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Well, both my home and work computer have quite cranked up brightness. But it's not so Jackson pale really, I'd say beige/pink. I probably will make my skin a bit lighter, but not as light as yours is, I find little tan giving a bit rounder and healthier look

Also, I noticed that your edit looks quite happy.
As much as I remember John, he was quite miserable/serious - well, his friend was victim of really bloody murder, so no hesitation here.

Coming back and reading this thread & comparing ProgZ' redraw with mine gives me so much ideas! Sadly, I'm at work and can't implement them 

Pale skin, the way eyes are, thin long neck, little box-shaped head, I dunno!
It simply strikes as Jackson. Maybe someone other is able to see it.

[much]

Haha, I find my neckless, round-faced dude much closer to Al Borland. Especially closeup.
Hate Al, though.

Ooh, that is GOOD!

Well. You are right about redraws, ProgZ, but I've often got redraws for threads like those I totally don't want to use and it's kind of uncomfortable to ignore such hard work done just to help me.

Nice paintover, still. I totally suck at picking colors, so your image sure is helpful. Especially since I love your work and try to learn from you whenever possible.

Your edit reminds me... Michael Jackson, for some reason, hihi. Dunno why.

Anyway, I decided that
* I will go for 4 shades instead of billion (but not three) on body. I like my multiple skin tones, and there's really not that much of them (5, after cleaning up). Maybe reduce them to 4 also and contrast out more.
* I try to find a middle between your head and mine. I don't like all the skinny and young michaeljacksonish Landy, but not my old, neckless and burly neither. So I need to find some kind of middle version of both... yet stay true to original and still match closeup image.
* From your edit and its superiority over my image, I decided to totally redo coat, and reshade pants & shoes & shirt.

I will remake John and post it here. Not today, probably, but tomorrow.

Thanks!!! 

Alright, I did some hardcore drawing work tonight.

Meet my old (2004) sprite of John Landy, if you haven't yet:
      
Original closeup portrait by pixelcat

That's correct, the witty protagonist from The Hamlet, one of winners of AGS Team Challenge in 2004.

Well, I decided to remake this character and got here:
   
Note that my version of closeup is nowhere as cool as pixelcat's original


Now, what I ask help on, would be colors of John's coat. I'm quite satisfied with rest, but I couldn't get shading and colors on overcoat right. The dark shade seems to be too dark, yet I've experimented alot and cannot get it right.
Also, general C&C would be welcome too, on both images.

Just don't make completely new redraws of whole character, because I probably won't be using those.

Additional question you might ask: Will there be a game? Since me completing a game takes a miracle or dozen, most likely not. Then again, there will always be a possibility...

Really great tune!
What I'd use on this gamecore(?) piece, would be a sequencer or some gated pad in the middle, above bass and below pads... There was very high and very low tunes, middle felt empty somehow.

Time's best thing to prove my point. Come back to this thread after a year.

All gaming magazines predict console games taking over PC gaming, big time.
While consoles being cheaper, not needing upgrading and being generally more comfortable to use, I have a big problem with that.

Point is - consoles do not need brains to use.
Also, nor do games for consoles.

Gaming is getting more and more unintelligent, especially since you cannot control RTS or adventure game or even tycoon-simulation-style game with gamepad, and mice on consoles will never get popular. Also, alternative controllers do not really happen, atleast there's no trace of them.

So, out of 100 new released games, 90 are about shooting and/or killing something (don't believe me? visit new releases list on random gaming site, such as gamespot). Anything requiring more than three brain cells will not happen.

Also, even on PC, Flash has taken over big time, going for handheld'ish simplicity...

That's the curse of consoles.
That's the cause of retardation of games.
That's why - when PC gaming really dies on one sad day, no-one will remember adventure games.

Sorry if it's been here already, but--

THEORY: If we take worst song ever born on internet, add a crazy drummer and distorted guitars, we could get something that's actually good.

SUPPORTING FACT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKQgDY0pZ68&feature=channel_page

Make conclusions yourself.

Even though I wouldn't touch either music genres even with a mile long stick, somehow I find this remix incredibly... awesome. So I guess it fits the thread.

np. I didn't say this to enforce my suggestions or something.
Create a while, listen to listeners, and you'll get what I meant.

I do whatever I like to do and honestly do not care about others what they say...

Why did you post this thread then? Are you lost?

This is Critics Lounge. If you have no respect for opinions of other people, don't post here. Infact, don't release your music. You can keep it in your computer and enjoy all for yourself.

Somehow, you got the joy of creating all wrong.
Especially since music is one of most expressive things to create!

Oh, sorry about the link. But yes, that tool is incredibly expensive. There's still a trial, but I don't know, how feature limited it is...

Too bad, I'm just a php/javascript guy, so I can't recode that tool for free. Though it can't really be that hard to write such an application...

This tool is clearly overpriced. You can make your own protractor using something vector-based, thus accurate, such as Illustrator or CAD software or... hell, even drawing angled lines in PS and keeping it as template on separate layer.

Such template might not have all the features, but does the thing, I think.

Actually, it gave me an idea. I'm using ArtiosCAD for my work, how would it benefit in making a room outlines, and then exporting vectors to Photoshop?

Nuts to that, I'll start another game!

