Messages

Much easier: http://www.gimp.org

Click Downloads and choose the required version (OS, source or binary version).

Tip: To draw straight lines, do the following:
- User the pencil tool
- click somewhere
- press and hold shift
- click somewhere else

You now have a straight line. Also works with eraser tool and probably some others as well.

To draw circles etc, use the circle selector tool to make your circle, choose Edit -> Pencil (or what's it called) and it draws the shape of your selection.

It's a bit quirky to use but it's quite a useful, powerful program. Good luck using it!

I partially agree with Evil's point (and others' as well), walking around with a chicken with a pulley in the middle for most of the game seems rather pointless (nevermind about the staple remover!). But using only items from the same room makes puzzles too easy. Challenge the player a bit instead. So long as the combination of objects is sensible (not "use staple remover on wax lips") it's OK to walk around for the whole game with an object before you use it. Especially if you design the game such that the player will ALWAYS get the item. E.g. you need a map to get from LA to NY, it's in a desk drawer: as you open the drawer/take the map, character says "I'll take this pen as well, I might need it."

Another option is to use more dialogue puzzles and fewer inventory puzzles. And there are more options if you think outside the box sufficiently.

Example: I walk around with a credit card all the time, but I hardly ever use it*. So long as I have it with me when I need to use it

* So if anyone was in doubt about my gender, this should quench all doubts!

I know of a site where you can host up to 100MB, but it's not permanent:

- At most 7 days
- At most a certain amount of downloads

(whichever comes first)

But it might help getting your data to other users without using snail mail

www.yousendit.com

The transition from field-with-house to mountains-in-background is odd. As if the field rises up sharply, but there's nothing in the field itself to suggest that. Especially the house makes the field look as if it's horizontal, not sloping up towards the back.

Hope this makes sense.

You want lava? Indy's got lava!

http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/indiana-jones-and-the-fate-of-atlantis/screenshots/gameShotId,24010/

http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/indiana-jones-and-the-fate-of-atlantis/screenshots/gameShotId,24011/

The style is completely different but it might give you some clues. Good luck!

Here's my first entry, and my first sprite ever. Please be kind! Made with The Gimp after I dismissed ArtGem for being too counter-intuitive (amongst other things) and Painter Essentials 2 for being downright useless (to be kind) for pixel art. At least the Wacom tablet comes in handy!

13 colours (14, including background)
100 x 100 pixels


2x as big:


The vicious man-eating seaweed settles at great depths on the ocean floor. It has to since if it would live near the beach, it would not survive the first ebb. Say what you will about Darwin but at least he got some essentials right!

The seaweed catches it's prey by hypnotizing it, luring him within reach of it's sharp tentacle fangs before proceeding to rip the poor fella to shreds.

The seaweed also hopes feverishly that evolution (or the graphics artist) will give it a mouth to ingest it's prey through, or Darwin'll catch up with it pretty darn quick after all.

- The path is not straight in front of the door, as you walk out of the shop it veers to the right.
- The grass and path could use a tad more detailing, But don't overdo it, you're almost there.
- For some reason the lighted and shadowed colours of the building seem a bit weird to me. "Pale" might eb the right word. Maybe that's what you want for a magic shop though.

Apart from this:  :o Wowza! (but that's been said before  )

Can I borrow some of your talent?

I know it's wrong to say / do this, but the term "buy the games" sticks in my mind when I read this.

But that's been discussed until everyone was blue in the face, so many times now...

also that (still unfinished)how doi go away from shop without paying for sword in MI1?

Uku, hint 1:

Spoiler

You have to pay for the sword. Get some money.

[close]

Hint 2:

Spoiler

You can get a job in the forest. Explore the map, wander through the forest.

[close]

Hint3:

Spoiler

Work for the circus. You'll need to solve some more puzzles but this earns you money to buy the sword.

[close]

My least fav puzzles are when you die if you slip up (like the vine/cloud land in KQ1VGA), unlogical ones and when you have to go back in the game to solve a puzzle. In SQ4 maybe I messed up, but I could get away from the SQ12 derelict city without some necessary items; in the mall you could buy one adapter out of many, but you would only know which one you needed if you were near the end of the game.

I absolutely loved the almost-last puzzles in SQ4 on the computer console in the maze, though:

Spoiler

Drag robots into recycling and robots are gone.
Drag brain into recycling bin and you die.
Drag disk into recycling bin and the game quits to DOS so fast you can't even blink your eyes!

Annoying if you didn't save, but very funny nonetheless!

[close]

Oh and the FOA darkroom puzzle as funny, I didn't find it a hindrance because of the @overhotspot@ feature of their GUI. Damn I miss FOA, I have the disks but I've lost one! Me wanna play again!

