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* What doesn't fit too well - is dark green screens on dark gray wall. Displays should be brighter green, I think.

* Nice usage of isometric perspective!

* I like the sample 3 the most. These white lines on otherwise quite eye-unfriendly blue floor now feel as there was neon/some other cool lights attached to floor.

[me]

Pay attention, please.

...no such demotivating/deinspirating confusion as Photoshop gives me with...

But okay, "no-one ever uses" is a bit overreacting.

...Still, suxx0rz!!!1 Drawing'n'stuff must be fun, not a headache + lifelong study to atleast orientate properly! When I draw, then? :p

Anyway, magnitz, ArtGem 1.2 shareware link is here...

http://www.increator.pri.ee/muz/rlv_ag12.zip

Hm. Since the project is ceased and not sold anymore, you may crack it... or even better, just set computer clock to year 2015 or so,  before installing... and back to current time, after you've used program once (opened and closed it). This gives you thousands of days until trial period expires

Artgem 1.3 supports some critical format, er... PNG? But I unfortunately don't have a copy of it on my HD, just an installed one. Try to find it yourself, if you so badly want it.

I think that's a resoluion problem.
There's no way to get good-looking TTF font in AGS at 320x240 res, since letters become somewhat weirdly aligned and won't scale down very well... Same for outlines.

Yet, same fonts look quite well in - for example - MSPaint - at same size and resolution.

For example, Arial, very much used and supposedly, very "compatible" font - won't look well if it's imported size is below 12pts.

I use Artgem... For almost everything, like backgrounds, photomodification, etc.

It's superfunctional, yet there's no such demotivating/deinspirating confusion as Photoshop gives me with its gazillion filters, tools and other professional crap no-one ever uses.
Well, ArtGem has good zoom, memory-based-(air)brushes, layers, list-type undo levels and brightness/darkness processor... which is more than enough for me to create art in my style.

For more specific and smaller pixel-art, MSPaint is also very useful, especially for tiny sprites and dirty animating.

but...
why didn't you read this?

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=1623.0

why? can't read?

Eh, there's whole "bands" making "music" using only scratches and mouths. My friend once terrorized rest of the company by playing such band's tape whole night 


http://www.platinumloops.net/demos/august/

Sure,

There are some layouts where it wouldn't make a lot of sense though, eg shadow behind the character that the character is clearly not standing in...

such thing should be used very carefully... And I think that staight-lines-style artists won't find much from it. Like this image you provided: the shadow on feet doesn't count feet as 3D objects and doesn't "round" around them, thus making feet look very flat.
But with fuzzy/softly bushed/distorted/antialiased/bah, once again lack of english language/the way I did - the flattening effect wouldn't be so strong.

I followed scotch' advice and used mask as object. It worked and... sorry, but I liked what I saw 

Then again -- it can be used ONLY as light/shadows in FRONT of characters and objects - notice the dark corner near the fridge - when it covered the character, thing really did look very weird. Scotch is right.

Eh, well... I guess I simply found a way to add a little piece of quality to my games so other AGSers would be amazed how did I do that ("You can't do that with AGS, dude!")

Conclusion is - It's interesting, but clearly not anything revolutionary, atleast not enough to make CJ waste time on this, thus delaying other improvements.

[Usually, when drawing background art in paint program, I make the room itself first:]

To support my idea a little and fight my usual unavailability to explain myself clear, I illustrate my idea:


Usually, when drawing background art in paint program, I make the room itself first:



Then, I have to make light & shading, so I draw (usually onto extra layer) the thingy I called "transparency mask" here (which may be wrong definition), it's basically a black void with some "holes" cut in, transparent areas with gradient-like opacity. On this picture, consider pure white as completely transparent, and gray shades as semi-transparent, depending their darkness.



So, the final step is to put this "transparency mask" onto background, so it covers it. I also give it a bit lower opacity, so room is visible even under totally black portions.



So, drawing led me to an idea - why not apply the mask not in paint program, but directly in AGS itsself? This'll give me automatically all the character/object shading I need, and so that it may be only partial, i.e. characters hand or face is in darkness, while body is exposed to light, etc.

Of course, I clearly see disadvantages of such system.

* Games will take up to 200% more disk space from bg's since there's 2 images now for every room
* Current system is very simple, and there's no way that my idea could be the only lighting system. Only as an extra possibility, maybe, for expert users.
* I'm still not sure how fast/slow such thing would be. Alphas and large images equal usually with "low fps"
* This is not usable in 8-bit games. Not sure about 16-bit...

But well, suggestion is made. Maybe this will someday grow into atleast some part of better AGS light system.

Arg! Can't be! I'm stuck at the very start!

Spoiler

I have fought the guard, got scissors, key and flag. How to get this darn window open? What did I miss?

[close]

Seems interesting so far, despite some bugs,

Spoiler

the flag always "says" that there's a key with it

[close]

and very boring text, like "nice x" everywhere.

