Messages

The thing about the Internet is that time zones have been throwing me off all day today... 

Tassie:

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There are two things you need to give to Gloria; the life crystal is one of them.  You'll know it's over because the credits will start rolling.   

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A lot of good points...

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Why would Helmer be worried about getting his shirt dirty, but perfectly okay with cutting a piece of it off?

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I noticed the repeated puzzle thing as well.

Was there any use for the cup of water that you can get?

Rosie:

Level 1:

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The hand and the hand scanner are a good fit, sure, but nothing happens.  Why might that be?

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Level 2:

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If the hand scanner were broken, it wouldn't work.

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Level 3:

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Use the knife to remove the panel, and then get Lou to repair the scanner for you.  The option won't appear in the dialog until you have the hand.

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Just finished it up.  The "wrong room" was... haha.   

Anyway, nice job.  I wish I could have explored some of the other areas on the world map, though!   

My pixel-hunting must not be up to par.  I can only find the two hotspots on that screen.

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Edit:  Okay, nevermind... it's a pretty obvious "feature," but since I didn't get a mouse-over hotspot notification, I simply ignored it.  I'm not sure if you forgot to include the label, or if it was intentional.

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Sure:

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Walk to: Mountain Side (left side)
Look at left rock ("It is a rock."  "Looks like there is a disc under it.")
Interact with robot disc ("This robot disc might come in handy.")
Look at left rock ("Looks like there is a disc under it.")
The disc reappears, interact with the disc again, take it again, repeat ad infinitum.

Obviously it only gets added to the inventory once, but you can repeat this cycle...

The only two hotspots I can find on this screen are the two rocks, am I missing something?

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I'm not sure if this is a bug, but:

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I can get the robot disc over and over by re-entering the screen.

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Should have mentioned that I grabbed the robot card with "Lou" written on it.  I've tried using it on the symbol on the door, I've tried using the kinfe on the symbol, the knife on the card (to clean the dirt off), the card on Helmer (to clean the dirt off -- he doesn't want to get his shirt dirty), and the knife on Helmer (he doesn't "yet" see a reason to cut himself).

I tried using both items on Gloria and have exhausted the dialog tree with her.  I even tried touching her... but Helmer chose to admire the view rather than get physical.   

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I found the entrance to the cave, and the symbol, but it doesn't look like the cave is opening anytime soon.

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"I don't need to go here."
"That won't work."

As soon as I can get the game to say something else to me, I'll provide more feedback.   

Seventh. A combo of 6th and 4th. Write your story, make "place holder" graphics. (can be uber crummy) FINISH THE GAME. then slowly but surly learn to draw, then make NEW, BETTER  graphics. gives you the satisfaction of a finishing a game, while allowing your self an easy schedule for  the all-finished game. ( note this won't work as easy in 256 colours)

This strikes me as a good idea even if you want to "hire" artist help as well.

Completing the game with placeholder graphics, meaning that the story, puzzles, and scripting is all done, would be a great way to recruit artists who like the idea of the project enough to help out.  It also inspires confidence; the artists know that the only thing that will keep the game from being released is... well, themselves!   

Good luck!

The white lines in the road shoudl follow perspective as well; their edges should not be completely vertical.

The grey building needs more detail.  Maybe brickwork, posters, windows, or just some texture.

I'm looking for a story editor!

I don't need someone right away -- I'd like to have a finished script ready to go before I seek feedback, but I don't want to try the C&C forum where the script could become "widely public."

Any assistance, from taking the story in new directions to simply tweaking dialog and looking for plot holes, would be appreciated!

Full credit, but no pay, unfortunately.   

Also, again, i advice folks to colour onto a more neuteral colour than white, your work will look better for it.

If Dan's art isn't evidence enough that this is true, let me agree wholeheartedly with this!

The backgrounds are looking good so far -- I think the beach scene's composition falls apart in the upper-right corner, though.  I can't say anything until you finish one or both of them, so please do so that we have something to talk about.   

(It's frustrating and unhelpful to critique a piece and have the artist respond, "Well, it's obviously not done yet, I just haven't added that yet...")

