Messages

Sorry, I hate it.

I hate the high-contrast-eye-tiring feeling looking at those images give me.

It's simply EXTREMELY difficult to look at panel and see what's there, even harder to read text underneath. It's... tiring, uncomfortable, fighting back. Especially at places where's some unexplained white crap on the black background, pulling eye focus away from text. It all becomes white, brown and black blur in my eyes.

Trying really hard, overcoming eye wear, I notice that your drawings are quite cool, have this comic-like soft fuzzy look, and it's really functional. I mean, given a bit more polish and effort, and choosing other color scheme would make it easily something very enjoyable. Maybe NOT black background would work too.

Typewriter font is classy, but a bit too blurry for my taste. Shine tends to work better when high-saturation color is used, and your brown is not it. But I guess, it would need background of other color (and less mess on it) too.

The background sketching reminds me intro of Condemned: Criminal Origins, but there, it was done... well, right.

It's not bad, if your concern is art. Art is quite good. Colors are what needs heavy work. Or that 'overall' as you said.

I didn't bother to read or crit text, MaxPayneish monologues aren't really my thing, neither is storytelling in general.

* It looks EXTREMELY lazy how you handled anti-aliasing. Don't you see how bad this looks?!
Get rid of those ugly white artifacts NOW! It's hard to take bg seriously if creator was so lazy about so simple thing.

* The door looks quite interesting. I wonder if you could keep this style throughout your other rooms.
(and not overdo it)

* What did you try to do with those boards over doorway? Take two pencils and cross them. Can you really see edges of BOTH pencils over crossing? Place them over paper. CAN you see edge of paper under the pencil? I mean, what the f**k?

* I'd say that this background has potential, the architecture looks middle-eastern to me. But you should fix the effort/laziness problems first and then try to add something interesting onto white area.

Yeah, I guess I meant adapt. It's an international forum anyway, so tiny english mistakes should be common enough. Not everyone is a native speaker.

It's not like you don't have a choice? If Canon printer irritates you, choose another one. Why did you buy a printer that doesn't suit your needs?

I mean, I wouldn't buy an umbrella with a hole in it. And then be angry at company.

Uncreative?
Whining is.
If you called up people to boycott company X or simply warned about products of company X or something, it would be constructive, or atleast, informative and useful. If you're whining in general, it's stupid.

And maybe it would have been better, if you DID ask solutions for specific problems, like tool to convert video or printer that doesn't work like this. Isn't that what other people do?
There wouldn't be anything to complain about then, right?

Ah, I forgot EVERY MOMENT in Condemned: Criminal Origins.

Walking around corner and getting your face beaten in with an iron pipe is, well, quite scary.

Man vs. machine?

Dude.
Adopt.

I've been using TDK tapes in my Sony MiniDV for 5 years. Nothing's damaged yet.
Even if it somehow gets damaged, MiniDV is old news anyway. Record, firewire, watch all the crap again, load batteries... Quality will be much better with memory cards, which seem to conquer digital video world too (photocameras use them for ages now). Also, MiniDV tapes tend to get those annoying fat black lines over video sometimes, especially if tape collects dust or lies in low-temperature place for some time or even lies perfectly boxed... err... and gets lines for no reason whatsoever. DVD is much safer bet to hold video anyway, so I capture and burn everything as soon as I get video made. If I won't do it immediately, I probably won't, ever, so there's no matter.

About printers, I own HP printer/scanner/copier combine, but I tend to avoid it like a disease. Not that I've truly needed it yet either. I got enough printer repairing (and kicking) at work. Printers are EVIL.

Still,
Adopt.

You don't really have to make your life difficult by using things, brands and tech that doesn't suit you.
Also, you don't have to invent a bicycle. MPG to AVI? What for? Is it really something that couldn't START as an avi?

Maybe there's alternative to each your technological problem? Not found yet? Maybe looking for one would take less time and frustration than messing with problem? Maybe handed out 15 bucks works better than week of downloading all kinds of crap only to find out watermarks later? Or maybe P2P program would work as well? A sin? Hahahaha... is losing hair at early age better choice?

I had similar problems before, but right now, I can't think of any. Everything seems to be moved into place. I know that some of them were due new technology, but I know that my tech usage habits have changed too.

Why challenge technology all the time? Or your nerves?

