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Less politically correct I say! More adult audience (and I don't really mean porn here)!
KGB is most serious, and therefore best - adventure game, ever.

if you mean 'attempting to tackle mature and difficult issues (such as racism, drugs and the rest)' then I don't think adventure games are really the best way to address those kind of things.

Adventure games are more or less interactive novels. Why couldn't be content as various as in novels?
A story is a story. A book is a book. There could be anything written there. How is adventure game SO different?
And what could be BETTER way to address "those kind of things"?! A RPG or shooter or fighter where immense is broken when player delivers his attention to stats or equipment or damage bars instead of diving into plot?
Or... what else? I really don't understand this. What could ever work better than adventure genre?

All we get is one kids' game after another. Or a horror game that's still too childish. Blood & gore doesn't make things mature, despite what rating givers say. Ideas do.

About news and wiki: This is simply personal preference. Games could be about ALL kind of things, crossing nothing out because "there's too much of it on tv". It's more like your pick which mood you like in your game. I personally would trade one "tv-thing" call of duty 4 for hundreds of other non-modern-setting games. Simply because I saw MP5 submachine gun on TV, never really held one, and plasma blasters & rocket launchers of other games simply leave me bored. Some people DO like reality.

And keeping drugs/etc in or out of the game... Honestly, I don't give a shit. I leave parenting (and choosing games for kids) to actual parents and would be really happy if they'd keep the f**k out of video game making, in return. I decide what I put into my game, and if someone sees it dangerous, well, don't play it.

Nice idea, though Roger's font (yeh, the overused default font) kind of blends into long unreadable mess for me. Keep sentences shorter! I can't help it and maybe it's just me, but red text over black background makes my eyes hurt really bad.

Also, how to exit this besides alt-x? I think I saw some kind of options/quit? gui but other gui was totally covering it, or atleast presumed quit button...

EDIT: Ah, upper gui is visible too. But the things that opens with ESC key should really be INFRONT of the learning gui.

Hapland series and Escape from Rhetundo Island

http://foon.co.uk/farcade/

I totally know a game like you described...
I totally can't remember a title... maybe later.

EDIT: Oh yes I do now

You had to shoot slingshot at things near pac-man to make him notice them, etc.

The thing is that on Vista you might not have permission to write to the game folder, so if Winsetup provided that option it could confuse people if it then failed to work.

Hmm... Is there a way for AGS to detect operating system? Like, AGS was smart enough to decide by itself where to save?

No.

Liked NES game tough.

Other than that, the only thing that bugs me is this transperency technique, I'm just not entirely sure what you mean by it. Do you mean that I'm supposed to highlight certain areas in the picture, or am I missing the point here?

If you clicked link I gave you, you should already know what I use if for: To easily simulate light. I'm no making anything brighter, but some areas darker.

Now, if you detail your BG, with this tech you can quickly apply darkness to areas that are not-so detailed thus bringing attention to areas that are. And, of course, make lights. I simply showed easy way to do this. Your goal is to make player believe that this is a magnificent, superdetailed background. You can either make it so (and never finish your game ) or use some simple tricks to give existing details more influence. Which I call detail faking and of which you have a little lecture now, from my combined posts.

[no]

Your problems and my point about angle start with car. To draw car here, correct angle would show very much car roof.

Warehouse angle isn't that noticeable, but when you draw the car, this is what would kick this background out of balance. Car angle would enforce alot of room perspective into this. My suggestion, try to get car's angle as straight as possible to "minimize the damage", but still believable. You cannot really show only side of a car, but before doing hard work, experiment with sketch car as much as possible to show as little of roof as possible. The point of this is to support side view of a character, let background and character sprites work and support each other!

Also, best scaling is no scaling. Always. When drawing a background, this is my first priority. Second one is when there is scaling, only down. Scaling character bigger is worse than making him smaller. Remember this too.

I used ArtGem! to do what I did, and in AG!, it really takes so little time to make adjustments like this. That's why I never moved to photoshop as my drawing skills got better.

