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thanks shbaz, will you be submitting an entry?  it would be cool to compete against you in two forums at once.  8)

ok think of it this way,....if you were making an orange,....ordinarily the tendancy would be to put the shaded part all on one side, and the hilight part all on the other side,....with sculptural lighting, the hilight, or the lighter area goes more in the center of the object, with the darker area all around the edges.Ã, 
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here's an example i made.  the one on the left is normal lighting, and the one on the right is sculptural lighting.

well, the main thing would be to not rush in the first place, but i think a bit of shading would be a nice touch. Ã, especially on the toilet and the stairs. Ã, also,....maybe this is just my own preference, but when i am setting up a scene, whether it's pixel art, or whatever,...especially if it has lots of 3 point perspective,...I like to block it out using a 3D program first. Ã, this is a bit lazy of me, i suppose, since i have the skills to do it correctly without using the 3D program,...but hey,...it's so convenient, and yields such nice results,...shadows are perfect,....etc. Ã, so,...my advice would be to do a bit of preperation, maybe set things up with a 3D program first. Ã, I use blender, but some find it a bit difficult to use. Ã, It's actually quite intuitive once you get the feel for it,...it's interface is not the standard windows interface, and it does not work like the standard interface. Ã, Personally,...I really like that it does not closely resemble every program out there,....but, if you find it daunting, there are other programs, like 'design studio lite' which are not great, but they are easy to use, and work fine for things like setting up perspective. Ã, Anyway,...my point is, that taking some time to prepare actually saves time in the long run. Ã, Also,...if you feel impatient,...take a break. Ã, don't hurry through things. Ã, walk away, and then come back to it. Ã, anyway,...not to ramble. Ã, just some simple shading would add to it quite a bit,....and I find that when doing pixel art, it's best to use sculptural lighting, which is to say, put the highlites in the middle, and the shading on both sides, as opposed to light on one side, shadow on the other side. Ã, cheers!

Here's the full size jpg render.  It actually came out really well,....I didn't notice any significant artifacts at all.

Ok I'll do a full size jpeg render.  I just wanted to keep the image mostly intact without having a ridiculous file size.  Thanks for replying.

well,....this is exactly in between the two suggested resolutions.Ã,  if it disqualifies me, please say something and I'll change the resolution.
---<edit>--- image replaced.  see below.

i don't know of that format, but it exports:
VRML 1.0
DXF
Videoscape
STL
AC3D
Cal3D
DirectX
DirectX8
.lwo
.bvh
.ndo
.off
.radio
.raw
.cob
.wrl
.obj
and even .wings

ah, ok.  for some reason my comp was recognizing them as .bmp's.  I'll go with .png then.  thanks.

when i tried to put up a .bmp in the MS Paint game thread it didn't work and I got a message saying not to use .bmp format.  I noticed these are .bmps, so i take it, it's a thread specific thing?

Looks great man.  I am also a 3D as well as 2D artist.  Perhaps we can at some point work on a project.  I don't know much about hammer editor, but it looks like it gives good results.  You may want to give blender a whirl if you haven't used it in awhile,...it now has on board raytracing among other things.  some really spiffy mesh editing tools too.

I'm not suggesting anyone drop out of school, but I will say this,....school was a hell of boredom for me, including college.  When i dropped out of college and began studying on my own time, at my own pace,....I have learned SO much more than I would have in a like time period at an educational facility.  It doesn't even compare.  Some people were not meant to be 'put through the paces'.

I liked the puzzle in fallout2 of finding the pieces needed to activate the car, not so much that it was a great puzzle, but it was difficult, and the best part was the reward.  a nice set of wheels.

Just to get the ball rolling again,...

Next:Ã,  Something you would NOT eat.

While at CGTalk, I noticed a picture ( plugged on the front page so you know it's good ) entitled 'arabian market' that had background written all over it, so I contacted the artist, and asked if he would be so generous as to allow his work to be utilized by AGSers,....He said no problem, and even sent me this link to some other works of his, that he thought might be of use.  >> http://www.3dlinks.com/GalleryDisplay.cfm?artistid=3255
There is one in particular that he thought would be useful, called 'nobody there' or something like that.  I checked it out.  It is uber coolio.
He did request that if his backgrounds made it into an AGS game, that he would like a copy.  He seemed like a nice guy, and very generous.  I wrote him a note thanking him.

