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Well, even I cannot understand the plot. Or where it leads. It contains an angry ganja-growing farmer, plane-hijacking terrorist, a trippy hippie, nerdy cliffhanger, desperate sheperd, antisocial fisherman and so on... Freedom of Creativity, ho!

When game starts, me - casual AGSer and Valter - diehard Quake2 clanleader buy potato chips and find a free trip to Hawaii from chips pack. Unfortunately, trip is pretty cheap and plane gets hijkacked. So, we piss terrorist off and he throws us into the sea, which leads to landing on an unknown island. Here the game starts. So, it goes from reality and present day towards complete madness.

I picture myself and Valter just like we are, me as a fool who hits the wall with my head before finally being sure it really does hurt... and Valzebnik as reasonable and cautious guy, who just sometimes goes crazy and starts fire everywhere (that's true too, he once set whole forest on fire near my hometown, at the riversideÃ,  :o).
To make things easier, I call myself "InC" and Valter as "Valz" in the game. These are our nicknames in reality, too.

If people "get" at least 10% of the humor I include, Plot will become less important anyway.

I can't say exactly how long the game will be. Medium-length, I suppose. There's more things I would like to add, but...

...Right now, My puzzle ideas got TOO hardcore, so I'm awfully stuck in scripts logic, there's like 10 conditions/events for each thing to take account while performing (if you do this then check if this thing is like that and this thing is like that and million other things are like that blah blah), so if...then...else stuff got really messy. As soon as I get over this part, rest of the game development will advance faster.

Puzzles are very complex so far. For example, you have to get piece of glass from plane window:

Spoiler

* Valz refuses to touch sharp pieces of glass
* InC tries to get one, hurts his hand, tries again, hurts hand again, after third time he punches furiously plane door, which makes piece of glass to fall off from broken window, onto ground.
* When interacting with glass on the ground, InC - still angry, stamps foot on glass, burying it into the ground and forcing player to get new one
* Valz picks glass piece carefully up when interacted.

[close]

See? Things are complex and it gets even worse later.

[Backgrounds...]

Well, well.
I think It's time to announce a game I've been making for half a year already... (thus hauling my lazy ass back to work  )

Let's see screens first (which tell the story and give some general idea about the game).

Well, happens that myself and Valter (main characters) win a trip...


But things won't turn out quite as planned...


And we end up on a strange island full of strange people...


And start exploring around, still trying to figure out is it just a bad dream or reality.

Okay.
So far I can say about game:

Backgrounds...
...Are almost ready, there's 13 of them. They're drawn pretty well, considering my lazy nature, every pixel is paid for, with sweat and tears. "Residents" of Critics Lounge maybe remember some others not shown here.
Maybe I just add 3-4 more screens. Or 7-8. Or...
oh.

Characters
There's 10 of them, all quite colorful and animated. I plan to add some more.

Animations
Game is already (and will more in future) filled with shitloads of animations. There's 2 reasons why:
1) I promised to put shitloads of animations into game.
2) I love to animate & I'm lazy. Instead of scripting or trying to fix the weak plot, I just animate and animate, so I can say that I'm working on the game... while I'm actually not working on critical elements of the game. Well, so that is.

Plot
Isn't anything normal human being could start building game on to. I really messed up with plot, fact that game could be ready by now - but I still have no idea what happens at the end - proves it.
But I'm still looking forward to patch all this mess up somehow.

puzzles 'n' other adventuregamey stuff
No pixelhunting or timed puzzles, but whole game plays as scripted cutscene. You do few clicks and enjoy the show again.

For example, I connected 3 rooms so you have to run around them many times. And this took 9 GlobalInts and 12 different animations to work. At the first I thought - "Lots of time on graphics, but since AGS is so easy to use, I'll throw rest of the game together later, just in a day or two"... well, scripting everything together actually takes more time than I spend on making bg's for 5 games like this!

Sound
There's plenty of sounds. Most of them ripped from Internet or various games.

Music
Not a tune of music. My weak musical talent has abandoned me this time for good. Actually, I hope to ask someone to make me music later, when most of the game is complete. Preferably something NOT midi, since I somewhat dislike MIDIs.

Release date
Not sure at all. There was about 5 months delay where I just started AGS and closed it after 3 minutes of looking at the project. Right now, AGS Team Challenge has increased my will to continue my own game too. I hope to get all of this together in few months.

Update (7-01-2005):
Finally, I got some time for the project, and some plot patching done. I started revamping some existing backgrounds (because my drawing skills have got much, much better since the start) and I won't even mention animating skills after last ATC and some other projects I tried/helped with.
Palette went from 16 to 32-bit, because of heavy gradients usage.
About enough material is together to make a demo.