[MUCH]

My suggestion: since your BG is still very simple and city in background can be salvaged and reused due zero perspective:

Make a new one.
With MUCH less ground area.

Why is 80% of your background simply ground?
How do you imagine using character here?
How much scaling would he need to walk there? On low res, how ugly it would look?
At so deep angle, is typical horizontal side view even believable, or would we see more of the top of the character from viewpoint like this?
Isn't ground simply boring thing to watch or draw?

Newbies always have rooms with floors wiiide and tall.
I never understood why, but I know for sure it simply isn't practical. Especially when making AGS game.

You have nice style though. Detail faking through monochromatic noise is really good idea, but noise should be faking the viewer, not stick into eyes.

So, use much less noise, only enough to make viewer think that the wall is made of many colors and not one. It makes an illusion of highly detailed wall, if used properly. The ground had just about enough noise, but only noise wouldn't be enough yet, use soft brush and darken processor to make areas of concrete lighter and darker, you could go quite random with this -- and still get excellent result.

EDIT: Also, to be less a whiner and more help, I made you a quick edit on detail(faking).
This is how I used my own suggestion in previous paragraph:


2X:


And it didn't take longer than about 15-20 minutes. If I had layers of everything here, it would been only five.

See how noise only HELPS to make soft brushes appear to be more diffused and distorted, but doesn't stick out so much, for example, on asphalt, it's hard to notice noise instantly, you have to look to see this. That's how you can use soft fuzzy brushes and still have pixellated look. Plus, it makes things appear a bit more detailed than simple soft brush could...

If you'd reveal software you used to make this, and like my version, I could give you a tip or two how to reproduce this.

Of course, Inkoddi's colored version looks much, much better. I suggest to go with his color scheme here. It's just the ground that is too plain, too large, and therefore forces you to pump out heavy amount of details... which is painful. If there was less ground, you could save up alot of hard work and have much more detail with smaller effort. Just look at your city skyline: A bunch of black rectangles, few yellow pixels and the far area looks WAY more detailed than main scene. Seeing a hint here?

Then again, this background COULD be saved by having big, uber-detailed car covering up most of the ground, a manhole where car couldn't save the boredom and some boxes or bums (or both) infront of the rightmost wall, add some graffiti where wall is still visible, also a large tag over garage door, some streetlights and parked cars behind the fence and some wires onto left wall to cover higher areas where bums or boxes wouldn't help and graffiti would be too high to be believable. This is how I would do.

EDIT2: Simple darkness filtering seems to help alot too, on limiting boring areas into less visiblity...


2X:


First, I removed a bit of reds and greens from image and darkened it to get bluish night light.

Then,
I basically covered whole image with layer of black color, reduced its opacity to 15% so it won't make everything black, but only darker, and then removed black from city skyline, and cut transparent areas into black layer in foreground area, mainly on the road where tire tracks are, and smaller "holes" near lighter areas of fence. Read more about this technique here...

It somewhat makes player look into lighter area where action is, and other boring areas are not so noticeable. Adding a bit of glow with soft brush to buildings will distract a bit too and makes detailed part of the image (skyline) more noticeable. But this BG still needs some real detail. Faking and distracting simply multiplies it.

Gimp... is awful. How do I put this-- it has great features, it's free and everything, but user interface is in some weird way even worse than Photoshop - overused program, which I consider most uninspiring, creativity-killing inspiration drainer ever.

But I don't think that program choice is what your problem, really. But as always, I suggest my personal favourite: Artgem. For description, it's like MSPaint with everything you've ever imagined it should have, layers, processors, filters etc. Only without confusion, killer menus and headache like PS or Gimp has. (crack included, but not sold/made anymore, therefore legal)

See, style isn't a pick. If you're an experienced artist, you could try to make work or two in some other "style", but we very rarely actually see something like that. Style is your handwriting, the way you do things. And the way that improves with every drawing. Every experienced artist here has it's own way of doing things, If I see a sprite made by well-known AGSer, I could usually guess who made this.

