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I think that whether it be one or eleven rooms, the number is set by how this team-creating goes and what will be our capabilities.

In less than a month, I don't think we could pump out many BG's, neither code them all.
Especially if no-one's saying anything solid ontopic.

EDIT: To complain less and contribute more, here's a random game idea:

Zombies!

You play either alone or as a member of a group, getting trapped in a

* spaceship (future ,a member of crew)
* haunted house (a member of stupid, investigating teenagers)
* mansion (a detective called by royal family to investigate - um - a strange corpse with bite marks)
* ship (a seaman or a pirate)

...and it turns out that other occupants of the place (ship personnel, nearby villagers, royal family members, other pirates) have turned into zombies and you have to survive

well, and puzzles go around fortifying, improvising weapons & things to scare zombies, losing "unzombified" mates in a fight, investigating for clues - let's say - to find out ancient curse which turns things into zombies (diaries, newspaper clippings, etc Alone in The Dark stuff)

...and so on. That's simply first idea I got, inspired from that superb flash game Last Stand and "I Am The Legend" movie. And even this has tons of options.

I volunteer for either background or character art. Animations too, atleast some.
(If we get another artist onboard, we could decide who does which part of the graphics.)

But only when we have some kind of basic story and setting together. I won't do ANY game.

And Emerald, get your act together. Every single thing you posted today reflects your shitty mood.

[was]

Personally? Nah.
I'm not that good at drawing cute things. And have no interest in toy story, anyway.

Of course, if there was a story, and we could read it, and it was good...

Demo quest? No. I don't like this.

I'd prefer to show that AGS is able to make an interesting and exciting game, not a bland tech demo. Even if it has a good storyline, stuffing random stuff for it just to be there wouldn't probably work, plus, has a big workload. And team things tend to fail usually, so it's better to keep it simple.

We DO have Demo quest already. Why make two?
...

Now come on, let's get this thing going! Who's ready to organize?
We had a thread about AGS buddies not long ago, it's time to PM and notify those buddies.
Come on!

I'd say go hardcore. Escape-teH-room games and media overall tend to be... well, boring.

But remember the movie named Saw?
A room. Two men chained to pipes. Corpse in the middle. Mystery.

Wasn't this, well, brilliant?
Or the Cube? Again, simple idea making an ultimate sci-fi.

I don't mean gore here, but helping carebear find all the happy toys and get out of closet wouldn't be so interesting.
Anyway, it's up to storywriter to decide. Who will make story?

Since it's named "design contest", every technical aspect must be top-notch, I think. Probably two-button interface (I would hate LucasArtsy "confusing verb flood" or overused Sierra touch-look-say-go). But again, I wouldn't take responsibility to decide that. Simple GUI and interaction would set it to probably casual and not-so-oldschool gamers. Which - again, would be good, because people @ Adventuredevelopers aren't all same oldschoolers we have around here, and it would be nice to show "modern" gamers AGS too.

Oh noes Petteri, what have you done to yourself?
You look so much older!

[AGS]

What? Where? Team?
I'm in!

Characters, Animations, Backgrounds or trance'ish ambient hiphop/breakbeat music, I do.
But there must be a master scripter AND a storywriter aboard.

Escape the room game would be simple enough to actually make, too. If someone could give it a hardcore story, it would be spiced up enough to win.

Since Adventure Developers is adventure-stuff general, a team representing AGSers would be really cool.
Sorta like exhibition matches in sports.

I think people give way too much credit to their 'president'. Nobody ever notices the army of advisers and councilors and officials who make absolutely sure that every tiny 'decision' the president 'makes' is the best course of action. Instead they fixate on who's preacher is making a fool of himself, or who's campaign adverts are going over the top to determine the next president. But it doesn't matter. Politicians are all the same.

That's what I meant with "game for rich, white, bald men". President is a fool who is put infront of the people and has to deliver those deals and decisions made behind closed doors to the public. Clinton with her head full of myriad of human rights, law schooling and girl power-attitude doesn't really sound like a woman capable of doing this.

Please tell me you mean something other than what that looks like.

