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the main problem I see is that it does not seem to have any depth. The doors seem very flat. Maybe if you slowed down on the gradients, and tried shading manually according to the light source, it would look better. Also, you may want to animate the water, or it would look very odd.
*EDIT*
Yikes! I did not mean to come of harshly. Keep at it. It does not take all that much work to make a presentable BG. Your BG was A LOT better than many firsts I have seen here. Don't give up so easily.

Hmm..your intermediate time is not even in the same ballpark as your expert time!

I am not sure what you mean. Is my intermediate score bad? I don't play on intermediate as much as expert, so I don't really know.

MillsJROSS, you can minimise the minesweeper window to stop the time, by the way. I tried playing freecell, but I got annoyed of it really fast. Having to watch over 3 seperate piles of cards was too much for me.
As for my strategy, like I said, I do a lot of "educated guessing" when I am stuck. If there is a 1 showing, I click around it, since the chances are low that I will get a mine. If it is a 2 and I found one mine, I do the same. Another way I can go fast is by recognising patterns. At first when I played, I went through it labouriously, thinking which place would have a mine. Later I recognised patterns in numbers which meant that mines were in certain places. Like MillJROSS, when I lose, it is usually because the dirty mouse skipped the box I clicked on.
I did actually make a minesweeper clone in QBasic, but after designing the core, I realised it would be very annoying to have to find mines with the keyboard, so I could not go any further

hehe... unbeliever
like I said, I haven't played it psychoticly for a long time now. I hope this satisfies you. It is more recent, but it is still more than 100 though:


And by the way, it takes a lot less than photoshop to fake a good score

Oddly enough, where I live, long hair is more common. Even I had a messy "Beatles" hairstyle until recently, when just for the heck of it, I grabbed a pair of scissors and a razor, and went bald. It was an interesting feeling to keep rubbing your head and finding it to be bald. It has grown back curly now for some reason. Also, when before my hair was a brownish tinge from being in the sun for so long, now it is jet black. I grew a goatee to go along with it, and needless to say, I like incredibly freaky now.
I like very long hair for girls. My friend used to have hair that reached below her hips. It looked great, but according to her it was a lot of work. Of course, hair is hair, and how it looks depends on the person.
I am not very obsessed about my hair, and enjoy experimenting. Not dyed it yet though. Can't see it looking good.

what a horrible score
I could get all the mines in less than 100 sec when I was crazy about the game. Now days I just play it to fill time while pages load on my crap dial-up connection.
You can actually use the chance thing to your advantage. It is easier to guess all the difficult ones first, and if you survive, you can clear up the easier ones for a great score

i think the main problem is that the image is too vibrant and bright, warehouses are dark and dingy places, devoid of colour and life (which sould be reflected in how it looks), start by taking some of the colour out, then go from there.

An easy method would be to draw what seems to be a brand new clean warehouse, then spend the time adding age and decay to it. This way you have somewhere to begin from.

As you can see from the original and the edit that I made, it was darkened a lot. Does it still need more darkening?
Oddly enough, the way you suggested IS the way I made it. That is, I started with a nice clean warehouse, and started decaying it from there.

there should be more cracks on the wood and maybe small space between the wood on the floor
also the wall is really thick please make it a little thinner
also for me it looks like the crack on the wall doesnt look old to me, it looks a little strange
also if it is abandon and noone has been there for a long time there should be a thick dust everywhere
and what i was tryng to say in my previos post is that try make the wall look flaked, that is if it was painted

now i got a small question
what material is this building? is it briks or wood?

What do you mean by "small space between the wood on the floor"?
The warehouse is abandoned, but a character will be living under it, and walking through it everyday, so I made the corners dusty, but the rest of the room was the same.
Any suggestions about the crack? I made it sort of "glowy" because light would be shining on part of it.
I was not really thinking materialwise when I made the wall, so I have no idea what it is made of.... Some sort of plastered stone I'd guess 

you want hell costume ideas?
well, the obvious ones would be a devil, skeleton, grim reaper and angel. Just for the easter egginess of it, you could have a sam 'n max costume, and a guybrush dress.
Here, for some ideas:

That does not always work either, redruM. For example, I really want to make a certain game. I know I want to make it, and I try, but after a while, I get bored at certain parts. I think: "ok, I will leave it for a bit, and get back to it later". Three months later, I have not done a thing.
You need just a little bit of push in making a game, unless it is a crap 2 room 2 hours-in-the-making game. My advice is not to get bogged down on any one part. If you have been making backgrounds, and start feeling like leaving it, try adding to the story. If you have been doing sprites and have had enough, mess around with another part of the game.
Start with something small. You can leave your big game idea for a while and maybe participate in a MAGS.

hehe...yup, it is Indy. Going to include some "Carpenter Replacement Wanted" as a joke.

