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Ashen is lying. MrColossal's avatar never animated, and no were ever looped therein.

Last month there were three that I didn't finish: 1213 ep. 3, The Family Treasure and Santa's Sidekick.

So wait, the month before that, did you finish Gladiator Quest, then? I don't think you did. I think you ran it, walked around for 30 seconds, saw it's a text-parser game and quit.  The game doesn't take place in a Roman prison either, it's the protagonist that is Roman. On his way back home he is captured by some barbaric borderland raiders and put to a warlord's private arena. This all is explained in the game's very first text message. I know you didn't play the game not to completition, but even for 5 minutes because you would have noticed and mentioned in your review that the game has extensive battle sequences (with which you'd have understandable trouble, they're pretty difficult).

Factual accuracy, or lack thereof, in reviews says a lot. It might be your 'personal opinion' that GQ takes place in a roman prison, and as such I can't contest your right to have it, just like it might be your 'personal opinion' that The Family Treasure is broken, and I can't contest your right to have that opinion either. I can however, question the validity of such claims as I am now. I urge you to be more careful when you play the games, give them some time to develop and keep your attitude fresh. This approach will fall flat on most ags games because simply, they're bad and they don't need anything of the type. But the few that do, will benefit. Otherwise you're not doing a service to the people that read your columns, because they're not approaching the one or two AGS games they'll pick to play with the tiredness and time-constraint-induced pressure you seem to have on your shoulders. Simply said: ags games should not have to win you over from the handicap that reviewing so many games understandably creates, because this handicap doesn't exist in your target audience.

I found it funny at first that you thought GQ was a remake of an old c64 game, but now I understand it is because you're probably not looking at the games you play critically enough. You've had to play so many bad or completely uninteresting AGS games, I guess your receptory capacity to them has understandably thinned, but you gotta fight that. I'm not sure anybody needs a review that says very little about the game, contains factual innacurances and is two phrases long. It slips from 'review' to 'just mentioning this exists and I tried it, guys.' I for one, don't care for the latter sort of journalism in the scene.

Yes, we decided to use that name just so we can preempt them if they ever have a gathering. This was a running joke during the meet.

Good luck, Caine. Post when you have new stuff and if you want my help.

I dunno if words really help much, but here's the thing about colour palettes, conservation and mixing. Copy/pasted from a reply about the same topic in Pixelopolis about how


was made

http://www.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs092/VA10/HTML/GoethesTriangle.html

this thing above is real fun, I suggest you use it.

Now, it's still guesswork for me, but there are basic rules. I lack deep technical knowledge, but generally I avoid too much saturation in natural surfaces, ultra saturation is for plastic colour and human made reflectives, of which I don't draw much anyway. So as long as you keep saturation low, you pick a hue, any hue well whatever hue you think will make a good base. Let's say we're making a human face. A desaturated dry flesh tone will do. From there, we consider the lightsource tint. Lightsources have tints. daylight is bright yellow and reflective blues and what have you. Therefore we start making the shades go towards the yellow highlight we need. The darker shades should complement the yellow with the opposite colour in the colourwheel, in this case, purple. So darker shades mean less saturation, and towards purple. Lighter shades, more saturation (naturally, but don't overdo it). That's pretty basic, and I've done the purple-flesh-yellow skin ramp for spritework for the last 3 years or something. However, here I have 16 shades, which is way more than I'd need for modest purple-flesh-yellows. so what do I do with intermediate shades? I decide to represent other parts of the colourwheel, do near neighbour tints. Now, this is a bit guesswork and a bit 'lol let's see how much we can cram into this thing lol!' but not as much as you'd think. For example, I selected mid-range pinks/oranges because I knew I'd need them for where the flesh is pink with sanguine humour so to speak, and greens because I wanted that sort of zombie thing going on. So when you have a few primary tints, and a few secondary tints, you try to bridge from one shade to the next, the fine art of minmaxing lightness/constrast/hue to have a servicable ramp. for example, when I entered the first orange on the cheek in step 3 after pep suggested oranges, I just selected the colour below (a blue shade) and shifted the hue to orange to see how it looks. However, this is not a finalized shade. For this shade to be used for maximal effect, it has to NOT be the same lightness and saturation as the shade below it, it needs to be lighter, or darker, even if it's by a little bit ( you can get shades to work with eachother even if they're 10 or 20 lightness apart if you tweak the saturation. It's really hit and miss here ) so it becomes part of the RAMP, not just an alternate tint to be used only here and there. My focus is on using all the colours everywhere, at this time in my pixel art path, therefore unifying the palette is no1 priority on any piece for me. This creates, however, baroque-ish and monochromatic pieces. everything just melts into itself, a wonderful flurry of colours. This is the effect I want, but others prefer segmented colours and more game-arty things. Look at the three blick coloured pieces by myself, tomi and pep. Look how Tomi made it into a game sprite, with 3 ramps ( blue, red, green ) pep applied his special stylistics with the bright but unified palette, and mine is sorta monochromatic, every colour everywhere...

