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I'm glad you finally made it to the backgrounds this time, cos this really looks promising

As some others, I only have a slight problem with the sand. It looks a bit flat. At the back, you could change the shade from the hatch, making it more curvy where it hits the sand. Also, if you shade it on one side, shade the whole side (the sand on the lower right could need some more both at top and bottom). The sand leaning against the middle pillar should be darker.  I sense you've been adding a little noise to the sand, maybe you could increase it just a little bit. Eventually, have som darker or brighter grains added here and there. In general - experiment with the structure of it (you could always look at some googled pictures for reference). Then again, it's pretty damn good as it is.

The rule about the keys was meant to make people think of other type of puzzles, and not tons of "locked door - gotta find/steal the key" which would be the obvious cliché in the setting.

A keypad isn't by definition a type of key, so that would be a way around it.

BTW, there's nothing in the rules saying you need to unlock doors in the game... but as long as you follow the rules, you can of course do as you wish 

To be honest, I didn't get the puzzle. I read the signs and tried following them, then walking the opposite direction, I also tried following the shadow, but were eventually sent back. I should have done more thinking. It's just this thing - I hate mazes. Really. And especially when there's only one screen repeating (in KQ2 there's at least three or four), and when you fail, you feel you're teleported, because ending up there doesn't make sense. If it's an interior, minimalist sortof room repeating, it can work, but in a forest there's not that repeating pattern. If you really want to produce tons of believable rooms simply in some sort of maze, maybe you could have a more general forest ground as a backdrop, then RawDraw some trees and paths to make more variation?

The backdrops are really beautiful and the interface is smooth.

About the main character, I think the animation is a bit messy, esp. the skirt but overall it's not bad. I'd advice turning on "Anti-glide" mode though, with the sound (as Candle has pointed out) and gliding I got a slight "train" impressionÃ,  Also, scaling him up (as in the first screen) made him a bit too blocky.

The ambition-level for this project seems very high, and I really hope the game gets finished. However, if this is your first game, the general advice around is "to start small". I can speak for myself: I started making this huge game, put a lot of half-decent stuff into it, endless pages of crappy code, did things over and over, and eventually gave up. Then I made a small game, had it done in three weeks, and really learned a lot. Now I'm back on a huge project, and everything works out pretty much as I want to. But please, do as you wish, this was only my experienceÃ, 

DontTreadOnMe:
Hmm... like SSH's idea, it is good, but still it includes keys and is a puzzle..

Spoiler

Couldn't you use another type of board, some mail-system or something... just a thought

[close]

Can't wait to see the LEGO in action 

everyone else: Keep it up!

Next: David Lynch goes really crazy

Sure would! ...of course it could safely crop the top as well 

Sure, and it's okay with "normal" characters, but I had this guy panicing, jumping up, hitting the head and falling down, resulting in his artificial limb detaching and rolling a bit away. After cropping, he would slide a lot back and fro on the spot, naturally, since he sometimes bended over to the left, sometimes to the right, and the lying sprite was much wider. To have it animating properly resulted in a lot of character[EGO].x/Wait combinations. Same problems I had with cropping a kangaroo, as the tail stuck out in side-view. Bottom line is, the "natural center" of a character isn't always in the middle.

The solution as of now is either keeping larger sprites or calculating a lot of movement for each special animation (thus avoiding the AnimateCharacter(Ex) function(s)).

Being able to crop only the top of sprites wouldn't affect the sprite's bottom center. Another possibility would of course be to be able to always crop the same amount on each side (with AGS calculating how much to crop without changing the center). That would be a dreamÃ, 

[crop sprite at top only]

Another suggestion (I've searched the forums, read TFM, but still might have missed something, so please bear with me... )

Sometimes you have a character which behaves in most strange ways, jumps, falls and what not. To make sure it would stay in position, I made all it's sprites the same size, allowing room for all those actions. Silly! Eats space.

Would it be possible to include a "crop sprite at top only" feature? This way it'd still stay in position (to my limited knowledge), but it would be an easy and fast way to decrease gamesize (and increase performance speed...?).

What I want to know is... What the hell happened there?

and which team is it that hates us so much?

