Topics

[First game]

I have recently gone over several Abandonia-like sites (and Abandonia itself) and found a variety of different old computer games, that I played as a kid, however here are two games that I didn't yet manage to find anywhere - I hope that someone might be able to recall the names:

First game: You played as a paper-plane. It only had five levels as far as I recall, and the where all only made of one room (you saw the scene from the side - it was 2d obviously). I think you had to move over fans to get pushed up again. The goal was to reach some point on the other side of the screen. Also, there were shredding machines (that turned you into a pile of shredded paper if you tried to pass them without turning them off somewhere else first), you could find little rubber bands which you could shoot then and there were ballons in one level (which you had to shot somehow). That's pretty much all, I have no idea about the name and whether it's abandonware now, but I think it ran on Windows already. It might've been some ad-game, because it was really short, but I'm only guessing here.

Second game: You played as a technician/mechanic or something. The name of the guy was in the title and he was called something with the letter 'b', I think (Bobby maybe?). You had to go through levels and solve some puzzles, in the first level you had to make a tv work, I believe, in order to do that you had to align an antenna on the roof of a house and check the tv in the livingroom. The second level was made of a big maze with dark rooms, which the character feared. There were lightswitches as well. I don't remember anything further, I think it ran on Windows as well.

Any ideas?

[The Theme]

TUNE   CONTEST
_____________________________________________________________________

...from August 23rd until September 3rd...

I didn't win the last tune contest, but because the original winner (BunnyMilk) didn't show up in several days, the host of the last contest gave me the privilege set up next round's theme.

The Theme

Write me a song that somehow shows the life of one person. You can really cut it down to a few major events - for example: birth, first boy- or girlfriend, breaking up, finding new hope, wedding, getting children, aging and death. Actually this is still a lot, feel free to cut it down even further and add your own major events in life if you want to! Musically, it would be great if I would hear a wedding organ melody for the wedding or something heavy-sounding for negative-times (such as breaking up or death maybe). Feel free to be creative, but make sure to let me know about your thoughts on your stuff (also, it's appreciated if you'd add the events you tried to describe and the times in your song), this helps me to understand and rate your work better. You can release this information after the entry-time is closed if you don't want other entrants to see and steal your ideas, just make sure to let me know early enough please. Also, you are invited to give this a meaning of some sorts - for example give me a simple birth-melody played with toy-sounds and high bells and then - after a nice death passage, play some of the first notes from your song again to symbolize an eternal circle of life (reincarnation or life after death). Be creative.

Good luck.

In order to become a better sprite artist, I recently took a whole new approach (to me atleast). I chose the game with the best sprite art in my opinion (which came down to Metal Slug) and started studying the graphical style. Then I drew the following four sprites while heavily eyeballing reference material from the game every now and then. I realise that the sprites look quite similar to their references, but I really drew them myself and only got heavy "inspiration" on how to shade. Mine are generally not as fat as the originals. I also took the colors straight from the original sprites, to give my copies the exact same Neo-Geo palette feel.

I did not, however, copy any parts of the original sprite or anything. Anyways, I know you're all just waiting for the images, so here you go:

Metal Slug styled soldiers (4x zoomed)...

I tried to add new ideas (for example the third guy with the backpack and the gun positioned vertically on his back) and reduce the amount of "almost exactly" copied parts from the original sprites as I went along to make sure I really understand and grow into drawing in this style.

My questions are: (1) what do you think of this "studying-another-game's-art" approach, did you ever do anything similar, do you have any tips or experience? And (2) of course, what do you think of my sprites?

Thanks for your time in advance.

Hello,

today I found out at the Dott2-forum (a project in which I participated a longer time ago), that somebody called "DOTT fan" made these FIMO figurines:





I think those are great and they make me wonder whether I could pull something like this off. I should give it a try sooner or later.

Maybe one could even try to recreate a room from the game...

Anyways, what do you guys think of this and do you know of any other such efforts?

[this]

After quite some time, I decided to go back to composing classical scores in MIDI format. I got the idea for the main theme of the following piece while doing tapping exercises on my electrical guitar somehow.

So, anyways, I am looking for critics on this work-in-progress classical soundtrack. It's really only a few ideas but I don't want to spent days and days on it and head into the wrong direction understandably. It's only 50 seconds long and thus a really, really small MIDI file to download.

Thanks for your time and don't forget to leave any kind of feedback here after listening.

[Gypsy scale]

TUNE CONTEST
___________________________________

This time we'll get a little experimental.

The rules are simple: write any kind of song using the so called Gypsy scale!

For your information, this is how this scale goes:

Root - Minor Second - Major Third - Perfect Fourth - Perfect Fifth - Major Sixth - Minor Seventh

or:

Root - 1/2 step - 1 1/2 step - 1/2 step - 1 step - 1 step - 1/2 step

or in C:

C - C# - E - F - G - A - A# - (C)


Entries will be judged on how good they express the feel of that slightly uncommon scale and how good the overall production is of course.

