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Thanks for that input, Pyke. Is Stasis a completed game where I can see these things in action?

I really want to know what your process is here. The style of the backgrounds is just lovely, and the characters look like they could have been pulled from the best of European BD. Are you hand drawing everything? I notice the way you're handling the joints -- it looks very nice, but I bet facilitates the animation process considerably.

Can't wait to see more!

Part of the idea came from Polar express with the ghost dude.

There's another part of that movie that I really liked, the part where the train has gone too quickly, wrecked, and is skating sideways on thin ice that's cracking underneath it. But in this case, the engineer, by proceeding cautiously and heeding the advice of others, is able to get it on track again. Great scene in that movie.

Hmm...strange. I've got all of those settings, and mine still ditch the alpha channel. I've read somewhere that the problem may be where buttons completely overlap the GUI, which mine do. I'm really using the alpha'd sprites for two reasons: I'm putting them against a background that has both a gradient and a non-uniform texture (I didn't want to go through the hassle [read: was too lazy] of making sure they were all lined up pixel perfect), and because I'd planned to use the buttons in different places (title screen and pause game GUIs).

Now I've changed the design for the latter GUI, and am only using each set of sprites in one place, so it's no longer an issue. But it would probably still be useful to figure out where I went wrong.

I agree, and am glad that Anian could help, because I was obviously talking rubbish!

Looks more like Aidan Quinn to me....

Sorry, I didn't reply to your topic until a couple of hours after I read your post and didn't re-read it.

Hey, that's OK. I hope that response didn't come off as rude, I just meant to say I've thought about this as a best practice and am flummoxed by my inability to come up with a way to make it work.

The SingleCursor module sounds good, I'd go with that. (Actually, I'd code it myself, but if you don't want to, that module should do a fine job.)

You may have noticed from the fact that you, personally, have had to answer two or three questions on programming difficulties that the coding and implementation isn't my strong suit. On one hand, coding my own cursors would probably be a good learning experience. On the other hand, I'm trying to cut as many corners as I can!

As for the cursor, what if you didn't use a talk or interact symbol but just a general indicator that the cursor is above an active hotspot?

I think I'd still like to try cursors that change according to the hotspot they're hovering over. I think in some ways, adventure games are about selling the illusion of immersion, and I think it helps foster the illusion if, even under a two-button system, I'm at least showing the different actions. This might just be a personal view, though.

Word labels might work. There are usability drawbacks, as Narushima notes above. I will have important information in text and dialogue as well, though I suppose these can be translated via the...translate function, whereas the cursors stay static.

Things to think about. I appreciate the conversation here. It's leading me to put a lot of thought into the fundamentals of my game's design.

Is she throwing the knife, or just drawing it? If the former, maybe take a look at some pictures of baseball players throwing the ball (not pitchers, with the wind-up, but infielders).

I have a feeling that there's a way the other arm would move to balance the forward motion of the throwing arm, I suspect drawing up, bending at the elbow and then extending outward. But I've screwed up the ability to figure it out for myself by trying to do it left-handed like your sprite (and now that I'm aware of my left hand, everything I do feels clumsy and awkward!).

Isn't there going to be a massive problem when someone solves the puzzle and posts the solution online? - You don't have to look at it, but someone in your group might, and then they'd spoil it for everyone else.

The best way to do an MMO-Pn'C like this is if you ran it Alternate Reality Game-style, where the gameplay takes place once, during a specific period of time. In a lot of ways ARGs are essentially adventure games brought into the real world anyway. Seems like it would be expensive to run a video game like this, though, as ARGs have the benefit of utilizing extant media to tell their stories across.

However, I've seen what the Scandinavians can get up to with their roleplaying games, and if anyone can pull it off....

EDIT: Nevermind. Once I figured out that it was an alpha channel issue, I was able to turn up several forum topics about it, most helpful being
this one, I guess, which I think says this won't work?

Back to the ol' drawin' board!

***



Above is a combination of two screenshots from the same compile of a game. The same sprites are being called in each shot. On the left, the sprites are applied to buttons. On the right, to objects in a room (in this case, a sample title screen). Is there a reason why the quality differs so wildly between the two? Is there anyway to make these sprites look better as buttons?

Below is a sample of the sprite. Probably not very visible, because it's white text on a png with an alpha channel, but I thought I'd share in case the answer somehow lay there.

If you haven't started actually building your game yet, you might want to think about a different interface altogether. I myself prefer a two-button-interface, the sierra cursors always kind of annoy me because seldom are they actually made proper use of.

I am actually intending to do this, after reading Vince Twelve's WYGIB essays (and the discussions that followed). I haven't played Beneath a Steel Sky, but in Broken Sword, even under the two-button system, there are multiple cursors depending on the object/hotspot over which you're hovering. I guess these don't include 'walk,' though -- I'm thinking of the that denotes room exits (which is yet another use of the hand). I find these morphing cursors helpful in knowing what to expect when I click on the object at hand.

While I have you here, there are a couple of module options for this style of cursor system. Do you use either of these, or have another system?

SingleCursor 1.0
Control Modes (BASS, SCUMM, Sierra All in One module)

And useless actions should give appropriate responses.

This is actually what I see as the major drawback to the two-cursor system. I intend to do something more than play-testing (which is mostly a sort of bug-checking process, correct?), and more like the usability testing I do for web design. I want to sit in the same room with some of the players, watching them as they play, asking them to think aloud about their decision making processes, not guiding them, but letting them explain to me why, for instance, they chose to try to combine two objects, or why they thought a solution to a puzzle might work.

This would give me a chance to create numerous responses, or even rethink the solutions I'm providing for some puzzles. A two-cursor system cuts down on this a little, though, for the purposes of actually getting around to one day publishing a game, this might be beneficial.

