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I'd try to make your two major elements bigger: the logo and the girl on the unicorn. I admittedly don't know KQ, but I feel as though the mountain behind her likely isn't as important, and yet takes up almost half of your composition's center. I'd zoom in on the girl, maybe even letting the unicorn horn break the plane of the circle, letting us see the background elements over her shoulders instead of above her (and I'd desaturate the colors in the castle to match the mountain).

In addition, I would spread the KQ logo until the red ribbon was almost touching the outer edges of your picture.

You may be correct that this image is too busy. You could get rid of some elements, but I think you could also work with the saturation of colors so that all of the secondary images aren't competing for our attention.

All in all, though, I like what you're doing with this art, and the game. I will probably be inspired to make your game my first sojourn into the world of KQ.

I'll likely be throwing it up onto Kickstarter soon to get some funding for proper voice acting

Please retain the services of your daughter. Even with your note, her voice still took me delightfully by surprise in the demo.

Looking forward to poking around the update, probably later tomorrow!

AH. That is actually quite useful, I think. I'll use that method with my next set of sprites. Thank you!

It also helped to realize I only needed to animate one leg, and that I could mirror and slightly adjust for the other. Made things much better.

Then I got stricken with strep throat, along with my baby son, and haven't made any more headway. I'll try to get this sprite worked out by the end of the week. I think it's the only one that I'll need all eight directions for. Everyone else pretty much appears in one room, and can be shown in three views. I'll make their heads and uniforms symmetrical too, so I'll only have to draw two views!

I think that should get me at least part of the way there, Calin, and definitely helps me get a better hold on the syntax needed to get this done. Thanks!

And thanks for your advice too, kyodai. I always forget about audio channels. I definitely want the ambient sounds to play alongside this. I just don't want it going off in the middle of a round of dialogue or something!

I tried to figure out a more descriptive title for this thread, but it kept being too long to be functional. Apologies for the vagueness.

Two questions:

1. I'm in the process of trying to design my game, and am wondering how difficult it would be to utilize audio that is:

• Pulled from a random pool of OGG files,
  
• Played at random times, provided no other sounds are playing,
  
• Played only in certain rooms,
  
• And with a pool that can grow or contract according to player action (using boolean variables).
  

I believe from looking through the manual that I could figure out how to do most of these individually, but might perhaps run into trouble trying to write a stack of code that meets all of the above qualifications. I don't need the code yet, as I'm still just figuring out the design document. All I need to know now is, is this feasible, and how difficult would it be to pull off?

If it proves too difficult, now is the time to figure out alternatives. I'm trying to save myself some headache in advance. I've left the above purposefully generic. If you need further clarification on how I intend to use this in-game, see below:

Spoiler

My game is set aboard what is essentially a docked ship. The PC can roam the ship and the port where it's docked. I'm looking to implement an onboard announcement system (thus the limit to only certain rooms, those on the ship), that would provide ambiance, hints (e.g. "A reminder to all personnel that _required_item_ can be found in the bursar's office." -- I'd want to remove these once that task was completed), and feedback for player actions ("Would all crewmembers please refrain from setting passengers on fire?" -- I'd want to add these according to player actions: e.g. if (SetPassengerOnFire == true)).

The random, continual nature of the announcements would, as I said, add to the ambiance, but would also allow me to seamlessly introduce specific announcements at specific times without the break in immersion that a sudden playing of audio might cause.

I still don't feel as though I'm explaining this very well. Let me know if you kind folk need clarification.

[close]

2. Could I save some file space in the compiled game by reducing the bitrate of OGG files that purposefully sound lo-fi, and will mixed bitrates cause any problems in AGS?

I feel as though based on past experience, I should thank Khris in advance, but anyone who has thoughts or advice, feel free to respond.

Maybe part of his problem is that a number of these sites have recently changed the way they work. For instance, I have used ImageShack for at least five years, but they changed the way they do things, post MegaUpload shutdown. I was going to use Photobucket, but didn't want to have to register and login for the types of one-off stuff I was uploading, and Post Image never worked correctly with forums for some reason.

Now I'm using PicValley.net when I need to upload random, mostly temporary images.

>SAY "Alright, let's walk and talk. Let's get a look at this walkway. Why don't you take me to it? And tell me your name while you're at it."

