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Add a load of plot holes and fact that the kid never came to an idea of teleporting into military warehouse for weapons or something like that, thus causing long, pointless battles with so-called "paladins".

You missed a VERY important point - the Jumper can only jump to a place he sees or has seen and has memory of. That's why all the pictures in his room. He can't just Jump to a military warehouse cos he never seen it.
There were plot holes but this wasn't one.

I didn't say THAT was. But emphasis was more on "something like that". How about gun store?
Paladins felt really weak against jumpers. I mean, "I can teleport through time and space. What can you do? Fire tazer?"
And other way too: since jumpers were human by all standards, paladins could simply use bullets. Bullet speed conquers human reflexes most of times, right?

What I mean is that this all was stupid and not very well written. Teleportation puts immediately "sci-fi" tag onto a story. Why stop there? If writer had crazy idea like this, why not go further and maximize creativity on teleportation issue. For example, gaining speed through rapid teleporting to give a good punch in one scene looked really good... But how about Orange Box and Portal? Why not gain speed by teleporting into sky, falling, and putting momentum into punch by teleporting just before hitting ground? Or anything else like this? There's maybe hundred things I could add if I had to write film about teleporting. Other scene, they teleported a driving car. "If it moves, you can jump" or something. Why not defeat enemies - for example, by teleporting onto a highway, touch a passing car and bringing it with all its speed - infront of an enemy? Well, anything like this was missing. Really creative usage of the "power". If felt sometimes like your ordinary soap-opera with people talking all the time and throwing punches, with tiny exception that 2 people can teleport. Good action movie? Nah.

As I said, by only robbing banks and taking exotic trips, protagonist felt a really really creativity-poor teenager. And, ahem, where's sex? If I could teleport as a teenager, well...  :

Then again, maybe it's saved for/by a sequel.

It's weird. I know that I can rate someone's drawing fairly when I'm able to make it myself. Or atleast, get close.
Because that means that I can understand the workload and effort, understand difficulties and detect laziness.

If you get negative, anal crits from someone, better see who it is. Artists are weird. Maybe someone, who's launching attacks at your palette/whatever, happens actually to be a moron who can only draw same thing in same colors and that's basically concludes his skill.
I know alot of people, who have mastered - for example - drawing Mickey Mouse and call everything else pointless and stupid. But never dare to draw anything else, to cover their actual lack of talent.

What I don't understand is that holy aura around term "pixel art".
Hey, those are lit lamps on your screen, not a damn religion. Rules? What rules?

Anyway, that's a magnificent picture. What are they bitching about, anyway?

I didn't like the movie that much. The start was quite cool, like kid with cool ability robbing banks and living well and so. It would be cool movie, if through whole movie, the protagonist would have stayed teenage and invented all kinds of tricks with his found ability.

Sadly, "they" had to ruin it.
At the moment that awful, unsympathetic female entered storyline in their adulthood, everything went downfall.

Paladins? Paladin killer? How can such a brilliant idea: human teleportation could be ruined so badly?

Add a load of plot holes and fact that the kid never came to an idea of teleporting into military warehouse for weapons or something like that, thus causing long, pointless battles with so-called "paladins".

Not a bad thing to pick up from discount DVD's rack, but I won't suggest spending money and hope on cinema.

Ah, and I hated this broad.

Sounds to me like a bunch of n00bs are trying to rate art.
N00bs as people who don't know how to comment on art.
One thing is knowing how to draw, way another is how to criticize works of other people.

Why Pixel Joint, anyway?
Our CL is the best place ever.

[capitalism]

But for the sake of peace they should just accept it and let it go.

In a world of capitalism? "Let"... "go"... 2,2 million people worth of tax money and work labor, 10,000 sq/km land big enough to be an independent country?

For the sake of... peace?

You're crazy! :o

Note. I'm all for peace. But "letting go" a country sounds kind of utopic in world today.