It's a fictionous team... hating Team Hasselhoff, or the Suicide Bunnies or any other team is fictionous as well - drooling in anticipation over the coming games from such nice line-ups is more likely.

What happened in this setting was (sorry about any poor writing - English isn't my native language), that this team first had a bunch of bad ideas, gave up making Trivial Pursuit Larry (as it really didn't work as an adventure), decided The Wig was a little better, but turned to Monkey Island for inspiration. After playing through part I and II, the idea of making Donkey Island came up, and everyone got a little more excited - especially about the voodoo bits. But then other problems came sneaking to the surface. The eternal mixture of pizza and coffee resulted in several team members suffering from digestion problems (this is were the story gets really bad), and the general hygiena level sank quickly. The story writer - dictating his ideas mostly from the toilet ring - failed more and more at convincing his members of the brilliance in his words. Conflict raised. After about a week, they still had nothing. Then they played Monkey Island again. This time they came up with the idea of utilizing voodoo to hopefully put the other teams in misery and thus going for a draw. They attacked David Hasselhoff (the poster) with scissors, and attempted to strangle a toy bunny, but felt it made no sense. The poster issue got the sprite dude and scripter upset, as they were fans of Hasselhoff the Actor/Musician and realized they might actually have killed the Celebrity. A long fight emerged. The story writer and team captain stood up as a true leader and suggested they should unite their forces in breaking through the door instead, to put all their troubles to an end. Armed with nothing but panic, blood, sweat and tears, they managed the impossible: to open a locked door without any items in their inventory.
For the next three days nothing happened apart from the regular delievery of pizza. Then it was time to hand in the first screenshot, and since Andail hadn't got any PM from the team, he tried to contact them on the intercom. Or feel free to make up your own story.

The right leg sits in the same position (on ground) for two frames. Will result in Michael Jackson type of movement.

It's very good and I can't see anything wrong with the broom.

I'm a little puzzled by the top of the walls, as it is a little darker. Tapestry of mystery?

Also, the shadow hitting the cupboard is puzzling - if it's because of the lamp, it should hit the wall close to the door on the right, and be a tad softer (because of the distance). If there's another lamp in the room, it's fine, but then one would expect more brightess on the left half.

Yes, I agree with Seleceus. Keep drawing! I did this for practice, and that should be a more than good enough reason for everyone to enter. Besides, we can't stop making fun of ATC yetÃ, 

how do you do this?

The major thing I do is trying to change all the annoying pixels over and over. There's still a lot of them left, but I had to move on and do other stuff.

Impressionism: Seurat (1882) - Andail (2005) - Expressionism: Heckel (1908)


It's awesome, excellent colors, boosts atmosphere. Being bored with my job (again) I decided to see how it looked without a couple of green lines which caught my attention (they are still there, but much less prominent).

I didn't mind them that much, and they sortof went with the style of some of the blue in the background.

I agree on loominous' point regarding the lighting, it's sortof a Magritte effect...

I think the sideview of the head gives a very "flat" impression. Maybe the backhead could do with another row of pixels?

As for the walkcycle there's a little limp impression (due to more swinging of the right arm than the left, not unlike my granddad). Also, at some point the toes should point upward. Maybe he could stretch the legs more forward? His ass seems to drop dramatically at one point (at the same point of time, there's a gap appearing in front), but that only takes minor adjustments to fix.

SSH: Neat idea, but it would be "a puzzle where a key is involved", so it's against the rules. You may however call the main character Mr. Key. It could be set in Key Hotel. You can have a woman with a dress made of keys. And so on, just keep the keys out of the puzzles 

If anyone else can think of original puzzles involving the use of keys, make up a list and you'll be all set for the eventual "MAGS - Keys only" competition 

Sure, any part of the hotel is allowed... even the outside parts 

[motel]

Does it have to be a hotel hotel, or does a little motel type off-town place do?

motel nÃ,  hotel for motorists, with space for parking cars near the rooms.

Yes it'll do.

Well, that was a 1 hour download (broadband), and 2 minute gameplay. However, I still found it quite interesting (despite some minor flaws), so if the author don't mind, I'll host it -> here <- for a while. Should be a bit quicker.

And yes, the thread should be moved.

Can the player character HAVE a key, provided it doesn't have anything to do with solving any puzzle?

Sure.