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But this is wrong Chris Jones... 
Though, when joining AGS community, I thought that they were same.

Ooh, this one will reap some AGS rewards...

I really don't care about title or language usage: it's everywhere today... and no sane person really cares, taking into account what type and how much is this... thing... "game" anyway.

But four hotspots isn't a game indeed.
Dude, give us a game to play, not a tech demo showing nothing particular.

Er... This thing had a WIP thread? I could make a "game" like this in less time than posting a thread here.
Jeesh.

Everybody knows a story about three bears, right?
Joke goes like this:

Three bears arrive at their house.
"Someone's tried my porridge!" says Papa Bear.
"Someone's sat on my stool!" says Mama Bear.
"Turn the lights out! We'll discuss it next morning!" yells Little bear from bedroom.

The original, if you didn't remember the tale:

Spoiler

A girl gets lost in forest, finds a house, three porridges, which she tries, three stools which she tries and finally, three beds, which she uses to sleep on. The smallest ones, belonging to little bear, always suits the girl. Then three bears arrive home, Mama bear, Papa bear and Little bear, they discover that someone's tried the porridge, stools and find Little girl from bed.

[close]

I think it fits the theme. It's funny, yes, but when naming the idea, well, not so much.

Eck. A ballad band.

Why did really you make this thread? To find someone holding your hand while you both listen?
I cannot imagine getting any useable info out of it.
Simply Red, despite being total earache IMO, is still very popular band so even asking sounds stupid. Like, you might aswell ask if anyone likes N'Sync or the Prodigy or something.

I think that only purpose of "music" like SR makes, is for elderly to have something playing while they attempt intercourse... eck.

I think it looks amazing, though as has been mentioned, the clean pixels of the character don't seem to dance 100% with the background.

Seconded. Amazing and charater doesn't quite fit.

* The tree at back is somewhat weird (doesn't look as well drawn as surroundings) and doesn't quite fit neither.
* GigAtel sign and "13B" are way too saturated and stick out too much. Same goes to sloppy tree.
* Though reflective floor looks really good, I suggest to cut back on reflections: Otherwise it'll seem weird why everything reflects on floor but not the character.
* Some places seem more rushed than others and stick out. I especially don't like the area at right side, where trashcan is: the floor and missing outlines make this look strange.
* Leftmost roof-window arch seems to have smaller middle outline than others.
* The white thingy on wall at leftmost side looks empty and strange.
* Pay extra attention to antialiasing since there will be characters living around someday.
* The second roof arch is generating illusion of being 3d, since it's shading. But looking at first arch, it's not supposed to be so. Recolor it so part of arch wouldn't be lighter. Just observe carefully, if I couldn't make myself understandable.
* The roof glass could be less dirty and have some extra transclusent white spots to look more glassy.
** The background city should be ALOT clearer!

EDIT: * The little cabinet inside leftmost stall looks extremely weird. Look at it.
It seems like it's far back, like inside the stall wall or something. Like wall was much further than it seems. Or is it just me?
I just think that it's impossible to us to see stall floor. It should be lower and not visible.

I gave this extra picky criticism since I know you're a great artist and general opinions are positive anyway, therefore not helping much.

My list goes as this:

1. Ben Jordan 5 (one of best AGS games ever)
2. Pleurghburg: Dark Ages (true classic and cool as hell)
3. Prodigal (still impressed!)
4. Framed! (awful graphics and total noobness blown away with superb atmosphere)
5. Henri: Don't Drink & Drive (yes, my *own* STILL unfinished game. But I get always so angry for this being not ready whenever I play a bit)

Actually, there's about 10 more games that could be in this list.

Whoah, getting better!

But really, computer game jokes are well... old. Joke about Duke Nukem Forever not coming out yet is SO overdone that it wouldn't hurt to not see/hear any until 2412AD and no-one's going to miss those.

Pick a theme, Fluke. And stick with it.
Or even better, pick a story and continue the story. Story-driven comics leave people waiting for what happens next and are a bit more popular, as fas as I have noticed. Of course, if the story's funny and you are able to have a joke for each event/strip in the story.
And it would be better if theme/story was original, to be interesting, and characters had er- characters, nature. Like, the purple demon thingy was always pessimistic and green one was always angry or whatever. Also, keep the font same! Everywhere.

Personally, I liked your first, noobish art style more. It was somewhat cuter. You can draw nicely, but drawing nice blobs won't make them less blobs. Then again, the cleaner part of new style is somewhat better also. You should take the best from two styles and combine them into one.

What I see... it might happen that your windows got either damaged, or whole hard disk.