Well, I'm trying to make something calm.
What do you think?

Any suggestions how should I finish this track?
Any other ways to improve this?

http://www.terran-x.com/increator/light.mp3 (bit less than 1MB)

1) When using any paint program that allows layer usage (ArtGem (shareware version here), Adobe Photoshop, Flash, etc. ):
Make totally black layer over your background and starting from the spot where light comes (a lamp, window, etc) start erasing the black colorÃ,  from layer with opacity around 5-15%, erasing more near light and less from corners. It's hard to explain, but easy to do, yet effective too. Later you might want to decrease overall opacity of "black layer".



It's not bad way to shade, but shading by hand looks alot better and is somewhat with higher "quality".

2) If your paint program supports brighten/darken processor for brush, it's even easier. Just darken everything that's away from light source.

3) USE a good paint program. MSPaint is good only for pixelart and sprites.

[juncmodule:]

Moving from Game Maker to AGS is quite a big step.
They're completely different in many ways, and the game developing process is quite different too.

In AGS, you start with paint program and spend enough time on it for AGS to have few new versions before you're finished with at least minimal needed bgs and sprites to start scripting and actual game making.
With Game Maker, you usually draw graphics in progress, because usually sprites are alot smaller and you add objects (instances) one by one.

I don't think that neither of programs are available to use easily without any scripting. ESPECIALLY game maker, since every instance you make needs almost always few user-made variables and scripting via drag-and-drop-icons is actually alot more difficult and time consuming. If you're really making a game and not a one-room-3-objects spaghetti, that is.

AGS has become alot more stable and fast engine than GM is.

And games are more dynamic, interesting and feel more complex.
Especially if comparing absolute-beginner-made AGS and GM games... GM beginners usually make some simple maze-type-game with stolen graphics and maybe default sounds, while even really n00b AGS game already feels like a GAME.

But yes, since AGS is oriented to one genre, the freedom of making anything is more difficult to reach and needs superior scripting skills.

juncmodule:
Weird, but I always thought that Leisure Suit Larry 1 was the real shock and wow-effect in adventure game genre. I started from there and many people I know did too. 

You are right. i never before tried to draw a male breast in that little format...

Male?
I can't see that he's male! You forgot little detail...

Actually
blackman890,

The Indy sprite you started with is NOT compatible with your style, that's the problem.
That and the fact that you may not have your OWN style yet since you're a newbie in sprite industry.

Yes, follow the tutorials and work alot, soon you'll find a way to draw characters which suits best for you.

Not bad. I'd pay more attention to shapes
(Orc's bottom lip is way too long, right leg is bigger than left one, right hand looks like it's been torn off and glued back to body, knights hair shows too clearly line tool usage)
and, of course - shading. They're pretty nice characters, but extra shade color per body part would make them twice as nice.

Not-so-mister-do-you-have-a-spare-dime boy?
More-like-we-are-teh-playstation-generation-hah! boy?

[AM]

Well, I recall thread with same topic from the past... far past.

My original first name is Indrek. (don't try to find out what "in drek" means in German )

My friends shorten it to "Ints".
Many old games/NeoGeo (whoah!) games accept only 3 letters for a name in hiscore table, so I shortened it to InC.

I AM creative, if there's any purpose for my existence at all.
Very little of my creativity manages to get to the public, because being a perfectionist, no game, drawing, song, etc is never "completed" enough for me to release it and say "Here, that's the best I can do!". So my creativity stays "inside" for most of time.

InCreator.

Well, that's it.

Yeah, about these backgrounds...
On the weak side, they're simply:

a) boring, as Andail said
and
b) Too colorful.

No, you don't have to dump them.
No, you don't have to redraw them.
They're far too nicely and artistically drawn for that.
I see lots of effort put into them. That's great!

But I'd suggest to overlook your palette use:

* If the game will be about mystery, force everything closer to one tone, like make everything more blue or green

* If the game will be "King's Questy nonsense adventure"-type of game, Maybe decrease contrast(er.. saturation) on most elements of the background.
Something like in later Sierra (and some other publisher's) games where they used actual scanned paintings, which gave this weird-but-nice smooth contrast, good examples are also games "Innocent until caught" and "Igor: Objective Uikokahonia", etc.

I posted an example here: Numbers show how much saturation was decreased on particular part of background:



...nothing but just a really quick edit... but doesn't hurt eyes so much.

