Messages

[gun]

Makeout Patrol, you seem like my post retold. 

Nice to see like-minded people at AGS (for a change).

A lot of people from other parts of the world say "in my country we don't have guns and it's better and safer that way," but in America, if you suddenly impose strict gun control laws (stricter than they already are,) people won't know how to cope with that or adjust.  Yes, guns are really that important to Americans, and they are the first thing that come to mind when you say self-defense.  I agree, a gun's only purpose is to kill, but I wouldn't use mine in that manner unless I had to.

I think it's too late for America.
Guns have become strong part of the culture, and this goes long way through Wild West to initial colonies. Even if government will try to limit firearms, it wouldn't probably work, nor take guns off the streets and homes.

And... isn't America at WAR right now?

But "in my country we don't have guns and it's better and safer that way" is really true, Europe is alot quieter and safer place. People kill people everywhere, but reading a newspaper story about some psycho killing someone with knife still isn't as disturbing as a kid gunning down entire class or anything else in that manner. Other weapons could seem lot more gross in context of crime, but body count in general should still be smaller, I think. If you're insane and have a gun, you're much, much more dangerous to society than one without.

Huh. I have this serious urge to play a good adventure game for last few weeks.

Problem is, nobody makes really good adventure games anymore...
And classic ones, It kind of feels like I've played them all. But that can't be truly possible!

I would really appreciate some hints on gems I hadn't discovered yet.

What do I like?

I like murder mysteries. Point'n'click interface. A good story. Decent graphics. Third-person (!).
I like either serious or truly humorous themes. But no cartoons (sorry Sam'n'Max).
I loved everything LucasArts did. I played almost every Sierra game (minus later Space Quest, later King's Quest and Quest for Glory games).
I hate action sequences and billion-verb games (the ones where you can select 6+ action verbs from list).
I don't like text parser much. But it's a game with REALLY good story, I don't mind (completed Gold Rush! few days ago).

Games that can be described as "deep" are probably my favourite. I mean Prodigal, Pleurghburg, BJ series (to name some AGS-made), and of course others - Dreamweb, KGB, Fascination, anything that leaves a strong impression...
But anything well thought-out would do. I had gazillion favourite games, but I suddenly feel old: I can't remember any good titles!

Deep isn't really required. They could be comedy games. I never got into Monkey Island games, found them only well-crafted and playable but not very interesting. To crack me up, it takes Gobliiins or DOTT, semi-serious games won't fall either side. I liked Leisure Suit Larry series...

Sci-fi with spaceships and time totally unlike current one is out of the list. I have nothing against science fiction (like X-files, Dune, anything else semi-realistic), but if it leaves modern boundaries and becomes totally some alien-races-in-intergalactic-bar, I won't like it. That's why I skipped last 3 games of Space Quest. Also, as hardcore fantasy settings aren't interesting for me too. Medieval times or historic settings are cool, but finding pixie dust for a troll in order to  acquire letter for Elf king - no-no.

Can anyone name something that's worth picking up?
9.99 out of 10 that I've already played it, but I still have a hope for some good gaming experience. Also, after excellent graphics wasted on horrid crap of a story in Syberia 2 I lost all hope into modern adventure games so I don't know much about games made after 90's. Maybe there's some quality stuff to recommend here?

Ah, and name AGS games too! I've played yahtzee things and BJ series, but there's surely some gems in AGS history I've missed.

Guns. Are meant... to kill people.

The less people carry guns, the better - is what I believe. No matter what's the purpose. If you need a gun, instrument to kill people just to be safe, I think it's time to move somewhere else.

Why gun anyway? In a self-defense situation, gun provides very little advantage. If you can get your hands on a gun easily, criminal also can. I don't find owning a firearm something that makes me more safe. Instead, some martial arts training would benefit much more, and would be actually useful even if you manage to live through all your life without an incident - which is much better than carry a gun all the time and never have use for it... And if things go bad, no gun or kung fu will ensure you 100% safety.

Where I live, a firearm is a rarity. Police carry firearms, military does. That's IT. Even common criminals VERY rarely have firearms or commit crimes involving a gun, and when they do, it's either some improvised gun of unknown quality, or really serious criminal, from organized thus more serious crime. Like Russian mafia. But these people don't spend time robbing banks or mugging elderly people on the street anyway.