I suggest:

* use punctuation. Like ".  ,  : ! ? " and so on. "Nice window" is not even a sentence! Or even better...
* ...ask some people to do proofreading for you, to correct grammatical and lingual mistakes. There's many people in this forum who would be glad to help.
* ask some people to beta test whole thing before releasing it. beta testing is very, very good. Once again, you may find some here, since people at AGSForums go wild when someone says "Indiana Jones" anyway... 

BTW, what's that green pixel in almost every room? (upper right part of screen)

Yeh, flat shaded 3D characters.

But think...
We can - or to be precise, AGS can - calculate paths, coordinates, speed, etc for 2D objects(characters), right?

Now imagine such 2d thing moving around walkable areas. Invisible one.
No, we just have to link animated 3D model to it (so it would would just use the 2D object for right screen coordinates and moving), and animate it to move feet - and we have mouse-controlled 3D character.

Don't know how to make different directions, though.

Why Doom? Why gouraud texturing? Is it really needed?

Think big!
Think Alone in the Dark!!1

I'm afraid that this has been asked before, but since I couldn't find similar thread, I'll just ask.

Current light/region system needs very much manual work if I'd want to light character continously, gradient-like. So I came to this idea:

An extra lightning layer, which is in grayscale and specifies characters/objects light amount, like it is in many 3D-modelling programs. Basically a gray layer, where gray is default, darker spots darken character and lighter ones lighten. Just like transparency/transcluency/bump/etc maps in 3D graphics.

The opacity of layer could be set from AGS also...

Wouldn't it be easier and faster for lighting system instead of using many regions?

I believe that this can be done even now, just by covering BG with object of same size and using alpha, but this sounds somewhat... slow. Or not?

Turning on/off or changing the mask in game (animating?) could also serve purpose, for switchable lights, shadows, etc...

Also, partial character lighting would be always possible, like making volumetric lights, light rays, - spots, etc. And shadows!

Anyway, engine could support such thing. Sorry if such idea has been explained 100 times beforeÃ,  ...

Hah!
http://artpad.art.com/?igjk4nncb5o

This is pretty cool.

Universal smiley?
Fooling someone - smiley?

Dunno, he looks like

"pwnd!1!"

-or-

"I'm actually playing with myself right now"

or something like that.

[game]

I have.
Just...

If Red Alert was running on GM, it would have at least 10x higher minimum system requirements.

Debates about GM's speed always go out of control.
But I'm not the first or the last one who - after hours and hours of coding, drawing, etc has just become extremely frustrated, since the engine just can't handle it all.

Take Transport Tycoon, for example. Now try to use same tile size and make as big map in gm as there was in original game. Just plain grass tiles, without any levels, etc. Without any chance to have bad coding! It's still impossible to run!
Even if it is possible, and you still get decent frame rate, you have either a 4GHz rocket, or have just pushed engine's limits to maximum. Which means that further work, like making really a game is very complicated.

Yet, original TT ran fine on 486...
I'm definetly not running ancient machinery, but 2D game can't require so expensive PC as GM games do. Especially an amateur game.

While head is Zbrush usage at its best, lower part of body looks... well, boring.
I would try giving him massive, strong feet... and maybe a

* Heavy killer scropion tail, which looks just like an extension of backbone
-or-
* Really big demonic wings (though they are probably super difficult to model  )

Enourmous fists and feet would rule very much.

* fix the crappy shading on cupboard/drawer-thing. It's "feet" are shaded like they were cylindrical. Yet, they very strangely blend into cupboard and farther ones look like they are not even round, but just flat like paper.

* Also, you could make the doors bigger on cupboard, Why a roomy cupboad with tiny doors?

* Color choice is quite lovely, now go on and fill the room with stuff.

Have I used GM?
I have tried numerous RTS games, since It's my favourite genre and GM is most suitable thing for this.
Also, some isometric tycoons...

These are genres where GM will fail.

The n00bs can't mess things up, since they don't use complex drawing events. But any good quality game needs them.

Show me a well running GM Real-time Strategy game. Or an isometric game.

Oh my god.

This image cries for more palette. It's so detailed and nice, just this... color limit.
What a waste!

At least, try to add some extra (darker!) shades/colors to grass and pavement.

To lead you to an important point...
Though you say it's 256-color, it stills looks like 16-color one. Most likely because of super contrasty colors. I believe that a bit more careful palette handling should do it and add more mood to the scene.

So, I - trying to do as Darth did - edit as little as possible, but help as much as possible - to make it easier for you to go on - did a paintover over Darth's paintover...

Most things fixed on side view and then matched to front one.

* Fixed foot stance to more relaxed (basically I just used select & move tool in MSPaint and moved rectangles of pixels here and there)
* Modified sneakers a bit, especially on front view
* Changed lipstick colour - no teenage girl uses so strong colors
* highlighted cheecks/ corrected head shape/ fattened neck on front view
* Messed a little bit with jaw and nose on side view
* Made hands longer on front view
* Messed with these big boobs Darth drew , to match size on both images
* Made clothes more loose, and messed here and there


2x:



You have a pretty nice start. Don't stop now!