Prince of Persia (the original, of course) kept me very tense due very deadly and bloody traps and death resulting in almost every wrong key press...
KGB (no words needed)
Amazon: Guardians of Eden (no words needed, ever). Even those low-quality photos that meant not to scare, still do scare shit out of me
Penumbra: Overture (spidddersss!)
Half-Life 2: Episode two (spiders!) I'm not afraid of spiders in real life, but in game, I'd prefer NOT to play game with any
Half-Life: Getting knocked out by surprise, only to wake up in trash compactor
Police Quest 4 (rather disturbing, I'd say)
Leisure suit larry 2(?) When walking out from river and noticing that Larry's feet are eaten by piranhas
Manhunt was quite scary all the time, like every time enemies noticed you

and the scariest moment EVER...

King's Quest 3: When suddenly getting eaten by big, blue... Spider!!! The scariest moment in video gaming for me, ever made.

Avoid.
Infact, there's about billion ways to get free room for homepage WITHOUT server located on North Pole, ad-support from Devil himself and loading times measured in light years.

If you want you can make your page and even I can offer you free hosting (if content size won't exceed few hundred megs), but domainname would look long, such as
http://retrojay.increator.pri.ee or whatever you want for domain main name in similar manner

Anyways, if you desperately need this, I could help (PM me). Just make the page first.
Anything's better than Freewebs.

[do]

Simple, too dark, boring, functional.

Your background is very common style among AGS users, and I got good news - that group of users who actually do release a game every now and often. Mainly because goals are reasonable and everything is functional, yet quick and simple enough to draw.

I suggest adding a bit of detail to the building wall, like something on windows and some cracks and bricks, but there's nothing much more I could imagine there. Just add last touch to it and move on to next one. Your potential to make games with this style is high.

Only crit I could give is that door is fairly large. Do you imagine the size of character for room like this? Is it easy to draw? Would it look good?

Anyway, well done. You chose a working formula.

[not]

Yeah, without chroma keying I wouldn't even bother: it's way too much work.

So first, aquire big blue (or green) wall, sheet of paper/cardboard to attach to a wall, or cheapest and most accessible version - a large sheet of cloth. Then, set up a place where is LOADS of light, using lamps (unless you get your hands to professional ones) won't give good results. Make sure your screen is 100% stretched and flat (for cloth), because shadows are hard to key out. Last thing to remember is that whatever color your screen is, the thing you're going to use as sprite should not contain this color at any tone -- for example, for green screen, don't wear a green shirt,  have green eyes or dye your hair green. From my video hobby, I prefer green over blue - it gives less jagged edges. Also, blue seems to be darker so it's harder to key out.

Also, for Photoshop, for example, you could seek for plugins for better selection/separation tools. There's some that work way better than default lasso/magic wand via some trick, such color grouping and posterizing.
Pity I don't remember any names.

As a fps game? Yes.
But there's no better "walk in the jungle"-simulator yet. A beautiful jungle.

But I recommend COD4, AGAIN. That's really a game to play. It's best fps game I've played since original Half-Life 2 came out. It's worth to have good computing equipment so you could see all the beauty.

Nah, not the game, Call of Duty has been seen and done...
But those two game sequences. One as president and one as that shooter inside plane. It's like "Liveleak - the interactive game". I totally fell in love with those two.

For some more recent games, World in Conflict is worth to max out. If you can, of course. Command & Conquer 3 and its expansion are not. To be honest, they look much better with low graphics, because as it's so common nowadays, designers went mad and blurred-lighted-shaded everything well enough to make sure player gets epileptic quickly.

But if you're a sims2/battlefield2/counter-strike/minesweeper/WoW player, you have simply wasted money.

I like it!

I'm usually not fond of things like this, but this one made me laugh.
Simple, straightforward, blam!

As far as look goes, do what Twinmoon suggested with layout.
And, try to add secondary shade to main colors. I did a few tries with flash, and lighter, low-saturation shades work quite well. Unfortunately, I managed to mess up my edit, so no posting here

Go ahead, tell her brother that you are starting to really like his sister.

