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If you've seen the thread where I was previously sharing art stuff, you'll know that I was having a bit of a crisis trying to reconcile the cartoony style that I wanted for my game with the semi-realism that was coming from stringent frameworks for animation, background art perspective, etc.

Some time this week, I realized that one of the solutions might be temporarily setting aside the cartoonish game and going with the semi-realistic flow. So that's what I'm messing about with now. I've still been making walk sprites mostly. This is a main character, and I'm experimenting with making different walks based on his mood (I'm also going through Richard Williams' animation book). This is my favorite so far (except for the hands, which I need to do from scratch -- I copied these over from an old image -- and the pants legs, which need a little more bounce), the tough-guy-girding-up-the-loins-to-head-into-battle-walk.



I'm still taking a break from sharing most things, but I didn't want June to pass without participating in this thread one more time.

Never give up!  Never surrender!  (By Grabthar's Hammer, what a savings!)

An underrated classic. Enrico Colantoni is especially good in that one.

Hey â€" to all the Mc Gyvers of you:
Is it possible to use those small handles from the metal cans to repair a fuse? 

To answer the question, though, of course it is. All you have to do is use the metal to complete the circuit. What fuses provide is safety. The actual conductivity would depend on whether it's actual tin, or if WHAM/the game is using the colloquial "tin cans" to mean aluminum (I think the latter is more conductive). No need to be MacGyver. Poor folk do this a lot (except then their houses burn down).

P.S. Guess who's probably freaking out and/or dead from lack of oxygen right now?

Spoiler

Emma.

[close]

To be precise, it's "and the gold of."

"e" = "and" in Italian
"y" = "and" in Spanish
"et" = "and" French

All pronounced the same, based on the Latin "et."

As a merkin?

You could visit the top of the Empire State building, the Statue of Liberty.

Going to the top of the Empire State Building is fun, but really expensive. It's one of those do-it-once-in-your-life sorts of things. I don't advocate actually going up in the Statue of Liberty though. The much cheaper (free) option is to take the Staten Island ferry, which goes by the statue and gives a beautiful view.

OH! And as far as lodging goes -- skip the hostel, and seek out a sub-let. Lots of folks will lend out their spare bedroom for the night for a tiny amount of money, comparatively. http://www.airbnb.com/ is a good website to start with, because they have reviews, and a search that will let you limit by check-in/check-out dates.

Thanks for your comment, FritoMaster (Like the corn chips? If so, I might be able to challenge your masterdom. I too am a connoisseur.).

I've figured out what's off about the walk model for Felix, who is intended to have a cartoonish strut. The arm movements match (actually, they're not nearly as extreme) as the sorts of cycles I was drawing influence from, but the rest of the body does not move in the appropriately cartoonish way.

This is because I was influenced by a common walk cycle called the double bounce, of which, as you might guess, the double bounce is the essential part. Coincidentally, that's the part I've left out.

It's also the reason why I haven't checked in with a new walk cycle in awhile -- I'm redoing these again, and I think I'm moving to hand-drawing everything now that my lightbox and scanner are working. Unless I win the lottery and get a Cintiq sometime soon, hand drawn animation will be much quicker for me. This time I'm going to add the double bounce, and slightly more cartoonish anatomy (the way I'm drawing the character when he's not moving in other media).

Here's an example of a double bounce cycle:



...Perhaps that looks "gay" or "mentally retarded" to some of the more crass users here, but I honestly couldn't give less of a f#*k.

Yeah, I'm just going to ignore that. Feel free to not post in this thread any more.

No one's shared any music in the thread so far (unless I've looked over something), so I thought I might share some things I've been working on. I'm doing demos by creating my sheet music in a program called Guitar Pro, which exports horrible-sounding MIDIs, which, when run through a program called GXSCC, makes really neat sounding 8-bit tunes.

My end goal is not to use the 8-bit tunes, but to record actual versions of the songs with real instruments. I've done a real instrument demo of one of the songs, but I'll share the NES-style versions first:

The Grand Tour (you may recognize this one as an entry in the tunes contest -- it was called 'Keystone Chase' there).

Port Cumulus Rag - This version has a click track, but won't in the real version. This will be a single guitar played in the style of Etta Baker with perhaps a jug bass accompaniment. Here's a PDF of the sheet music & tablature if you'd like to play along at home.

AQ Theme - This is the main theme song for my game / my future transmedia empire. Two verses with lyrics with an instrumental section in between. No vocals on either this version or the one below. I'm not sharing the lyrics either, suckers.

