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Scenario one is cheating. Period. Scenario two is mentally cheating, which is even worse, in my opinion.

I totally second that.

If I was boyfriend in either of situation, I'd consider quick and bloody breakup.

If a girl needs to kiss someone other OR spend time with mentioned co-worker to be happy, she's not happy with me. Atleast, not enough. So - bye.

Physical contact is immediate act of treachery, which is atleast fair and concrete. In second scenario, I wonder how girl could look into boyfriends eyes and tell him she loves her. While she admires someone else and her boyfriend isn't the only person she wants to spend her life with. There's guilt and faking written all over it and I wouldn't respect person who could take this as normal relationship or life. Does she even respect herself? If yes, how could she?

Commitment is holy. There's no place for lies in this. Not even lying to yourself.

I don't give a f**k about political correctness in this, i.e - "we didn't do anything". If you dream about being with someone else or need to be, don't slam the door on your way out.

Yes, I am quite jealous type. But I'm also loyal as hell and expect same.

[effort]

Hey, you can be politically correct on all aspects, why not. And if you're looking for hard, cold proof that you shouldn't use KOF graphics, you won't find it.

It isn't about written rules or copyrights. Yeah, go ahead and rip these magnificent backgrounds. You might do well and make a popular game.

But more likely, you won't.

It's just something that no-one does, and even if somebody does, it usually fails.
Otherwise, why couldn't every AGSer get an emulator and rip all these nice pixel games dry?
Every member could have few games at their account, wouldn't this be easy?

But people don't do that.
They draw by themselves, as good or bad it isn't, post images at critics lounge, learn-learn-improve.
It's difficult to explain. But by going the easy way, you will be lower than the very beginners at art.

That's why effort counts over quality.
And that's why even incredibly beginner, MSPainted - if there's effort visible in it - background beats all the nice scenery KOF could offer.

To be a bit more positive, I'll tell you this: Adventure games need functional, not incredibly pretty graphics. You don't have to draw super-realistic scenes or have a degree in fine arts. What's important is that the things you draw WORK together, and is recognizable by human eye (i.e. door looks like door, hehe).

If you're going for ripping, better make sure that you can either rip all you need from same place/style or edit various things so they'd match. If you get all bg-s and characters from KOF, but are unable to draw or rip - for example gui buttons or inventory icons to match the style, you're pretty much failed. Think about it before jumping onto this "thin ice" as said.
We cannot argue about this, because logic says that there's nothing that can stop you. But eh, you're free to try.
I just wouldn't and stay at this point.

If you are unsure about your art skills, show something in Critics lounge and see what people suggest. It's more likely that you like your art less than everybody else.

Anyway, to spare you from further discussion, I'd get onto topic:

Q: Exactly how frowned upon is that here?

A: More than enough to reconsider

I'd say that getting a keyboard rather slowed my music making down. Why? I'm too lazy to use it and trying something on MIDI keyboard and composing that something are two different things.

Yes, I wanted keyboard like hell. Before this, when trying out a melody (inventing it), I played it on pc keyboard, and this is - of course difficult and frustrating. And yes, MIDI keyboard makes melody tryout alot easier.
But hooking up the keyboard, playing, memorizing, re-entering everything with mouse to piano roll... well, it takes alot more time and kills inspiration.

Now, it takes super inspiration-filled day for me to plug the MIDI keyboard in at all. I must be in real creating rush to do that. Apart from these ultra rare days, it collects dust.

[illegal]

Please don't be cryptic.  If there is something I need to know, please tell me what it is.

Okay. While free resources are mostly amateurish,  nameless, simple and functional bits of  graphic you can use, made by amateur artists... KOF is a whole universe with set story, huge fanbase and of course - world's best animators from Japan behind the graphics.

There's a  huge difference whether you use some free GFX or rip a piece of other world apart. Plus, as said, it's illegal. And you can make as good game you could, people who know KOF will probably hate it.

FruityLoops Studio 6
and for hardware,

Roland Edirol PC-50 MIDI keyboard.
Enough to rock.

Besides, what's the difference between taking the backgrounds from the resources page and yanking them out of King of Fighters?

