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This is always something that has bothered me a bit, because almost all sprites are drawn the way your example was, and most BGs are drawin in perspective. I had the idea to map out my BGs in 3D, and then place a basic model to figure out exactly how the pose should be, but that would be very dynamic and variable, never mind from screen to screen, but sometimes even within one screen.

As it is, I think you're mock-up looks fine, and designing your sprites straight on shouldn't be a problem.

Some suggestions so that you don't run into problems in future BGs (and perhaps can use to remove problems in this BG):
- Try keeping the vanishing point and horizon as low as possible on your backgrounds, while still having them look good.
- Try designing your backgrounds in such a way so that the characters forward and backward movement (away from and towards the screen) is as minimal as possible. While AGS supports scaling, and it can even be done smoothly, the results are not usually nice.
However, the major problem (more important than scaling if you ask me), is the front and back walkcycles. Almost all walkcycle templates you'll find here (and probably many examples), have the bottoms of the characters feet very visible when walking towards the screen. Since the feet are almost always below the horizon, they really shouldn't be so visible (I think), so it kinda looks wrong. If you don't have the bottoms of the feet visible, and instead opt for a "straight on, towards the screen" forward walk-cycle, it still looks very odd, especially if the character is going (vertically) down on the background while coming towards the screen.

You can somewhat prevent this from coming up by putting in some background objects (shelves, cabinets, etc.) and foreground objects strategically, so that the player character doesn't come too close, or go too far away from the screen.

I read somewhere (no idea how true it is) how a person in some US state was diagnosed with cancer or something, but didn't have healthcare or any way to treat it, so he finally went to a bank, robbed it for $1, and let himself get caught, sent to prison, and now his cancer is being treated.



...So yeah...


EDIT: Well, I guess it isn't. http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/nc-man-allegedly-robs-bank-health-care-jail/story?id=13887040

Hahahhahahaha....it's more like I'm standing by AGS. Mostly because for me, it's much easier to make a non-generic story-centric game that is an adventure game rather than an FPS or RPG or platformer (or include small portions of those things which I like into my mostly-adventuregame).

I still love the classics for their great story, their sense of adventure, their wonderful dialog and all that...but as I said, I don't see that a lot in recent (especially commercial) adventure games. Which is why I haven't bought a "new" adventure game for myself since...Syberia? (not saying Syberia was anything special, it was okay enough, just that that was the last time I decided to spend money to play a "new" game that catered to the traditional point & click adventure-game audience)

I mean, I played the free Tales of Monkey Island episode, and the free Sam 'n Max episode, and while they were nice enough, with a couple of small flashes of the greatness these games once had...I was not convinced to spend money on buying any more episodes. I bought Machinarium as part of the Humble Indie Bundle, but I got bored with it after a while, realising while it had a very nice ambience and atmosphere, it was little more than a series of consecutive, self-contained puzzle screens.

All I can think of right now is "I'm selling these fine leather jackets"

But I remember a couple years ago someone took the voice-pack from some LucasArts games (including Indy & the FoA) and re-edited them for a lot of humour. Those files seem to have been lost to the internet now, though

Interesting read, although it didn't really provide me with any new and interesting ideas. However, this, I absolutely agree with:

Very little usually goes into making them special. Illogical puzzles, such as the Runaway series making you weld a key back together with sunlight or load a Gatling gun with lipstick, aren’t merely tolerated, but treated as all part of the fun, instead of â€" let’s be honest â€" the stupid rubbish they most definitely are.
...
Modern adventures simply need to start thinking a bit differently… and two areas in particular are long overdue a good shake-up. First and foremost, puzzles need to be largely retired in favour of problems.

And lots of people completely disagree about with me.

* Babar waits for blueskirt to respond.

I look back at the games I've played over the years, and while occasionally I talk about a puzzle that stands out (I think I mentioned Day of the Tentacle's time-centred puzzles in the "Favourite Puzzle" thread), I never really considered the "greatness" of an adventure game with respect to the puzzles.
If you ask me, "puzzle games" would be a separate genre from "adventure games", and wouldn't necessarily have to be the same...I'd consider something like Myst to be more naturally grouped with games like Hodj & Podj (or even Bejewelled or something)... puzzle-centric games, where if there is a story, it is secondary to the puzzle element. I realise there are people who enjoy these sort of games, enjoy sitting down and figuring out how a stanza of poetry relates to which levers need to be pushed to open the door, they probably dislike action-segments, and usually even timed-segments...but that is not me.

I enjoy exploration, I enjoy the actual "sense of adventure" (probably why I was never really all that fond of mystery adventure games, and sort of indicative of why I got a sudden "adventure" feeling while watching Up! the other day..which would make a great adventure game), I enjoy looking at stuff, I enjoy talking to interesting characters, etc. Of course, I enjoy a challenge, and wouldn't want the game to basically be an interactive movie, but I'd rather the challenge go along with the flow of the game, rather than be an obstacle to it.

