Messages

...and once again, Loominous wins, thus hosting new blitz!

Gongrats.

Another piece of info/advertising/thingy to show - is never too bad, I guess. My life would surely be something less if Jesper Kyd wouldn't had a website and I wouldn't accidentally trip on it.

Unless you have a band, name the page your name.

Surf for some official pages of famous bands/DJ's. Some neat shockwave/flash, when done correctly, would make your page a pleasant both musical and informational experience.

Oww, this is bad.
The trees look very good, which I cannot say about everything else, especially the grass! Since it's your style - complete overhaul wouldn't work, there's very little to help with, so

* This horribly smudged area between two roads has to go.
* The grass looks like you whipped it together in under a minute! Since it's handdrawn, I don't understand why you picked so non-grassy green and didn't just use color picker to get green colors from bushes? Total palette change and lots of redrawing required here.
* The tree in the middle looks magnificent, though the one far right looks way too flat. Add more dark tones (black color?) to it's rightmost side to make it rounder too. Also, I suggest heavy darkening on it's lower part.
* I'm not familiar with your artistic abilities, but there must be a way to blend smaller road into bigger one! I mean, colors and contrast, they're too different right now. I suggest desaturating the smaller road (filter it to black&white) and HEAVILY darken both roads.

I like the composition though, in game, this room/scene would surely feel interesting.

Why such a long voting time? Who's gonna wait for four days before he/she votes?

Long? Must be global time difference? 2 days, not four. By GMT +0200 I announced voting at 2nd October (somewhere 5 AM), and this ends in last hours before 5-th. Around 48 hours isn't too long, IMO.

[let the voting begin!!!]

Wow. Just when I thought that this compo is dead, there's lots of entries, and pretty good ones, if I say so myself!

Thank you for your participation (sp?) and let the voting begin!!!

Mountains, btw, were super easy to do: I just drew them on separate layer, using only cyan, then darkened and lightened them - absolutely randomly, blurred to make random look disappear - and reduced layer's opacity until I got this far-and-hazy look.

I suggest making both the poles and road lighter as it gets closer to horizon.

Nice stuff. Your pics make me wanna start up making games again.

Double, triple, quadruple YES INDEED

What comes after quadruple? It's really... hell of an inspiring bg.
I made an edit (or further), though you won't most likely go my way, since your simpler and less-colored style. Still, this BG is a gem if polished a bit...


Edit is quick and therefore a bit unclean 

Now let's wait till loominous gets here and shows the light... 

* Reduce saturation on water tower
* color the sky (do I see badly erased sky on burger sign?) 
* Some debris near tower should add some detail. Like pieces of UFO and/or tower
* The bottom of tower could be even darker, in direct sunlight, shadows tend to be strong
* I'm not too sure about this, but you could experiment by adding some sunlight glow to the metal things (tower, sign) using antialiased 16-pixel brush very carefully... something like this, but with more care

Gen-gen!
If replied many times -
next stage: popular threads

This is typical "what colored pants do you wear" poll.

It's just co-incidence that we happen to be mostly artists and game developers so the question kind of seem to fit in CL.

While it sounds quite interesting, outside-the-game gameplay is both it's stongest and weakest point... for example:

* What if player doesn't have an internet connection?
* What if player has no (idea about using) graphics manipulation software?
* What if player has never used any compression programs?`
* What if--
etc...
This limits the game audience, so you should keep tasks fairly simple.

Personally, I find the idea interesting but doubt that I'd care to waste time on playing something like this.

But I also have really tiny vision of an idea... it's so unclear... I haven't thinked it through yet, but what about people co-operating in finishing the game? Teamwork? Like people study clues and fit all pieces together (in game forum or similar way)

Eh, this requires helluva long and big game.

[math]

For a first one, you managed to avoid most of the mistakes newbies usually do, good job.

Notes: (may sound harsh, but are meant to help ya out and for 1st try at CL people usually get even more crits than this)

* The door is wrong. Pull it's bottom part few pixels down, that's the best way to fix the problem (I'm unable to explain it due my lack of english vocabulary) or examine very closely to see this logical error.