I don't see why he should be upset about this. If he's okay with it, and you get anywhere with her...
...there's few changes about your life and friendship:

Cons:

* if you ever get into fight with her, hurt her, etc, consider your friendship over too
* her brother should realize that he's getting between you two, you (and her) both bombarding him with questions and messages. That's a crappy position to be in... 
* he could get jealous. That's a family thing. Simply realize the possibility.
* he probably wouldn't feel comfortable if he knew you bang her, beware of random acts of aggression

Pros:

* hard intel! Your friend can solve loads of problems with intelligence, so you'd know really well how to hit right buttons with the girl. Also, you are able to find out rough edges of hers without loads of scandal and mistrust.
* your friend would likely trust his sister with someone he knows and trusts, so he wouldn't be so protective as brothers usually are
* she probably trusts a good friend of his brother much better than a random guy, so it's good too

Overall, that's a game with uncountable pros and cons. Are you sure you can take it?

So what happened to just talking to women (women, not skirts or humans with breasts, thank you very much) and finding out how THEY feel?

And risk with a lie? 
Anyway, I figured this thread is about starting a hunt. And considering if putting friendship on plate is worth it.
What's to ask from girl? If she feels same way, only thing to lose is friendship. If not, no damage done.

I have been told that I have overexaggerated the hotness of this chick...but the fact that I find her attractive at all threw me for a loop in the first place.

You're young. The term "hotness" is actually that's not important variable. Unless all you want is an adventure, in which case if you care about your friendship, it's better not to do it.

Dude. Crysis. Oblivion. COD4.
Bought 8800GTX OC2 and I don't know a game that couldn't run on maximized graphics on this. Except Rainbow Six Vegas 2, but I don't play games that are SO ugly anyway.

Then again, firepower doesn't make loading times shorter and high graphic settings prolong them even more, so I still usually don't pump maximum out of games...

[27 TIMES]

I'm too in the shame list! "Unproductive forum users"  :'(
Oh no!

R4L, you quoted about 2060 bytes of data for your 76-byte response.
That means your pointless quote wasted 27 TIMES more bandwidth than did your reply.

I declare you the title of 'most inefficient poster, ever'.

The preachy uber-Christian who goes on evangelical rants

We do?

The hot chick who's always getting hit on

We do? And we did? Draw fellow AGSer contest?

The drama queen who finds a way to take offense at everything

WE DO?

and the loser-hippy who always gets screwed

wrongwrongwrong

The wise-cracking smart-ass who gets on everyone's nerves

and

The know-it-all who argues about anything, even if he doesn't know anything about it

Eem... huh...

I think can see how Blowup and Genuinefractals work -- posterizing edges of different colors heavily and blurring contrast groups, adding grain...  But none replaces data that isn't there in first place.

Whenever possible, still have your photos bigger than needed, and never smaller than needed. Plugin magic or not, scaling up is never good and rarely has any quality.

People who pay for porn (or pron) are suckers.

True too.

Quite good. I like how you managed to get a nice figure with so low polycount.
I'll point out some shortcomings:

* Not enough polys in crotch area
* A bit more on chest area would do good
* Way too much polys on head, especially neck and jaw. Why? It's not like they add detail or anything
* Doing a low poly character, defining and cutting eyes into head is quite pointless. I'd use texture for this.
* Overall, I'd reduce polys on head about 3 times. Head kind of looks out of place, considering other geometry.
* Boots (soles? english?) are at angle. When human stands like this, his feet still do connect to ground nicely. A bit of rotation would help.

It isn't foolish to use MSPaint, but it is foolish to ignore LINE tool. You can still make cartoony look with using short, changing lines. But freehand everything? It looks like grandpa tried drawing with his shaky hand. I mean, it really tires my eyes.

Also, don't forget that you don't have to use default palette - you can make your own colors! Red, white and green? Well, that's one of a hell of contrast. I suggest more matching tones, less saturated ones.

Also, remember that pure white usually KILLS any background. Look at professional games: do they use pure white at all? It's reseved for very little spots, very special occasions. As little as possible, as carefully as possible. That's because white is most bright color of them all, if you paint walls white, you're pulling viewers attention to the wall. Away from other things you drew.
Now why would you want that? Are walls that important?

Aside from this, not bad at all. Keep on practicing!

Weird thought:
If someone would be desperate enough to break laws just to experience my music, i'd be actually quite flattered.
But it would be same if people were willing to pay for it.

Hm.

No and I won't try to.
And I even agree that's a theft.

Theft of potential money.
But if there's no potential money in the first place, well...

I won't feel guilty.
That's the whole point!

Wrong. Raping, Grand theft auto, etc is material displacement or manipulation.
You TAKE something. Physical.
Or there was a car. Now it's gone!

Seeing and listening is NOT. There won't be less song or movie if someone listens or watches it. There's no subtraction.