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Fixed the hand and a handful of other things. Made new things to fix.

In tightening up the arms, I've lost some of the wild spaghetti arm floppiness that I was going for, which makes the one frame with the not-humanly-possible angle stand out. I still need to lower the hump on the shoulder in that same frame, and I need to get my shadows tighter by laying the frames overtop each other, instead of in a strip, to be more consistent as the sprite moves.

I think I might let this be for now and move on to some other aspect of making the game, before I get too bogged down. When I started this thread, all I wanted to do was prove to myself that it was possible, and as I noted before, I think I've done that.

Now I might move on to testing some GUIs or something before considering fixing this sprite / making the other views. Otherwise, I will wind up with one really nice looking sprite and...that might be all.

This looks so awesome! The "imperfections" you mention make it even more charming; it's clearly a hand-made, cool look. Can't wait to play it!

Couldn't agree more with this. This looks beautiful!

fiddled around a bit and have made another version.

Looks good! That pocket square is the bee's knees.

So my guess is they will try and use SCUMM again.

One of Schafer's video answers during his Reddit session yesterday led me to believe that they would steer clear of SCUMM. But the actual question involved SCUMMVM, so maybe I read too much into it.

Plus the hand that is closer to the viewer kind of rotates for no reason

You're right on this one. I got it right in the pixel version, inasmuch as you can tell what those hands are doing. I'll dig up some more hand reference and fix that when I do the handful of other corrections I need to do.

Thanks!

Some flickering around the shoulder where I need to tighten up the linework, I need to be more consistent with his tie/dress shirt area, and the pin on his chest jumps in one frame. I think I might need one more frame of movement just before the up step too, as it's a bit jerky.

Still, I don't want to toot my own horn, but I think this is damned good considering I hadn't done this two weeks ago. Don't worry, though, I'm sure working on the front/back walking sprite will kill any feeling of accomplishment I have at this point!

I've included an updated sprite in the original post.

I admit that I did think it was a tuxedo. I still think the blazer could be further lengthened, to look more blazer-ish. I'd also lower the pockets a bit, carry one lapel over the other, and add some buttons. I hope you don't mind that I took a few minutes to poke around at your image:




You could easily do a three-button suit by splitting the difference between pixels, but it doesn't read as well:



Hope you find this helpful and not intrusive!

Well, here's a cold reading of the character. If I get it wrong, don't hate me!

He's secure enough to let himself go grey, combed back from a neat widow's peak. No smile present. Dark glasses. Red tie with a neutral suit? That's the definition of a power tie. And a pocket square to match the shirt. A serious, calculating fellow.

Thanks, selmiak! Lost Horizon it is. I forgot that bit of the plot.

I'm not sure, but I just googled "adventure game tiger indian village" and found this which sounded close enough.

This game was ten minutes of my life that I'll be disappointed to account for come judgment day. But thanks anyway!

[March]

In honor of the month, and because I'm trying to work on one myself, the theme I've chosen for this round of the Tune Contest is "March."

That's march as in John Phillip Sousa, as in Mendelssohn's bridal processional, as in Darth Vader AND Indiana Jones' theme music, as in "Pomp and Circumstance," as in the theme song to "Mickey Mouse Club," as in "Colonel Bogey" (the whistling theme from Bridge on the River Kwai), as in Mozart's "Turkish Rondo," as in "Entry Of The Gladiators" and pretty much every circus song there ever was. There are a lot different ways to go with this.

To set the bar as low as possible, here's a chunk of what I'm working on. As you can hear, it's still very bare bones, and I could really use the inspiration:

The Up Ship! March

Deadline for submissions is March 26!

I found out this week that I'm horrible at pixel art, so take these comments with a grain of salt.

First of all, because I'm a novice, it took me forever to figure out that the thing floating about his shoulder is just your palette, and not part of the sprite. Stupid me. But the palette is what stands out to me on this. I like that you're sticking mostly to one neutral color range, with the pop of red from his tie. Tim Gunn would approve.

At the smallest level, I wonder if the color of brown you're using for the detail might need to be slightly darker. I have a harder time reading some of the finer features at that size. I might just need new glasses though.

The best thing is, now that I've seen this guy, just in this one image, I feel like I know some things about him, and I want to know more. That, to me, is a sign of a good sprite.

Keystone Chase by Eric!

Ha, well done...except this response was due on the first of March, not the first of April.

