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Wow, this is the most awesome-looking game I've seen here. If I was confident in anything but writing dialogue and basic scripting I'd offer a hand. As it is, I just look forward to playing it.

Love the demo. Nice, irreverent, harmless fun. The sheer silliness of the 'diversion' moment won me over. My only hope is that future puzzles are a bit more nuanced, but I'm sure that will be the case.

Would be happy to cameo in the game, too, when the time comes.

[The Unicorn and the Wasp]

I read that post myself - he made it after The Unicorn and the Wasp went to air.

Seeing as Gareth Roberts is thus responsible for the demise of the project, I think it is only fair that he should be forced to complete it!

Love the idea, love the look. I'll definitely be dl'ing.

This looks fantastic, can't wait to play it.

Would I be correct in surmising that it's sort of like Drawn Together just with adventure games?

For the most part I thought the music suited the scene, and I was thinking today about how firmly the Marf music got lodged in my head. Seeing as that guy hasn't got past the very start of the game, though, he's only talking about the Clonestation music... which I have to say was a bit irritating.

The thing is, it's quite a good bit of chase/showdown sort of music, so it works really well at the end of the game (btw, brilliant ending, man. Reminds me of the classic Monkey Island endings) but at the start you're just exploring and finding your feet (even though Charlie himself is trying to escape) so it feels intrusive. A sort of typical sci-fi drone probably would have been better for the early scenes.

I'm impressed you did the music yourself, though. what program did you use?

I can think of a lot of worse places to start with than KotoR! Besides, from the use of Mos Eisley I think the game is set some time later than the Knights-era.

Speaking from my own POV I have to say that I'd rather see an adventure game with all established planets than all new ones - come on, I'm always up for seeing Nar Shaada! (And in case any pedants butt in, I KNOW it's a moon)

Well, I'm not any sort of uber-fan so I have no idea what you mean by the 'radio series' version - was the character slightly different? But in terms of design, I think the film version is brilliant, and it was how Douglas Adams wanted him to look - a robot that has been designed to look fun and happy, but carries itself in a very depressed and subdued manner.

Even though the game is unpopular as hell, I loved a lot of the puzzles in Simon the Sorcerer 3D. The pizza puzzle, in particular, has a fond place in my memory.

My least favourite are in Discworld (good to see Cunny brought it up) and specifically... something (can't remember what) has fallen of the Disc and is juuust out of reach. How do you get it? Well, obviously you'll need a broom (?) and apparently the ONLY broom on the entire PLANET (because you travel across the whole world map in this game..) is one you swapped for a wizard's staff three acts ago. So you need a snake (??) which you get from inside an egg (), to feed compost (which makes it grow long) and starch (which makes it go stiff) to swap for the broom.

This is the only game in which I have felt no guilt at all in using a walkthrough.

And big thanks for bumping this thread - I've just dl'ed it and it's a great game so far. Very, very fun. I'd never heard of it until I saw this post..

I assume we inside a tent in this scene? Because, if so it needs to be a lot darker, with some kind of distinctive light source... Like a hole in the tent ceiling, or a doorway. That slit to the right looks like a good starting point, though it may be too small...

Wow. Thanks for the tip that's what I needed - light source is something that I have never, ever thought about. I guess that's what comes from being weened on the old Sierra titles when they only had sixteen colours...

Also, if the tent is a circular one, which it looks like it is, there are some perspective issues... It doesn't look very round, because of the way the walls are drawn and the objects are placed.

I was trying to give the roof a slightly saggy look, and to suggest that the whole thing hasn't been set-up quite as well as it should have been. As is, it isn't quite circular enough, I know. I was trying to use the clutter to distract from the fact that I'm not that good with perspective, but a keen eye will always see through that trick..

It isn't foolish to use MSPaint, but it is foolish to ignore LINE tool. You can still make cartoony look with using short, changing lines. But freehand everything? It looks like grandpa tried drawing with his shaky hand. I mean, it really tires my eyes.

Well, I hope you don't mind overmuch if I half-ignore this point. I don't like using lines at all, because the ones in MS Paint look far too unnatural. Using the curve line extensively is a possibility of course, but it's fiddly to use and generally doesn't get much more of a result than freehand in my experience.

I need to brush up on the detail and care of the freehand, I know, so I'll work on that, and try to limit the amount of double-pixels I use. Hopefully that will be a good enough compromise. That said, in hindsight using the curve line as the basis for the curve of the tent would probably be a good idea.

Sorry if I sound defensive, but this is just my own style and lines don't enter into the equation much as far as it's concerned.

Also, don't forget that you don't have to use default palette - you can make your own colors!

... okay, again not wanting to sound too defensive, but almost every single colour used in the picture is a custom colour and not from the default palette - the red and white being the obvious exceptions, of course, along with the blood and the green patch. I used four different shades of red in the playing cards hair alone.

That's because white is most bright color of them all, if you paint walls white, you're pulling viewers attention to the wall. Away from other things you drew.
Now why would you want that? Are walls that important?

I gather you're speaking metaphorically here, given that the actual walls are beige rather than white. It may be a mistake but I use the white and red because in this scene they are the colours of the knight who owns the tent and I figured that they should be clearly present as a thematic device in the scene, and that for his banner the strongest possible versions of those colours seemed logical. Besides, MS Paint doesn't seem to have a softer white to my eye - it goes from white straight to light grey. Maybe I'm insane but the very next notch on the spectrum just doesn't look white to me!

But... I see you have a point. Looking at it again, the flag in the middle of the room is a definite mistake - it pulls focus straight to itself, leaving everything else in the scene on the peripharary. I should have gone through with my original idea and had the desk directly in front of the flag so it would be in the centre of the room.

Thanks a lot for your help. Hopefully my second effort will be much strongly. And not quite as squiggly.

Erm, wow. The single most engrossing blog post [and comments] that I have ever seen. Just finished reading it and I was on it so long that Nelly Cootalot has nearly finished downloading! (Dialup. )

And I have to say that Michael Bywater's ideas didn't sound that bad to me. I mean, the end seemed a mess, but it would still make an interesting game. I especially liked the stuff about the plant and the radio. Nice and so-lateral-it-hurts-your-brain..

I'd like to volunteer my services as a proofreader for the English translation, if you wanted one. I do a lot of creative writing and work fairly quickly when editing/rewriting material.

That said I can't speak French (just English and a little Japanese) so I'd need a rough translation to work with.

While I'm hear I'd better add that this is the most beautiful-looking AGS game I've ever seen and I can't wait to play it.

Hey. This is an image I knocked up over the last couple of days in MS Paint, as a sort of a break from 320x200 graphics which get a big tiresome - this is also the first time I've used shading extensively (but not THAT extensively as I'm sure you'll point out, mostly on the tent walls and the grass)



I'm quite happy with the results, but also keen to hear what I need to know before attempting a game in the resolution for real. (This isn't for a game - just my own tinkering)

It's also an attempt at mimicking the style of Monkey Island that I loved, with the incredibly crowded and detailed backdrops that scenes would always have. By far my biggest surprise was discovering how little paraphernalia is actually required to make a room look 'crowded'...

Oh, and I should add that it was done entirely in MS Paint. Be sure to tell me how foolish I am for using it.