the shoulders, which seem to be lit top-down).
You did give the sprite much more substance and depth, but it's too pillowy.

Progz, that's a beautiful sprite. Too much change of style, and hard to use for MoodyBlues, probably, but still a very pretty sprite.

Thats funny, I was just following Cyrus' obsession with MI myself!

That reminds me, I am working on a new Monkey Island game and I have got Dominic Armato to do the voice of Guybrush, and Helm is doing the graphics, with Nikolas providing the music. Steel Drummer plays the triangle. The game will be released in 2009.

Helm's doing the graphics and Nik's doing the music? Who'd play that crap anyway

Good post, SpacePirateCaine.

Wtcq: When you start a thread, make sure to include the following:

* A topic on which you declare your own position, thoughts and feelings
* Some sort of question or plea to encourage people to reply

Don't just write three random sentences and hit post.

Oh and everybody rest: Just because a thread is seemingly topic-less doesn't mean you should fill it with more nonsense....

More than 5 steps is not feasible, since the nuances will be too subtle for a human mind to distinguish between, in a fair and reasonable way.

Just three steps is not inherently wrong...but then again, while we're doing this enormous backlog of games, we might just as well implement some more steps just to add feedback. When you have only 2 steps (in an extreme case) the pressure will be rather high to make the right decision, since classifying a game as "not approved" is quite harsh. Or in other words: The mistake to rate a game that deserves 3 cups out of 5 with only 2 cups our of 5 is not as big as rating a game that deserves "ok" with "not ok".

About the strict requirements: Naturally, there are heaps of people perfectly competent out there who's only been with the community for 3 months, 7 months, a year etc, but this is a matter of trust. People will have their own creations evaluated and graded by an anonymous panel. They at least deserve to know that the members of that panel have met some minimum criteria, and those limits must be drawn somewhere.

Baron: Again, taking the movie Fantasia is the kind of isolated (and rather weird, truthfully) examples I wish that we could avoid.
Instead of thinking that we're "punishing" people, think of it like this:

Game A and game B are equally good in graphics, plot, scripting etc. However, the creators of game A has gone the lengths to actually produce their own soundtrack, developed to specially suit their game. Game B has just nicked some midi-versions of famous pop-classics. Given that A's soundtrack actually fits their game, it should help push that game towards a higher rating.

So instead of trying to find certain games that happen to be terrific in one aspect while still awful in another, try to look at the various parameters and decide what the general audience (the random players out there who wish to try on our games) will appreciate. 

Nik:

The old users' ratings will still be there.

The percentage and the blue cups will co-exist. Making a new average seems reduntant, as does sub-divided ratings.

Also, since the panel will be dynamic, we need a constant flow of new applicants. The first panel will soon be set up, but already in one month one has to go and a new one will be invited. 

Yeah, such a distribution seems reasonable.

The reason why the panel should adhere as much as possible to an official document is that people will demand a certain transparency. If they sense the panel is picking personal favourites, they might feel wrongly treated.
Also, the more subjective feelings you allow for the rating, the more will the decision have to be discussed and agreed on by the entire panel. Otherwise there's no guarantee the rating will be "fair".

I don't think you can put Mom's Quest and 5 Days in the same league.

...which I didn't do. I said I personally prefer Mom's Quest, while aware how little mainstream interest there is in such a game. Simply because I prefer slightly obscure, odd games.
5 days a stranger is good, but many casual gamers would probably say the graphics are worse than many other adventure games out there. Thus, the graphics can't be considered top notch, or as good as for instance Apprentice.
So, bringing up individual games doesn't help, because for a fact, not every game can be rated fairly. It's impossible. They will always lack in some compartment.
Rather make new suggestion how the rating should be carried out.

Yes, as we said, there will be more genres and classifications as well.
Both regarding settings and genre and some other elements, all browsable.

Please try to regard this objectively.

Sure, SSH doesn't play with the sound on, but lots of people find fitting music and sound effects extremely important. I know of people who can't play games with bad soundtracks. Therefore, sound must be accounted for when it comes to a general rating.

Sure, a Russian game with poor translation and grammatical inconsistencies can be GREAT in all other aspects, but the large mainstream audience prefers a correct language.

Sure, InstaGames can be rewarding and fun, but if they would make their own graphics it would move up the overall impression one notch.

You can keep bringing up personal examples of great games until the cows come home, but sooner or later we'd have to settle for some criteria.

My personal favourites (games like Mom's Quest and Aaron's Epic Journey) wouldn't get many cups according to this document (nor would my very own games...), but I'm trying to think outside my own black box here.

It seems very common that when people try on low-res pixel pushing, faces come out like that. Surprised and, if you excuse my blunt language, almost silly-looking.

You can with very few pixels achieve a symmetrical and fairly good-looking face. I'm not saying all faces must look pretty, but in case you'd go for a pretty character, I made this little edit:



Changed her face, added some highlights and adjusted over all proportions. She now looks younger, but the head typically take a larger percentage of the total height among game characters and toons etc (compare rpg-characters for extreme cases) to make them more personal. Also, if you want to stay by realistic height proportions, you still need to add some width, as the original character was very thin.

The documents which will guide the panel's ratings will be public. However, there will always be a subjective factor involved, since we're dealing with humans.

This is preliminary outline to the rating document.

Of course, there will be as many opinions on this document as there are members in the community.

I didn't mean to induce some sense of guilt, I just offered an explanation to why AGSers will be less likely to pay for indie games.

I think it's beneficial for our community if people actually succeed in selling their games. Unfortunately, lots of people (maybe not on our particular scene, but in many other indie-environments) nurture practically impossible dreams, and end up trying to sell crap products which just damage everybody's reputation. Some people just don't realise what it means to actually start charging money for their products; some can't cope with the pressure and demands, and how all the feedback suddenly turns 150% more critical.

So, making good games commercial will create good media attention and facilitate for future projects. Trying to sell bad games will have the opposite effect.

I support Dave 100% in his commercial ventures, maybe especially because I know how commited he's been to this indie-scene of ours (not to mention his patronage of the RON community).

I understand that running your very own chat forum would be a dream come true, but please don't do it here.

Interestingly, the fact that "outsiders" buy commercial AGS games to a higher degree than AGS-ers is pretty understandable.
AGS-members live in a huge symbiosis where everybody helps eachother, and where one specific creator's training ground is made up by the collection of material he's taken part of (for free); all the art, music, games, tutorials, etc.

Since I don't charge for my work in the critic's lounge (where I've provided feedback ever since the board was created - a progress I was involved in, if I'm not mistaken) I'm not going to pay people money just to support their careers as game-creators.
I will, however, pay for games if they appear interesting enough.