Take a look at both and ask again.
If that's what you intended to do, I seriously suggest not to.

Sure. New, aggressive shading on water makes it look much more real.
Em.. there isn't much else to crit, to my eye, it's perfect.

I think that to find better answer to this question, forget about peacetime murder rates here and there and think about war.

We had 2 major world wars in 20th century. After both, what happened? Extreme progress in everything.
War is what boosted culture of ancient Greeks and Romans, and most of the prospering civilizations in time have been built on dead bodies and loot.

I think that war = competition between Man and Man, and this inspires things. Even cold war (the fear of WWIII) forced both sides to do amazing things, one side sending a Man on to the moon and developing thermonuclear weapon, other doing same plus sending a satellite onto orbit and keeping most challenging and ambitious project with humankind in motion - global communism. Not to mention all other technologies it produced.

Law and order isn't what makes big things. It's anarchy, freedom to do anything. For example, not so many good things happened in Medieval era, when church and feudalism controlled everything (thus denying everything new). Everything (industrial era, etc) started AFTER this, with revolutions and reformations. Democracy contains healthy dose of anarchy, that's why whole world tries to grasp to it now.

Maybe fear for his life (even if it's not direct) keeps man improving and getting better. Isn't most advanced pieces of our technology (either directly or started from) improved measures of killing another human being?

And why are we getting more violent? Because we're better at that! Imagine yourself as a medieval king. You don't like other country. To do anything about them, you know that you have to sacrifice thousands of lives of you people. But now? Nuke, gas or poison the bastards and problem is gone. Don't people realize it collectively? Don't we all know that our country has an army somewhere, protecting us and destroying anyone who wants to rob or kill us - with most monstrous weapons ever made? Don't you pay taxes to have people and weapons to do killing for you? Where's motivation to be peaceful?

Violence is made extremely simple nowadays. With enough money to hire a lawyer and little plan you can exterminate or torture anyone you don't like. Sometimes I've been thinking that it's easy enough to even kill someone, atleast where I live. In Estonia, unwanted kill results in 3 years prison maximum. It's quite easy to stage an accident on someone you don't like. What happens? You will be put into pre-investigation lockup, it's nothing like real prison (you can have visitors, make phone calls etc), investigation takes 6 months to a year, and if you admit guilt, you'll be sentenced to a jail for a year, which will be considered carried out due time you've been locked up, plus maybe probationary period, which isn't really a punishment. To totally eliminate human you don't like, it's not that big price to pay. Especially since you never reach real prison. Works so well only first time though.
Any other things, like beating or so won't even usually be punished here - 3 years prison or fine. Few weeks in lockup is actually worst that could happen. No-one's dumb enough to get maximum punishment and walks off with a small fine. Fine! Add a good lawyer, you will be right in the end!

Western thinking and general softness about crime is the problem in my example. And I still haven't figured out why European Union and loads of stupid human rights movement organizations press this. It seems that people like violence? The more advanced and democratic, the more excuses to kick heads in?

Yeah, I know. It sounds awful. But there's some ends of a long string of thought, don't you think?

* Water is a bit too red/purple. In a swamp, I'd imagine brown or green.
* The branch at the center... make some loose leaves, it looks like green cotton ball right now
* A medium between Erwin_br's and original image would be good. In all cases, rightmost tree should be darker, like on these edits.
* Mandolin(?) thingy really distracts with thin pixelly look, while everything else looks much more smudged and rough. I'd do something about this.
* tip: water would look much more realistic if some of the light from door would reflect on tiny waves. Also, reflection of background trees would do good.

Apart from this, it looks superb. Three blossoms and road vanishing into horizon are giving it extraordinarily cool effect.

The yellow line on carpet looks like it's radiated or neon or something. It's way too bright and stands out too much...

Still, the chair (especially the chair) and table both look too low. Sitting on this chair... would look really funny. Make chair legs taller by at least 3-4 pixels!

I like the one with shadows, i think it looks really cool!

Well, having a character in a game without shadow makes this quite unusable though...
If you're going for shadow room, make file cabinet darker.
And yes, it looks too empty right now, and the door looks REALLY huge compared to everything else.