I think you should add some more instruments. Now you're playing one instrument, this stops and the next comes along, this stops and the first instrument takes over again. Instead of drums and basslines, maybe you could add some background noises. The scene you describe would benefit from faint wooshing noises etc, like the wind sweeping over the deserted landscape.

I'd "soften" the outlines.  Just change the colour some. It might look better in it's background but now it seems to stand out too much.

Other than that I have no comments to add, looks nifty!

Hmmm thinking about WME. I might want to look into it as a development tool. It's so much better, much more modern...

Why doesn't it work? What error messages do you get?

maybe you could try something like this for more detail:

I like this, it's much more like a character now than like a blob of orange. Maybe reshape the helmet a bit, it looks a bit tall and bulbous now.

The best thing is, no colours were added so the pallette hasn't changed.

would anyone care for some home made gui's??Ã, 

I personally will be using the MI2.7 GUI for my (intended) project, but by all means do it. After all, the MI2.7 GUI is also a homemade GUI  even though it's graphically and functionally ripped off of the LEC games... If you make something functional and useful, people could at least use it to make their own versions with different graphics.

I say go for it!

* He needs feet.
* The 3rd frame is the only one where his legs show any z-order perspective. Also the rest of the body needs more shading. Where's his left arm?
* Make the backpack stand off his back, instead of being ust a brown piece of cloth sewn to his space suit.
* His helmet now looks as if it's one with the suit; instead, make it look as if he can take it off. After all, he needs _any_ way of getting into and out of the suit!

It looks nice but to make it look good, you might have to study space suit detailing a bit more. Maybe the www.nasa.gov or www.esa.org (what the Euro Space Agency's website's exact URL?) websites can give you good pics to show some detailing, shading etc.

BTW come to think of it, maybe some patches to show which country/agency he's from might help. I believe most astronauts have their national or organisational flags patched onto their suits.

We moved to Summertime (is that DST, or is that "normal" time in English?) this weekend.

How peculiar that this isn't a worldwide standard. Then again I know that not every US state uses DST, never mind about the rest of the world.

I like these! Very good looking, congrats. Still, a few more comments:

- The 8 is too big. Make it smaller, or make a plaque with small illegible script on it, then when the player Looks at it, Geoff will say "This house is number 8".
- Maybe make a few seams on the wall (show the mortar between the stones). To break up a large surface. It's already shaded/gradiented but it's still a large flat surface. Well that's the nature of walls, but you get the idea
- How many people live there? 3 very different curtains in what looks like 2 rooms, is a bit odd.  I do like how the middle one looks like it's really behind the glass. (ie it's vague) But unify the style a bit.
- The fence posts are dancing up and down. If you want to elevate some of the off the ground, use a way to indicate this: either use shadows from the lamp post light (the shadow does not start at the base of the elevated posts) or draw how the posts are in the ground. (eg put some grass or pebbles around it)

With a fairly small effort you can turn a good BG into a great BG! Oh and good title screen too!

If you make scrollabel backgrounds, perhaps you shouldn't use any perspective, at least not on the horizontal plane. Look at the MI1 start screen (before you enter the city), it's a long scrolling image so every house is painted without perspective.

BTW even though this isn't exactly my style (I'd have used more gradients and softer colours), this does look very cool indeed. Brighten/soften the shadow and it's very nice indeed. Maybe work on the grass a bit, it seems somewhat unnatural. It's the same throughout the field of depth and that doesn't work, you loose detail when you look further away. The tree does look very good though.

I'm not sure if it describes "one with nature" but I recognize some form of Japanese oboe, which is a cool instrument for water sounds. Here are some points of criticism:

- It's too rushed, slow it down. Nature won't run away you know!
- Soften the attack and decay (note). It's very on-off now. The decay is not so important (elongating it would make it very reverbed sounding, and very messy) but the attack should be smoother. Ie let the notes flow in.
- Make the notes flow smoothly over into one another. Don't leave (incoherent) gaps between them.
- Timing! It seems to be way off at some parts (example is at about 0:15)

It seems very gloomy and foreboding, if that's what you were after then you've obviously succeeded! I like the way you've arranged it, and the way it develops (in so far as possible for a 0:30 piece). But I strongly suggest that you take the above suggestions to heart because it might not be very enjoyable to listen to after half an hour of puzzling. I do feel that you're on the right track.

(note) A better approach might be to use short notes with very long decay, instead of long ones without any decay as you do now. More like an acoustic instrument, a piano or a guitar where you hammer/pluck a string, then let it ring out.