Are you serious? Wow...I don't know what to say. Thanks so much. And thanks for running the competition, as I otherwise would probably not have composed this piece, nor thought about its potential in my game-in-progress.

As nice as it is to be validated, I think everyone else did a much better job than me! I enjoyed listening to all of your pieces!

So...how does this work now? Is it like the background competition where I choose the next month's theme?

EDIT: Something like this in the room script

That works like a charm. Thanks very much!

I have a room with a mirror, a tiny room, in which I have a hole cut in a walk-behind through which the mirror character appears. I've put together code from a few sources on the forums, condensed, because my walk area is so small I don't really need to do extensive measuring from the bottom of the mirror to make the effect work (you can see a picture of the room in an image at the bottom of this thread).

Here's what I have:

function room_RepExec()
{
cFelixReflection.x=player.x+35;
cFelixReflection.y=player.y-20;

cFelixReflection.Frame = player.Frame;
 int l = player.Loop;
 if (l == 0 || l == 3) l = 3 - l;
 cFelixReflection.Loop = l;
}

I also have some objects in the room, for instance, a set of drawers, that the player walks to before opening, so:

player.Walk(oFelixDrawer1.X,oFelixDrawer1.Y,eBlock,eWalkableAreas)

When I interact with the drawer, the player walks to it as I'd hoped for. Unfortunately, the mirror character does not, and creepily stands there before disappearing once the drawer is opened. Any suggestions on getting mirror man to follow?

As you can see above, made some more progress while the forums were down!

I especially like the second one. Nice melody, well orchestrated. What's your process for creation?

Trying to recall an adventure game where one of the puzzles involved keeping a tiger away from an Indian village. Can't remember much more than that one scene. This is perhaps a game where there's a palace hidden in a tall rock formation in the middle of a nearby lake, or I may be conflating two games.

Anyone know what I'm talking about?

I really like the sketched look of the pants. What seems to stand out to me is his more pixelled-looking upper half.

I think maybe the issue here is that they're slightly mismatched in style. I really like the pixelized head, and the torso and arms seem to match it. Also, the pants/legs took me about eight times longer than anything else, and so I'm probably always going to hate them.

if his back foot was sliding, then he would be SHUFFLING. I think it looks fantastic. Very fluent, ver unique walkcycle.

Thank you guys so much for the compliments and support. I think I've proven to myself at this point that I can do it, so now I suppose I should start thinking about making a short game. Last night, I whipped up a quick background and started practicing with the programming language:



I was stumped on what to really do, because I just wanted to mess with the code, so looking at each of the portholes gave a track name, and using them played one of four songs I've been working on lately. It took a lot of Googling "site:adventuregamestudio.co.uk '(name of function I don't completely understand)' (general idea of I want to do with it)," but I got things working eventually.

Before progressing, I also sort of want to try doing a version of this sprite that starts in Illustrator as well, where I feel my art style is on less shaky ground (and taking as an inspiration the sprites seen in this thread), but there are a number of things I want to fix about this one too. Lots of pondering to do about my next step.

In any case, thanks again for the encouragement and criticism!

EDITED IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT TO ADD:

So I went ahead and tried working in Illustrator, and I like the results. With the caveat that I still have to redo the head and add some of the details, here's a comparison:



What do I lose from going the new route? Does the sprite lose its charm (this might have to remain to be seen until after I redo the head)? Will the animation be less smooth? Do I lose that nostalgic feeling?

What do I gain? Does it look better, or am I crazy?

Beautiful! Thank you!

[EDITED LATER IN THE EVENING TO ADD]

Another try. I'm not very good at pixel art, I'm discovering. Especially on the pants.

I fixed the issue with the hands by realizing that I was drawing a cycle that was twice what it should be for my leg motion.

Then, I matched the wrong arm motion to the leg motion, and had to move everything around. Thank god for layers.

I forgot to adjust the tie in the second row for when the torso turns toward the camera (player?), so there's a weird shoulder shimmy.

Thanks again everyone for your guidance. It's not the best, but, like I said, at the start of this week, I'd never really animated anything, much less a walk cycle, so I'm happy with my progress.

EDITED LATER IN THE EVENING TO ADD:

Learned a very, very important lesson, I think. Started a test game, made a very basic room, trying to start learning the AGS system. The lesson is this: smudging the edges is a horrible substitute for anti-aliasing by hand, and renders sprites useless!

AND A SECOND EDIT:

...Learned a second lesson. If I use 32-bit true-color, I can use alpha channels, which makes everything OK again, I think?