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Blondbraid, that creature is positively frightening and scary. Alien and yet somehow familiar... I just can't put my finger on where I have seen it before...

Great entry

[JimReed]

I  have this font that JimReed made and I expanded to 256 characters, it's the one we are most probably going to use on the new Sierra Template:

[Download Link]

Congratulations people!

Yay another skull for my collection!

[Proxima Centauri b]

Proxima Centauri b
Making First Contact

About 4.25 light-years from Earth sits a red dwarf called Proxima Centauri.
Around this star there is an exoplanet called Proxima Centauri b, right within the habitable zone.
We can only wonder what kind of life inhabits this planet.

Your job is to help us catalogue what species roam this distant place.

Guidelines:

• The alien creature can be humanoid, but should not be human, be creative.
• The creature should have a description that tells us something about the species.
• There are no limitation on palettes or styles. Animations are welcome.

Once all creatures are presented by August 1st a panel of xenobiologists will decide which of these creatures is more likely to be found.

And the winners are:

01 - Blondbraid - Eepuot	02 - Rocchinator - Revernauts (v2)
[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/DgHF1CN.png[/imgzoom]03 - Izera - Antititties	03 - Nixxon - Teleported Creature

But now, I found a perfect software for my needs! Aseprite! It has nice pallette support, dithered gradients, custom brushes, 2x1 pixel size, layers, animations, and more. I can't recommend it hard enough!

Aseprite is a great tool. Where do you set it for non-square pixels? Or are you just making a 2x1 grid and coloring inside it?

Oh that is so freaking cool! Thank you for providing me with the gif! I will not use the same method of creating my backgrounds (obviously) but referencing it should help me achieve the Sierra "feel"

Yeah, that method can be torture to use, but it really shows how the backgrounds were assembled.

I'm really digging both backgrounds, but I lean more for the 1x1 pixel one.
My main issue with the 2x1 pixels is that you have to keep making sure everything is in the non-square grid, and all the drawing software I use is not helpful on that aspect, so it always ends up being more work for me.

On the technical side, what Gurok mentioned is true, pre 256 color Sierra backgrounds were a list of commands that the computer would draw.
Here is a stolen gif that shows one background being rendered: [Source]

[imgzoom]http://scicompanion.com/Documentation/_images/DrawPic.gif[/imgzoom]
As you can see it's a series of lines and fill commands one after the other.
The dithered parts were just another color in the palette, that would be rendered as a 50% dither, so they didn't have access to other types of dithering unless done adding a lot of commands that would make the games a lot bigger.

Now, that said, I personally think that unless you want to go for a 100% real old Sierra style you should take advantage of the tools we use now a days and make the dithering that works best for the backgrounds.

[the contest will close the 24th]

Really nice work Rocchinator!

I'll be extending the deadline a few more days, so the contest will close the 24th now.
Hopefully this will give more time to people that didn't get to finish their backgrounds, and an opportunity for those that did to make any modifications they want.

[Nixxon]

Really nice entries  Nixxon and Eri0o

If no one is against it, we could extend the deadline to the 24th to help selmiak and anyone that didn't have the time to finish up their works.

I'd really like to see more works too, even though any of these four backgrounds would be great

Nice entries Lorenzo!

Come on everyone! Let's have some more before the contest closes!

It pays being Argentinian

Anyone feel free to take my turn.

I'm having the same issue on Chrome on a 1920x1080 resolution.

[Relatos Salvajes]

Is that Relatos Salvajes? (Wild Tales according to Wikipedia)

[1.-]

Really tough voting decision...

1.- Tabata
2.- Nixxon
3.- Tycho Magnetic Anomaly

I can't wait to see what great stuff you'll come up with guys

This is a work in progress of an idea I had for a game set in a tower:

[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/Hu7b8Wq.png[/imgzoom]

The game would pan from room to room, avoiding the player to see more than one room at a time. As you can see, the different perspectives of each floor do not line up, but since the player only sees one at a time (except when the camera pans) the illusion is maintained.

Just to make clear: My point was not to use TTF, but to have all needed characters. Using existing TTF is just the easiest way to get existing fonts (with all characters) into AGS, but of course a pixel font is much better suited here.

I feel the same way, that's why I wanted to state clearly that I was planning to add the extended characters to any font we end up using if those characters are missing.
I know that using a TTF would be easier, but since the idea is to update the template with nicer art I believe it's worth the effort that the font we use looks good as well as being completely functional.

[No TTF]

The Background Competition is on!

@Font:
we can use JimReed's font for now and gather fonts people made and are offereing for use over the time this template thread is running and at the end vote on a font to use, what about that?
I'll surely vote on that, even though it sometimes is really hard to decide on a font.
So how do we get people's attention to submit fonts when they don't read this one thread under way more interesting threads about new free adventure games in the forums?
What about we create one post in this thread outlining what we are expecting from that font (not ripped from a game, made by the submitter, including all special chars (list them, post a template?), TTF, something I missed?) and link to that from our forum signatures while this thread is running.

No TTF. I am willing to make all the special characters if the font is missing them, but no TTF.
True Type Fonts are vector fonts, so we have no control over the rendering of the font to the pixel like we have with bitmap fonts, add to this that the template is 320x200, and the font will most likely look like crap due to the lower resolution.

Cat is right about needing the font to have all special characters, so we can type words with Ç Ã' àŸ and all the crazy accents our languages use.
Trust me, I want to be able to type CæsarCub with the right character whenever possible.
I already provided those characters for JimReed's font, and I am willing to do that again if the font we use is a different one.

All a font needs is to be small, readable and ideally created by the community. Because if we are stealing a font from a game, we might as well steal one from a Sierra game and call it a day.

I'd say nothing bigger than JimReed's font because the template is 320x200, so there is not much space for a big font.

[The Template Background Competition.]

The Template Background Competition.
A.K.A. - Not the Background Blitz.

As some of you may know, we are making an updated Sierra Template for AGS.
We already have the icon bar and nu-Roger defined.

Now it's time to have a nice background, so Roger is not floating in the darkness of space.

[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/7Q5NLzR.png[/imgzoom]
Doesn't he look lonely there?

Your task is to create a nice background for our friend.

The specifications:

• The background must be done for a 320x200 resolution.
• Roger should fit in it without having to scale him up or down.
• There is no thematic restriction, but Roger should not feel too out of place.
• There is no color restriction

For reference here is one image of Roger:

[imgzoom]http://www.tulevik.eu/ags/roger_blue.png[/imgzoom]

Te deadline is July 24, so there is lots of time.
Please keep the specifications in mind, since this background will be used on the Sierra Template.

Winner: Selmiak

[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/z8i22Q7.png[/imgzoom]

Conspiracy Theory Alert:

I believe Pilchard and CaeserCub are actually conjoined twins!

You can tell we are different people, he is actually making games.

Thanks everyone.

Wow, awsome entry, Caesarcub!
I had a similar idea but you beat me to it.

Good to know I wasn't the only one seeing a hammer and a sickle XD