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I had respect for the Pope, but I don't have respect - and I'm afraid of - the masses.
Those stupid, easily manipulated groups of people, who march whenever somebody beats a drum.

Well said
But these masses has always existed and will be in future.
It's good that some of them followed the Pope and not some next Hitler-like madman? Well, if there's a flock, there has to be a sheperd.
(Interesting that few wires run together here, you described the masses just about the way church does - masses need someone to beat the drum - so-called sheperd)

And if it's a peaceful one, and accomplishes his task well, let us respect him.

The first adventure I ever played, was Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade, EGA version, somewhere in start of 90's. I was about 6 years old then, just been "introduced" to IBM PC and just about to fall into hands of "the curse" which ruined my sleep, time and life afterwards

All sudden, on this 16-color screen, I saw something amazing. I thought about it as the coolest thing in the world and decided that some day, I will be able to make such a thing by myself.

Well, It ruled sooo-much. Too bad that I couldn't speak english more than saying what my name is, in english. So this game somewhat got lost for me. But even as shitty as my english is today, I still owe 70% of the knowledge to AGI (therefore, Sierra) games. The real craze started with Leisure Suit Larry 1 and KQ3 hit the ticket: I played and played - with dictionary nearby - it until I knew english enough to finish it (which took more than three years!)...

So, a Sierra kid, with deep sympathy towards LucasArts.
Adventure games and playing them has taught me something very useful in this life.

Currently, I have no wish to play Sierra games. They just lived their age out and lost the touch.
But... why are there so few games that are at least a little bit replicate the feeling I get while playing Indy FOA or Last Crusade?
And how long will it take to get FOY completed at last?

That's what I'm saying.
I took 128 crap out and am trying out the 512 chip only.
Well, 133 MHz and not a hertz more. Athlon XP 2200+ is quite strong motherboard even today and it MUST support the RAM. Manual proves it.

There's a way to switch it to 400mhz in BIOS, but it looks VEEERY scary:

like words CPU Timings, FSB Frequency and settings "aggressive", "turbo", instability and all this crap. I really doubt that I could mess with them without causing and explosion or meltdown... 

Like setting it all to "expert" (which lets me alter EVERY setting), then set Mhz-s to 200 and something else (forgot the phrase already) to 200% so the MegaHertzes are multiplied... bah.

Do I really have to get PhD in computer science for just to get a chip of RAM working?
Why is everything computer-related nowadays named with three letters and a number after it... only?

Ooh, I'm so out of ideas.

OUUUUUUUCH!
It WAS SDRAM. But I bought DDR.
Now, from my motherboard manual, I clearly read that this board *does* support DDRAM up to DDR400.

Problem is, setting it above 133Mhz in BIOS will just keep rebooting and resetting machine to 100Mhz, yet setting it manually to 133 works fine aswell.

This sounds quite logical, since FSB is set (and shown) in BIOS.
I think I'll just test.

Well, I planned to give my old tractor a little boost.
Currently, there's shitty 256 MB of RAM sitting inside, 133Mhz.
I plan to buy 400Mhz chip with 512 MB.

Can they be both inside? Will it make it even faster?
Or will be there some conflicts/speeddown?

Pope... yeh, too bad. If I should make a top-million list of things that I think about in one day, religion, God, Pope & co. would be at the very end of the list.
But the news like this are somehow important and it's even surprising how they caught my attention so much. Weird.

Then again, Pope was(I mean - was, is, and will be) extremely rare form of human being in our world. It's quite hard to imagine a man who raises hand and millions - if not billions of people look at him in ALL over the world, and their nationality, race, ethnics, etc - does not mean anything. Only the thing they believe in - counts. And the man doesn't need any weapons or anything like this. He's the Pope! Even if he's just for show, even if his title is just a formality -- if HE speaks, people will LISTEN to him talk. Also, John Paul II did alot in his life and moved much things around on this rock we call Earth. 

Power like this is extremely awesome IMO, it unites human race in some way. I admire this.

But people like this are very rare. This is why Nobel prize was invented...

A great man has died.

This is quite cool story.
Strong as well, and quite good for an adventure game.
So yes, it strikes!!!

But I absolutely, totally, definetly second what Peter Thomas said!
Yes, superb foreshadowing!
Yes, these little weirdnesses in characters acting in situation sound a bit unreal.
Yes, this is going to be good....... ...!

Hm.
I, personally hate the nose style. It's a matter of taste, but they just irritate me too much.

But everything else -- as masterful as can be!
Color choice and usage especially.

Only thing I could suggest is to take it more easy on lines and curves -- they're way too straight! More rounded lines and shapes should fit way better to your cartoony style.
Same goes to body poses: they're like soliders standing still (the second one too, but a drunk solider ). Why not spread legs a bit, lower shoulders, unstraighten(word?) the backs and stand "cool", not so stiff.

Edit: also, noticed that punk's boots are weird. I understand that you tried to make it to look like there's ironed part or something, but they look like there's slippers worn ON boots.
Try to add back part too, and add little nails into it, so it would look better.

Or --
"use booze on girl"
"use more booze on girl"
"use even more booze on girl"
"kiss girl"


this works just fine. She won't remember how good kisser you were, what did you eat or who was the guy anyway

Excellent color usage!
There's just three problems with samurai:

* no fingers, as noted before
* foot blends into shoe too much
* even though black outline on nose was needed to bring it out more, it sticks out too much now

Out of crits now! Reason: too good work

It's a lovely scene!

