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I made this as a submission for the last Background Blitz and am looking for any kind of critique (composition, perspective, color, whatever). It's my first go at coloring on the computer, and I'm pretty happy with it. I suppose that I could clean it up a bit more, but I like this kinda rough look. I didn't know which style I wanted (or could make) for my game before I did this, but I think it more or less established my style.



What I really want to know however is what style of characters you think would work with this sort of background. I was going to do the characters in Poser (going for a The Longest Journey sort of look), because it is so much easier to do the animation once and then rotate the camera for each view angle. But now I'm not so sure. I figure that I could use Poser's sketch style render and then color each frame in photoshop. But I'm not sure it would be worth the trouble.

Thanks,

I figure that I'll keep entering the blitzes as long as my backgrounds can be used in the game that I'm working on (the asylum for rodents, that YakSpit suggested, might be a bit hard to fit in ).

GarageGothic

Do we have to show that the house is haunted, or will you take my word for it? Would an ordinary although somewhat spooky looking house be ok, or is it necessary to have blood running down the walls and ghosts hovering by the front door?

Please don't tell me it's too late to submit the final version of my entry. I worked on it till 3am last night, assuming that 19th was last day to submit. I'm not too familiar with the rules here.

Edit: Just found the rules again in the suggestions thread. I KNEW that I hadn't just miscalculated which day was the 19th, back when I said I wouldn't have time to get online before the deadline.

Anyway, here's the colorized version of my previously posted background. I made two versions, one with the horse shadow and one without. I prefer the one without (less clutter), but now that I see them on a screen brighter than my own, I realize that there are some issues with the framing (no pencil at the very top of the merry-go-round). I think it came out pretty good though. It's my first go at colorizing on computer (I originally wanted to paint by hand, but realized I couldn't get the light bright enough), and I learned a lot making it. Looking forward to the Haunted House blitz.

I know it's not very important, but I figured that it might be easier implemented now that Chris is re-doing the walkable area and regions-thing.

I think it would be really nice to be able to assign some kind of surface material parameter to walkable areas, to allow for different footstep sounds for the character. It might not seem worth the trouble, because few people use footstep sounds in their games. But I think one of the reasons that people refrain from using the synchronization of sound with walking animation is that it usually ends up sounding like the Zak McKracken footsteps. Whatever surface you walk across it's the same thwack-thwach-thwack. It would just have to be a number, maybe you could have 10 different surfaces that you could assign for the whole game. And then you could let that number change whatever sound was being played.

Please don't hit me if it turns out, that this can already be done through scripting. Ok then, go ahead, hit me then, but not too hard, ok?

I hate to post anything unfinished, but I might as well, since I'm not going to get online again before the deadline (with Easter coming up and all). I thought I could finish it at school today, but it turns out they only have Paintshop Pro, not Photoshop  :(

I'm not sure if we're even allowed to post unfinished images in the Background Blitz thread. If not, feel free to move it. I just thought I'd keep it within context of the carnival theme, and I would feel worse not posting anything when I said I would:



I'd love to hear any criticism or advice. It might be difficult to say anything about an unfinished background, but if you have any thoughts about basic stuff like composition and perspective, please do tell.

Edit: You don't have to mention that the hind legs of the horse look kinda funky, I am fully aware of that :)

As for film noir influence, I wanted the merry-go-round to be backlit, so that the horse cast a huge shadow on the boarded up facade. And the fortune telling machine in front would have been almost silhouetted. I didn't really manage to convey that in the pencil drawing - you can't even see that the scene's set at twilight. Most of the inspiration came from Strangers on a Train, which isn't really a film noir (although Hitchcock uses a lot of the same visual effects). I also re-watched the amusement park scenes from The Lady from Shanghai and The Third Man for the atmosphere, but they didn't really add anything.

Sorry that I couldn't contribute with anything real this time,
GarageGothic

Oh my, I was actually going to have a film noir style amusement park in the game I'm currently writing. I didn't intend to create any artwork this early, and I've never participated in a BackGround Blitz yet. But there's a first for everything.

I can't wait to get home and get this started. I know exactly where to look for inspiration.

Edit: By the way, just making sure I'm not reading this wrong: Did you mean a theme park with a film noir theme (like, Disneyland has a fairytale theme or whatever) or just an amusement park drawn in a film noir style? Also (sorry for all the questions, but this being my first time and all), are we allowed to use scanned handdrawn/hand painted art?

Dorcan, thank you so very much. This was exactly what I was looking for. You're the best!

Wow, thanks. That was quick. I'll check it out right away.

Again, thanks a bunch

That would be really cool - if you have time that is
Do you think it would be more difficult writing the actual dialog (when you've got the script for it) than with regular AGS dialog? Or would it be more or less the same? If every conversation needs to be hardcoded it might be too much trouble. When I get to actually producing the game, I'll probably team up with a scripter, but it would be nice if I could input the character's lines by myself without his help.

This is a terrible question, because it's not very specific. I'm not asking for a solution, just: "Can it be done?" and "Would it be really difficult?". But of course any suggestions about how to do it would be appreciated as well

I'm only just getting into AGS and have zero experience with scripting, but I'm learning while I'm writing the design docs for a game which I hope to start developing in a few months. So right now, I'm trying to find out what's possible and not, and make changes to the game design accordingly.

The question is simply: Is it possible to make a Gabriel Knight I style dialog interface in  AGS script? What I mean is a conversation interface without layers, but with new topics popping up in the main menu when you learn about them. And each time you choose a topic, you get a new reply, until the NPC has nothing more to add. I assume the graphical look of the GK dialog screen (faces on black background and the topics in the middle of the screen) is just a matter of setting up the conversation GUI right and then changing background when entering conversation mode?

Sorry for the rather vague question, this is after all my first post

Edit: I found a month-old discussion of the GK interface in the forum, but the thread seems dead now.