Although the grainy look does give it an old atmosphere, I dont think I could do that for every screen in my game.
I made up a newer version with all the comments:

Anything I should improve? Anything else I did wrong?

hehe... weird ed looks like a bulldog . Seriously, maybe you could make the "pouches" on both sides of his chin a little less prominent. About the background, the only thing I noticed is that the polluted water looks like it is going a bit uphill

his hands seem to be waving like crazy. When they swing back, they circle and then come back in front.

[Map screens:]

I was wondering which way to make my game. I thought I might put the question to the people here. Which is better in your opinion? Map screens where the player can go to a larger number of rooms from clicking on an overview map (used in games such as Monkey Island, Sam 'n Max and QfG3), or games where the player has to travel through a series of linked rooms to go from one room to another (Kings Quest 1,2,4,5, DotT, SQ1,2,4 etc.)
The way I see it:
Map screens:
Easier to go from one place to another
Gives you a better sense of direction
Easier to know when a new place has opened up
No unecessary "linking" screens where nothing is done

Other:
More realistic-
That is how it normally is
Feel more involved with the world (maybe part of 1st point)
No feeling that every screen has some problem and solution (resulting in a click-fest if the player gets stuck)
Gives a sense of exploration

Comments? Your ideas?

For me the solution is milk. One glass of milk "puts the fire out" for me. So when I do get stupid and eat something that I know will give me heartburn, I just make sure I've got some milk nearby.

Hehe.... I think you are going to draw out shbaz with that comment. He is almost as heated about milk as he about blender   

It is not actually meant to have a cartoony look. Does it give you that impression? It is meant to be more like Legend of Kyrandia-ish.
I can see what you mean by perspective on the cans. I will fix that up. How am I to add dust, though? Should I just cover everything in a layer of transparent grey? How should a pile of dust in the corner look? What did you mean by browning?
The big container is supposed to have yellow paint. Does it look so?
*EDIT* Something very like this character will be in it.

This is supposed to be an abandonned warehouse, but I can't figure out how to make it look old. I made a crack in the wall, and a bit of broken floorboard, but it still doesn't look old. Does anyone have any techniques for sandpapering this BG? The walls and floor and to give the cans a rusty look? Of course, other C&c will also be appreciated.

Very interesting topic. My thoughts on the matter:
Of course, it is better  to live a healthy life from the start then to do what you want and then take medicine for it. Also, I find it very wrong to take medicine's just for the heck of it (like sleeping drugs and such). Iqu, I respect your views, but when a there is a choice between death and life, where life can only be achieved, by these medicines, most people will put their personal beliefs aside and choose life.
My father has this problem with medicines. After he has been prescribed them by the doctor, and completed the course, he stores the medicine. When he feels he has the same problem, he takes the same medicine again, EVEN if it is expired.  He does the same with anti-biotics, which infuriates me, for reasons explained by Iqu. I had to throw away a whole cabinet full of medicines when he was gone.
However, both my parents suffer from some chronic disease. My father also has the acid reflux problem, and until recently he was taking some expensive medicine for it. He then got this book "Fit for life" by some Dr. Diamond, which told him he should not mix his food groups, something like what Sylpher said. It works great, and he has not had problems for a while. On the downside, though, whenever he gives in, and mixes up something like beef and potatoes, he suffers more than he used to. I guess his body got used to being pampered.
My mother has pollen and dust allergy. She has not been able to smell anything for almost a year. The dust is not so bad, but every year, when the paper mulberry pollen is in the air, she really has it bad. Her eyes sink in, her nose swells, and she has fits of coughing and sneezing. Medicine had little effect. She even went to this herbalist, who gave her some "plant extract" that completely cured her, but she stopped taking it when she had it tested and found out it was chock full of steroids. Now, the only way she can be helped is by going to the polluted city every year at the time, where there is little pollen.

Loook moooom, its Suuuupermaan!
And I am serious. I mean, who could be a better hero than a  fictituous Kryptonian goodie-two-shoes who refuses to die? Any real person will always end up doing something you hate them for, unless they died before anyone found out.
Aaanyways, Superman could beat all your heros' asses.

I wanted to ask something like this as well. How does one take screenshots from a video file? I tried PrintScreening in Media player, but that does not work.

Great Game AGS-GD. But there is something I thought maybe you can improve if you make a newer version:

Spoiler

When I read TO's diary I also thought to dig up on the cliff, but when I checked, I saw that there is no hotspot (no name came underneath), so I thought there is nothing there. Thus I ended with the sad ending and did not know how to get the happy ending until I checked the hints you gave. Maybe it would be easier if you put some hotspot name like "floor" or "ground" or "cliff", so that it can be known that you might be able to do something there

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