Problem is, it's too plain and empty. Even if there's no things around, the amount detail of sand is quite low, compared to the sea.

I tried this and that, like

* giving much stronger contrast and variety to straw-like plants - so they would blend less into the sand and feel more realistic

* taking photo as and example and darkening sea as its gets closer to the horizon

* giving sand some holes and bumps by darkening and brightening almost randomly spots around

* giving sand higher amount of detail by adding a 12% of noise

Well, it worked, kind of... but colors are more aggressive now and it's whole scene gets more serious somewhat now, too.
Anyway, if nothing else - I hope that it'll give you  at least some ideas for next bee-gees.

[I think that]

I think that it's really dumb to say "2D/3D is better than 2D/3D", just as 2ma2 said.
They are not the opposide sides of something. I believe that these are just two different kinds of (digital) art.   

2D goes under painting-art. It's very old, most-well-known and always admired one.

3D - on the other side is very modern art, which is actually a combination of many different forms of art, such as sculpting, architecture but also painting and photography, depending on case (of texture style).

So it sounds like difference-of-tastes-arguing, like "i like paintings", "no sculptures are cooler" - which leads nowhere.

I agree that  graphics is not the critical part of an adventure game. And even if cell-shaded 3D games maybe as pretty or much prettier while looking like painted ones -- well, atleast for me, it's unexplainable, but I sense 2D other way than 3D. It gives different feelings and emotions and even if extremely masterfully made, there's just a little of something that doesn't feel right. For example - "Runaway: A road adventure" was an excellent game with superb usage of 3D and 2D together - but it just *wasn't* 2D! I liked it and all, but not the way I love indy games for example.

Also, I think I wouldn't like Indiana Jones & FOA that way and that much if it was cellshaded and in hi-res. Oldskool has its own charm, and it's unreplaceable.

Well, racism-racism once again, some whine to look weak and offended, some actually are and some don't give a damn.

No to potentially/or actually offensive language sounds like a nice way to act so yes, the name should - or at least could be changed.

"Neeger" is definetly a word in Estonian - stands for "nigger" indeed. I believe it's so in some other scandinavian languages too. But since there's even not a 0.01% of black people living around - and wasn't since Jesus was born, this word has always meant black people (somewhere far-far away), especially the ones who live in Africa. Since there's no black people there was also never any racism towards them, there's no "evil" background or meaning for this word. Kids learned at school "this is africa, this is where niggers live" and it was very logical and interesting and never meant any harm. So even media here still uses the word and there's no panic around it. Even now, if someone with black skin walks around the street, people discretly peek him with interest -- as anyone who is different and can't be seen every day! Even with admiration, since it's quite cold in this part of world and black people have always somehow reminding sun, warmth and good tan . This  is a bit funny, yet the person himself may not understand this and get seriously offended!

Times change and since this is forum is for people all around the word, it would be a good manner to be more careful with words - especially if in other language they mean something offensive/insulting.

But about the picture -
You have a long way to go, but a good start. Make him a bit taller, add colors and avoid black outlines, because if using them, extreme care and attention is needed.

The sand blends into sea too much.

Ever heard of mass drawing technologies?
Well, it took about 4 minutes.



But if I'd spend at least 14 minutes, it would be perfect.

Happy birthday!

I only have one word to comment:

Details.

It's very nice bg with much detail in it. Why not the tree leaves?
If I had some more time, I'd draw every tree some leaves, instead of these green clouds with fruit. It would be soo-o much better.

[EDIT, a hour and 40 minutes later:]

No "folder" button.

But!

G00gleing again and again finally led me to a nice program "Acoustica MP3 CD Burner". Shareware, though.
But instead of usual schoolboy's "First Visual Basic Experiment" that most of these unknown-program-try & order-sites offer, this one was extremely advanced, simple and useful piece of software.

It has special "make mp3 cd" option, with very complex wizard, offering almost everything that might come handy with problems like mine. Mp3 normalizing, pre-equalizing, volume boosts, bitrate conversions, filename conversions and limiting from 8 to 64 characters, etc. Like, this program tries hard to match your CD to meet (and not cross) player's capabilities, even with file and folder limiting to some number and so on. This was pretty cool.

Which took me to a point where all I needed was to find out what's the limits of mp3 player and use the program to meet them.
Well...

What was not cool at all is that the manual which came with player only instructs at n00b level, what does this or that button do and how to turn on radio. There's absolutely not a single piece of technical specifications, such as maximum allowed bitrate or anything else like that. Not in the manual, not on the box. Nowhere!

Company homepage is also a school-project-type-spaghetti, being just one small sick flash animation and 3 music tracks. There's low-quality photo of a product and some unreadable lines of same crap they printed onto box. No specs.

Anyway, I keep trying. I configured the program to make a CD that should be playable even in 2000 years old MP3 player, maybe this will work. Of course, re-encoding all the mp3-s to super low bitrate will take 2000 years by itself...

*sigh*

EDIT, a hour and 40 minutes later:
And once again, teh day is saved! Lowering bitrate and restricting  spaces in names and long filenames did the trick! 

** jumps HAPPILY out of the window, nearly hitting the passing car

Nope.
I was a bit aware of not some players not playing pirated/ripped MP3s,  heard somewhere that Sony mp3-players need some authorizing crap and so on.

It's manufactured by Italian company named "Trevi".