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I'm warming this old thread up with a new title, because just recently I remembered another fun game from the past.

It was a real-time strategy game taking place completely underwater. You could build submarines and buildings as well as develop technologies. I don't remember a lot more, it was really a standard real-time strategy game, but everything in deep water. I used to love it!

Does anybody remember the game?

EDIT: It was not three-dimensional (this excludes "Submarine Titans" or whatever the game's called you'll find on Google)!

[tanks]

Shouldn't that be tanks ahead of time?

By the way - the base looks great already!

Hehe, thanks! The inspiration image (drawn by you, Miez) looks great, too!

Try and google "advance wars". That should provide some good reference material, though the game's not exactly iso.

I tried that, but wasn't able to find anything suitable through Google or the official website (which seems broken to me). The newer game is in 3d and the old version is too different from my desired drawing style, I guess.

Actually, I do have enough reference material (from Command & Conquer, StarCraft and Dune 2 mainly), it's just that my problem with the cannon is so specific, that all those resources won't help me anymore, they already helped me a lot when drawing the base though.

Anybody got any suggestions? I never knew how unbelievable hard it is too draw such low-resolution sprites in isometric perspective for real-time strategy games. Seems way, way harder than anything I've tried before - including (rather simple, granted) backgrounds and characters for adventure games. Heads off to the artists who pulled this off back in the day.

EDIT: I'm just corrected some typos, but I decided to leave "Heads off to the artists [...]" in the message. Of course, what I meant was "Hats off [...]"!

[Miez]

Through heavy pixel-pushing, I've managed to draw a good-looking tank-body, but now it seems near impossible to me to add a cannon on top of it. Whatever I try, it looks awful and destroys the image. That's why I'm looking for advice on how to improve the sprite and how to add a cannon onto it. Paint-overs are especially welcome!

Here is the work-in-progress sprite of the tank:




And this is how the tank is supposed to look like in a different resolution and from a different perspective (credit goes to Miez for this picture):



Thanks ahead of time!

Personally, I think the best ending was in 5 days a stranger.

Spoiler

I really thought Trilby died in the fire, and when his shadow suddenly walked up in front of the house and said something like: "Everybody has to day one day", I was sure he died. Logically he didn't die: "running into a field of police officers as a burglar just isn't a smart thing to do". That part really got me. Amazing story!

[close]

Okay, so this is probably something stupid, but when I try and rotate an object by putting in Ags3d.SetPrimRotation(i, 20, 0 ,0) [where i is the int value thingy for a cube as in the default code in the manual/readme/thing] it comes up with a scripting error - "Type mismatch: cannot convert 'int' to 'float' ".

Normally I would assume it was something wrong with my coding but if I change "Rotation" to "Colour" or "Scale" or any of the other parameters it works fine...

Untested, but you should try it with:

Code: ags

Ags3d.SetPrimRotation ( i, 20.0, 0.0 ,0.0 );

The ".0" means you're passing floats instead of ints, and this function seems to expect floats!

This problem doesn't exist in all languages though. I can't speak for English too much (not being a native speaker), but in German, I guess you'd say "einundzwanzig-zehn" for 2110 for example, which would equal "twentyonehundred-ten" in English.

Anyways, others will need to worry about this.

Ha, I look forward to spending another night over the next title. Keep it up, the graphics have never been this good, I can't wait.

Here are some quick suggestions:

I changed the round-part of the sideway (to make it rounder), I fixed areas behind and around the large tree and did some other minor stuff.

It didn't turn out all that good, but you get the point, I guess. Your brother should put more attention to his line-work and the shapes. Apart from that it's very nice, lots of talent.

The original for PC was great, one of the very, very few "modern" games that really did something for me.

Steve, I tested some of the functions (GetRayHits and GetPrimPosition) but they always return me a float equal to 0.00. I think there is a problem somewhere, no ?

In this context I'd like to re-mention the problem with the functions that should return the camera position values and returned 0.0f always as well. I think those problems still exist, if I didn't miss anything.

Great work with version 1.2 though, it's getting better and better with each and every update!

Spoiler

Try to take a key from the room with the safe in it. Then use that to open one of the doors in the first floor and you'll be able to continue.

[close]

Try pressing it once. The character will walk until you press it again.


The game looks and plays great, I can't wait to finish it once I have some time! I have a strong feeling your game will win this round!

Your question is not "silly" at all... but it's in the wrong forum!
Anyways, check out the "Background" tutorial in my signature, it shows you how I and most people handle outlines and how to color them!

Hope that was helpful!

This is really offtopic now, but I'd like to invite you, Steel Drummer or Yodaman, to come to our forums over at www.barnettcollege.com or post in our FoY-thread in this forum here and tell us exactly what you found "glitchy" in our demo. Because nobody said anything about the demo being this way, and we'd like to make version 1.2 of the demo and the full-game enjoyable for everyone!

It's nominated for "Jaw-dropping demo" and "Best narrative" not for innovation, iirc.

And Yodaman, are you serious or is that sarcasm I detect or fail to detect?

Great! Looks very nice, I can't wait to play your game!

1. It isn't "Repeatedly_Execute_Always", it's "repeatedly_execute_always".

2. You forgot the brackets after the funtion name: "repeatedly_execute_always ( )".

3. There is no need to put single conditions in brackets after the if-statement.

4. "if ( something == 1 )" can be replaced by "if ( something )".

5. You should format your code better using line-breaks.

This is how your code should look like:

Code: ags

function repeatedly_execute_always ( )
{
	if ( mouse.IsButtonDown ( eMouseLeft ) && oHeartstone1.Animating )
	{
		player.AddInventory ( iheartstone1 );
		oHeartstone1.Visible = false;
	}
}

EDIT: SSH was faster...

That's true. Of course, tutorials on the internet, no matter how good they are, will never replace a full knowledge of art or anything. But for independant adventure-game creators, I personally think that the know-how that you can gain by reading good and effective tutorials is more than enough to create satisfying background- and spriteart for independant adventure games.

No offense taken.

A perfect way to learn how to paint backgrounds, is to learn from the start. Tutorials are useless in my opinion, since they teach you technique, and technique is something you develop after you've studied art.

I haven't studied art and still I wrote this tutorial. My tutorial simply shows a way of drawing backgrounds that I stumpled upon while trying to improve as a graphical artist. I realize that my final product from the tutorial is no way near a real piece of art or something very pretty, it still does is purpose and is better suited for adventure games than a lot of other graphical attempts out there. I don't think you have the right or reason to call tutorials "useless".

Yeah, I have an almost similar tutorial, it just doesn't fit your current style very well. Check out the "background"-link in my signature!