hope the rambling helps. If you need any clarifications, ask.

another post from Pix about colour theory, this time discussing the TRVE MASTERS OF NEBULAR FROST piece:

I don't think there's any tinting way early in the process here, is there? Post which history step you mean if you want something specific. When dealing with demoscene artwork, I make my colour ramps estimating what tints I'll be using beforehand and then adjust each shade until it meshes considerably in my mind. Way early this is all the one flesh ramp until I'm satisfied with the volumetrics. The corpsepaint face of course called for a pure grayscale ramp, and the hair and leather for blues and reds. So 64 colours. When I had my ramps, I somewhat intuitively started testing tints on places ( like the collarbones which I REALLY love as they came out ) and some stuff just makes sense ( like the tint on the shoulder from the resonant blue behind the hair ). Other stuff are just there to be there. I like mixing everything with everything. Pure ramps look boring to me.

Craig Mullins is talking about things I probably wouldn't understand for the life of me I guess, but from my limited ability and experience I can too tell that as long as you properly minmax the saturation and lightness of a shade, you can do pretty freaking big jumps in hue from shade to shade and it will look very well. Look at a recent edit I did for faceless' avatar for hue jumps in a single ramp. There's theory behind the hue shifts most of the time, but since pixel art allows for such minute control at any level in creating the piece, one sometimes just goes crazy and experiments with the HSL sliders on a shade, 1 bit at a time

Generally though, the theory is that you tint towards the colour of the lightsource ( blueish yellow in sunlight I guess ) and towards complementary shades in darkness. Skin strangely adds saturation in darkness in places where the skin is thin and light subsurface scatters through, but it goes towards more muted unsaturated purple darks where it is thick and oily. In pixel art, and this is more of the way I learnt to pixel from studying amiga-era artists, I usually forget proper theory when I tint art. I like to unify my palette for the piece, everything everywhere, and I like to keep the main colour of the piece as 'ambient'. It's there, but it's not THERE and THERE but not THERE. It's the general colour. Otherwise I like to use otherworldly lightsources, tints and smearings that while not realistic, suit the pixel art aesthetic I've developed over the years.

The computer is not a tool for simple reproduction of representational art like actual painting can be (amongst other things). It has it's own aesthetic. There is an aesthetic in the method. You can accentuate the aesthetic by making the method more visible in the art. Computer art, video-game art, pixel art. These things have special charges that need to be understood and to an extent exploredfor me to respect the produced art as within a new medium in itself. In that respect then, I pixel in colour schemes and stylistics I've picked up from amiga art, because clear 'reality'-based colour theory doesn't accentuate the pixel art method for me. Also, I sometimes texture using squares, or my structures ( not as in this piece ) accentuate the vertical and horisontal grids, generally giving the feel of squares, doublewide pixels, etc etc. Pixel art isn't just drawing in another way.

about green tint in flesh: I think I was trying to unify that end of the ramp with the pure gray ramp I use to tint that under the nipple for example for later when I would collapse the two ramps so as to save shades at the optimization stage. But the sickly green suits his oily flesh, no? What else would probably work would be as sick burned pink, but it would need a lot of juggling to balance it now if I changed it.


crab2selout: of course dither brushes were used. Also darken/lighten modes, some smearing around the head hmm what else...

no that's about it.