Let's see how Russia reacts...
And hope that peace will stay in the region.

1. Character dimensions are related to the rooms and resolution of your game. For 320x240 game, I wouldn't make character taller than about 110 pixels. But, I find 50-90 pixels of height usually enough for my games.

Of course, doors and entrances in your room should be in harmony with character. In the end, it all depends on your style.

2. Very interesting and highly technical question. I never thought about it. Windows Paint' palette is usually enough for me, for example, and all color picks are done by bare eye.  I sometimes edit saturation to get it lower, but that's all. To be honest, I don't even know what's the difference between RGB and CYMK modes!
Usually dragging eyedropper around on Paint's palette area will help me to find the color I need.

3. For 70 pixel character, 400% zoom seems to be enough. If this confuses you, try making a stickman which has all needed heights for your final character, then zoom in and stickman will give you nice references in actual drawing, so there would be no surprises later.

[bad]

I say it is bad. Well, "for starters", very few people come up with something good.

But what is good is that you can learn. Especially at Critics Lounge at AGS boards, because everyone will help and we have a loads of both tutorials and various styles to help you with this.

While there's no "pre-set" rules for character drawing, there's still some very common starters' mistakes you made.
Here's the problems with your image:

* Double pixels. In most corners, you made that strange double pixel error. Seek tutorials about this.
* Color leaks... er... or something. Your outlines don't keep brighter color inside. Take a closer look at his hands! What did you exactly tried to do here? Why aren't hands outlined? This is simple to fix, though.
* Proportions versus realism: As said, eyes are too high and big, there's no forehead
* Blue hair?
* Skin color is unrealistic. I can't point a finger at your character's race.
* Decide if it's an outlining you have there or some sort of half-assed shading. Currently, it feels like both.
* Image is unfinished! Never, ever post unfinished work at CL, unless it's something really big and complex, like a background. barely 200-pixel and very basic character does not fall into this category.

So, fix all mistakes first and post what you got. Then we'll see further.
The best advice I could give you is to learn from what others do when drawing a character. Observe how everything is drawn and used.

There's 2 cases where I made a tiny tutorial for help, and they're here
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=33380.msg433646#msg433646
and here
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=31167.msg400216#msg400216

Hope those would help a bit.

And yes, I know that I might have sounded harsh, but after few sprites, tutorials, and learning further you'll barely recognize this one.

My machine is one of two things I'm never sorry to spend money on... second is my GF

Intel Core2 Duo (2 x 2,18 MHz)
2GB RAM
NVidia GeForce 7900GT/GTO (512MB) (with self-made custom cooler)
250GB HDD
Buggy, problematic, overheating, color-dot-infested, overly damned Samsung Syncmaster 740BF 17" LCD monitor. Never buy this.
5.1 Sigmatel Audio soundcard thingy
WinXP Home Edition

And loads of fancy junk, from TV&FM card to a tablet to a 5.1 surround headset to a MIDI keyboard to a...

Anyway, current specs indicate that last time I had money was more than year ago.
Damn you, poverty!

True.
Sorry.

Okay. But this is far from promotion.

I simply doubted that LoL3 (lol!) couldn't be found on P2P networks.
There's no links to anything, no server named,  nothing. Not even MD5 hash name!

Just a screenshot from popular program and its search feature in action.

I've never been in UK (although I'd love to), but this is how it feels via media and books:

British? Old. Retro.

Like old cities, ruins of strongholds, old-looking architecture - even "new" buildings look very much 1930'ish

Football. The football in Britain seems to be what Islam is in Middle East. Cultlike. Same goes for Monarchy, queen.

I should mention that this probably means a lot of britishness for me: cultlike belief and sticking to logically stupid or useless things. Like STILL not using metric system, driving on left, history-long geographical isolation, not following any stereotypes (british tv & movies are best example for this), etc. Doing everything "our own way", not important if it's the best way.

Weird addiction to beer. Pubs.

