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...and here's Al the Adventure Alien, in a rather dangerous, 14 color-y situation:


What is he going to do next?!

Nice entries so far, keep it up!

Thank you. I've already animated him in his new outfit, and gave the dragon a color overhaul:

This looks totally great! The hair may look a tad too solid, but other than that... awesome!

Thanks for even more replies!

A lot of good points have been made:

MrColossal: Good idea, I'll make the transparency fading more noticable.

mätzboy and Ryz: Good point about the 'use' thing, I'll change it, it really shouldn't be that way.

buddha: I'm gonna add some details to that guys clothes, that'll hopefully fix the bland look. Also, I wanted some space down there because I'll need more buttons later on - one of them will call a spell book window.

Darth Mandarb: I'm not sure what you mean with 'nose cut off', maybe could you explain it some more?

big brother: Rust color sounds good... I'll try that. Hmm... the headband guy definately needs more work - I'll tinker with him some more!

EDIT - I think I have the right outfit for him now, what with him being with the city guards anyway:

Thanks for the comments.

Geoffkhan: I think I already have a few ideas of what I could add to the redhead guy. Not sure why hid outfit looks familiar to you though, I didn't use any references for him.
Any ideas what I could do with the dragon? Changing colors would be easy (maybe blue?), but I'm not sure if it's enough of a change. Maybe I can do something with the animations?

By the way, I forgot to mention that the music is not original, it's from a game midi collection I downloaded.

Thanks for trying it out!

I want to finish a game, but they always end up way too big and become way too much work. So I've decided to really keep it small and minimal this time, about 15-20 rooms max.

Anyway; I think crits for sprite animations are best done when seeing them in action, so I've uploaded a small test, ~720 kb big.

http://www.faind.com/bernie/interface1.zip

I'd apprecciate feedback on:

sprites: colors, animation...
background: too blurry, overall composition, clashing with sprites...
interface: is it useful enough, too bland or clunky...

I don't want to spend too much time on backgrounds, so I'm keeping the details to a minimum and try to get some 'atmosphere' across with colors. The BG in the interface test took about 20 minutes, and I want to do the rest of them like that.

Also, here's a screenshot if you don't want to download it:


There's another character in the game test, it kinda didn't make it into the screenie, heh:


Thanks for any comments, suggestions and crits!

MMF and TGF would be fine for that, but since they cost money, those programs may not be an option for you. It might be easier to pull it off in AGS than in MMF/TGF, but you would be more limited - no progressive text like they have in rpgs, for example, and handling an inventory with keyboard alone may be quite hard as well.

If you have any questions, or if you want to see an example of what's possible, feel free to PM me, I have loads of unfinished MMF game engines sitting on my computer.

*Obviously, Bernie loves MMF almost as much as AGS*

EDIT - Actually, I'm not sure if it's possible to have progressive text in AGS since it does have numerous string commands, so I suppose I shouldn't have said that.

Hmm... it's fairly easy to make tile-based stuff in MMF or TGF. But as I said before (on page 1), you'd also have to code aspects like a menu, battle mode and dialogue boxes completely yourself. This gives you immense freedom, but you need to be prepared to learn those programs in and out.

And again, here's a small MMF demo game I've made, with parallax scrolling and stuff:
http://www.faind.com/bernie/gnome.zip

Hmm... scan at a higher contrast in greyscale, and keep the lines clean in, then you can do the following:

1. Import into photoshop
2. adjust brightness/contrast to define lines more
3. resize to 600 dpi or so, if it's not already in that size
4. use photoshops' cut-out filter tho get clean lines, with levels at 2, edge simplicity at 3/4, and fidelity at 1 or 2. This only works properly on greyscale pics
5. import into software that has a 'convert to vectors' feature, such as flash

This is what i got when using the small pic you provided:

http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/comicvector1.gif

Your pic file is not big and clean enough to do this properly, but you should get the idea.

I don't know about 'ika', but if you're considering using an alternative, I can recomment Multimedia Fusion. I've already made several rpg engines in it, from zelda-like ones to ff-battle style ones, and also platformers. If you want to see an example, I've uploaded a small platform engine:

http://www.faind.com/bernie/gnome.zip

Shift - Jump
Ctrl - Hit
Hold Ctrl until blinking - Special move

I love that program, I'm using it for all non-adventure games. It has a few drawbacks though:

-It costs money, check http://www.clickteam.com for details
-It can't do much in the 3d department, and too much of the little 3d it can do is very slow
-Over 300-500 animated objects onscreen make it quite slow
-Fixed frame rate
-Takes a while to learn/be able to make custom movements

The Good:

-Doesn't require scripting as such,Ã,  basic game-mechanics knowledge will help heaps to create any kind of movement and AI
-Easy sprite editor
-Nice level/area editor
-Scripting is done via clicks, examples:

'If character collides with object1' -> 'destroy object1'
'Always' -> 'move character +1 on x axis'

Can't think of anything else right now... so, see for yourself if it will suit you, there's a demo available at their homepage.