Have you checked out the PSG tutorial?

http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm

It can probably explain some things better than I, but in a nutshell, whenever light hits a surface, it gets reflected off of it like a billiard ball bouncing off the side of a pool table.  When the light leaves the surface, it picks up some of the color of that surface.  When that light strikes another surface, the colors blend.

You can test this in a number of ways, but perhaps the easiest is to go into a brightly lit room (bathroom, usually) and hold something very saturated in color (an apple) up to a blank sheet of white paper.  Or hold the apple up next to your face and take a look in the mirror.

Certainly, it isn't necessary to find out where light is bouncing all over your image, and the golden rule is, "if it looks good, it is good."  But it can be helpful to ask questions about bounced light.  "Is the bottom of his chin a little greener as the grassy ground plane reflects light up into it?"

I'm making less and less sense, I should stop... but check out the link above.   

I like the idea, and these look good so far.  I also like how they're rather different from one another, in terms of angle and color.

My big suggestion (which is also my pet peeve in all computer-generated graphics) is that you have to add cast shadows.  In most cases, they just need to be enabled in your light source for pre-rendered 3D, but they're glaringly absent in the "Junkman" image, where a setting sun would cast long shadows off of those objects resting on the ground.  The barrel in particular looks pasted on, which it more than likely isn't -- just a side effect of the lack of shadow.

My favorite is the "Miner" image, which seems close to done.  Maybe a few more elements in the foreground -- supplies?  What do miners use?   

I'd like to see more buildings in the "Smuggler" image, or maybe something like a bridge or a fleet in the background.

In the "Barkeep" image, it looks kind of like we can see into the other building windows, which I doubt is what you want (unless those floors really are empty).    I'm guessing they're supposed to be mirrored windows.  I don't know what to tell you here except that if the reflections can be pumped up and the window color itself maybe made darker, it might be clearer... maybe it's just me and those windows are reading fine for everyone else.   

One question, if you don't mind: what are you using for textures?  Is there a specific library you like, or are these shipped with a particular program?  They're pretty nice.

Desmond>>
Look what you did to my banner  :o But I see your point. I didn't know about people blocking animated GIFs in their browsers. Is it common?

Honestly, I didn't do anything to your banner.  That is how it appears in my browser; I just took a screenshot.  Until I read that it was animating (supposedly), I assumed that was how it was supposed to look.

Disabling animated GIFs is very common, in my experience.  Animated GIFs have two common uses:

1)  Adding inconsequential animation to a page where animation isn't necessary
2)  Really irritating advertisements

For many people, #1 isn't worth enduring #2, so the whole thing gets shut down.  In my case, the animated GIF gets replaced with either the first or last frame of the sequence, and all other frames are removed automatically.

If you wanted to avoid displays like this in different browsers, you could make sure that the first and last frame in your animated GIF were full frames, rather than updates from the previous frame... the GIF will be larger, but anything that strips it to its first or last frame will at least get a complete image.

Glad some of you found it useful.

Haddas:  I'll consider doing a tutorial, certainly, but there are more qualified artists here that could do a better job.  I'll see if I have time, though.   

Afflict:  I guess the way I think about cast shadows is a little dorky and taken from 3D rendering, but if you think of your light as a camera pointing at your scene or subject... when you consider everything that camera "can't see," that's where your cast shadows are.

So in the example study I posted, if the light in the upper-right is a camera looking down at our guy, then from that angle, the nose is overlapping part of the face.  That part is in shadow.  Probably easier to visualize would be the brim of the hat -- from that angle, the brim would be blocking the eyes from view.  So that whole area goes into shadow as well.  As soon as we translate "what we can see" to "what light is striking," then the analogy works out.

I don't know if that analogy will work for anyone other than me, but sometimes looking at something in a different way helps.     If necessary, I can do an image or two to clarify this explanation.

Please keep in mind how your banner might look to someone who filters out animated GIFs of all types:



(Of course, on a black background a lot of this would go away, but it's rather jarring in this thread.)