People don't usually have guns. Sure, there's hunters, grandfathers with what they saved from WWII or some businessmen with gun license, but usually, no gun. Everyone has right to own a firearm for self-defense purpose, but guns are expensive, getting a license means long and costly bureaucratic process to go through, and...
...nobody really needs one.

I find that good.

[nothing]

I've once got a 1:14 minute video, which weighted 10 Gb.

And this depends on program HOW?
Sounds more like you don't have a clue what the codecs are or why are they invented.

Vegas saves a  strange thing with .sfk extension (into My Documents by default), which doubles as clip and which I believe is copy of the clip in Vegas with changes within the project - in its native format or something. If you do lot of video editing and forget to erase .sfk-s of completed projects, indeed, it will fill up your HD.

But so does rendering your movies uncompressed. Jeesh!

If you capture something, it indeed comes initially in uncompressed format. It's perfecty normal, and GOOD.

For a quality video edition, I really don't see why it should be anyway else, since uncompressed = lossless = top quality. Some cameras (especially cellphones or photocameras able to record video) automatically compress the video during recording, but MiniDV cameras, AFAIK, don't try to spoil quality (reduce size) by themselves.

So, right way to do this is capture video from your camera uncompressed into computer, make edits, and then render with some codec. Like DivX or XVid or any other popular codec. 1:14 minute video could be 10GB only on either uncompressed, ultrahigh resolution, very badly packed (low compression) or with a really strange codec. This has nothing to do with the software you used to capture. This could be entire educational thread, but there's tons of similar forums and resources out there. Just Google.

I bet there will be more UFO's till movie release.

Crash? I don't know what you're talking about. Video editing is a long, time-consuming process, and I've used it nearly 3 or 4 years, I think. Starting from Vegas 6, and using 8 now. You can imagine how much hours I've spent using this program. In 3 different computers too.

Crashes during all this time?
Zero.

I stuck to Vegas because I needed something that can easily capture video from my MiniDV camera. Vegas autodetects and rips. Premiere had 4- or 5-page wizard to even start capturing, and even then managed to mess the process up somehow. So, lack of random errors and problems is main thing why I use and recommend Vegas. Strange that your post tells exact opposite.

Premiere had some hardcore crashes though, but Adobe software has always been computer-choker. Both hard-disk and processor. Their drawing software (PS2) takes quarter gigabyte. Crappy document format (PDF) reader - 175MB on my computer. nearly 200MB to open up a document, which also opens at a pace that makes me wonder if the specifics of my computer really are what salesman said them to be and not 10 years older in technical sense... So, I'm quite anti-adobe, but if there would be no Vegas, I'd use premiere.

Maybe you tried running it on 286 or simply had some crappy half-installed codecs or something. Nothing to blame on program.

Sony Vegas is powerful and easy to use enough to buy it.

There was a period in my life where I tried almost any better-known video editor available and Vegas raised high above all others. Adobe Premiere and Ulead Videostudio are second best ones. Vegas and Premiere seem to lead the monopoly, and divide the fans. Other programs don't get even close, as much as I've tried.
Ulead seems to be more oriented to beginners and wizard-like approach, but also packs alot of power once you learn to use it.

If you want simple and yet very powerful tool, better rack up some money. I don't believe that there's equal freeware to any of named three.

Wise words, wrong smiley!

You made me sad again... 

I like your second version. But you have to add darker shade along most rightmost edge to make coat look more cylindrical, otherwise it looks too much like a cardboard cutout.

2-3 pixels longer hand would still be good idea even if you like them short. Right now, this guy belongs to a circus. Or rather like two kids on top of each other wearing daddy's trench coat. If this guy needs to pee, how would he reach his zipper? 

Okay, to show you some logic behind all this, I really tried to put together a kind of physics map for raincoat...
MSPaint in all its glory... didn't turn out so well, since my brand new Razer Kraitâ,,¢ gaming mouse turns out to be total crap if I try to draw anything, ever, and is meant for racking up frags only... 