I do. She's an American. Not much else.
I don't see her sitting down with - let's say, Iran leaders or president of the Russia and really understand other part.
One thing is to lead a country, another thing is to lead one of the most hated nations in the world. Whole Islamic part of the world (Africa, Middle East) and Slavic part of the world (Russia, many of the former Soviet countries) and of course, Asia (Koreans, Chinese, whoever) hate USA. Could this woman be diplomat enough to easen those tensions?

Does she understand differences between cultures?
I doubt it.

And how much respect does she get from - let's say, an islamic leader? How do muslims think about women?
This though could generate a whole new thread.

I think that best leader are historians. People with wide knowledge of history and foreign culture. Law? Hell no.

Then again, what do we know? Bush, looking so simple-minded, innocent, and manipulable -- led half of the world into a war. But maybe pacifists don't really have a place in White House?

Excellent work! Is it handdrawn? I mean, I've never seen isometric step-by-step building like on this image you provided. Is that some kind of specific software you used?

But as far as look goes, I still prefer MashPotato's edit.

Too small what? Character is out of proportions, but character size isn't something that's SET.

It depends on 2 things: your background graphics and game resolution. The first room you draw for your game, usually sets the size of character: The size of door must be so character could fit through non-scaled, and later, you draw other doors according to that. But for a 320x240 game, typical AGS game character height goes between 50-110 pixels (never more than 1/2 of screen height), larger if it's cartoonier style.

[two]

Not bad. I like the colors and overall feeling.

* Gun seems to be a little short. Don't know what's Johnny English, but it  really feels too small.

* Shade colors feel... random. For an experiment, it's nice but for a game, not too practical. You could do as well with less colors and stronger contrast -- I wouldn't dare to animate something so unreasonably complex, ever.

To improve, stick to 3 colors per colored part (shirt, pants, etc), but use colors of higher contrast and less scattering. Many classic games with outstanding graphics use three colors, and it's enough if done well (Gabriel Knight (uses mostly 3, sometimes 4), Full Throttle, Dig, Sam & Max Hit the road...) (those are links to good screenshots showing exactly what I'm talking about, so click, observe and learn) and for example, Day of the Tentacle, while looking faboulous, uses only two colors per color-part (body part wouldn't be 100% precise so I say color-part).

The key lies in well chosen contrast and partial outlines. I always wonder why new artists @ AGS try to get their shading as dithered and confusing as possible...

* Shade colors are uneven. Beard, for example, feels detail-poor with everything else shaded so hard.

Environment-friendly and cheap to have, of course.

My take on the subject:

For the President of the United States, it doesn't really matter who wins. Only candidate that can play the game of bald, rich, clever white men making deals on country fate... is McCain. And he won't win (or so it seems). So, anyone else would simply be a puppet.

After all, USA has a president. Always had.
It's American Dollar.

So whoever wins, dollar still decides everything. Earth would still spin around, people would still eat hamburgers and watch Hollywood movies. And money keeps circulating.
---

But for the other (unwritten) role of US president, something near world leader?
Someone with strong voice in global matters?

Here, we are doomed. I don't see how hillbilly woman or raised-muslim black man would make important decisions for rest of the globe. Racist or not, I think that both main candidates are... well... not material for this. In that position, good leader must have a bit broader vision that extends over that tiny bit of large continent we call USA. They do not seem to be those people up for the task.

The leadership in US, how it's built, sounds sometimes like a strange social experiment, similar to Soviet Union. Too many nukes under one persons finger. But I'm sure there's some kind of shadow system to keep everything in order even if things hit the fan. Maybe some dark project with a Delta Force operative and M24 sniper rifle with a bullet for president and coverup legend/forged evidence ready to blame someone else, if president crosses some invisible line... Just wondering. Could make a cool story, hmm.

What 3-D application, would you suggest to create reference drawings, such as the one you posted. That would be more than handy to somebody like me. Thanks everybody, I'll try to post more later.

Anything that can do simple boxmodelling and lights/raytraced shadows would work.
Blender. GMax. Anim8or. Wings3D (not sure about shadows).

I make mine with 3ds Max 8. That costs a fortune and a bit more, so...
But ones I named are free.

I didn't mean dark as my render, but on original image, there's absolutely no shadow on tree.

ShonenAi, you probably scrapped the idea or forgot the thread, but here's a 3D-render following your perspective AND with rotated bench. Since it's 3D, perspective should still be correct. I used grayscaled version of your initial background behind the render and made ground plane transclusent so we could see original too.