If you have your original windows disk, I suggest inserting it before boot and reinstall it. But to avoid this--

* use another well-booting HD to see if files on old HD are still there. Or take your HD to a friend and let him check.
* go to BIOS and default everything and try again
* go to BIOS and disable all drives except the problematic HD & try boot

Such crap has happened to me few times when shutting down computer improperly, like when XP loading screen was still on. One chance of hundred, but it may mess up whole windows installation, if you turn machine off at this very bad millisecond.  And I had "luck" to stumble upon this moment.

All times, I had to reinstall winXP. And it caused trouble, since old WinXP installation didn't go away, so I got this stupid "select your OS" screen at startup--

Quite nice BG. I edited Mr. Flibble's Edit, since it's quite good and needed some advancing IMO.



* Took much braver attempt at shading Elevator/door thingy. Kind of messed up with lightest rightmost shade, but you get the idea.
Why are newer 3D games so dark? Because all kinds new shading effects are better visible in dark. The metal in a dark room should be much more shiny. That was my idea behind new shade
* Replaced/Added er- "weird/palette conservative glow" with airbrushed glow. It looks much better, though it's a bit of pain to use. And makes image filesize tad bit bigger.
* Increased overall saturation and contrast of image.
* More of an experiment, but I thought reflective floor could make this place more scifi-like. So, I copied contents of the room to the floor, y-flipped and at very low opacity. This wasn't the brightest idea, since I usually draw more realistic "reflectmap" in those cases (it looks a bit wrong right now), but again, made it quick and idea is visible anyway.

Suggestion: Get rid of black outlines. I used them for a long time, but as soon as I started experimenting with not making any, my images got much better.

[make sure]

It's possible that you don't need any filters.

From game setup, set game to 640x400 and make sure that "force alternate letterbox resolution" is also ON.

While 320x240 games are extremely blurry on my 17" LCD, in 640x480 it's fixed somehow. In 640x400 it's bad and blurry again. So, try some modes, it might just solve the problem.

Seriously, I'm not supposed to be posting this...

http://www.increator.pri.ee/i/pull/omfg.png

Do you mean this font?
www.increator.pri.ee/rev/agsfont.rar

I guess it's quite cool. But aren't those games sold? I mean, you pay for the magazine, right? And get a DVD, which is included in the price?

I'm sorry to say this but I totally hate the new one.

Why? The file cabinet. And a bit of console. The corner style!!

By my art viewing psychology, while cartoony style tends to be happy, round and easy, BUT! the way you excecute it, it feels sharp and stressing. More towars horror than cartoon! Like it's ready to jump at you and stick its sharp corners into your eyes!

Look at your corners! Look at my example? How does each file cabinet make you feel?



Aside from this, the new floor looks excellent, I also like console and window. Window needs a bit of work yet, though. The things behind window doesn't look to be far away, but more like painted onto a window. Decrease contrast on them and make them lighter!

...and some more light/shading/perspective pointers... not 100% your version, but weird enough, both you and KhrisMUC feel about shadows and perspective same way 3ds Max does.



EDIT: But since you're restricted to MSPaint... that just gave me an idea!



Posterized version shows exactly how to achieve this light/shading with little of colors.
I doubt you're using any of this, but I like the idea. Might aswell use it myself...

* red floor is bad.
* too much ceiling visible! As far as art viewing psychology goes, large areas of nothing in it will decrease amount of details felt by viewer. In other words - if you have lots of empty area in your bg, people think that it lacks detail, because it decreases "detailed" feel from other areas. Even if you have loads of stuff in the room.
* Gray is most boring color ever so don't use it so much. Add a tone of blue or green or both to the file cabinet and console thingy.
* Window could be larger. It also covers those plain, empty walls.
* Why is file cabinet placed so strangely? Anyone who plans an office, tries to spare room. So, file cabinet should be against rightmost wall.
* Perspective seems to be slightly off, even if it isn't. This feeling comes from console. I don't have time to draw these fancy lines and check, but remember that it isn't simply geometry - sometimes you have sacrifice mathematical accuracy to a good look!

Otherwise, quite nice bg. I'd certainly use some antialiasing and soft brushes for (neon) lights and glass, despite your clean mspaintery style... and It'll be a gem!

EDIT: Then again, one picture is worth thousand words. This is direction I'd go. Mainly lighting.
Without black outlines though, and not so hastily (this is probably my worst editâ,,¢ of 2007)

Well, I made a tiny cutscene video to Henri, with car arriving at country house.

It's only 9 seconds long, but something entirely new compared to the way I made Henri earlier.