Now, stop reading this and get working! Lay down some ideas in this scale, put them together and post your entry! The last time I did this contest, there were NO entries! Don't do that to me again or I'll never enter a tune contest again!

[Version 1]

I want to present to you my latest outcome of unexplainable inspiration.


Version 1 - 320x200 (2x zoomed)...

Some facts for the curios:

> I only used my mouse, MS Paint (and Photoshop for textures, gradients and the noise-filter).
> Took me five or six hours.
> Got heavy inspiration from a background by Neil Dnuma and one by Dr. Scary.

Allright, I think I am stuck. Somehow, the colors (lightness or saturation) got messed up while saving as PNG. I would be very happy if somebody could give more tips on how to improve the background.

Feel free to do paint-overs as well.

Thanks for your time.

[DOWNLOAD HERE!]

Hey guys,

I am working on a new song, it's pretty heavy, but has an emotional part. It's still in work, right now, there's just an intro, a chorus and a bridge (the clean part). It misses a verse and a solo (maybe more)...

Anyways, DOWNLOAD HERE! and make sure to leave a comment/suggestion/whatever.

I wrote, performed, recorded and mixed all of it myself here, so please do not only judge the music itself, but maybe also the patches and overall recording quality.

EDIT: Oh, this thread is called "Vol. II", because I used to have a similar thread months ago. I hope I made progress since then!

Once again I tried to improve my sprite-skills. Took me 10 minutes to get the following character view done. I know this is not enough time to make something real good, but I wonder what I could improve!

Here is the sprite:


25x62, 12 colors + background and 6x zoomed...

So, please give me feedback, suggestions or even paintovers to show me what I could make better with this character. Thanks!

If you are into guitars, then watch this video and tell me what you think about it.

All jokes aside, those two guys have MAD skills!

My favourite parts are:

Speed = Emotion

- I'm the fastest guitar player in the world..
- Faster than Vai?
- Yep.
- Faster than Yngwie?
- Are you trying to make fun of me?

It's like... It doesn't react to my way of playing. That's a slow amp. Every other note is not coming through...

[Birth]

I know that we had threads before talking about music, but I got an idea from another forum: The idea is to write down interpret and title of tracks, that would fit certain passages in your life the best.

I'll just start and you'll see what I mean:

Birth: Pink Floyd - Echoes
Average Day: Red Hot Chili Peppers - Throw Away Your Television
Falling in love the first time: Eric Clapton - Wonderful Tonight
TAfter the "first time": Coldplay - Shiver
Marriage: Can - She Brings The Rain
Midlife Crisis: Dream Theater - A Change Of Seasons
Getting older: Pink Floyd - Time
Deep Thought: Phil Collins - In The Air Tonight
Death: Emerson, Lake & Palmer - From The Beginning
Post Mortem: Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here

Hm... Seems like the "Soundtrack to my life" is pretty much rounded up by Pink Floyd.
Feel free to adapt/change passages if you like.

[TUNE CONTEST]

TUNE CONTEST

19 Oct - 27 Oct

Concerning last contest...

I didn't yet have a chance to express my thankfulness for picking me as winner for the last contest, and since I have too much time this was the first contest I ever won, I thought I should write a short comment. So here we go:

Nikolas: "So, the winner is..."
He opens the envelope.
Nikolas: "...HKD!"
The crowd stays quiet, everyone looks confused.
Nikolas: "I don't think there's any member in this community that is named 'hkd'."
A guy in a black suit rushes on the stage and whispers something into Nikolas' ear.
Then he disappears again.
Nikolas: "Ah, let me turn around that envelope."
Nikolas: "It's... DKH!"
Everybody cheers...
I come up to the stage and receive the medal from Niklas.
Me: "Thank you so much. I love you, I love you all!"
I fake a tear, turn around and start walking offstage.
Then I fall over a banana peel on the ground and let the medal fall and break.

Concerning NEW contest...

Allright, now that we're done with that, I am ready to throw the new topic at you: Write a piece of music, that expresses a climax. This could be the music for the climax of an action movie or the climax for a porn scene. If you think that porn is immature, you are most likely a virgin and you should stick to the first suggestion ( the action movie ) or make up a new topic with a climax in it.

So let me summarize:

- Write a song.
- Any styles, genres, formats or instruments are fine.
- Keep in mind that the primary criteria when judging will be how good you express that climax.
- The deathline is the 27 Oct - this year.
- What are you waiting for?

I have thought about this idea a long time, before posting here. I know there are too much competitions going on anyway and that there has just been a new competition suggestion, but I realized, that there are several competitions for artists (backgrounds, sprites, comics), for musicians and even for story/dialog-writers, but not a single one for the ones here that are into coding.

So my idea is to have a competition for coders. A good example for a task, could be to write a particle engine with AGS... The entries would be AGS games, but should only show off the desired effect of course. They would be judged on how good they look, how fast they run (for example how many different particles it can render without slowdown) and how close they come to the desired effect.