It's kinda sad that what drew me to adventure games originally is more available now in all these other genres that basically stole from the adventures.

You can quite well guess a person's age by that kind of statement. We even did the Map Dance from MI1. A friend of mine won eternal fame by shouting "Behind you, a three-headed monkey!" to distract a teacher during a pretty hard test. Still, the girls usually thought we were quite weird...

Or where they grew up, I guess. Although I...became aware... around the time of the first blast of 2D point & click adventure games (the first one I remember was Space Quest 3), most of my friends didn't share my interest, although those who had access to computers or video game consoles talked about Prince of Persia and such in school (discussing which of the buttons you all had to press to make a particularly long jump, only to realise many years later that a single jump button was adequate ).

I also met a girl who I used to play Curse of Monkey Island with..but that was years later, even after I had played it originally...so it was mostly me trying to not yell out "THAT'S NOT HOW YOU DO IT! YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO USE THE COOKING OIL ON HIS BACK! IT'S SO OBVIOUS!"

Why would the quality of the source material have anything to do with whether or not a parody be made? You suggesting parodies be only made of stuff that you don't care about?

The point you make has been discussed before, and just like before, it boils down to this:

Is it truly such a bad thing that some innocents die by mistrial if the fact that we also get rid of thousands upon thousands of legit hard-line criminals who would have potentially repeated their offense upon release, killing more innocents, or destroying lives in other indirect ways.

I guess it does, and in the case of (most, probably?) people in this thread who are opposing you, including myself in this particular point, I'd say that No, I'd say such a thing would be completely and totally unacceptable, and in this way the SYSTEM ITSELF would have no claim or right to call itself "just", and I'd be among those protesting (probably not looting,  though).

You voluntarily have RealPlayer on your computer? :o

My father was fairly computer savvy for the time when I was a kid (he seems to have unfortunately fallen behind a bit now), so that sorta drove my love of computers. He got adventure games for me I guess because he didn't want "evil violent" action games to be the totality of my experience (good thing he never looked too closely when I was playing Prince of Persia ). Sometimes he even played with me just watching.

Most of the kids I knew at the time were not in the least interested in adventure games. I met such people later in life.

I think he meant the texture on the grass...the texture on the walls was of secondary importance (and gave everything a metallic-grill look).

The problem with the grass is that it is a very obvious pattern. You can see exactly where it repeats. Try randoming it up a bit if you must use it (or try using a combination of two different base patterns).

Something of a tangent off the tangent this thread is already on, but I always thought that all these "humane" methods of capital punishment were mostly nonsense, and only really there to "protect" the people watching. Wouldn't a well placed bullet to the head, or a properly done decapitation result in death a whole lot quicker (almost instantaneously) rather than gas chambers or lethal injections (where we don't really know what is happening about pain and feeling and stuff in the condemned person's body)?


PS: Your link doesn't work properly for me, WHAM.

Pop music's utter blandness surprised me a bit...I mean, sure, I don't listen to much radio, or any of those music channels myself, so I'm not over-exposed to it or anything, but I got the newest Weird Al album a while back, and that's usually a good standard: he takes the latest greatests songs, and parodies them (or their style), occasionally coming up with some interesting hits.

This latest album had almost nothing of interest. The only thing I'm still listening to is the polka medley. Even the last album only had a few I remember. Am I getting old, or is it getting crap?

I have not heard of Ribspreader, and am not too fond of Death Metal, and am fairly apathetic about everything nowadays, so I probably won't listen to them. Glad you are enjoying them.

Sorry about your troubles, Grim. I hope everything works out. I too have a wish to become "someone". Perhaps if we help each other out, we can both become the someone we want to be (unless you want to rule the universe, in that case, sorry, that's my....eventual plan).

Anyhow, I'm doing okay myself, I guess. A bit overweight, plenty lazy, been on an uninspired streak for a couple years now, but....at least I have my health...except for the slight weight thing. And...I've been enjoying rerembering Farscape lately (although that means more hours in front of the PC, and even less caring about my weight). Those are good things, right?

They should also have a level of artwork that supports the resolution

I got it in the recent Humble Indie Bundle, and....errrr...played for about 15 minutes before I realised I found it kinda boring .

I dunno...I'd think it'd need more than that one gimmick (reversing gravity thing) to carry the game.

I take your Determinism and raise you a Hongcheng Magic Liquid!

I'd like a golden grenade. And a rabbit with red eyes, please.

I'd say you need to fade away the mountain into the background even more. You should remove the extra dark patch on the peak, and make some clouds coming IN FRONT of the mountain as well.

Whatever it is, it's not incomplete, so why would it be moved to GiP?

(I'd post something more on topic, but I haven't played/viewed the episodes yet.)