Numbered arrows show forces that possibly manipulate wrinkles and curved lines are wrinkles:

1 - pink arrow. Shoulder(in a sleeve) tries to pull sleeve away from rest of the coat. This causes fairly straight wrinkles near sleeve (blue lines around shoulder).

2 - orange arrow. Hand in a pocket pushes pockets forward and down from raincoat. This causes wrinkes around pocket corners (red lines near both pocket corners). Since this area gets most force and wrinkles, they appear longer and continue down where gravity and friction tries to straighten raincoat.

So, from pocket to the bottom edge of the coat, hard, long wrinkles happen. (See also my edit and Indy sprite - this is where those large darker areas come from). Wrinkles are curved near where stretch is strongest but try to get vertical as they move downwards. Physics.

Also, notice that pocket wrinkles and wrinkles near place where sleeve is tailored to the coat are strong enough to cause tension - therefore wrinkles between them (green curves near ribs)

3 - magneta arrow. Hand in a pocket also pushes pocket out on third axis. Like, away from body. There's no special wrinkles for this, it simply explains why wrinkles in pocket area are SO strong and also why pocket area is lighter on Indy sprite -- they tried to make it look like pocket is a bit more forward (closer to the viewer) than rest of the coat -- which is correct.

4 and 5 - yellow arrows. The point where hand is bent pulls both ends of the sleeve together, which also causes wrinkles - which again, try to get more vertical as they move away from that tense point. (All blue curves on sleeve)
---
Thin red curves -- note that depending on raincoat thickness, coat buttons pull other side of the coat towards them too. But on your sprite size, it's almost impossible to make them visible on your sprite due small size.

........
Now this is a helluva long story for a really simple physics observation. Also, my sketch is way too detailed for such a small sprite. But it's good to know, even better to understand. For a small sprite, you have to take most strong and important wrinkles, shade them, and voila.

No, I don't really start calculating wrinkle physics when I draw a sprite. Over time and experience, it's kind of gets pre-programmed into artist's vision, you don't have to think to draw right.

How did I learn this? Not really by posing in a bathrobe but by being amazed about those crazy Japanese animators (no, not anime). Neo-Geo games. Which I strongly recommend to you -- there's whole sprite banks for those games and you can also visit local arcade, find first 2D arcade fighting game and take a long, thoughtful look.

It's good to start here:

http://www.gsarchives.net/index2.php?category=all&system=neogeo
Click-click-click.
See those marvelous sprites. How few frames they took to make lifelike animation and so on.
Zoom in! They have 2-5 colors of shade per tone. Only. Though it looks like so much more.
Games to check out: Art of Fighting 1-3, King of Fighters, Garou MOTW, Samurai Shodown (all).


Good luck!

Hm, I seemed to go a bit overboard with palette. Few pixels with additional color.
Actually, only 3 shades of gray would do. Of which, one should be much darker than other two.

EDIT: I noticed that this sprite from Indy shows it well even without my words--

If there's an area on my edit that would still need some work, I'd say it's the area a above pocket, over the ribs. That one didn't turn out so well...

Won't that shading be a pain to animate?

No, not really. Even in most inexperienced hands, it's hard to mess totally up. Even random attempt without really knowing what are you doing would still produce better result than no extra shading at all.

Infact, animating so-called "pillow shading" or gradients is much, much worse.

But tip for animating: I suggest to draw all frames without that extra wrinkle shade, get them absolutely, finally, right, and only then apply extra shade. This tends to work much better, avoids messing up and redoing hard work, and helps to see the "big picture" better.

P.S. Firefox 3 blur annoys me too! 

Well, shading is not random.

Easiest way to figure out is to wear something, let's say a bathing robe, take a picture of yourself and then pay attention what causes wrinkles and which direction they go.

Also, it's kind of funny how you posted image of two men, same height, side by side and didn't really notice that your guy has way too short hands. Unless that was intended? Anyway, fixed this.



4x:

First, I don't see any image. Find a working host! It's not like there isn't looong threads over AGS for this, with many options and resources. Just search. Then again, I do see your avatar, which seems to be in same place. Maybe you messed up the image somehow?