* Try to use more er- math - when drawing. The shapes are too abstract, for example, I don't understand why you made panels on door so different? It leaves a "rushed" feeling.

* Get rid of double pixels. It feels almost like a style of yours... but that's not a good way to go. Again, looks too rushed.

* fix the perspective on window. It's bottom line is awfully incorrect... Also, I think that window could be lower and bigger.

* Overall, the room feels too high, including the door.

* Don't use JPG's, they look awful if it comes to pixel art. Save your image either as GIF (if under 256 colors) or PNG (the best IMO, even mspaint on WinXP saves that)

* Using a photo/multicolor poster doesn't quite fit with left of the drawing

* The desk is awful, if it comes to perspective. Also, who puts a desk into a middle of the room?

Oh, i'll never forget the stupidest thread ever made by a noob.

The n00b policy is softer these days indeed.

I remember... erg- crashing from one bad thread/debate to another.
Like learning to walk in a room filled with spikes 
Oh what pain.

Then again, not so long ago, Mister FlukeBlake joined the forums...

Dang. I have no point again! 

...or wait... Nobody acted later like this...

Not trying to be rude or anything.

Not to sound overly-harsh,

Sorry if I'm a bit harsh but...

I don't remember anything like that 2 years ago...  :-
Critics lounge was place where you get your rightful load without any excuses... but with instructions to avoid next one.

It seems that members are extra cautious now.
Which actually is good. For global peace and stuff.

Though I registered quite late, I will always remember DGMacphee, from the days he added some fun to the community. Amen.

For simpler style, AGS & MSPaint combo.

Mspaint > quick and simple for character drawing, with some skill, the outcome looks as good as any other program.

AGS > As I draw the frames, I paste them into some random AGS project, where I can instantly see them all and quickly test the animation by assigning it into view and seeing preview. This is a good way IMO, because I need to know how animations feel in my games, and testing in some animation software may change the feeling. Some otherwise nicely working gif images won't look that good as game animations. And vice versa.

[doubled]

Just played through demo few times... some thoughts:

* Control is mega clumsy, yet interesting in it's own way
* Rockstar'ishy simple 3D really rocks. At present day, it's quite nice to get a new game that doesn't need my 2Ghz system doubled to run fine. For example, F.E.A.R. was everything but playable, yet I met all minimal requirements (plus bit more), and I still haven't figured out what forces game developers to make so overteched & unplayable games. Lack of content?
* 380 megs of demo featured awfully little of gameplay. I remember Half-Life 1 demo years ago, which was totally different from full version and took many hours to complete... *sob*
* The game reminded Max Payne 2 very much, even the music
* Game developers *still* love to overuse video noise filter and DX9 glow-thingies 
* 2005 is a really good gaming year. What all good has been released!
* ---
* I'm SO getting the full version!

Andail showed you right way, I guess.
Nice colors and overall atmosphere, though dirt(?) color should be slightly darker.

Some weeks hours of adding insane little amount of extra detail would make it perfect.

I personally would start with heavy bombardment on everything with noise filter...

That isn't a puzzle.
That's crap!
I hate this! 

Stuck on level two! 

IMO, shortest way to inspiration is success, strongly connected to motivation.

Doing something, and seeing how well it proceeds, both inspires and motivates.

Be successful.

Here we go again... 

No blur.
Toned, desaturated and more peaceful palette.

That's all you need.

Whee, it's FatGyver!
Really, try to follow human shape and make him a bit taller.
He's way too fat right now.

I suggest using a reference picture, to get shapes ok.

[KGB]

Well... KGB (which almost meets all the highest scores in my list of "good things about a video/adventure game")...
Manhunt striked with its brute, uncensored violence at beginning...
Dreamweb, of course (most atmospherical thing ever, and also that's exactly how I imagine a good cyberpunk).
To name more... maybe the intro music/demo part of Robocop 3 on NES?
It would be also unthankful to forget Gabriel Knight here.