This is now 12 colours. You know about your anatomy thing, right? Extremely small head, long legs? Not my type of thing, but each to his own. Otherwise, you're not using your palette very smartly. A colour can be used in many places, this saves up both colours and time when you animate.

haha, why do you say?

Dude don't go too far with the self-flagellation. I don't need your apology, I wasn't insulted in any way. You called jozef an idiot and that's the only thing I believe warrants an apology. You did go too far with your complaint, and it grew wearisome but now you seem to understand this, so I don't see what's left to say. Good. Onwards.

What's wrong with the bass? Are the bass notes inaudiable? This is strange 'cause it's probably one of the most bass-heavy tracks I've done, distorted bass and contrabass coupling at places... are you listening on headphones or speakers?

I played his Mags game, and it's hell of a lot better than my own first-game-has-to-be-pirate-themed Crown of Gold. I didn't have any problem with the said puzzle that caused stuckage for jozef. The dipped ale crow rope puzzle was pure illogic, though.

Personally, I found it quite playable, on the whole. I didn't encounter any showstopper bugs, I didn't have to look at any walkthroughs, I didn't get stuck for more than 1 minute or 2 at places (solved the crow rope puzzle by mistake, though) Then again, it's the first ags game I try since Life of D. Duck, and before that, the orow3 games. I don't play every game released, so I can give one of them a fresh look once in a while, and this one won me over. I think jozef may be hurting his own endeavour by playing all the games released, for 3 minutes each.

A review is a buch of comments in the row. You're evading the argument by what you're saying. You object to a comment in a review. What makes you think the reviewer should change it because of this? It's one thing to discuss the validity of a comment or a full review (go post a comment in his blog if you like, as he said you could) and one thing to demand the comment to be taken out. Come on, now.

Who is being stupid? Do not insult people. Handle this calmly.

I want to apologize to all the welsh if they're missing their goats.

I'm sorry, I think you're being needlessly argumentative.

How does this relate to Jozef?

Quite directly. A reviewer reviews stuff, he should be careful with the distinction outlined above.

Because he wrote something on his blog

Because he has taken it upon him to play all these freeware games and share his reviews of them with the community, yes, he should take care of what he says and how valid it is. This is not an unreasonable request. By strawman-ing this, "some guy wrote on his blog", you neglect the specifics of the issue.

means that now everyone who gets stuck in a game has to call the game personally unplayable?

No. It means that Jozef should perhaps consider what is actually broken/unplayable, and what simply proved to be a challenge for him to solve. If there's bad puzzle design, cool, that's critique. If it's actually broken, cool, that's critique, fix it. If he just got stuck early and gave up, that's neither broken, nor bad puzzle (yet).

He said that he tried to do exactly what people on these forums said to do to pass the first screen and it still didn't work.

Fuzz mentioned on irc that it might actually be a bug. An actual bug. If this is the case that a bug exists, then the broken/unplayable thing is very valid! Is it, though? And I agree that when you know what you have to do and the game seems to resist that's usually bad game design. But bad game design isn't the same as unplayable game design.

I agree that buloght should take it easy, stop asking for the comment to be removed because life doesn't work that way.

I disagree that 'personally unplayable' conveys what you and snarky are saying it conveys. I understand how someone would take offense to 'unplayable' and not to 'I didn't like it'. Even if both are admittedly subjective views, the first seems to imply that the problems encountered were problems of design, whereas the latter can mean a lot of things, usually that the game is well done but didn't suit one's fancy.

The review says 'a lot of people say this is a good game' and then 'for this and that reason I found it personally unplayable'. The fact of the matter is, the problem which rendered the game 'personally unplayable' for jozef, was getting stuck in a puzzle. If -especially before the internet- that counted to make adventure games personally unplayable, then I guess me getting stuck on a Fate of Atlantis puzzle for A FULL MONTH would make the game quite 'personally unplayable', right?

Whereas I understand all the points you guys are making and generally I agree, I do not think you can pretty up the world 'unplayable' from a point and onwards. It's not the same as saying 'this game, personally, I found it to not be my cup of tea'. I don't see the need to twist words around. Unplayable, personally or not, means the game is significantly broken in ways that PROBABLY will annoy or confuse most users. This is an unsaid assumption that is very easy to make. Should jozef have the right to say this or that game is broken? Sure, I'm not saying any different. But the discussion of whether it actually is broken is warranted as well.