Style comes as your drawing skills evolve. You don't really pick it.
If you go ahead and start drawing your first "serious" sprite, you usually seek for some reference, such as photo or other sprite from somewhere.  And how your version turns out WILL be pretty much your style, it just gets better over time. Even if you make something overly basic and faceless, and post up for crits, then people adjust it according to their style and the edit you pick to keep/redo will still be your style later. You won't make faceless art anymore, you try to make next ones as this one. Logical?

This isn't 100% so by some unwritten law, but more like how things usually go.

Much of your sprite art is also decided by your background art. You can't really imagine Indiana Jones sprite in the DOTT mansion, right?

My suggestion: decide what you need and make it. If you need a dark, serious sprite, find reference and draw it. After first one, next ones keep getting better and easier to do, and need less reference or help. In three words - just start drawing. Everything else will just turn out by itself.

Loominous edit - as we could expect from best lighting/shadow expert at AGS Critics Lounge AFAIK - looks very realistic to me.

But maybe too realistic, though. Like those newer 3D shooters, where everything is either yellow of blue... and it's a bless to play a game with real colors after those...

I personally prefer colorful, magical look that original had.

I do not agree with loominous. Partly.

First-

It's good idea to "zoom" on storyteller/readers. They look not important enough and I kind of missed them in first view. Like, what, there's some people there? Move on. But main point of the image is telling a story. So they could be more in focus and larger. Considering the detail and amount of time/effort you put into them, you probably hate people suggesting something like this. But that's simply a "good idea" and not anything critical to fix.

But-

I don't like the idea of zooming in on the hunter. Right now, tiny and hidden in a shadow, leaning against giant tree and looking at much bigger unicorn, it's kind of harmonic, expressing his stealth and that tiny knife and beast atleast his own size and so on. There's a battle coming, and
I find that the "feeling" works very well. Man against something mystical and nature and ... well, emotions can't be described very well. But it should be quite simple to replicate what I feel reading my text.

Or let's try opposite side of this. Right now, the man and the unicorn seem equal opponents, or since unicorn blends with surrounding nature (being more part of it than man is), man is facing something great. But when man is larger, closer, and there's less of this gigantic tree seen, how do I put this?
Simply, I see a big bastard trying to hurt a little unicorn. With a big knife.
To hell with 3D-perception and realism. Man closer = man bigger. This is still first emotion that comes. This changes overall feeling alot. So I disagree with bigger hunter idea. It's fairy-taleish image right now. Zooming would ruin it, for me atleast.

For crits, I suggest much heavier contrast for bottom part of the image, make room darker (and also dark-shaded parts of people) to give book a bit more "power". Also, it would make window light more interesting, and you need this, because your shadows on window look really cool, and to be honest, IMO much more realistic than anything else on bottom part.

Also, upper part of image is still kind of boring. I mean, man and beast are a bit too detailed compared to everything else. Also, it - heh - looks like unicorn is licking some green goo and not eating grass. To improve this, well, make some grass.

Is that... a river? then seriously cut down on bumps. Water tends to be straight and reflect stuff. High contrasts are good, but this also means less interpolation between colors. I mean, less shading, light spots are light and dark ones dark. There's nothing or very little between. If it IS a river, that is.

I find window and flower -- strange, eh -- the best parts of this image. Both seem to be unimportant, but add alot of feeling to the both parts of the image. I like it.

Overall, I find this image fantastic, and no word of mine contained anything negative behind it. I really love art like this, and it's excellent even as it is (minus unfinished man and ?cow).

EDIT: I got wondering, do I really see a cow on the lower right?

Add shadows to trees and other things too.
Grass really does need some extra lumps and detail overall. Maybe a second shade?

Barn would use some more detail, such as spiderwebs or tools hanged onto wall or more cracks or whatever. Too much empty, boring area on sides.

I don't have a slightest clue what's going on in this thread.

On occasions like this, I always mention Framed.
It looks very much like someone's first game (which - if I remember correctly, was), has crappy (though fully functional) graphics and some weird choices for sound (of which, some are really good), puzzles that vary from very bad to ok, and a story that would be a gem if it were written by someone more experienced..