Wish us luck!

Good luck! I'm seven months into your future, awake at all hours with a boy cutting his first teeth. Enjoy any sleep you can get now because it only goes downhill!

On the other hand, I'm loving every second of it too. I wouldn't trade my boy for anything, his mere presence enriches my life so much.

Challenge for next poster: post a movie that is liked by more than 30% of the people who see it

I liked Royal Flash!

Royal Flash?

And we have a winner!

Not Caligula! Dan is surprisingly close with one of his guesses.

You guys, why not just say you have amnesia? Would make life alot easier.

Well, my thought process was that if I were in a terrorist takeover situation, someone whom I strongly suspected to be a terrorist told me they didn't know if they were or not because they had amnesia, and I was holding a gun, I probably would kneecap them just to be safe. I certainly wouldn't be inclined to trust or help them.

Here's a pretty easy one that I watched last night:

ugh, you guys seem to be hell bent on making things worse on yourselves rather than better by alienating this guy who already thinks you're moderately crazy.

Moderately crazy? Apparently wherever we go, someone shows up five minutes beforehand and kills everyone. I'm incredibly surprised this guy is even talking to us.

I agree with you though. My suggestion above was intended to hint at a common goal for the two of us, which might prompt him to divulge information to our amnesiac PC without us having to directly ask for it. But thinking about it, I think our next step should actually be to ask him his name, which would humanize our interactions (If only we had a name of our own to offer in return. I vote that our alias should be Maurice Micklewhite).

@Eric - You are barking up the right tree, but I need a title :-)

I've taken a scan through Lopez's IMDB listing, and it seems like the best candidate is Enough?

I might follow up with:

>SAY Whoever you think I am, I'm not. Listen, I was able to get through on Newell's computer to the main facility. I think I talked to Emma, but I can't be sure. Things got hectic. She gave me instructions to seal the dome, but then the bullets started flying on her end too.

Is it the one where Jennifer Lopez is the battered woman who learns Tae Kwan Do?

for me it looks a bit weird. The knees are too low.

Thanks for the crit, Lad. I'm afraid I'm too far along to change his knee-height now, and his legs are on-model for the way I'm drawing him in other (non-game) places.

I think part of what's throwing people off about this sprite is that his face is too realistic. He's much more of a cartoon character. The face that's there is sort of a placeholder until I can figure out how best to transfer my drawing style to the screen and have it mesh with other graphics in the game (I've had several failures at this already -- my drawing style is more reminiscent of the European "ligne claire" artists, somewhere between Herge and Floc'h [but not nearly as talented]). I'm not eager to hand-draw everything, but I'll want the faces to look right.

Unless you mean the same thing as Tabata, whose message I've just seen for the first time. Hmm...I see what you mean about the knees in the front view. I might have to change it some of the below 3/4 views as well? I can't tell right now, I've been staring at them too long tonight already!

I hope you all don't mind me continuing to dump process pics / maybe progress if we're being kind into this thread. Thank you all for reading and supplying suggestions. Here is, again, a very rough frame work for what I believe should get me all eight views for a player character sprite. Now I'm going to start looking at these in transparent layers, cleaning up the sketchiness of the lines and smoothing the 'tweens.

I'm probably not even a third of the way into the game and I've already enjoyed it thoroughly. But the real reason I'm posting is to let you know that I genuinely answered, "Noko noko," to a question today without thinking about it beforehand. Your game has affected the speech centers of my brain.

[> Go down and open door to S.BAY by using id-card(s)]

> Go down and open door to S.BAY by using id-card(s)
Oblivious to the fact that the mans can't hear you, you brandis your set of three (3) ID-cards

(Emphasis mine)

WHAM / the game might also be arguing semantics with us. Because it's not the ID card we need to use, but the S.Bay keycard. We're explicitly seeing that we used three ID cards here, but that wouldn't include the separate key card.

But then, if that's the case, we could argue semantics back at him/it. Because him/it says (again, emphasis mine):

You apply all three keycards

Just in case, I'm pulling an audible:

>USE S.BAY KEYCARD ON S.BAY DOOR

Oh, and:

you brandis your set

I choose to believe this wasn't a typo and that WHAM has tricked us into playing a Seaquest DSV fangame.