Buloght, please calm down, don't blow this out of proportion. There's no conspiracy against you. You can't ask someone to take down a review of your game just because you are hurt by it, it doesn't work this way. You're free to disagree with his review as much as he's free to write it and post it.  I haven't played your game but I hear it IS playable and it is good, but that doesn't mean someone can't disagree.


Jozef: No I'm not kidding, the readme was part of the 'theme' me and ghormak went for. We were trying to capture the ambience of an old c64 game, that sort of thing.

Now, I know that you play a boatload of these free adventure games every month, and you can't afford to dig deep in each and every one, but what I see is that maybe you should make more of an effort on the investigation side of the review. The games aren't made in a vacuum, so if they're orow games, that should be mentioned, if they're 'theme' games, that should be mentioned. If you disregard that aspect of reviewing, what you're left with is 'I played this, it was ok/bad/great/unplayable' which I guess IS a needed service to people who want to play the 'good' AGS games out of the pile and trust your opinion, but the issue is, do you want your reviews to be just that, or do you want to give constructive criticism back to the creators, and also inform the readers of more specific traits of the games? There's fine lines, and boy, do you have a workload on your hands that concern them.

If you find yourself pressured for time and you have to play an ags game to test it, don't. That's not a good mindset to sit down with an adventure game, you will quickly grow impatient at first stuckage and might rush to conclusions about how 'playable' it is. If you're trying to give your readers an unbiased opinion of the merits of these games, give them a fresh chance, every one of them. I'm not saying it's easy, but it's the honest thing to do.

Haha Jozef, are you carrying the Gladiator Quest joke, or did you really fall for it? Glad to read your reviews, happy you liked Caverns!

Do not buy a $1500 cabinet.

Oh yeah I guess reverse-discrimination should be mentioned: when the women of the forum post inane bullshit or are overtly ignorant and opinionated about it, everybody seems to cut them slack just because they exist and they'd rather that than risk sausagefest.

Hello. I listened to your song. First of all the guitar sound is very fuzzed out in a bad way. Second, it's too up on the mix, let the drums breathe. The drum programming is minimal right now, do you plan to mix it up any? The distorted part is simple and not interesting to my ears but that's a matter of taste.

The emotional part, dude, where's the speed? SPEED EQUALS EMOTION! Jokes aside, I prefer this part of the song a lot. Then the distorted guitar comes back and all I can think is modern 'nu' metal... again, no accounting for tastes.

There's a million things you're going to learn on your own about mixing guitar and home recording, but if I can hurry you on the way, cool. Aquire, or 'aquire' Native Instruments Guitar Rig. Buy a very good distortion pedal. Go from distortion into Guitar rig and tweak until the full sound works. This takes a lot of tweaking but you can get pretty warm and realistic guitar distortion that way. Don't trust GR to do it on it's own though, you'll need the distortion pedal still. Maybe next version of GR it'll have realistic distortion on it's own. Read up on equalizing guitar signal. you don't need a lot of middle frequences, and you have to shave off both treble and bass to make room in the mix for other instruments. It's important to realize that guitars are tonally very flat instruments that generally suck without equalizing. A guitar is only part of the mix, there's going to be other stuff in there too so it not only matters that the guitar sounds good on it's own, it matters how it sounds in context. This is also very much a matter of levels. Too quiet guitars and they wash out and sound feeble, too loud and they overpower the whole mix and while as a guitarist you might go 'YEAH AWESOME! GUITAR SOLO!!!' you'll later realize this isn't really a good idea.

A guitar, or rhythm guitar combo, without bass for support, will ALWAYS sound weak unless some sound engineer does studio magic. The bass still has a place in the mix. Either record stuff on guitar and transpose them 12 semitones down, or get a bass as well. You will never hear your guitars as you envision them without the bass for support. Same goes for the kickdrum. Every metal band you've heard which you love, every 'crushing' guitar palm mute is coupled in the bass and in the kickdrum, it's no accident, it's tried and true.