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Better, definetly better.
And... that's about all I could crit/suggest here.

To fake even a bit more detail, you could try adding a tiny bit of noise to the stone floor...

Also, the wooden boards in the center are most undetailed and somewhat boring part of the bg. If you like - and are able to use my idea so it'll look good, you could also try to lighten edges of boards, something like this:



That's one of my 10000 ways to fake detail (I should write a book!) - it makes wooden and metal objects look better on some occassions... but only some.

I totally like the overall feeling (detail, mmm!), but one thing seems not right to me:

The bricks on wall. It feels very much like there's a gray wall with vertical and horizontal lines painted on it.

I recommend trying to make brick-lines much darker. And maybe shade each brick individually to make overall look more believeable.

The problem (I rely on original, not edited bg) is strong near door, but bricks near the archways feel already quite close to correct.

Also, the reflection of light on water is a good idea: Try to make something similar as Loominous did.

Covering such a lovely and detailed bg with darkness (as Loominous suggested) would be realistic, but sounds like a waste of hard work to me. Maybe just slight adjustments or more lights?

[i]

What will be a final size of Henry in mb?

Henri! Somewhere between 25-40 MB I guess. Since I have only 2-3 potential tracks ready, decided to for MP3 and game itself is 18MB without sound, It's quite hard to guess the final size.

Thanks for crits, everyone. I don't think that I'll do without beat, since it fills some parts of the song, and urban-streets-stuff-themed game fits well with hiphop'pey beat, but I agree that I overdid the beat a little.

I think I still need an extra melodyline to smooth whole thing out and maybe a bit of correcting here and there.

To be honest, It was quite surprise to get positive comments since I don't consider myself reaching even amateur level in  composing music. Especially in FruityLoops.

...at least on the level of Nintendo/Many AGS games...

Ouch. That was mean...
So a single slash separates AGS game gfx and horrors of 8-bit...?

Lame yes, but boy was it fun to make.

Well-well. I finally decided to use my lousy FruityLoops skills to create a moody track to my Henri: Don't Drink & Drive! project.

I tried to make neutral, ear friendly, moody and ambient song, though I'm not really sure how I succeeded... Experts may hear hardcore Sytrus overusage and repetivity (probably caused by my love towards melodic/euro trance and dreamhouse genres)...

If it's worth nothing else, then it could at least serve as an example what I need musicians to do when I find some.

But I would be very glad to get some crits and/or good pointers to make it all fit more to a game.

Mp3 format, 3 minutes 55 seconds ~3.5 MB
http://www.increator.pri.ee/muz/Henri_soft.mp3

It's very flat.
Here's some tips to improve the looks...

* I recommend stonger contrast in shading, much stronger.
* And lower-saturation clothes color.
* Put a white pixel or two to eyes, they're too grey.
* The nose - between eyes  - looks quite weird... work around
* Straight line at the center of the shirt won't fit with the overall messiness of clothes. Bend/curve it!

I like the overall look on his face, but fixing these little issues might improve everything alot and make it much better.

It's so... Far Cry in Doom 3

Pointless detail and hardcore CPU/Video load where it's not needed (human faces, sick lightning) and no light and detail where it IS actually needed (The map)... I felt sorry for my machine.

Bullet time? Seen it in Max Payne
Ragdoll physics? Seen it in Hitman and HL2
Bump/etc wonder mapping? *sigh*
Poinlessly megadetailed characters with 30000 vertices or something thus slowing CPU to ice age? Seen it in Far Cry, hated it

It seems like lots of tech wonders just thrown into a blender and added a bit of C code. AI didn't impress much neither... and my sound card produced painful noise all the time, though it's a good card and up to today's standards...

Also, what's this fever to throw video effects into games nowadays? All this noise and blur crap... my eyes hurt.

No, thanks.

Well, make it Graphics vs. Gameplay then.
But apart from FPS and racing genres, I find modern games having very good gameplay, and the standards have skyrocketed indeed.

1) No blur, compadre.
Blurriness is what disturbs the most...

2) It's advisable to add something like "includes violence" into thread name, because, some people DO find these anims disturbing... and it would be people's-nerves-friendly thing to do.

3) The shake moment. Either the bullet collides with skull or girder thingy hits your head, people shake their head once, both because terror/fear moment and physics... and very quickly. For bullet, it also makes head shake harder since there's strong and quick collision. Add the shake into your anims to get more realistic result. So, basically, add a frame or two where head shakes in terror.

4) Since characters sure do look cartoony, making their eyes go bigger in the shake moment would also make all look better.

5) For second anim, shooting a revolver causes force that throws both the gun and hand holding it back. This way the shot would look more believeable. You tried this, as I see, but kind of failed... Now it's more like there was some animal in revolver who peacefully entered into guy's head or something... er - nothing like a gunshot, i mean.

6) The detailed way how head crushes doesn't match the lousily detailed briefcase and body falling part. Either make headcrush as simple too or spend more time on other two.

-Removed double pixels

Really? Are you sure? 

C&C: Nice colors, but you should use more straight lines and keep body parts similar.

[wrong]

okay.
First, use [ img ]http://www.server.com/yourfile.jpg[ /img ] tags to make your picture visible. (don't use empty spaces as i did). TeH superior BBCode and smileys reference may be helpful here.

Now, about the picture...
It looks very professional for a starter in AG, but there's also some extremely n00b mistakes (numbered on picture too).
I bolded the keywords so you could understand easier what was wrong.

1. What is that green fluid in the sky? I get your idea, but it should be blue, or even purple and not so dense.

2. It may be a problem caused by JPG compression, but-!
The edges of the smoke-thing must not be separatable from sky area. They should either blend very nicely into sky, or  it would be even more realistic, if the smoke was visible only in the cone of the light. Also, smoke is way too dense.

