Messages

What do the French put in the water?
They must have really good art teachers at school!

PS: If you didn't catch the hint, m0ds was volunteering to do some music for your game. You want that. He's good. Don't reuse Monkey Island music - it's not the right thing.

I think I agree with Dan on look of the main character - but I'll reserve judgement until I've seen her move and "heard" her interact. You never know!

In the front view, his arms come back in towards the body from the elbow down. Try making them parallel to the body - it should look more relaxed. I agree with Scuthbert about the shoulders.

Also, in the 45 degree rear view, his body is behind his legs. This ties in with Opo's "ass = nuts" theory. His legs should tilt in the other direction.

Nice shading!

Looking pretty good...
In the first animation, though, it looks like he's crouching behind a bush, like a bear in the proverbial woods.
His ankles should rise off the floor and his knees should spread apart slightly, and you should still be able to see all of his torso. His arms look a bit weird too, tucking under his legs like that.

Here's a quick sketch of my take of the final pose.



Left arm on the ground for support and right arm above leg for balance.
The legs aren't great but you get the idea I hope!

Cheers,
Steve

It seems like there's a lot of wasted movement - I wouldn't expect a mech to swing so violently left and right.
Also, I'm looking at the slow version, and it still seems like a run rather than a walk, but I guess if you're making a platform game rather than an adventure it will be fine.
Nice design!

That's not bad at all!
The black clothes look a bit messy, but it depends on who the character is, and what he's for. Fill us in on the details and maybe someone can help you more...
eg, are the eyes supposed to be red? does he need more facial features or props?

For the scaled up image, I recommend using

[img width=xx height=yy]blah[/img]

with xx and yy multiples of the original size, so that the pixels are all the same size. For example:

I haven't used a three and a half inch floppy since the operation I got a pen drive.

The hex puzzle is the hardest puzzle ever!
Occasionally (rarely), he'll walk the long way around to get to a tile, which doesn't help.

Spoiler

I think it's too hard to work backwards to a solution that works - it would be easier if each column toggled or did nothing.
I started trying to work it out, but eventually I just wandered randomly.
Of course, maybe I'm just stupid...
Rather cooler than the Fate of Atlantis hex puzzle!

[close]

There's a full stop missing in the intro, after "ruined".

I'd also make the floating text fade in much quicker. It's a bit frustrating having to wait two seconds to see the description.

Well, a right click can describe it if you're impatient

But I want to see it now!

Thanks for the great feedback Steve. If you are still stuck having been to all the starting 5 locations, ask me and I may be able to throw some light on things  

Subtle! I guessed it was something to do with that, but I didn't realise that:

Don't forget that you can talk about any item in the background during dialogs

Really? That's a great idea! I wish I'd thought of that!
(I guess I should have read the manual better. Can you also ask about any inventory item then?)

What about Tim Schafer?
He had a publishing contract with M$, and he blew it!

Or Benoit Sokal?
He had a great franchise going, and pissed it up the wall!
Not that I've actually played Syberia II, or particularly liked the first one... Hmm...

Very nice!

I tried it first in 320x200 but it was definitely not designed for that
You should include a .cfg file in the zip that is set on 640x400.

The interface is very well done, but you probably don't need me to tell you that. The only problem I had was when looking at the pyramids in the map screen, when the character changes to the full size talk view.

I'd also make the floating text fade in much quicker. It's a bit frustrating having to wait two seconds to see the description.

Are there just five locations in the demo? And is there nothing to do except talk to people and look at stuff?

Looking good!
I loved the characters ducking to get into the tent, and the "amazed" animation of the main character. Interesting script - seems nicely paced, with not too much exposition. The only confusion I had was Aten and Amun are quite similar, as are Khafre and Khefren. I guess there's not much you can do about that! Except maybe to explicitly link Akhenaten and Aten in the same sentence somehow.

Oh, I also noticed the Sphinx says "msy" and not "may" at one point.

[EDIT] I see you want comments on graphics, sound etc too... Well, the graphics seem a bit murky, and the characters don't exactly go together. I appreciate that's not too constructive. The only sound effect I noticed was the footsteps going down the steps into the pyramid, and they seemed out of sync with the animation - way too late.

Sorry if that was a bit freeform.

On my must play list!
Steve

Interesting composition!
I was impressed by how you kept the frenzy together at the start.

Remco,
It could be your SW Synth (midi basically) volume is lower than the Wave volume in the control panel. It usually is for some reason.

If someone can say "the colors of your distant objects have too much contrast", that is advice I can implement.

That is advice that almost anyone can implement.

Don't you think it would be discouraging for a beginner to post something and get comments like "your inverse triangular compostion could be better accented through the use of truncated diagonals and negative space"?

The information contained in that particular piece of nonsense, which I appreciate you have obfuscated for effect, is probably of interest to most people.

However, I think it's pretty easy to guess what sort of advice is going to be heeded and what ignored. So you can carry on your elitism without splitting forums - just ask for indepth criticism when posting, and be condescending when replying

I say no to the split.

As I see it, Critics Lounge is here to improve the skills of people making AGS games, so that the AGS games you play are better. I think more beginners should post here. I'd like to see full games posted, critiqued, and improved before they make it to the games page.

I agree that a lot of posts recently have been backgrounds that look like the creator spent two minutes on it. I think the best way to handle this is to reiterate the advice in the "READ BEFORE POSTING" stickie and tell them to post only when they have gone as far as they can with a piece. Obviously it depends on the style, but maybe recommend 3-4 hours work minimum before posting?

The one thread per member seems like a good idea, but how is it going to be enforced?

As for replies, the old maxim "If you haven't got something bad to say, don't say anything" applies.

Steve

If your thread disappears off the front page, it's probably because no-one had anything to say about it. That's a good thing.

I'm curious to know why it's imperative that you manually change the room/prevroom variables!
Sounds dangerous.
And likely to break in future versions - they're not guaranteed to stay as you've set them.
Why not use a global variable instead?

Me too, eh Darth?  

Heh heh.
Always a great way to elicit a response.

Yeah, looks nice! I like the quality of the writing too.
The first room is a bit muddier and blurrier than the others.

I agree with Monkus Electricus about the character speed and the shadow.

I liked the "tweaked" game setting in principle, but
- talking to people tends to be quite important, surely
- allowing people to turn off player interaction if it's important to a puzzle is a bad idea, and if it's not important, then maybe you could just allow them to look at their reflection in some water or something

Also, I tried talking to the axe (what?) and the game crashed

I wish people would stop digging up ancient threads.
I get all excited for no reason.
I think DM's abandoned this game...

Great!
I'm sure 64x64 is enough, even for an 800x600 game.

One suggestion:
If the font is large enough to make the window exceed the screen width when in the font overview (quite easy to do on my 1600x1200 monitor) as a fix you could *not* zoom the letters.

Or implement a scrollbar

Outline is cool, but kind of unnecessary I think. Particularly when there's no way of undoing it!

Nice tool!
Steve