AQ Theme (real instruments) - Here's a demo of the AQ theme with actual instruments. The guitar plays the melody for the lyrics during the verse, and some improvisational soloing during the instrumental bit (though I transcribed the improvising for the above version, and now it's what I play every time). In the final version, I'd love to replace this guitar with a clarinet (and different music, naturally, as the clarinet is a single-note instrument), but I don't know any clarinetists. Any clarinetists out there in AGS land with access to decent recording equipment?

I've got some other tracks I've been noodling with. I'll try to transcribe them before the end of the month and share some versions here.

I wish you'd have played more than five minutes, m0ds, as I'm stuck in the game and could use a little nudge.

Still got three more days, right? I'll have something in by then.

What Eric probably means, or at least what I do - put a piece of paper (I use regular printer paper) on the surface, I even tape it slightly.

Yep, this is what I meant. I used drafting dots to hold mine down. I don't so much anymore, because I eventually got use to the smoothness of the Wacom.

I've just kicked in a little too. Thanks for listing Screen 7 as the payee. I'm not sure the wife would like Kinky Island showing up on the credit card bill!

P.S.: I didn't say it before. I'm using a quite small Wacom CTE-440 at the moment. I'd like to "upgrade" with a Wacom Intuos5 but at the moment I'd like to get better with this one, first.

I too use one of the little Wacoms (mine's the CTE-430), but my dreaming goes a step further than yours. I play the lottery every so often with specific hopes of being able to afford a Cintiq.

Do you have any issues with the tablet itself? I did a few things early on that helped me get used to it, like putting an index card down to have some texture when using the stylus.

There is a radio in that room, when the power is back on, it could be handy to have her there. Or we may need to use it to talk to her.

Given our experience so far, I believe we will be able to use the radio to tune in to hear Emma getting shot.

You are really dumb, do you think programming is everything? Art can lives without numbers luckily... are you the creator of AGS? If no, just shut up and try to give some help instead. A game is made by a team, which means that each one have a skill, you can't do all by yourself. This means that maybe you are good at coding, but a really rookie with graphic. Seriously, I'm not that beginner you may suppose, and btw if I want I can do a complete game by myself in 1 week.

Take a deep breath and think about how you're approaching this conversation. The creator of AGS isn't around to answer your questions. Khris is. But the questions you're asking are very, very basic things that are covered in the manual, in the YouTube tutorials, and in the PDF by densming, all of which we gave you links to in the other thread. Your game isn't going to be made in one week if you're not consulting the manual, I guarantee you.

What you need to do is slow down, go through the manual, see what the program does, what it's capable of. I know you're champing at the bit to get your game started, but you'll be better off if you start incrementally. Start a game that's not even close to the one you want to make. Build a room. Make a character. Make an object. Make a walkable area. Make some walk-behinds. Program some interactions. Pretty soon, you'll get the hang of it. You'll be able to draw a distinction between questions that are forum-worthy, and questions that are easily found in the manual (oh, and questions that have already been answered and can be found via forum search).

Don't wear out your welcome here by attacking someone who just won an award for helping beginners with coding issues. Especially if you're looking to build a team. Art can live without numbers, but without the numbers (the programming), it's just going to sit there and not be a game.

> As the two of you you head you the door for the maintenance room level 2, apologize for going through pockets by trying to get her to see how crazy a day it has been for you, amnesiac in the midst of a terrorist situation, not knowing who to trust. (Also, inquire as to whether Mike made it.)

With all of the classic creators coming out with new work, I thought I'd point out one more who's doing so -- only it isn't an adventure game, it's the new Pixar movie. I was watching the latest trailer for the film Brave, and saw the name of Steve Purcell (of Sam n' Max fame) listed as both a writer and a co-director.

I'd seen him in the credits of Cars, but that seemed like a relatively minor contribution. This seems like a bigger deal, and the movie looks well done, so I wanted to point it out to any Purcell fans here. Here's a teaser excerpt. Film's out June 22.

The two halves don't seem to line up properly, at least not to me, until I traced the lines with my cursor. There's some weird illusion going on that makes me perceive the right half as going further down than the left half.

!!! Super horrible tangent there. Wow. I wouldn't have noticed if you hadn't pointed it out, but that's horrible.

I'll mess around with the outlines some over the next week and see if I can't figure out a best practice. Thanks for the input, Yoke!

Yeah, sorry. That was not the best way to describe the scenario. But as you said, it works much better than I would have imagined. I guess I hereby withdraw my support for a z-order function.