The winner of a round could post a new idea, just like most competitions here already work.

If anybody here has any better ideas or suggestions on how to do a coder-competition, then share your opinion please.

Hey there,

after staying away from the Critics Lounge for a rather long time, I decided to improve my sprite drawing skills (once again ).

So I drew this guy in roughly 10 minutes:


Original size


Scaled x4

I know that I should work longer on a sprite like this than 10 minutes in order to make it look better, but I just don't know how? How should I spend more time on it? How could I improve it?

[3D]

Hello,

I just finished working on just another PONG clone. What about a PONG clone, you say? Everybody wrote a PONG clone... But this one is special: It is in 3D. That's right, programmed in C++ and OpenGL, it combines the feeling of the good old PONG with the new possibilities of the third f*cking dimension. It features... ehm... two paddles... and... a ball. No seriously, there are only three different bonus ( what the hell is the plural of bonus? bonii? I always wonder about that... ) available at the moment, but those are fun and something completely different than your average increase paddle size/add ball kind of bonus - for example one will increase the speed of the camera rotating around the scene, so that playing is becoming really hard and challenging.

Did you really read all this text above? Anyways, here are three screenshots - but keep in mind, they don't show the feeling of this game at all. The actual look is quite terrible, but play it and I'm sure most of you will find it quite addicting ( atleast most of my friends did, when we tried out the multiplayer-mode:

EDIT: I am sorry, you'll have to visit each link and click on "free" everytime in order to watch the screens and download the game...

http://rapidshare.de/files/5883430/Screen3.jpg.html
The legendary 'HELL TEMPLE' with minor graphical bugs...

http://rapidshare.de/files/5883424/Screen2.jpg.html
Some ingame action - two paddles and a ball...

http://rapidshare.de/files/5883418/Screen1.jpg.html
And - finally... The legendary... ehm... main menu...

DON'T JUDGE THIS GAME BY IT'S LOOK! Actually, don't ever judge a game by it's look...

I am aware of some bugs ( both the paddles and the arena aren't displayed correctly ) but it is completely playable as it is. It features a tournament with three levels and three different enemies ( easy, average, difficult ) as well as a multiplayer-mode for two people on one keyboard.

For more information please check out the readme-file.

It is a beta and the reason I post this here is to get feedback, so please let me know what you think about it and what you would tweak/improve/change.

Thanks and here is the link...

[The song has been updated. Please check some of the responses to this thread...]

The song has been updated. Please check some of the responses to this thread...

Thank you.

This suggestion recently came to my mind again although I thought about it before several times: Would it be possible to either add a new parameter to the RawSetColorRGB function, that determines the transparency of the color or maybe add a new paramater to the RawDrawLine function, that determines the line's transparency? This would be a very handy shortcut to create color overlays, semi-transparent RawPrint messages or semi-transparent crosshairs for minigames.

Or how about adding a function that allows you to draw lines on room masks manually? You could then create great real-time light effects by redrawing room brightness masks while the game runs. For example: You have a light in the room and then have an animation when the player touches it or something and in those animation sprites the light moves a little bit. Then you could draw the actual shadows and highlights created by the light in realtime with a little advanced scripting and have a stunning effect in your game.

Would anybody else find that useful? I have to admit that the second suggestion is probably not useful for many people out there, but I am sure that semi-transparent RawDrawing would be something very useful...

Oh, and if this is already in the tracker somewhere then ignore this. The tracker still just lacks a search function...

[THE NEWEST SCREENSHOT FROM THE NEW VERSION:]

Hello everybody,

while working on several other projects, I recently started playing around with AGS and 3D...

Let's make it short:

Here are probably the first cubes that AGS ever rendered:





THE NEWEST SCREENSHOT FROM THE NEW VERSION:



I will continue working on this thing in my spare free-time and then publish it as a script module for AGS 2.7...

It's great fun to move around those cubes in real-time.....

I will probably also add a sample game or something...

Now the first AGS DOOM clone can come...

Hello,

I was trying to find a graphical style that will allow me to realise some of my planned projects. Therefore it needed to be good-looking of course but also time-sparing ( I can't spend two weeks for one background )...

Now I played around with combining Microsoft Paint and Adobe Photoshop 7 and I kinda got a style, but I don't know if it's really good enough for adventure game projects.

I mean it is rather quick ( 2 hours per background ) and everything, but I am just not sure if I should really go with that style for future games. That is basically why I am posting. Of course you can also give advice on those screens if you like...

Here are the screens:

Both screens are double-sized (originally 320x200 and use less than 100 colors)!

Hey everybody,

I just finished a small freetime-project - a pong clone.
The first ever with AGS as far as I know.
Anyways, I put 2 whole hours of work into it...

Check it out at http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/games.php?action=detail&id=549...

I know this is not a big thing, but maybe someone would be interested in the sourcecode? It's only 200 lines, so maybe for someone who wants to start with scripting non-adventure games in AGS this could be interesting?

Playing this with a friend is good fun, by the way. Like in the old days...