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Thanks for all the suggestions... and to settle the debate on gender, I am a lady, and the fiancé (I can't spell, and didn't realize there were seven ways to spell that) is a man. He writes a techy sort of blog about free program solutions and wanted a windows person to make the jump to linux and describe the experience for people that want to know.

I'm also on linux right now, just got it all installed after a couple of missteps. Aside from a few kinks, things are going okay... and using any sort of virtual XP is illegal... since that is using windows and not Fedora. I already "sold out to the man" as some websites say since I loaded nvidia drivers from nvidia  :

That's a shame that CS3 doesn't run... But I found a list of really crazy-looking paint programs to tinker with. The only things I have left to do is to to try to get flash player working properly in firefox and try to find my network so I can grab the rest of my files off my other computer.

Hello all,

Recently, my fiancee challenged me to use Linux for two weeks... and for those two weeks, my harddrive with all its windows and all my cool junk will be hidden and I have to start fresh with a clean install of Fedora.

Now I know I can't work on the actual scripting of my game during this time, but I can still do the graphics... so what I'm asking is what sort of pixel-friendly programs are out there for linux?

I know I could probably get photoshop running under wine, but that might be a bit complex on the first day. What about other programs that are useful? Something like outlook express/windows mail?

Any tips or suggestions you guys can give me would be appreciated... I hope this little challenge won't end up with someone crying... though it would either be me crying or my fiancee after I beat him up to get my windows back...

I use JetAudio because it came with a media player that I love.

Also, Songbird is also very nice.

Both might have features that you don't need, but they are customizable. The reason why I like JetAudio the best is because you can make it shrink down to fit atop the windows taskbar with all the features available to you.

I have all 6 disks of Windows 3.1 somewhere... not the originals... the backup disks that they highly recommend you make of your OS so that you always have a copy of Windows...

good times... good times...

Her legs look lumpy and she's very stiff. Side views are hard and ladies have many curves. Shave off some pixels on the front of the leg in the back. Her breasts grew a whole lot between the front and the side views... try to slim them down. Actually, she seems a bit heavier on the side than front-on... Also put both sprites side by side and draw lines to match up the shoulders, waist, dress etc. I'd provide a paint-over if I wasn't at work right now.

Twentyfour posted a very helpful tutorial to help me improve my sprite and I think it might help you out as well.

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=37425.msg492167#msg492167

No, not trying to pimp my thread, just thinking that such a nice tut can be passed along. 

You have a nice start so far, she just needs some pretty-ing up.

EDIT:  Here's a very quick paintover to show what I mean about the breasts and the legs.

I tried to rework a couple of things here, and starting throwing some shadows around. I also fixed the "vampire dress" to be a bit more interesting. I'm still lost on the side view, she looks weird, but I can't really figure out why or where to start.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

For the computer techies...

H. Key's Local Machine or H. Key and the Local Machine

First off, thanks for the suggestions so far, I'll post up some edits later. I'm not sure if I'll fix the shoulder in this particular view because this is the outfit that she wears in the beginning of the game when she's shy. Later we'll see the return of the cute black and red dress when she gets a bit of sass

I'll be looking at that tutorial in a bit, I know the side poses are... not very good. I'm going to work on the poses and try my hand at shading a little and see how that turns out.

Edit: Fixed the side view and posted up the vampire outfit (slightly modified). Not sure if it's "mistress of the dark enough", but I  used Kangourou's idea to go along with the change in ...confidence level that the character gains after the costume change. Attempted some shading on the hair and boots of the right one... not sure if I will stick to the dithered style.



Also fixed the wacky leaning of the castle walls.

Hello all, I took a break from my game and now that I'm going back into it, I find that I really could improve the graphics with better shading and coloring. I'd like to get some opinions on my character and a background.. Any shading advice and coloring tips are appreciated. Also, feel free to chime in with anatomical or perspective tips as well. I haven't really been drawing in a while and I'm a bit rusty.

Some of you might remember me posting this character with different clothing. Well, this is the outfit she starts out in. A sweater with a hood (the dark parts on the elbows are patches, the dark bits on the front are pockets) and sort of flair legged jeans. Also, she's a vampire, but she's not a very good one.



This is just outside the vampire king's castle. When our hero above first gets here, there's a large thug standing in the doorway. Once the thug leaves, it becomes the entrance to the castle proper. I know it looks flat in some areas and kind of weird in others. The black parts are where the GUI goes. Any suggestions are welcome.

Why not assign the barking animation as the player's talking view? Then have cEgo.Say("Bark! Bark!"); whenever the player barks at a person/object?