* A man sitting in that chair should have really tough time reaching this door handle! Or the book on upper shelf!
I mean, everything is totally out of proportion. Don't you use characters for size reference? Add an empty layer, put your character onto it, and draw everything according to character. Then erase character layer. simple?
* Never make a background that forces you to use character scaling so much! It won't look good later.

Firefox, Trance-pacific, visible.
Imageshack tends to be slow for some people, try hosting your banner somewhere else and try if you see it.

I would totally go for scotch's edit!
It has less of this "ancient scanner & oil painting" or "really bad weather"-look later Sierra games had, has less unimportant outlines and overall feeling is friendlier to the eyes. Also, crucial things that attract eye, like river and plains have some color now.

Nature is beautiful, why show it with depressing colors? Reddish/bluish-gray palette with dark, artifacted outlines on original feel a bit of depressive... to me, at least. I haven't studied any color theory, but this sounds like a bad mix anyway.

But drawing itsself is very nice either way.

Not too bad, keep on practicing.  Perspective is quite off indeed. Why not practice correct one also? It's the hardest thing to do anyway.

** But in general, I'd say that your images have nice amount of detail in them, but heavily lack any design or composition. Especially the "City of chaos" picture -- there's a lot of buildings and stuff happening, but you didn't think how and where to place them, which results quite a messy scene. So, try out different compositions in your further practice, you'll need it.

** To get some more serious experience, pick a reference for your drawings. For example, google for a photo/pick random photo from random magazine and try to draw what you see. Practising this will clear some things up in your head on how things look and how they are placed. Your visions and ideas will become much better. If you have done this enough, you are able to improvise quite realistic scene without needing any reference and it still looks real. That's what to aim for.

** Don't go into such heavy detail yet. Try drawing something 3D, I mean, try to draw cubes for example. In various angles. Or a perfect circle. Teach your hands and eyes to work together correctly.
For a nice 3D practice lesson, take a box of some kind. For example, a matchbox. Put it onto your table and draw it. Don't mind drawing etiquette or details, just basic shape of the matchbox.
Then rotate it into another direction or put something behind one corner to tilt it.
Draw again. And so on.

Pretty soon, you can think three-dimensional, visualize correct perspective in your head even before touching the paper with pencil and you will never have - for example when drawing a house - this starter's question "which side should be visible and how much?".

** I suggested this because all your pictures are very two-dimensional. Things have no depth nor distance from each other. That's first thing you need to practice.

** Also, taking a RANDOM 3D fps game (even ancient one), and instead of running-and-gunning around, just paying attention how walls disappear into horizon and how it changes when you turn your character or make a step forward also helps alot.
At least, it helped me. Sometimes when I'm playing something and must stop it, like to eat or talk to phone, I still keep looking at the game. It's strange how much details and new things I discover only by doing that. It all goes somewhere, into my head, and I can bring this knowledge out when I'm drawing something. "How should I draw this...? Hm... think of Doom... oh yeah. This way."

Heh.
About a month or so ago, I went to cinema with my GF to see Ratatouille. Tickets are only sold for cash, and we were late, so she stood in queue while I went to ATM nearby to withdraw some cash. There was a card forgotten inside the machine and "Do you want to continue" question on the screen. Must have been another rusher...
Our ATM's require PIN code only at the start and I was REALLY tempted to "continue" and see how much money there was, maybe even get some and make myself a nice gift...  Since cash is getting rare here and everything, including wages etc go usually through bank, I'm quite sure that there could have been enough money to make my day. Or atleast, get myself and GF a nice free evening.

Eh, moral dilemma.
Anyway, I decided not to continue, took out the other card and did what I needed to do.

Thinking clearly about it later, I had chills. And thanked myself for not starting any mess. What if the owner of the card remembered last moment, came back to ATM and saw me there? And if he was a boxer or something? Nice movie night indeed... When someone loses a card, he usually calls to bank and card gets shut down. But if there's money missing, he or she goes to police. And cinema lobby was full of cameras, maybe there's even some built into ATM, so they'd found out anyway...

But at the moment I saw this card and opportunity I didn't think any of this. If I were religious, I'd consider this a test.