I only see matti's edited version. I guess it's pretty much same anyway.

Oh... It's quite awful.

* First, buildings in RTS game should not have near-zero saturation. Those are buildings. You want player to see them, click on them. No saturation makes them unimportant and hardly visible. Boring.

Saturation overall is a tricky thing. When making backgrounds for adventure game, map tiles for RTS or anything else similar, an amateur artist couldn't go very wrong with using low saturation. Actually, it's much easier to choose too saturated, bright tones and mess up your picture.

Now, GUI elements, buildings and units for RTS, cursor graphics and whatever else meant to click, look, notice - this usually needs more saturation, to catch attention and be easily located. Low saturation would make a nice choice for windows wallpaper, but not for important sprites.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

This image shows high-saturation colors. See how bright and noticeable they are?


Here, saturation is down by 75%. See how foggy and much more boring it looks? The lower the saturation, the more gray color is... Your buildings are totally gray. That's really bad choice, IMO. What emotion is described gray? Boredom. Color of dust, spiderwebs and ashes. Not interesting things. Never make gray your main color, ever. Unless you draw something that totally needs it.

* That cylindrical building looks quite cool. You can shade alright if you want to. Why isn't it visible on other two?

* Heavy lack of ANY detail. The bigger your sprite is, the more detail you can add. Well, I guess it's WIP yet and you do amaze with some nice details on whichever building you keep.

But I wouldn't keep any of those buildings. Exactly because what matti pointed out. Perspective.
If you want to make perspective that couldn't go wrong, learn to draw really quickly getting professional looks almost instantly, there's a way for game like this: isometric perspective.

I think that isometric perspective is mirrored version of "traditional" drawing. Typical sprite/background drawing needs 80% of skill/talent and 20% of care and measuring (to get lines straight and avoid errors/jagged lines/whatever).

Isometric sprites are opposite: You have to be very careful to make lines, but if you succeed to do so - keep lines correct and shading/outlines as needed, your lack of skills or talent doesn't mean much. It looks good anyway. So, basically, isometrics is good if you're beginner and better with numbers than pencil. For a 2D RTS game, it's almost a must.

Also, isometric art works better with both higher and lower saturation. But finding a good balance is what you need anyway. Don't take my previous text as a thumb rule and make everything look like a bright, contrasty lights of christmas tree. For RTS, usually there's a main color, known as player color. Like red or blue or something, it's always bright and large portions of buildings and units are colored with it, so you'd know is it your or opponent building you're looking at.

So, look here now --
This a bible for isometric drawing:

http://www.rhysd.com/tutorial/index.php

Why do I suggest isometric graphics? Because I've done about 20 (kinda lost count already) unfinished RTSes in my life. It's much easier to go for blocks instead of some cartoony things that really won't want to match with each other later.
...Or even easier is to make everything 3D and set up ortographic camera, such as they did in Age of Empires II. But that method has it's own cons and main is time: to model, to render, and workload on retouching to make it look more like pixel graphics... might take longer than previous two.

Good luck!

Male AGSer shalt not have female companion!

I noticed that prizes are 64 pixels in height. Isn't signature banner restriction in height much less?
EDIT: I didn't really find a rule for this, but 64px still seems a waste of space for me.

Quick edit: remember that

* Lights are meant to LIGHT rooms
* Lights cast SHADOWS
* Area where is no light, will be DARK
* Everything dkh said
etc etc

Since the edit was quick, I suggest you to remake whole bg similar to edit, also remove some torches and make shadows right.

Your drawing isn't bad, but lack of any shading whatsoever and those copy-pasted torches on back wall suck as hell.

My grandpa told me the other day that the best way is to wipe out any ciggy you would normally have after eating a meal. From there on - it can be done! Personally I think the best time for me is when I'm ill and in bed for 3 or 4 days, and physically can't handle a ciggy. But that doesn't happen so often and afterwards I give in too easy

This is true.
I know a sure way I could quit, but that means prison-like life for some time. Lots of sleeping and little activity, no stress. There was a summer when I didn't work or do much, spent most of the time alone at computer and sleeping randomly. If you're taking long sleeps and little activity for a week or so, you're actually feeling more tired and sleep even longer, though it makes no sense due not spent calories. During this time, my smoking dropped 90%.
Lack of stress reduces smoking and sleeping cuts heavy (8-14 hour) gaps in nicotine usage, you could quite easily quit in a month or two, without too much psychological suffer. Also, it's important to everytime translate smoking hunger into real hunger and grab a bite instead of cigarette. And then go lie down instead of after-meal smoke.
It works. But today, getting a sick holiday like this is almost impossible. Unless you're rich and single.