Slang. I can understand US movies without subtitles, but British ones, with all the "sods" and "chaps", add an accent, are quite cryptic.

Gothic. Stereotypical new British band plays Goth Rock of some sort. Things look gothic. Black is very common colour. 

Everything has this "Bioshock" game feeling to it. Cabs look like ones gangsters drove in 30's USA, buses look like this, buildings looks like this, everything looks like this. Retro.

Those few british I've met, are a bit gypsy-like, serious, introvert and with somewhat faked aura of confidence and strength. You know, to hide a bit childish happiness and craziness underneath.

[chinese1]

Artist as an amateur, not professional artist.
What kind? Every kind. Digital, mostly. Like 2D and also a bit of 3D, but I consider myself quite good with either realistic or caricature "mode" with pencil and paper also. During school, there was way more drawings in my notepads than actual school material.

Anyway, back to chemistry. For me, it goes like this,

First I open a textbook with paragraph I have to know. Since I don't have basics, it looks to me like this:

Saturated hydrocarbons (chinese1) are the most simple of the hydrocarbon species and are composed entirely of chinese2 bonds and are chinese3 with hydrogen; they are the basis of petroleum fuels and are either found as chinese4 or chinese5 species of unlimited number. The general formula for saturated hydrocarbons is CnH2n + 2 (assuming chinese6).

So, I don't even understand most of words in this paragraph. So I have to sort out "chinese" terms first...
I open another textbook:

Alkanes (chinese1), also known as paraffins, are chemical compounds that consist only of the elements carbon (C) and hydrogen (H) (i.e., hydrocarbons), wherein these atoms are linked together exclusively by single bonds (i.e., they are saturated compounds) without any cyclic structure (i.e., loops). Alkanes belong to a homologous series of organic compounds in which the members differ by a constant relative atomic mass of 14.

Well, I didn't replace chinese in this paragraph, but I don't understand 3-4 further terms!
Homologus series? single bonds? saturated compounds? This takes another, and another paragraph. With long circle, I finally figure out what Alkanes are. But I had to learn what hydrocarbons were! And there's more of "chinese" in hydrocarbon paragraph, so it AGAIN takes branches and branches, leading to more and more new chinese in paragraphs to figure them out.

So, I have to open ANOTHER textbook to sort THOSE out.

In the end, when I find them all, I have still failed, because all this new information, it all just becomes a big mess in my head. And that's what's killing me in chemistry. Even besides theoretical part, which ends still up learnable, the formulas and equations, finding ion charges and level of oxydation and all this logic-free mathematical mess of joining elements will still fail me in the test.

If there only was some video material to learn it. Visualize! Be it either 3D models or 2D animations, but something!

C4H9Li + H2O → C4H10 + LiOH

Won't make me understand what just happened. But heavy CGI of the process, I think, would.

Pro edition actually has only tiny changes from shareware version. It doesn't reduce GM capabilities noticeably, and is visible mostly to long-time veteran users only. But if I remember correctly, version 5.3 is still free, AND without splash screen or any limitations. And there's really little of changes in later versions, mostly handful of (quite useless, work-around-able) functions and built-in editors.

Also, v5.3 GM is noticeably faster and stabler, with much lower minimal requirements to a computer than 6 and 7 versions.

Turn off "delete underlying" for this.

But 3D is very basic, messy and difficult. To make something good, you should use external DLL-s, like Irrlicht engine (there's a port to Game Maker) or something like this. I don't suggest messing with 3D though, there's way better engines for this. Like NeoAxis for example.

If you need ANY help, ask.
But if you're never used GM before, let me give you first important tips:

* Do not use icon gui system in game maker. It's awful. "Execute a piece of code" is and will be only icon you need. So,

* Start learning functions immediately. This road building thing you showed would take only 20 minutes or so to create in game maker.