Right. Me wanna take part of game too.
Here goes:

1. Most of my posts start with "okay." or "Hm."
2. I spend 3 minutes of making post and 30 re-editing it few thousand times
3. I haven't released a game, though there's surely people who are waiting for it
4. I spend alot time on animating something while I should spend it on my game

Hm?

I really enjoyed this topic and I believe that I can be the one to get it bouncing again so if I don't get it with this one...I'll try another!Ã,  Ã, 
Increator
Flamboyant PC Salesman
Zoraphus
I'm leaning more towards Zoraphus though.

hm.
You're right.
Yeah, me.

Huh-
*one more "huh"

Well, It's really hard to decide who beats who.

I liked the entries, but--
best were the Scud-ninja and Chainsawmurai.

And while Scud-ninja is alot more detailed and maybe a bit cooler too, Chainsawmurai fits the theme better and is somewhat more masterfully made. The simplicity combined with near-perfect shape. Just look at the hair or pose of Chainsawmurai! They feel REAL.

This is what made my final decision.
SpacePirateCaine wins!!!

Yeah, what happened to that idea?
It was good.

It felt more like an arcade game, yeah. And a bit of tycoon with the time as a resource to play with...
But I loved the game. While story was somewhat stupid and overused, it was still very well implemented and...
...bugs are most horrible creatures on our planet.
Including ants.

Looking a zombie or vampire movie doesn't affect me at all.
Looking at the spider through maginfying glass scares the crap out of me.
Ants were what made this game so cool.

But I think that it is possible to cut most action sequences out, release pressure from time limit and remake it to a nice adventure game, like:

1. Getting to know people around the valley
2. Getting money and stuff to trade them for some weapons
3. Getting the plane
4. The fight
5. Entering the ant's nest and destroying the queen?

Well, if you rephrase these points, you'll get nice components/puzzles for a typical adventure game:

1. Characters! Dialogues! Exploration! If characters/dialogues are well made, it also works as atmosphere burst (5 days a stranger, anyone?).
2. Puzzles! A shop (an adventure game without a shop?)! Maybe some stealing/distracting/etc stuff?
3. There could be loads of puzzles around this event.
4. Action sequences... maybe
5. The maze! (erm... maybe?) And largest atmosphere burst.

Huh.
Yes, even if it wasn't really an adventure game, it has lots of potential to become one.

While geometry is pretty nice, textures suck as hell.

1. Trees. If it's made with Radiant/Hammer/whatevernotreal3dmodellingprog, draw texture by yourself or get alot darker one somewhere. Lettuce on pine trees is nothing I'd call real. If it IS done with some 3d modelling program like 3ds max or blender, etc, see if the program supports maps with transparency (alpha channel?) and you'll get much better result.
Actually, You can use transparent sprites with 3d level editors too, you just have to mess a little to align 2d sprites onto tree instead of putting 3d cone there. Later, you may duplicate the completed tree and make whole forest.

2. You could consider more tile'ing the house wall texture on y... wait, it's Z!-axis. And maybe use some drawing program to make it darker + reducing contrast.

3. No tree can grow on rocks. No forests base on rocks.

Apart from that, it looks like an interesting and lovely background.

"Historical mistake", BOYD.
At least SOMEONE noticed

Ladies and gentlemen,

I'm asking you to draw historical warfare with a (historical) mistake in it.

Something like on that picture I drew few months ago...


It could be just anything that shows
* warfare related stuff
* and has mistake on it

It could be a fighter plane with a simple kids slingshot, a modern tank without cannon, but a swordsman mounted on instead... or a clubman with a bazooka... just whatever. Imagine yourself making sequel to Age of Empires game and being really drunk at the same time...


Since topic is sick enough, no restrictions to color amount.
No harsh limits on image size, just make it smaller than 300x300.


And since I love animations, they're especially welcome!

Good luck. This topic will self-destruct (erm... lock) in 8 days.

...utilizing the same AGS (Adventure Game Studio) engine as the original King's Quest games, this VGA remake...

...huh?

Worst neighbour?
A neonazi punk.



so tiny sprite...! zoomed version here:



Sieg heil!11!1

Very Loom'y. Good!
If you're able to keep the detail during animations, It would be really neat.

...but about improvements... I think he (she?) needs:

* a butt
* second eye
* more & wider shape around stomach area and under it
* a bit shorter feet
* more detail on hands (a thumb, at least)
* a bit more realistic wrinkles on his robe
...so overall, more shape

* It would be also cool to see at least a little bit of shoes from under the robe
I could also give few suggestions about the face but somehow it looks perfect as it is. With this style you have there.