Hello... I'm stuck...

Spoiler

Sally has to save that Kadin guy from being stranded. I went back to the machine world, and picked up my platform, but that doesn't seem to work.

[close]

Nevermind!

Spoiler

Had to try doing everything once more.

[close]

Awesome game, though I, too am stuck in that pesky desert. I love the animations though... especially the "getting sucked into the box" animation.

I took the liberty of googling a trial of a .chm to .pdf converter and tested the program by converting the ags help. The whole file is 5053 pages long.... yes, that's quite a bit of printer cartridges and paper, but if you would like the pdf version that I converted, I uploaded it here.

I've had bad experiences with HP (the heat coming of that old HP laptop we had burned with the heat of a thousand suns), but I hear they are getting better. I now have a Toshiba Satellite something or other, it has a 17" screen, 3GB of RAM, an AMD processor that is better than my desktop (it is being used in the other room so I can't check) and it seems to handle Vista's load fairly well. We got it about six months ago for about $650 in a Circuit City, before the stores shut down. 

You might want to get a laptop that has similar specs to an older model that runs XP, as I have heard that new laptops don't even have drivers available for XP. Just something to keep in mind. Don't worry, I don't think it'd be as bad to rip off Vista and install XP.

Good luck, I hope you find a laptop that will work for you.

I've broken hard drives before. Take it out of the computer. If it sounds like the spinner is stuck, carefully knock on the drive to see if you can loosen the arm. Plug it back into the computer and see if that works long enough to back up the important files.

Also try hooking the drive up in the computer upside-down, try it as both master and slave. I've also heard that if you put the drive in a zip bag and stick it in the freezer, you might get enough time to copy your important files... though most people think this is just a myth.

Copper is good for passive cooling (without a fan) and aluminum is better with active cooling (with fan) but both are very good. You really need some thermal paste in between the heatsink and the chip. It not only creates a good seal locking out air between the surface of the chip and the bottom of the heatsink.

If the cooler is brand new, it might have some pre-applied... but if it isn't new or it's been used before it is no longer good. My advice is to get some arctic silver or the best equivalent you can find at your local computer parts shop. Get some rubbing alcohol and some lint-free wipes and clean the surface of the processor as well as the bottom of the heatsink.

A dab of thermal paste is all you need, think about half a grain of rice and apply it to the center of the top of the processor. Take a credit card or any other flat plastic card and spread a thin layer all over the core. Then carefully stick down the heatsink. It will take a day or so of the computer to be on for the paste to "burn in", but you should start seeing a vast temperature improvement.

Hope it works out for you. I've actually burned out a few parts and learned some things the hard way. It might not be too late to save the processor.

 I've googled the error you got and the article I found says this:

0x0000009C: MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION
(Click to consult the online MSDN article.)
This is a hardware issue: an unrecoverable hardware error has occurred. The parameters have different meanings depending on what type of CPU you have but, while diagnostic, rarely lead to a clear solution. Most commonly it results from overheating, from failed hardware (RAM, CPU, hardware bus, power supply, etc.), or from pushing hardware beyond its capabilities (e.g., overclocking a CPU).

    * Error Message: STOP: 0x0000009C... {KB 329284} Win XP
    * Understanding and Troubleshooting the Stop 0x0000009C Screen {KB 162363} Win NT4, Win 2000

Maybe the processor is overheating? Have you tried opening up the side of the case and blowing a fan in there? When you changed processors and heat sinks, did you apply a new coat of thermal paste? Is the heatsink fan spinning? Have you tried going into selective startup to see if it'll start windows? Might be something to try during half time.


The "Last known good configuration" in windows is basically the last settings that Windows believes are stable, but if that doesn't work anymore, then something weird might be going on with the hardware.

Great game! I love the limited palette and the humor.

But I'm stuck at the part with the

Spoiler

assassinbots. In my inventory, I have the tech support tool, the waterfruit, the CHAOS HAMMER 7000 and the virus. Annie doesn't seem to want to use any of these items.

[close]

Did I miss anything?

I got the error initially when I was trying to run the game from the editor. I believe it also happened when I tried to save it. But I haven't gotten it since, so I think it might have been a one-time glitch. I will let you know if I get any more errors.

Before I renamed the file, nothing really looked right, especially the last gui I was working on. Several random sprites were missing and the game wouldn't run at all. After I renamed the file the editor opened everything except the last one I'd imported. I haven't had any problems since.

On an unrelated note, over the weekend, I plan on loading the Beta of Windows 7, so I'll let you know how AGS handles on the new OS.