* For road thing, draw a tileset first, then cut it into pieces, make a sprite in GM where every bit is a subimage of animation, and with some simple coding, you can set different subimage for every track piece object. This is way faster and simpler than making different sprites for different track pieces.

* GM functions are easy to learn. All image-related functions start with "image_something", keyboard events "keyboard_something" and so on. So, it's quite easy to find them from GM helpfile.

* Just like in AGS example SSH provided, in GM you could also use arrays to make whole thing. But there's ton of other possibilities to make this.

* Everything is object-based. Every road bit should be an object, every train, house, so on.
To tell difference between objects that are copies of SAME object, every object has an unique value in variable ID.
For example, if you make an object named "track", and insert 3 of them into room, while they are absolutely same, value of track.id is different for each piece. A bit early to say this, but knowing what you're about to do, you DO need to know this. Makes life alot easier!

* Most of the game and code goes into "step" event for objects

* Do make your own variables, you have to declare them (similar to Turbo Pascal or even AGS). But in GM, it's as simple as giving them initial value in "create" event. For example, health = 0; in create event will ensure that your object has a variable named "health". And so on.

* To make a variable usable to ALL objects, instead of object name, you must use keyword "global".
For example, track.health is a variable for object "track", but global.health is a variable to every object. Like AGS GlobalInts.

Game maker! Game maker! Game maker!

GM is TOTALLY the thing you should use for your game. And I'm happy to provide ANY coding help you could need, having long and deep experience with this system.

But sim should be small-scale. Don't even try to think about Transport Tycoon scale, for example. Original sim city is maybe biggest thing you could do with GM - without too heavy slowdown.

[doesn't exist]

Huh? If eMule won't find something, it doesn't exist.



This won't go for downloading of course.
eMule is only a step away from awfulness of torrent technology.

Thanks for tips so far. Problem is, there isn't that ONE textbook I have to go through. Chemistry simply is like this: I probably have to go through all textbooks from grade 8 to 11 to stand a chance. There's no programmers who don't know how to copy a file.

In Estonia, educational system expects you to become a writer, historian, biologist, mathematician, rocket scientist and what else after graduating, so there's no voluntary subjects and everything is taken through VERY deeply.

Sounds like my kind of place!

You misunderstood.
While detail in subjects is extremely high, the time allotted and pace is same as everywhere. My ex went to high school in U.S. and from her descriptions, American kids are learning in 12th grade what Estonians do in 8th.

Yes, nice to learn more and harder.
But it's 5 days a week, 8 months a year, 12 years of school like everywhere else.
Grading is as strict, and chances to failure therefore alot higher. Also, getting into such heavy detail isn't really interesting. Not all of us like chemistry. Or history. Or physics. There's very large cover of things, heavy material to go through in relatively short time, and some of it is insanely difficult. Education here won't take individual interests nor capabilities into account. It often feels like school is forming a bunch superhumans.

For me, it would have been still okay if I was 17, teenager and mold-able. But my life has been a bit different and I'm 24 now. Like, old. Adult. So, it's a whole different music here.

If it happens that one or more of the subjects are totally against your person or capabilities (I described this before), you're pretty much f-ed -- like myself. A low grade on your sheet won't let you into university, and job market is instantly limited for you... if not closed at all. It's modern bureaucratic thinking: bosses do not know what they need. All they believe is a piece of paper. I consider myself to know computers and a bit of design, but I will never, ever have a chance at job interview to sit down and demonstrate what I can do. I will be buried before employer even sees me, because they always ask to send CV first.

Mozart himself would get kicked out of opera hall if he doesn't have a paper to prove his skill to compose.

Anyway, it's quite hard to use internet for chemistry: English terminology is absolutely bizarre and different for things I have to find. And there's absolutely nothing in Estonian language that would help. Google also gives too much PhD crap or just mess... If someone happens to know good links (organic chemistry), I would be very thankful.