Anyway, I returned card to the bank next day. But seeing a wallet lying in the ground, I'd empty it from money and THEN return it or take it to police. In a state full of bureaucracy, losing an ID or any other documents cost more time and nerves than any money in a wallet could pay for.

As for my own wallet, it's for show and few pointless cards. Money is safest in my pants' back pocket and even if not, I'm too lazy to search, open and close wallet every time.

SP2 has its pros and cons, but generally, if you're running on a system that meets Windows XP requirements and copy of XP is legal, there is actually no serious reason not to upgrade. It doesn't change much how Win looks and works, just your Add/Remove programs list will be trashed a bit. And you probably have to turn off nuisances here and there.

From your story, I kind of suspect your copy being pirated one. Why not be glad to get something extra to something you paid for? Like extra stability and bugfixes etc?

With illegal copy, of course, things are different. I was running on pirated XP Pro for 2 years and problems concerning SP2 and "windows genuine advatange" crap Microsoft invented somewhere during this made things slightly more difficult. My suggestion: not worth the hassle. Most of the hacks either don't work, install trojans or simply quit working after some time. With XP dying in few years, you can buy quite cheap legal version of Windows XP Home and enjoy carefree life with your PC. I mean it.

I like the picture, alot, but I'm not so fond of colors you used.
They're a bit too aggressive and somewhat "taste" a bit like rotten swamp to me. That's where I'd use colors like this, not on nice plains-and-mountains scene. Make sky brighter and grass/leaves greener and see how it turns out.

Such pretty scenery with distant mountains and stuff deserves alot lighter and less contrasty/saturated palette I think. Briefly - the picture is pretty, the colors are not.

I quite agree. I'd much rather employ my own security guard, fireman and doctor than contribute to a shared system through taxes.

Yeah, at least they would get their job done properly.
But that wouldn't be reasonable because in current system, one doctor, policeman or fireman serves hundreds of people. Also, you probably cannot afford them anyway. Of course, in current system, they fail more often. But your private crew would spend most of their time slacking off, unless you light a fire, catch a disease and get attacked at daily basis 
Or... do you?  :o

Income tax isn't a fraud, it's a nice reminder for us workers that there are people who don't want to work and prefer to take trips, drive jeeps, throw dirt at each other and argue about nonsense instead of working. If there's perfect society, it's for politicians. Also, they need money to maintain security, such as police or military to keep you from rebelling against them. That's why I hate democracy. My perfect society would be if people could HANG any leaders or representatives they don't like, without court, simply by majority vote. A great motivator, isn't it? But that's not likely to happen, so enough offtopic...

I earn about $590/419 euros a month... my work is about killing time with WinKawaks emulator and entering data/printing bills whenever order has been filled. Basically, waiting for bunch of people to finish their job and then enter their results.

But since it's part-time (about 15 hours of work in a week, of which also most time goes to playing Samurai Showdown IV and Spider Solitaire  ), I think I'm supposed to be quite happy with this. At hardcore fruit selling seasons, like Christmas, this 15 hours becomes something like 60 hours a week anyway.

In Estonia, many people earn this much or less for a full month of 40hrs weeks. Including most of my teachers at school, unless they work in two places at same time. Which many of them do.

Here, lowest part of the "food chain" are teachers, doctors, policemen and firemen. For example, garbage truck or bus drivers earn double that they do. Weird.

Amazing set of sketches, I see. Pretty amazing ones too.

Some are great, some not that great. Bodies seem to turn out way better than faces... but you have talent, no doubt.

What I'd suggest is to follow less anime/manga/whatever style and go for more realistic style.
That's because you can do it WAY better.

I totally love pictures #8, #13 and the best one -- #22. Woman drawn in full size on #22 looks best drawing of them all, in my opinion. And mostly because here you don't draw that sharp manga-style jaw, which makes drawing super cute.

To name one I didn't like so much at all, it's probably the colored one, #14. Looks way too much like rest of these million amateur manga drawings around Deviantart. And even if it's style, eyes that blend into skin make my own eyes stitch weirdly so I can't look at drawing like this for long...

Anyway, good luck to you. I really like what you can do with pen and paper. How about mouse/tablet?