3. Do not use blur. As simple as that. The tree is very nicely drawn, but you totally ruined it by blurring it. Where's the shadows? Texture? Beauty?

4. The star sticks out from sky too much. Make it smaller, and if you know-how-to, more transparent.

5. What? The tree is behind trailer. The light is in front of trailer. The trailer blocks light from bottom part of tree. Why does the tree glow like that? You get the idea: Trailer should block light from tree.

6. Erase this post. It does not fit here at all. It's too glowing, flat and unrealistic. Try a simple wooden post instead.

I love the rest of the picture, the trailer looks very good and overall atmosphere is cozy and interesting enough for a good adventure game.

Also, never post JPGs if it's pixel art. Save as PNG or GIF instead.

EDIT: Well, er... since I like ArtGem and I wasn't lying about this background's potential, I made a lazy edit.
Note that I also used ArtGem.



I had no patience to erase all your wrong-doings and there may be some unneeded crap on picture (too sleepy to notice myself) but mayor points are fixed or at least a bit improved.

For tech side, both the lamp post and tree was made by spraying custom brushes and variating them using brighten/darken processor later (same way you drew this lovely grass).

lamp post brush is here:


and tree-leaf/thorns brush is here:


Be creative.

- An outlet of creativity in form of games i love the most?
- Never-able-to-finish-my-game complex?
- Lottsa unfinished trash on hard disk?
- Ability to draw and animate pixelly art... and being a little bit famous for this though no one in REAL life gives a heck?
- Over 1000 postfuls of different forms of wasting, like time, webspace, people's around world and my own - eyes and of course, my keyboard?

Thanks! 

[and]

Er... isn't all the fuss like about

* Rockstar/(North) not wanting any trouble (, because of)
* Stupid people who would use anything to get a bit famous/win a court case/complain around pointlessly
* There was major trouble when original Grand Theft Auto went out in some countries



Then again, nude/sex/pr0n patches/mods are things that add a bit of popularity to the game (especially 3D life-like simulation ones) so if it's visible far away, companies should (and it's not a bad idea) do it themselves and add proper age limit to the box. Like the "woohoo" stuff in Sims2... it was super clear that if not the makers themselves, then someone else will fill that area some day.
But hey, they made it with some nice sense of tact and it works fine. So, teH h4xx0r0r g33ks don't have to spend nights trying to make a Sims 2 sex mod. And maybe it helps to sell game better.

"Do you know that you can have sex in Sims 2?"
"Wow, I'm so buying this!"
10 minutes after playing
"Aw, crap"

I liked the edit, but the hut doesn't look too realistic, so I highlighted/adjusted bri/contrast a little to match sunset more.

[BUG]

Well, if my next line is right, I know what's wrong:

The .agp image exists, but it's 32x32 size and there's nothing on it.

This is called a BUG. Artgem 1.2 tends to pull such tricks... Especially under Windows XP...  (though I've seen it under Win98 too... WinME is too idiotic to even take it into account)

You may save file finely during the start of the drawin, but when you reach 6-7 used layers or so, the saving may cause this small empty file.

Possible solution(s):

* Get Artgem 1.3 (and crack it). I haven't encountered such crap with 1.3. (1.3 is the last artgem version that exists before RL Vision stopped the project)

* Save early, save often > the bug messes up ONLY agp files. before saving to AGP, save it to bmp or png FIRST, so even if program fucks up, you will still have your progress so far (not layered, though).

* If you're too lazy to save as other format, simply zoom out to normal size and press PrntScr key to get screenshot. You may paste it into paint if something goes wrong and still have what you've done

* This problem is quite rare. Try messing in program settings, like reserved memory for undos and so on. Maybe you'll get rid of it that simply.

Eh, I guess that makes Def a winner then.

[how]

Well, Henri games were first ones I ever made with AGS, just joking about a good friend of mine... I started from AGS version 2.23... DOS, graphical editors and other funny ancient AGS stuff.

So yes, It's a comedy, though I'm releasing it worldwide (first in henri series) and I'm not sure what world finds funny... 

Unfortunately, only 3rd part went public and was recognizable as "game", since others were more like trying-new-engine-out stuff.
Also, it was entirely in Estonian language and since I've been trying to master my drawing style since, I'd be happier if none of AGSers ever see how painfully far I was in 2001...
The game was quite popular in Estonia, actually, and first estonian point'n'click adventure game at all.

Number 6 also means that this is my sixth effort to complete a whole adventure game by my own (Trippin'! and other tries were less or more teamwork), but yes, that sounds reasonable and I lose the number (which means redrawing title screen, ouch!)

About music and testing: There's nothing to test yet! And musician... well, I definetly won't ask anyone to do any work unless I'm totally, 100% positive that it won't be a waste and game WILL be completed. I just pointed out that I will need some people in future. But "future" is all I can say yet.

Because... every bg I draw, every animation I make, injects me wish and hope to continue the project, make it even better, story even more interesting and so on. While I ceased "Trippin'" because it didn't seem perfect enough for me, Henri seems to grow bigger and bigger for same cause. That's good, but I must force myself to finish the game at some point.

Thanks for encouraging replies.

But there will be no demo, It will be ready when it's ready and only demo-like thing is what beta testers get for testing.

An untested game, that is. Beta testers come most likely from here, I hope there's AGSers who want to help me on this (and not just get hands on game first  ).

Also, I definetly need a proofreader once i get whole coding done.

English (originally) and Estonian versions are sure thing, but there's also room for translations... especially since I have to include ä, ö, ü and õ letters to the font for Estonian one. Eh, but that's a dream, gotta finish a game first.

And you done all your graphics in art gem?

Artgem and MSPaint.