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Well, just use the normal character face-functions (depending on the version of AGS you use) and feed them the mouse location coordinates.

Example with AGS 2.62 or older:

Code: ags

// this goes in repeatedly_execute

if ( GetCursorMode ( ) == MODE_SHOTGUN )
// if the shotgun mode is the current cursor mode
{
   FaceLocation ( EGO, mouse.x, mouse.y );
}

Mylord, I suggest we ship the rebels to a deserted island to think about what they've done, and possibly think about what they're rebelling against.

...and possibly think about how the hell they're gonna get back into civilication before dying of hunger.

I think we'd need to see your code in order to help you. It certainly is very possible to do what you just described here!

You know, we could compromise though and give each member a graphical penis under their avatar and make it longer in certain occasions, competitions, awards etc.

Yeah and then everybody's pissed at me whenever I post because this image under my avatar screws up the whole forum layout and right border...

No problem, here you are, sir.

YOU wrote Future Conflicts, Chris?!

I don't know why, but I found this game years and years ago while searching around for Command&Conquer-related stuff, downloaded it and tried to play it. It's still floating around on my harddrive... Crazy... I think my computer is full of Chris-Jones-stuff without me knowing.

Mine's the smartest one ever.

Is that your girlfriend as well?

Why is her left arm darker? It looks strange to me, as there's no reason why this arm should be darker (there's nothing throwing a shadow on it or anything).

Apart from that I think it's good, I like the clean vector style you present.

Thanks to everybody for the comments and tips so far!

I don't think Metal Slug is your best bet. The MS sprites are known better for their animation than the quality of their rendering (inconsistent outlining, etc).

I found this to be very true now. The outlining is really extremely inconsistent, however to my eyes those sprites still look fantastic (of course, the animations are what really makes them stand out in the game, the balance and quality of the movements is just unreal). So, put in short, I do believe there are games with even better sprites out there, but for some reason I just really like this Metal Slug style and I know I'd be forever grateful if could learn to draw in this style some day.

It's nice, the only crit I have is that they look slightly like toy soldiers after a magnifying glass treatment. When animated, it will not probably matter, but they are slightly amorphous and confusing now.

I definately see what you mean here, biothlebop. I know this is a kind of lame argument, but the toy soldiers look with the oversized heads really is the style that I'm going for. Take a look at the game or games to see that they did they same thing to the soldiers. Thanks for the nice comment though!

I like them they look good just one thing its been ages since ive played metal slug care to show us reference.

Thanks to you, too. I am too lazy to go dig for the old references again, but this is a great Metal Slug resource site with almost everything in the game (including sprite sheets, animations, soundtracks, backgrounds etc).

I'll say trim down some pixels from the heads, but of course it would be much harder to draw facial expressions then.

I'll try this one out, I don't know if I'll be able to keep the facial expressions -- as you said -- but I'll try!

Another thing that I think needs a bit improvement, is that the helmets don't look as if they're hard accessories standing out from the head, especially the second last soldier, he looks as if he's wearing a tight green cap made of cloth (unless that's your intention), I'll say make the helmat a bit larger (trimming the face would help too).

I see what you mean, no the helmets aren't supposed to be made of cloth. I'll try to reduce that cloth feeling by doing what you suggested and see if that helps.

Okay, I think I have everything covered. Now I'll show you my latest piece of work. It shows the progress -- I didn't use nearly as many references and eyeball-sessions than I did for the last ones.

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.

It should be ok, but the left side of the building is currently at the same depth than the middle part. I suppose you want to place it back (which means down in this case) a few pixels so that it is at the same depth than the left part.

[heavily]

Is anybody else heavily reminded of Metal Slug as well? I mean heavily.

Thanks for your vote, Rap4Life42o.

I really don't want to appear as a party-pisser, but I don't really think that it makes sense to vote if you couldn't test out both entries, Rocco. I personally don't care too much about the outcome of this contest and know that "participating" is everything and not winning, but since this is a contest with voting, we should keep it fair.

And you are the only one that can't get the module to work, there's pretty obviously no problem with my code, it's more likely to be a bug somewhere in AGS or your system configuration and beyond my possibility to fix.

Still, I appreciate your interest in this competition and that you tried both modules out and voted here, not a lot of people do this. So, no reason to take this personal or anything, this just my opinion on this matter.

I thought Mark Lovegrove'd be enough love.

For east, west and south this should work:

Code: ags

character[MELT].Say ( "Drake?" );
character[MELT].Say ( "..." );

// face east
character[MELT].FaceLocation ( character[MELT].x + 10, character[MELT].y );
character[MELT].Say ( "DRAKE!" );

Wait ( 20 );

// face west
character[MELT].FaceLocation ( character[MELT].x - 10, character[MELT].y );
character[MELT].Say ( "Now where did he go?" );

// face south
character[MELT].FaceLocation ( character[MELT].x, character[MELT].y + 10 );
character[MELT].Say ( "..." );

Wait ( 20 );

character[MELT].Say ( "Shit, I have to find him now and the Chief." );

Your question is perfectly fine to be asked in here, I believe!

Ah, now I see.

Well, that's quite complex, but "here goes nothing":

In order to even draw two "heights" of tiles, you probably need layers. This means you first draw the screen full of floor tiles and then you draw the second floor over whereever you want to have a second floor. Now, when you let the player jump as described above, you first check wether he is currently standing on a first floor tile, that has a second floor tile over it. If there is one, then you don't let him jump at all. If there isn't anything in the way, then you move the player as described above, but you keep track of the current jump height with a variable. This one could be 0 whenever the player stands on the floor and for example 15 on the highest point that the player reaches throughout a jump (if the player jump strength is 15). Now you need to let the player walk around on the floor tiles if he is under for example a height of 10 and place him on the second floor if he is above those 10 units.

This would be my approach, I guess. It should possibly work somehow, although I am sure this is not the only and very unlikely the best way of doing this. Good luck!

Put this:

Code: ags

// for example
Display ( "First time" );

into the room's "First time player enters room" function.

Wow, everything was going great. I had more than $500 bucks and cows, barns and still all family members. I bet I was the richest person in the 3rd world -- but then the game told me that I lost everything due to a civil war.

Really, the message is good presented in this game and interesting, but game design-wise the game sucks. It just kills all the fun when you lose everything you can build up after one or two years. I know that the situation is like this there, but still this doesn't make the game good or fun to play.

[EDIT: MashPotato was faster, I am posting anyways...]

I am afraid, your perspective is pretty much wrong.

Take a look:



All those red lines would need to meet in ONE single point. However, the room has a good atmosphere to it and most of the red lines aren't THAT far away from each other - the only thing that is WAY out of perspective is the table in the middle in my opinion. You should change that, the rest is not 100% right, but still okay to look at (perspective-wise).

However, I'd really like to see a tutorial about your drawing style and would be quite interested (and am sure that a lot of others here are interested as well), so don't let that take away motivation. The background looks good and a tutorial would be great!

EDIT: MashPotato was faster, I am posting anyways... 8)

I would advise you to change the limit of 999 pages. If the player would click repeatedly on the "new page" button and then on the "delete page" button, you'd end up having 999 empty text files in the game directoy. And really, who writes 999 pages in the game? Make it 25 or 15 depending on how much information fits on one page.

Or you take it a step further and make the journal system dynamic, which means that the game automatically analyses which files are empty and then when the user creates a new page it will first take an empty file and refill it instead of creating a new one. But that's not easy to do.