I think its amazing the amount of hungry children in your own city could have been fed with the cost of your computer.

I think you're being a dick.

Those costly space programs come nowhere near donation a single individual. As a taxpayer, I've fed my kids alright.
If I was an American, I would be quite disappointed of getting a crappy photo for my tax money.

Thanks for all the advice everyone! I think I might try to quit today actually!

I wish you luck.
The hardest point (if your quitting will be though), will be feeling of guilt and lying to self -- making up reasons why you could allow yourself this, last, cigarette.
If you can overcome this, you're done!

I think it's amazing how much hungry african kids could be fed with the money spent to aquire that photo.

Ever tried sunflower seeds? They are sold salted and non-salted, as a snack. It's almost national snack for russians, for example. Healthy too. Mulder always ate them in X-files. Plus, they are cheapest snack in the world, I think.

I know that if I buy a pack of seeds, eating them consume heavily time and stop my smoking for 3-5 hours. You don't have hunger for cigarette during and a bit after eating too. Otherwise, I smoke one in every hour atleast.
If you like them, they're more addictive than smoking is. You eat few, and you can't stop anymore.

Also, don't buy dehulled ones: Eating ones with hull intact, cleaning them... takes much more time and won't get you nauseous. Cracking the hulls to get to the core is the main point of eating them.

Quotes from wikipedia - how to eat them:

Upon consumption, in-shell seeds should be dehulled and the hull should be discarded before swallowing the kernel. Dehulling is commonly performed by cracking the hull with one's teeth and spitting it out while keeping the kernel in the mouth.

And why is that good:

In addition to linoleic acid (an essential fatty acid), sunflower seeds are also an excellent source of dietary fiber, protein, Vitamin E, B Vitamins, and minerals such as magnesium, iron, phosphorus, selenium,calcium and zinc. Additionally, they are rich in cholesterol-lowering phytosterols. They are also a good source of calories(205).

I suggest roasted and heavily salted ones: Even though people call salt unhealthy, it's nothing close to nicotine. Also, if your mouth is salted enough, tobacco doesn't taste at all, so even if you smoke, you put it out after few breaths. Combination of salt and sunflower oil totally kills tobacco taste.

The less you smoke in day, the lower your "normal" nicotine need will go. So, the closer you are to no need for nicotine in your blood at all. This takes long time though.

But first, make sure that you need to smoke at all: answer this question:

* Can you survive a day without smoke?

I have theory that people who under some circumstances don't smoke, or can easily be atleast 6 hours without one (awake), DON'T HAVE TO SMOKE at all. Those are people who can simply quit at any point, because their physical addiction is almost nothing, and everything's behind psychology only. I have a friend who never smoked at home, but did everywhere else. I always told him to stop jerking around, he doesn't really need tobacco. And one day, he simply quit. There are people like this. Even if they smoked for 10+ years.

I, for example, can't really imagine more than 2 hours without tobacco, unless I'm asleep or dead. Even if this rare and though thing happens, I smoke at triple rate as soon as it's over.

Also, no smoking means no alcohol.
I've quit too many times to end up at a party, a bit drunk, and noticing that I've smoked two packs in one night. Next morning, quitting project is wasted.

There's also a method I believe could work, though I never tested it:
First, buy a pack 50% lighter smokes than ones you smoke.
Limit your daily smoking to a pack (or half, depending how much you smoke now).
Keep the limit. Don't break it. Tell yourself that this is all you can smoke, and if they're over, there will be no more for the day. So you have to kind of calculate.
And if you can handle the limit, start subtract a cigarette a day, make your limit smaller.
I think it should work by lowering your nicotine consumption.