I won't lose hope, but with my work schedule as it is, I probably won't raise my nose from the book until spring...
Ouch. Being a working man for last 6 years, it's kind of difficult to work hard on something I personally don't like or need and not get paid.

Alright, chemistry. Most horrible thing Man ever invented.
For me, atleast.

If I want to finish (finally) highschool, I have to learn chemistry.
And learn, as get to know with the subject from its very start. Even though theoretically, I should have been studied chemistry from 7th or 8th grade, which should make 4 or 5 years of friendship with this terrible subject.

Well, it's not really like this.

Basic (or middle) school in Estonia covers grades 1 to 9. Then it's 3 grades of highschool. But basic school I went to, was something similar to those movies where teacher is sent into hell on earth. I live in city part that pretty much equals to a ghetto in western cities. And the school was equal also. As were most of the people in my class.

In 8th grade (If I remember correctly), when puberty kicked in and people in my class turned into complete idiots/ultraviolent hormone bombs, my introduction to chemistry was something I regret till today.

The teacher happened to be total failure, and she didn't even try to teach anything or maintain order in class: the huge cardboard periodic table of elements was set to fire once, fights/bullying during lesson happened on daily basis, one desk was covered in magnesium and sat on fire, that wet rag that's used for cleaning the blackboard hit teacher more times that I could count, chairs and backpacks were thrown out of window to irritate teacher (3rd floor!), the list is endless.

In this earthly teenage hell, beloved miss teacher often simply shat up and just stood there till the end of the lesson.
Well, and failed everyone.

I can't blame her for this, but that didn't help the ones who wanted to study. Every crazed male (and some females) in this class were testing the boundaries of behavior and this teacher didn't set any at all. So, I recall only 2 or 3 more or less "normal" lessons during last  2 years of basic school. But I never reached chemistry, and passed school with lowest possible grade to pass it at all. Leading teacher of the class literally pushed me to graduate, I really didn't pick much up in this hell. Which caused alot of downfall and failed tries to resurface later, but that's a longer story.
Needless to say, there was NO lab work or actual experiments in this class. Even if teacher wanted to bring kids into chemistry, there was no equipment or resources for this.

Short story is this: chemistry is still something that sounds like chinese to me.

As an artist with strong visual memory, I can fairly quickly learn anything that I can SEE or what is drawable. Or, if it has very STRICT set system and behavior, so at average level, I can also handle maths(calculus,geometry,etc) and physics. Or languages. Works also for things I can imagine, draw a mental picture in my head -- history is my favourite subject.

This is where chemistry fails, being totally theoretical, with actually almost zero things to see or remember. I see a desk and keyboard infront of me. If I try really hard, okay, I can imagine and believe atoms and molecules buzzing around instead of this black keyboard my eyes witness. But 11th grade chemistry is a bit tougher than simple belief. Alicyclic compounds, hydrocarbons, carbonyl compounds, levels of polymerization, polar single bounds or whatever they were called, etc. And of course, formulas. In Estonia, educational system expects you to become a writer, historian, biologist, mathematician, rocket scientist and what else after graduating, so there's no voluntary subjects and everything is taken through VERY deeply.

Trying to read a chemistry books does nothing but confuses and makes me sleep quite quickly. Main problem is of course that I don't have any base to learn. You cannot simply jump into something and start learning it if you don't know any basics. It even isn't that hard to study. I can mechanically remember all this chinese and write on paper next day. This is how I made into 11th grade. But as soon as I walk out of classroom, the "chinese" in my head is gone. It almost feels like my brain rejects chemistry. Rejects really aggressively.

I have time until May. In May, I have to know chemistry like I had been learning it for last 5 years. And I'm so clueless on what to do.

Is there something in this world that could help me?
Maybe a webpage that goes from "what is atom" to "how to build an atom bomb" with loads of pictures and other stuff to make it be less chinese? Or maybe a strong drug to study? Educational computer game? Good tips? A visit to a shrink? Something?