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True! It should also be playable at that resolution

So yeah, it seems the undithered version is a better choice for practical reasons. For one, I think I've already given people headaches with my puzzles, don't need to graphics to help me there  And secondly - if I were to advertise it anywhere, the dithering would be most likely messed up by compression algorithms (either by whatever twitter does or just generally jpg butchering the image sharpness).

Thanks I most definitely will! In fact these past few years of me not making new games since Magenta (back in 2015) were very much about making music videos instead - also using AGS. Because that's just how I roll You can see them on my YouTube channel.

And here's my opus magnum!

Fair enough I do like to take creative risks. Another route of my experimentations is optimization. How can I make things smaller, lighter on the system - or less time consuming for me I do recognize here the artistic goal defeats the practical purpose bc the dithering is extra work - so I might indeed cut that if I decide to make these animated.
I don't mind being the resident weirdo One thing I do regret is alienating gamers with weird gameplay. Not sure this will turn into a game. I've talked with a buddy running an 80's/synthwave music channel on YT about making this into short pixely music videos. Which might work! I'm a storyteller firsrt and foremost, and I love these characters - so whatever form or medium I can use to unleash them upon the world will be fine

It is the perfect exercise in futility: computers don't need EGA - and neither do people. Most gamers are sick of VGA as it is. But me, I'm fascinated with artistic minimalism & the resemblance between dithering and primitive color printing techniques. It's just fun - even if it's fun just for me.

You thought my last game, The Unprintable Magenta looked ugly? Can't blame ya



Well, you've seen NOTHING yet! Hi-res is a thing of the past. VGA? Meh! Let's turn the resolution down low. WAY DOWN! Chunky Atari gfx style!



Orrrr... Let's get really freaky & fake lo-res by resizing the image - and THEN coloring it using EGA palette! With some crude dithering!



What do you guys think? Is this too much? How does the dithering look on your current display? Is it smooth/just slightly fuzzy with pixels clearly visible - or are there any weird artifacts/interpolation?

Also, what resolution should I go for? With the smaller versions barely over 40px tall, I think can safely go for faux 180px height (scaled 4x to work under in 1280x720px screen resolution) - but I might even try 120px & see how that works. Haven't decided on the type of gameplay yet, either - the taller ones being more suitable for a regular point&click & the smaller ones would work better in, say, a platformer. Also wondering about fonts: pixelated vs classic computer font?

Either way, i'm definitely having fun with the dithering, trying to get more color out of EGA. Yes, I'm weird - and proud of it!

That was just one of many bovine puns in there. There were much moooooo brands briefly/barely visible in the "haute cowture" segment as well as the TV channels, later on. Had tons of fun with that, and actually had to leave a lot of ideas out for lack of time/space in the video.

And there it is: a new video I mentioned in the post above:

I was listening to this song by Here On Mars on one hot, sunny day & started slowly dozing off. Then this dream vision of a blue cow with orange patches against a red Martian sky hit me. That's when I knew it has to become a video. Originally I planned it to be just a series of static images of cows grazing, repeating and progressively turning more and more psychedelic. But the song is just so clever and insightful that I had to do more than that to do it justice. I tried to reference the lyrics in creative ways - with cows at the center of the metaphors. The result is six minutes of complete madness that might only make sense to me

Look at how far you've gotten with your podcast! From chatting with the little ol' me to interviewing to your idol! In under 20 episodes! The big question now is: who do you interview NOW?! Hm... Rutger Hauer? Keanu Reeves? The digitized consciousness of Stephen Hawking?

Holy heck! Dude! In two posts you've reached a critical mass of awesomess that might trigger a singularity!

I'm going to miss Dysmaton, it was a cool title - but the merger will definitely make Neofeud 2 that more awesome.

And an interview with Gibson? How did that happen?!

Thanks

Selmiak: Haven't really calculated, but I generally consider them fairly simple: firsr I do lineart in vector graphics using Inkscape, then convert them to bitmaps and color them in GIMP. Most of the time I was too lazy to take out my tablet & I did most of it with a mouse. I wanted to take it easy with this project, as opposed to my previous video. The whole video took about 4 weeks, 4 days a week, to make - including the computer crisis, the resulting depression, then finally re-doing the first minute of it in AGS. All in all, took MUCH longer & was way harder than anticipated - but still I'm happy to have gotten it done, really needed that.

Already preparing for another project - this time using a 4-color palette similar to that from Gray!

Took me a while to get back into the swing of things - but I'm back with a new video made in AGS:

The song by the talented singer/songwriter/pianist Jennifer Doll nudged me in just the direction I'd been wanting to go: to do something cartoony and weird, silly and dark at the same time. Think Tim Burton meets Amanita Design. It also gave me the inspiration to keep going with these little, simple videos I make in AGS. I was actually originally making this one in Open Shot Video Editor - but when you have a 7 year old computer, playing with video editing software is more dangerous than juggling bricks of uranium. So after the damn thing started spazzing and almost fried my CPU, I went back and re-assembled the video in AGS. Oh, the things you can do with dynamic sprites and some tricky coding. Suffice it to say that there's barely any frame-by-frame animation - except the rolling paper ball, because I was lazy. Everything else - characters extending arms, the falling droplet, the leaf, the chewing caterpillar's head - is rotated/resized in real time by code. It seems I also figured out the code for character jumping (with the slow deceleration in mid-air and getting pulled down by Earth's gravity). Wish I actually knew the first thing about designing platformers because I could totally make one now

I've rushed into that 50% off trap with MOHO Debut last year. My bad. They'll brag about how Pro supports 4K - but they won't tell you outright that for some inexplicable reason the Debut version limits exported videos to 480p. Are you friggin kidding me?! I've only done a small animation with it before abandoning it completely. Also, it seems like they have these 50% off discounts every other week. No thanks! Might trick me once...

there's always a little voice in the back of my head saying that no one will be interested.

Oh, sounds so dreadfully familiar (except I usuallly listen & give up, and you're actually getting stuff done!)

Keep up the good work. The world needs more crazy, colorful adventure games.

Also, the red-haired fella makes me think of Brian Posehn.

I've always loved the water f/x, but man, these lava f/x...

There's a similar archaism in Polish, which is my native language: odrodny (adj) - meaning someone who lost traits typical for a certain group/family. The prefix "od-" signifies something getting away/distanced from something else, "rod" being the root of the word "rodzina/ród" (family/clan). The suffix "-ny" is a typpical adjective suffix, while the "-ek" (also very typical in Polish), signifies a diminutive form in nouns, and is often meant to be derogatory.

At first sight, judging by the word's morphology, it looked to me like a Czech word -- and indeed there is an interpretation that it is a distorted/misspelled "odrodek" - "one without roots". But said interpretation goes further and seeks to make a point there's something German in there, too -- which I'm personally not convinced by.

Neat! Loving all the magenta and indigo. A very useful lesson, too, for someone who's not very good with backgrounds.

Man, the game looks incredible! The character design, animation, the backgrounds, it all just oozes style and atmosphere. And those flickering reflections in the last image!

I just love the new minigame graphics! Reminds me of my own first attempts at art on my C64.

And I was SO disappointed they didn't feature you on Polskie Gry Video's series on games from PGA.

You're welcome One other thing you'll need to consider when making sophisticated cutscenes within AGS -- especially if they're supposed to run in sync with music -- is that people will run your game on different specs, and very often the graphics, especially in higher resolutions or when screen-captured without compression (on programs like FRAPS), will lag, thus ruining the desired effect. So while it's perfectly feasible to make cutscenes in-engine, it's probably best to screen-grab them, upload them to the project and play them as videos.