But just try this game. It has what most AGS games lack or disappoint with: atmosphere.
The thing that made Yahtzee famous, and which separates good games from bad games more often than we realize.

I prefer Kadji-san's footwork but original hand movement on this case.

In general, to be realistic, hand movement should be even less visible. Most people don't wave hands almost at all while walking. Of course, depends on temperament and walking speed too.

tonedeafmessiah, you might want to refine front and back walkcycles a bit:

* Front walkcycle has a strange 1-pixel "jumping bug" which needs to be removed. There's also a pixel lost near right side of neck, if you look closely. Also, it almost looks as if he's limping.

* Depending on your room, front/back walkcycles either are or are not very important. I try to draw my rooms so there's as little of vertical floor area as possible, with so weak f/b walkcycles you might consider this.

* To improve f/b walkcycles, to make frames more drastic, I mean, body movement change more, foot leaping more forward/back and so on. By no means I mean here more frames. Just try to pump more out from the frames you have.

* Making feet brighter and darker as they move away or closer to the "camera" is a good idea, but splitting it into strict half-foot sections is a bad idea. It looks artificial and not very convincing. Use 3 shades, but make them move smoothly from bottom half of feet to upper (and vice versa). Shading on hands turned out quite well - now add a mid-moment, where dark shade isn't either in upper or lower part of the hand, and that's also what you have to do with feet. 

Kind of difficult to explain what I really mean here, but I don't have time to make an edit...  Maybe you still understood.

Realism in movement that isn't in 3d or captured from video NEVER looks right in animated.

3D uses keyframes just as any animation. So does video camera. Records frames. Sure, it's 24 or 30 frames per second, not 6-8, but it's still same principle. I fail to see logic in your statement.

Which is ALSO limited by computer screen refresh rate.

And in the end of the chain, even human eye is limited to frames -- or at this speed, it's better to say time too. Light travels in time - which takes time - impulses travel in nerves - which also takes time - and brain processes impulse, which also takes time. So in the end, we never see any real or "realistic" movement - it's still something that we could call a "walkcycle" for our brain. A strip of frames. Of course, those are way larger numbers of frames than computer-made animation could ever achieve.

Point is, we NEVER sense motion in 3D space fully -- it's every moved unit in every moment. We skip alot of it, even with bare eye. So, I guess - the true reality would happen only when light speed was infinite, aswell as all other delays we need, when we want to see something. "looks right"? Really "right" should look only realistic movement. 3D or video might be better over sprite animation, but from true "right", it's away too much to even compare, I think.

But that's quite pointless discussion anyway -- real is what convinces, makes you believe in it.  And with a bit of tricks, even 4-frame animation walkcycle is convincing enough.

Maybe Disney never gave a thought about human biology.

Added about 3% noise, brightened/darkened opposing edges by 5%, randomly darkened by soft brush by 5%,
made windows using 8px soft brush and blue-greenish color, then darkened bottom window area and brightened upper area.

It's not hard to give(fake) them a bit of detail. It took less than 5 minutes.

[KGB]

Hm. This thread surely got the depth I was looking for, though I was afraid that all I would get are links to abandonia and mobygames. Kind of messy so I try to filter things a bit.

Progz, you didn't really read my posts...  ...because

* KGB is my most favourite adventure game ever. I mentioned name in the first post too. There's no games like this, or if there is, I want to own them. It's serious, deep, unlike anything I've ever seen, has really good interface, blood-pumping story, gore and feeling that makes Bourne Identity in comparasion, lame as a Disney movie. I've completed it more I could count. Even frustrating death around EVERY corned can't ruin this game. If I said serious and deep, this is what I meant.

* Dreamweb is one of those rare cases where I really enjoyed an experience of cyberpunk. Even though story gets a bit cheap, it fills all my requirements for description "cool".

* Innocent until caught: Played it with both characters and enjoyed very much. Falls a bit onto simple side, but chemistry between characters is really good, so is humor at the times. Also, it has all things AGSers call good: logical puzzles, simple - yet not oversimplified  interface, high replay value, etc.