To answer the actual question, why not design the cursor with respect to what the game is about? A wrench is an obvious choice for a mechanic, for instance.

Well, like I said above, I'm having trouble coming up with something this specific. There are no real defining tools for my PC's profession -- he's a steward, and the tasks/puzzles he faces as part of his job are disparate and varied. I'll keep thinking on it though! Thanks for the ideas.

This is a great sprite. Hats off to you, sir;) The only problem you will encounter is that when you'll find that you need to animate this gigolo a hundred times over to make him interact with environment and other characters, you will likely get really really tired... It seems like a task for Disney's 20 finest animators, not one man alone. My advice- simplify. It might seem like a bad idea if you're just starting, but trust me- by the room 35 you will be cursing all that cell-shading goodness...

I've been contemplating the same thing, and trying to figure out ways that I can cut corners. I have my Illustrator file set up in layers based on the walk template that I made before, but I think for the next time, especially now that I have the colors and line weights worked out, I'm going to try to segment the body, so make a standard torso for front/rear views, and draw the limbs around it.

It is surprising, but drawing this version took me significantly less time than trying to do the pixel version. Part of it was that I had the base already made, but part of it too is that I have a lot of experience drawing lines, and not as much finessing tiny dots. I'm definitely dropping the shading too, which will cut down on some time, and I plan on doing a very primitive style of rotoscoping / trace-overs for some if not most of the animations. I've got a nice little face modeling program so I can have consistency of skull shape across my movements and phoneme animations, and that will help as well.

This is a one-man operation, and my priority list goes something like: raise a baby, finish a dissertation, find a job, buy the groceries, etc. etc., and way down on the list is make a game. But I'm having a lot of fun so far!

My point of view is that a classic, puzzle-solving point-n-click is unsuitable for multiplayer for obvious reasons, unless people were to do it Gobliiins style where people join one of the rooms, then start solving it together at the same time.

I was going to say, I usually play adventure games multi-player. Some weekends, I queue up a LEC or Broken Sword game on the PC connected to the big screen TV, and my wife and I tackle the tasks in tandem. She and I have different ways of thinking, so we each approach problem solving differently. We have a rule about consulting a walkthrough only once per session, and usually only when we're really, really frustrated.

We've been going through Broken Sword 2 most nights this week, and we get in a decent amount of playing time between putting the baby back to sleep / feedings. And we occasionally talk out puzzles when we're at the grocery store. It's pretty fun.

That's the secret, isn't it. Low perspective with minimum verticals.
I will have to remember that if I ever finish this project and get to start a new one.

If nothing else, I've learned this just in time to start on my own project, and so thank you for my knowledge gained.

I like how economically you portray the different emotions in the portraits. Also, the shift of the eyeline in the face when he's stretching works well.

I would lift up and angle the pec lines for the stretch pose. When you raise your arms up like that, your pectorals go from sort of looking like squares (or, if you're getting older and fatter like me, rounded rectangles) to flattened triangles when you reach up like that, because of how the muscles are connected to the shoulders. Look at this:



I might also lift the shirt's hem line a little, and add some wrinkles from the point that the shirt gathers (would probably be like a half loop starting at each of the shoulders).

Watch out for your skintones staying the same on that last edit. I like the high deep hairline revealed by the profile shot.

I've been giving some thought to cursors over the past few days, and while ideas are obvious and abundant for actions like 'look,' 'walk,' and 'talk,' I'm less enthusiastic about the options I've come up with for the 'use'/'interact' cursor.

Part of the problem is that while each of the other actions has a single body part associated with them, e.g. I'm not, in this game, going to have a 'wink,' 'kick,' or 'eat' cursor, the hand shares time with the action for 'pick up.'

I know there are standard other icons--the turning wrench, the spinning gear--but my character isn't a mechanic, and this feels somewhat inauthentic. But I'm hard-pressed to figure out something in-character for him that would be simple enough to use as an icon.

So I thought I'd start a conversation here about this specific quandary, and maybe cursors in general. How do you approach creating them for your own games, and what successful examples have you seen in other games (pictures of actual usage are a plus)?

EDIT: Though I thought I'd adequately searched everywhere for pre-existing conversations, here's a related earlier discussion about interact cursors. This one can be more open than the pointed question of that topic, though.

Hey everybody. Hope you're busy working on composing those tunes!

Wanted to bump to point out the submission date, which I just added. Thanks!

I think he looks great. I take it you'll  give him 4 directions?

Thank you. Four is L/R/U/D? I plan to do at least those. I'm not sure I have my head around diagonal motions yet (nor, really, up and down, to be honest), but I might should start considering it if I'm going to do any backgrounds, I guess? How horrible does it look when L/R are used for diagonal walking?

By the way, there will always be a point where you have to make a quality/time compromise. It helps keeping your spirits up.

Thanks for this too. Right now, I'm able to balance the newness of animation with drawing some backgrounds, learning a little programming, making some music, and developing puzzles. I'm the proto-typical Gemini who serially abandons projects once I've figured them out completely, so dealing with so many different media and new concepts is good for me.

I think I may abandon the cel-shading on the sprite. I did a simple reverse in the game in the room I'd made and realized that the shadows won't always be, unless I'm really tight with it, consistent with the light sources in the backgrounds. I'm looking at the Journey of Iesir preview art, and their sprites are flat colored with little detriment to the character's appearance against the backgrounds. So perhaps I don't need the shadows to make the character look life-like.

Then again, neither my sprite nor my backgrounds are up to the standard that they've set, so...more questions to consider!

At what level is your dissertation being written? I'm currently doing a Ph.D. and my dissertation also deals with narrative (digital revival of folkloric communities). My comps covered some articles that might be of interest to you, if you're interested in theory. I'd be glad to send you a bibliography if you think it'd be helpful....