That response is the best way to ending up with 8 unfinished games 

Trust me, I am proof of this 

Same here, but number is a bit bigger than I'd like to reveal. Either here or to myself.
Dammit, perfectionism 

Let me know if you want more specifics than that.  I could ask him.  Actually a background from start to finish would be an interesting developer diary.

It definitely would... But I'm quite familiar with the style he's using and pretty positive I can reproduce it with much less effort (no resizing, my detail faking methods, etc). It's simply an eye of a designer I lack, those light solutions and general shapes - and especially composition (love the blue room background!!!) he makes - are very unique.
Such diary entry would benefit many other artists though, no doubt.

Actually, I'd love to see exactly what goes on in ProgZmax's head when making those sprites! I mean, what's the workflow and how are colors selected. How come they match backgrounds so well, yet stand out nicely? My characters never seem to really fit my backgrounds, mainly due low detail and bad color choices...

But I personally wouldn't want to stall you though, you have a cool game to make.

Liked the start. A humorous guy in a condition I could imagine extremely miserable, being is such good and optimistic mood, cracking jokes etc...
Didn't like second part, all the emotional messaging, crowd feeling seemingly uncomfortable, etc.

[Do this at your own risk]

About drivers:
With nVidia drivers, you can quite safely simply download them from nvidia.com, and install. If it doesn't work, install other ones ontop of old ones. Setup is quite smart and warns you if you're about to replace new driver with old or something. I've seen "nvidia driver cleaners" and long talk about removing trace of old drivers, but in reality, I never had to. Installing any driver always replaces old one and makes card use installed one. You never have to reinstall the CARD. It's all matter of replacing the driver.

What you SHOULD try is original driver. The one that came with card. And - things should run with with those drivers. Steam warning about drivers being old isn't really something to pay attention to. You know, if you buy a car, you should expect the engine it has to be compatible with rest of the car, right?
And if it doesn't help, it's simple to download & put back newest driver.

Same for monitor driver.

Also...

I'd try those things if I had your problem... the logical solutions first, desperate last-straw ones last:

* Try running in window mode. Do you have lines then too?
* Try starting fullscreen game, then alt-tabbing to windows, and back. Move mouse cursor over lines. Does mouse "erase" them, cleaning up the line-mess? (more common anomaly than it sounds, seen in hundreds of games in my life. Points directly at drivers and directx - or more exactly - mess in video buffer)

Start -> Run -> dxdiag
Display tab
* Check that all acceleration is turned on, especially directdraw. Do the test, if you have patience.
* Check files tab and make sure there's no problems
* Try reinstalling (re-downloading!) DirectX, maybe that would help. It's small download anyway, and might do good even if it doesn't help with that particular problem!
Some games install some custom(ized?) DirectX drivers and they might not be that good, or even broken
* Run Nvidia Control Panel (you should have taskbar icon near clock). Go to "Change flat panel scaling", Try different options.
* Go to windows display properties (via control panel or right click>properties on desktop), Settings > Advanced > Monitor > play with refresh rates. If you have only 60Hz selectable, uncheck "hide modes this monitor cannot display" and you can try 75Hz. Do this at your own risk. If something blows up, run.

Maybe something here would help?
Those lines... I could swear I've seen those before. But I don't remember what card did I have back then. And I think I got rid of the problem in some really easy way, maybe one of those I listed?

First, I second all that thomasregin said.

And second
some filtering could do wonders. Whatever you call your music genre yourself, it sounds Ambient to me. I'd use more reverb, delay and cutoff here and there. Also, those tracks sound like bases for much more complicated song. If you made another song onto your song, you would get a quality song.

What I mean by that is, you're using mostly single melody and instrument. But having both playing different tune at time, different notes, and supporting each other at same time would sound much more "full" and not so monotonous. Then again, monotony IS a characteristic of Ambient...

Do you know what beat is? It isn't simply to make song danceable or "popular" or force it into following a formula. It holds up the rhythm. You didn't use any... I would.

Apart from this, great stuff! Needs some polish, but it's really good at times.

I switch to 640x480 (enable letterbox if game's 320x200) with 2x filter.

So, basically, don't switch to 640x480, FILTER to this size. And make sure letterbox is on, incase you have blur.

On my 1280x1024 desktop resolution & 17" Samsung Syncmaster,
that's only way to not have blurry picture or small text..

If you didn't discover filters yet, there's your answer. I can play anything if it's either 640x480 or double, 1280x1024
anything in-between is ALWAYS blurry.



If you're having weirder troubles, try following things:
* Getting latest video driver (stupid advice usually, yet popular)
* Rolling back to older one (Much better. Works wonders on older cards! First place to start when some games get messy for no reason whatsoever)
* Using one that came with card (On my old GF7400LE, most foolproof way to have no trouble, that card didn't digest any updates from nVidia)

For me, AGS was logical step forward from AGI-Studio, which I used back then (2001?).
Since I'm ALWAYS looking for free game engines (even today), it was quite simple to find.

You're right, I am. And King's Quest without dying isn't King's Quest. Only I thought they created a feature to undo the last 'false' move. Like in Besieged. Guess not. So I'll leave it to that.

I hoped for this too. And moat monster ate me! Random enemy attacks tend to get really annoying, especially given otherwise light-hearted atmosphere in this game.

Anyway, what really amazed me was voice acting. It's absolutely superb, and I'm really glad you guys managed to hire a professional, because bad voice acting can ruin even best games...

Not very far yet, will play later tonight. Loving it so far!