* I hated Bloodnet. It's hit or miss game, I think. The kind of overdone cyberpunk I can't get into.

* Eco Quest? Never tried. I don't like kiddie games much, but I think I'll give it a try.

* It Came From the Desert... I love this game. Few weeks ago I even made painful attempt to use amiga emulator to play Amiga version (and 2nd part which isn't available for PC). Didn't turn out well though, but I've completed PC version once, and like things as this. Pity noone ever made a playable, high-color and mouse-supported remake. I had this crazy urge to remake it myself, but never got so far.

* Played SH: Case of Serrated Scalpel, excellent adventure game. Never tried the other, but surely will - now as I know it exists.

* As far as sci-fi and Lost Eden goes, I maybe didn't myself clear. I like sci-fi, I like fantasy. To an acceptable level.
With sci-fi, it's same as fantasy as I described:

"but finding pixie dust for a troll in order to  acquire letter for Elf king - no-no."

in sci-fi, this level of overdone-ness goes like this:

"but finding subspace modulator for a Rag'naards in order to acquire holowarp boosters for Magnitaurus Emperor - no-no."

So what I meant was X-files or even Dig is acceptable, but the sick depth of Space Quest or Stargate SG-1 is a bit too much for me.
Lost eden seems to be mix of fantasy and sci-fi and surely out of boundaries.

* Bargon Attack -- will check out.
* Runaway -- I played this long time ago. Despite cartoony GFX it was quite good so I will try to find it again.
* Broken Sword -- not my cup of tea.
* Sinking Island -- One of very few adventure games I've bought, and I quite liked it. Unfortunately it suffers from same problems as all new adventures -- miles to walk, zero to do.
* Secret files of Tunguska -- one of those "broken german translation" examples. Not necessarily a bad game but nowhere near anything made during 90's. Loads of beautiful graphics, but nothing to play. Why do they make new adventures so simple and boring? Why don't I ever need a walkthrough because every puzzle is a textbook example or something that could do as standalone flash game (sliding blocks puzzles etc)?
* Vampire story -- "to be checked out" list
* Freddi Fish -- I will try this

All that ozzie recommended -- absolutely nothing I've heard before. Will also surely check out.

Quite a list! Thanks all, so far.

Thanks for suggestions so far. Of course I'm aware of abandonia, combed through the-underdogs many times and tried much from reloaded, and have depleted anything playable there...
It isn't simply "introduce me to the wonderful world of old games" thread, because as a game enthusiast and very active pirate for last 17 years, there's very little of well-known games I haven't played... So this thread has a bit higher "difficulty" rating... thanks though. 

Of course I've played Beneath a Steel Sky. You wrote a lovely post about the game... but I never really understood what gives it cultlike love among many AGSers: I find it as mediocre as Monkey Island series. It's nicely done, has good puzzles and simple interface, but in-game action never reached me. I've completed it twice and I can't remember at all what happened there. So main point I'm searching for in games is entertaining or interesting story. BASS didn't really have one, in my opinion.

I loved Blue Force, It's like taking all good from Police Quest and making a separate game.

New, not played names named so far are Woodruff, Jack Orlando, Hopkins FBI, Normality, Bud Tucker and Orion Conspiracy. I've heard of Hopkins FBI but never encountered other ones.

I always hated Tex Murphy games, interface is so clunky and graphics so broken that it's impossible for me to "get in"...
Countdown was simply too sick and cool to miss, even though I died more than playing Space Quest 3 drunk.
Dark Seed longplay was on youtube and last week I managed to watch it through, so I won't probably be downloading this... cool game though. Fate by the numbers... downloading now, expectations high, impression (checked homepage) too.

Waiting for more!
With newer games it's probably simpler to surprise me, even those rare cases where I checked demo of some newer adventure, I usually ended up with badly translated german half-assed attempt on broken engine, graphics so beautiful that  it made me angry for developers wasting it on pointless game... so I haven't tried much after few times.