Also, light is about somewhere where your pic would have it. So, that shadow of the fence is also created by that light, not drawn on.

* Notice that even though I tried to make fence bars have same distance apart from each other yet same as yours, it proved that your fence wasn't 100% correct. Mine should be. You could use this as a guide, too.

* The right side of tree is and should be much, much darker.



Using simple 3D geometry for perspective and shadow help for 2D backgrounds has proven itself well.

Er... what?
...
This is probably one of the most confusing threads in Critics Lounge, ever. Or atleast, since 2003.


* Your sketches need some heavier detail. And some ... look. I mean, those faces are bland, expressionless. "WTF?" in only expression I read at all. Also, I don't think we could count 8- quick lines as a sketch of well... anything.

Suggestion: Draw a background, or whole character. Or even better, both. Until you haven't done so, the whole project is quite doubtable. Making a BG and character sprite would set first brick for actual art style and direction.

* I like the setting. Rarely-used take on typical future-aliens-humans kind of science fiction. I think it could work.

Suggestion: If making anything like this, be sure to remember basic human psychology and under what condition would humans be okay with something like this.

"Peaceful" is not a word to describe human being. Doing so, you've instantly made an utopia. So be careful.

No government would greet any aliens with open hands. No human being wouldn't really want to be a neighbor with aliens -- we have even trouble with people of other nation or race. You have to find a way to tell this story in believable form. The X-files accomplished it well, for example.

* I'd say that the plot outline sounds atleast as confusing and complex as your initial post here. But it also sounds interesting.

reanimated-skeleton-roman-warlord.
This would either mean total mess or really sharp and rich game atmosphere.

So I wonder how are you  actually going to pull this off.

Suggestion: in your story, don't play for Lost/Half-Life/Aliens/mystery/etc effect. If it's an adventure game, you have to put emphasis on two things: Goals and motivation. So whatever protagonist/player does, it should be motivated strongly, and lead towards a specific goal. And of course, all other characters too! I'm not saying your plot premise doesn't, just don't forget it. Otherwise, you have an interactive movie, but not much of a game.

Anyway, good luck to you.

I mean, it seems tame now - but the NES version of Ninja Gaiden.... it had this cool opening scene with Ninja's dueling.  At the time, I thought it was the coolest thing.

Bt

Seconded.

On NES, there was many cool intros.
I also liked very much...

Robocop 3
Power Blade 2

Coming back to the topic, I hope you won't mind this...

First full movie was really-really good. It captured fully that X-fileish mystery atmosphere and power of the dark ones, like the scene where "accident" was and HEAVY trucks came with bio-suited men and sealed everything off quickly. It was so powerful. What I didn't like that much was ending scene where alien ship (?) raised from ice and Scully SO did not notice it. She could, and later argue with her typical "this must have a reasonable scientific explanation"-kind of crap or something. But no. What a letdown. Wonder why she still investigates if she manages to miss all the evidence? Especially if evidence flies above her head, covering the skies?

I lost interest and track of episodes near the end of season 2. Running on weekly basis, I skipped many episodes and didn't catch up much later. Also, it SO irritates me when one man holds all the answers and the duo simply suffers through hell and beyond in mystery. Same thing with "Lost", though there's some bright moments.

I always feel like if I was Mulder, I would tail the smoking man and beat some answers out of him Jack-Bauer style. Maybe that's why I'm more 24-person: answers come quickly and twists too, to still keep things interesting.

I hope they make second movie as good as first was, and a bit better. Hanging on episodes wouldn't do this movie much good, but as I read, this won't be the case.
Yay!

I just remembered I have some season 3 episodes on my HD, from the time I decided to fill myself in and forgot all about them. Feels like watching time!

Well, I've always liked those little movies before games. What's your most favourite ones?

Best ones I always watch (always!) and never skip are

Battlefield 2 intro
(This orchestral hit at beginning and end gives me shivers and pumps up for game!)

Knights of Honor
This one got some awards. I clearly see why.
Best. Thing. Ever. 300W subwoofer helps the experience and gives neighbors their share, too

There's some more I can't recall right now.
What's yours?