Well, what do you think about it? My main concern is that... is it too dark for some people? It's supposed to be night, but I adjusted brightness up a bit, and don't want to overdo it. Then again, maybe it's too bright - and doesn't feel like night anymore? I can only tell what I see on my own LCD monitor. The daytime scene is out of question because I'm actually unable to model a (semi)realistic car or anything important cutscene should show. Darkness hides things pretty well

Well, It's 1,4MB of size, needs XVid codec, and if sound doesn't play, AC3 mp3 codec. It also has lens flare! .D

I'm aware and not satisfied with this tiny "too-fast-rotation" car does at one moment and intend to change it, but rendering takes lots of time and I want some general opinions before I continue. Is sound panning okay?

Would this kind of 3D cutscene-ing fit to my pixel-drawn game (see banner>thread>screenies below my post)? In general, I'm very unsure should I use and produce more of 3D cutscenery like this...

Ah, and the video.

http://www.increator.pri.ee/i/crits/six.avi

The car is SUPPOSED to be Soviet-era VAZ 2109. Supposed...

* speed it up! Alot! I know that this has been suggested but more votes on thing will make matter more important. Or make it skippable in game. I personally totally hate long logo sequences in games.
* White/gray outline leftovers(antialiasing?) on text don't look good in last frames.
* The number 6 is somewhat bland and unnoticeable. Maybe bright/saturate it up?

Originality is a good thing, but I disagree about shock value or comedic effect.

I think it isn't a must, but it's easiest way to make an interesting film. Only movies without any recognizable drama and which aren't documentaries neither I could think of, are art films. Like video art. Don't know if there's better word for it... Have you visited an art museum or exhibition and seen those artists who make extremely weird movies, and offer them as art? I have seen alot of those. And if film has usually content that has absolutely no point. Like a movie of man eating cereal. For two hours! That's it, just eating. Credits, fin. Or ice skating, while entirely nude (the one I saw last time, lol/eck!). I somewhat don't think that this kind of film was what lgm went for. And besides art, I can't think of a reason to make film which simply isn't interesting. Doesn't offer a story, situation or problem. I can't say that this was the case with lgm, I'm just explaining my point. But it doesn't have to be that complex. Your own example...

For example, what is Down By Law essentially? It's a story of three men escaping from jail and parting ways afterwards.

Men escaping jail! Criminals having a party after commiting another crime! A crime that has been one of the hardest one to pull in the world!

The theme itself sounds interesting already, doesn't it? So, who cares how interesting the movie actually was? I, as most of normal people, will never be in jail, never commit a crime to be sent into one, and never escape. So, it's interesting for me to watch this. Even though it's acted.

But also just for example, I can buy a pingpong table and play in my cellar. Seeing others doing this doesn't add much to my life and doesn't spend the time valuably while watching this. So, seeing this in a trailer leaves me cold. Of course, I haven't seen other scenes from film, and I'm sure that they could be much more interesting. Hm. I'm having this urge to actually see the whole thing after all this talk over a 5-minute clip. Buy DVD? Where? How?

Shakiness...
...was most annoying in starting scenes, like near car and when people prepared for game. Not much elsewhere.
Shakiness is good when used in right places. Have you seen "The Shield" (2002) TV-Series? It's full of shaking! Everywhere. But then again, it's used with action, and I can't imagine a scene of police rushing criminal hideout with steady and nice camera.

Huh. LGM, I think that you should make a 1920-s gangster movie. Starring... yourself. You have so natural mafioso look that I can't stop thinking about that and imaging you with a fat cigar in your mouth corner
Even better, since trailer featured quite boring musical background, team up with Nikolas and have some hardcore orchestral pieces for bg.

As for the trailery thing... well, though I clearly see (successful!) attempt at making it look like "real thing" and professional, like angles and shot composition, the trailery thing, which usually show highlights of the movie, shows... nothing. If that's what should agitate me into seeing the full thing, it failed. No good jokes, no shocking moments, no special effects or anything special at all. Feels somewhat a waste of hard work.

Even if I wanted to, I just can't review few shots of people playing ping pong and weird girl hitting on some freaked-out guy. Nothing happened. There's nothing to crit. I'm sorry.

To make any breakthrough with short movies, either make them extremely funny, shocking or original.
To survive through week thing, I would make either make artsy Tarantino-style movies about same thing. For example, take some people, and make a film of each one's day, introducing their different personalities and viewpoints, and events collide, since people know each other and day is same. That would rock. It's used much, though.
Another (rather cheap) way would be short movies based on funny stories, even longer anecdotes.
And there's always a way to make something interesting by undressing some ugly social problem and making a fiction-documentary around it.
I don't know any other ways to achieve popularity with no/low-budget filmmaking.

Of course, I haven't seen any other competitors work.
And naturally, brother needed some help, not a rant.