EDIT - I just found the 'ika' homepage... http://ika.sourceforge.net/
Whee!

Nice sprite so far!

A few suggestions regarding the animation - On the frame where the characters' foot starts going back again, make it so it's flat on the ground until it goes up again.
The arm animation could use some smoothening, the line inside him seems a bit jumpy, and the arm outline outside seems to stay the same for two frames.

Regarding Broken Swords style - It uses very saturated colors and also defines shadows with the outlines. It being a hi-res game makes it hard to get a similar style to work for a low res game. I changed an old sprite of mine to a line style like that and took it to the extreme so it's more obvious:



Don't think of an outline as just a line, let it also define shadows. BS doesn't do the outlines that contrasty, but you should get the idea.

Hope this helps!

After the feet touch the ground again, they need to move back, up in the air and down again. Hard to explain with words, hope this helps - it has only 6 frames though:

The arms are much smoother now. You could still have them go forward more, but you'd have to spread the moving forward and going back over a few more frames.

The foot problem in frame 5 is still present, I did a quick edit to show you what i mean:

Yours:

Edit:


Sorry about the black stuff at the bottom, no idea where that is coming from, but I guess it marks those frames I've edited.

What do you use to animate? Best to use something that lets you preview the animation, or least lets you browse through frames quickly. You could download Klik & Play for schools (free) from www.clickteam.com, it has a really nice pixel-based editor.

Looks pretty good so far, well done!

I do have a few crits, though:

-The flow of the animation is a bit off, the arm goes forward and back really fast, you could try evening it out a little ove the frames before and after the the arm's at the front. Maybe letting it go a bit more to the back wouldn't hurt either.

-On frame 5, the upper part of the foot in front goes back a little, making the animation a bit shaky. If you make it come forward more, it should look much smoother.

Hope I've not been too rough on ya. Keep up the great work, would love to see those sprites in a game!

When I played Apprentice I, I didn't really notice anything wrong with Pib's walkcycle, it looked nice and smooth, no compaints there.
I've also played the demo with the new interface, and it really was much easier to use.
About the inventory items - it depends on how many items there are in Apprentice 2. The amount in Apprentice 1 worked fine for only two items per page.

Anyway, great magazine, lots of stuff to read, yay!

BerserkerTails: Thanks! They do indeed talk the Lucas Arts way, I've always preffered this over the Sierra way.

Hollister Man: Thanks for the crit. The kid's bright spots are supposed to be highlights, but they seem to come out wrong. I'll also check the green guy's walk cycle again. (The front ones are the hardest to get right.) Not sure what I can do about his colors, they also need to work with the backgrounds and not stand out too much, but I'll see what I can do.

Karimi: For the sprites, I use an application called Click & Create aka The Games Factory, as it has a really cool and easy sprite editor. It can also be used to make decent platformers, rpgs and more, but this requires a really good grasp of that program. It's available at www.clickteam.com.
As for the backgrounds, they were made in Photoshop 7.0.

On a side note, 'It's just my style' is not something any artist should say, it's just a cheap excuse. If the whole thing doesn't look right to someone, there's a good chance something really is wrong.

There's a small layering quirk (z-buffer I think it's called) when a few characters stand on the same y coordinate and the main character walks past them (up/down). The layering order seems to change and a different character suddenly is at the front. It happens when the main character passes the y position of the other characters.

and... thank you for the new beta!

I've made a simple custom scrolling using the new repeatedly_always function. I'm changing a characters x and y position so it would follow the player character around the playfield, and I focus the viewport on this character.
This all works very well, except that the lucas arts style text does not stay centered over characters if the screen still scrolls while a blocking function is called. Is there a way to make it stay focused?

Thanks~

Good point about the moon, thanks! That edit looks great, Andail. I'll make it look like that, it has much more depth.

Jet X.L. - making his hair more bright is easy, I'll see if i can find a better red for him, thanks!

Darth Mandarb - You're right about the perspective... gotta fix that, thanks!

OSC - I'm not sure if I'll have time for doing that (got a full-time job), so I can't promise anything. But if I do make a tutorial, I'll post it here.