Probably the reason some 'wav' files won't load, is because not all files with the extension '.wav', are actually wav files.  This is the case with many of the compressed files one can download off of the web.  I recommend avoiding most of those, because #1, they tend to be very low in quality, and worse than that,....they have been used repeatedly by everyone and their dog.  I think it is cool that AGS supports .ogg, ( didn't know that until now ) because ogg vorbis is not only quite good, compression/quality-wise, but it is also a 'free' format. 

Sorry about that.  Here is another useful program: Atmosphere Lite ( pro version also available ) http://www.relaxingsoftware.com/naturesounds.htm
It makes sound backdrops from sample loops, for a variety of environments.  The only thing they ask is that you credit them, if you use it in a professional game or anim.  It can output .wav files, so no fancy soundcard acrobatics are necessary.

I just ran into this freeware app for bitmap painting.Ã,  It is very useful, and I definately recommend trying out some of the different brushes with the spray paint tool.Ã,  ( it sprays the brush tip instead of just dots ) ,...anyway, I just got this a few minutes ago, but it is clearly exactly what i was looking for. Lots of cool functions in a 650 kb package.Ã,  Cool and compact too.Ã,  Called GrafX2.
http://www.eclipse-game.com/?dat=7

i like the feeling of it, if a bit mechanical. 

If you can find it, use "chroma key green". 

I tried using the pallette from the editor, but it didn't work.Ã,  I don't know why, but i can only get it to work if I make the original in blender at the levels i described.Ã,  trust me i tried everything,...making the render in blender was my last desperate attempt, and i didn't even expect it to work, but thankfully it does.Ã,  Thanks for your suggestions.
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the main thread that i was following went like this:


I feel more comfortable doing the walkable areas, walkbehinds and hotspots (and regions if needed) seperately in Photoshop, where I can zoom in, make it precise.
My question is (yes, I know, about time lol) how do I know what color to choose for every new hotspot or walkbehind. That is, first is blue, then green then something red, I'm not sure using just any blue will work, and I know it's not good to work on colors that are too far in the list, since it's uncomfortable. Is there like, a list of which color is which color number in Photoshop or other programs?

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I don't think that any blue will work for the first color, it surely has to be match exactly (i.e. it has to have the right amount of Red, Green and Blue).

The easiest solution to that problem is making the region of any color, importing them to AGS and then using the room editor's fill tool to replace each of the colors you used with the ones availables in the room editor.

Of course that may not be the most effective solution, but I think it may let work until someones tells us exactly wich colors to use (I feel I'll also be needing that info soon
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Actually the colour doesn't matter at all. It helps if you are used to working with palletised images.. make a palletised image, colour 0 in the pallete is the tranparency colour (black in ags editor) and the walk behing numbers go up from there on the pallete.
You should probably set the colours of the pallete to something similar to how they will appear in the ags editor though, to make it easier for yourself.
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I use high-color, not the pallete, but here's an idea, maybe I can just take any empty room(or not empty doesn't matter
put a little color of each of the editing colors on it, and export it(you can export walkbehind masks right?) then open in Photoshop, use the 'eye' tool and write down every color's value in Photoshop.
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I just said.. the colours aren't important.

And it should be palletised even if you are using high colour, the walk behinds don't actually get drawn, the pallete is just so AGS can work out which number walk behind the colour is, so colour 1 on the pallete would be colour 1 on the walk behind in AGS.

It makes no difference if the colour 1 is pinkin your pallete and blue in ags, it's the pallete place that counts..
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Draw each walk-behind in high-color but try to stay as close to the primary Windows colors as possible. Next, convert to 16-color trying to match to closest color or even trty to match the Windows palette. Then, try to organize things a bit by using up the first colors instead of jumping around, like it will quite possibly end up doing.

For example, if you draw three regions, one in blue, one if purple, one in green, they might end up being slots 4,10, and 2. Try to change it so that only slots 1, 2, and 3 are used. It keeps things organized.

Then, save it as a .BMP file and import it into AGS.
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Ginny, Thanks for bringing this up and being persistent. It's something I have always wondered about but never got around to figuring out. I think this would make a good entry in a faq somewhere if any of the moderators are listening...

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is there a turorial on this?
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anyway at least I have it working now.