Messages

I think that some people might especially have a problem with the flat colours of Pleurghburg's graphics (i.e., the lack of shading within characters and general large spaces) and the "stiffness/ straightness/ squareness" of some of the sprites.

That's just a guess, though.

You think you need advanced animations? BAH!

BAH, I say! 

If you're looking for something fairly gripping and moving, then I dare say that it can be just as effective, if not moreso, to have still shots of some important scenes, locations, items, characters, or whatever,  and have some narration over them (voice would be nice if you can get a really good narrartor voice in there, but text is good too).

Of course, since what you do is so largely dependent on what your game's about, that's about all I have to offer.

If animations' not your strong side, I think you should focus on what your strengths ARE, and not get bogged down in what you feel you should do, just because it might be eye-pleasing or catch some attention.

Sure, it's the first thing that people see and it can really set the tone for a game, but if you try doing something that's too far outside of what you can comfortably do, then I'm betting that your efforts can be better used on imporving something else in the game in order to make it memorable.

That's my two cents, anyway.

Her boots and top of her skirt seem a fair bit higher in the 3/4side view.

Here's a different spin on your original idea -- the guys who pick him up are more or less relying on their intimidation factor, their ability to offer wealth and power and Colin's gullibility so that they can get him to do their dirty work: an assassination of some high profile person.

You could then try all sorts of things to try to get yourself out of the whole thing OR you could just go along with it, depending on what kinds of incentives that they offer you in return.... but eventually you have the big choice: either commit the murder, or be killed by whoever "hired" you.

The thing is, these guys aren't any sort of mafia thugs, they're some sort of super-secret government agents. As such, the police don't know about them, and no one in the government will fess up to their existance.

You're found out. And now you're a wanted man. As a result, you have to "go underground", relinquish your identity and leave your life behind in order to prove that you were forced to commit the crime and bring the guys who muscled you into committing the murder to justice.

You'd eventually track down the agents who decieved you in the first place, find evidence against them, take them down, and take them in.

The game would conclude with some sort of trial situation or something, where the evidence for and against your case is weighed. Depending on what you managed to gather during the game and what your exact actions were in terms of the assassination (i.e., at what point you decided that you'd kill the person), you'd either be decalared innocent or guilty (or possible variations, like Manslaughter, Murder in the Second Degree, Murder in the First Degree, etc.).

...May be a bit ambitious though....

I'm really liking what I'm seeing.

Making the walkcycle just a LITTLE slower might help convey his difficulty in lumbering around in that big costume, though.

Well, one of the eyes does look a little slantier than the other... All around, it's pretty nice, though.

I don't see PC games going away at all -- instead, I figure they'll get far more user-friendly in the near future for the average user. A lot of what PC users have had to put up with to run games and stuff has been awfully ridiculous for a long time, but it has been getting slightly better (think back to years ago when you had to do all kinds of settings fiddling to get a game to run with video or with sound and whatever). It's going to get to a point where a PC's every bit as good at delivering the console-like experience as the consoles are, while still retaining the ability to do all of the tweaking that the consoles don't allow for.

On the flipside, I figure some the the consoles that eventually come out will have a lot more in common with PCs than the current ones do, so that those who are really involed in getting their game on can stay on the bleeding edge like a PC user.

All-in-all, I figure that there's going to be some eventual blurring of the lines between PCs and consoles. It may be a while yet, though....

And yes: Fable has OODLES of potential to be very interesting to play. Hopefully it lives up to some of the expectations (though I'm sure a lot of people will be dissapointed by it not being as good as they envisioned it to be).

Personally, I don't much like the white coat and blue/ cyan pants... maybe a navy blue?... Or possibly just a cooler red (coat) and brown (pants), even?

If you're thinking of making the beard ice-looking, I'd fully suggest that it's made of shiny, dangling icicles.

EDIT: Something like this might give you an idea of what I mean (I also took away a few of the inner blue-greenish outlines):



EDIT: Hm. I wonder if he looks too "Santa"-ish now, though.... Then again, could make for some good jokes in the game.

Also, IS it supposed to be a glow around him, or is he supposed to be, like, encased in ice or something?

EDIT: If it IS a glow, as I suspect, then a nice in-game effect might be for it to slowly "throb" a bit, both in size and brightness. And for that matter, it could get even bigger and brighter when you're doing some sort of "angry" or "aggressive" animation. Just some ideas.

Woah-ho-ho!  :o

LOVE the latest two paintovers -- they'll each definitely help a lot for my working on this. Thanks for those, Mandarb and Luminous!

For Luminous's though, it's just too dark for what I'm looking for -- I want it to be semi-creepy, as a sort of precursor/ transition from the regular woods to the REALLY creepy woods. Still, it's amazing, and very helpful.

Also, Raider, it's supposed to look sawn-off and the game's set to take place in a contemparary time. but yeah, it does look sorta' out of place. More or less, it's supposed to be a "nose" of sorts on the tree, but I'm not so sure it does the trick exactly...

As far as the grass goes, jrl2222, if you mean the three different grades of the grass, I more or less threw them in there to have a sort of gradient of lightness/ darkness in relation to the light source (moon). I added the "grassy" top to the lines to simulate a grassy texture to the otherwise pretty flat green areas. Does anyone else find that it looks particularly wonky?

Unless you meant the obvious black-outlined grass tufts... in which case I'm not sure what you mean.

Anyway, I'll see what I can do in my next version of this. Thanks for the help AND for the kind words, everyone!

Well, assuming thatthe bluish outline is supposed to be a gostly glow, you may want to add a highlight to it, to make it more glow-ey.

Next up is his beard. Right now, I find it looks too "poofy" and not scragly enough.

Tried a really rough paintover, and this is what I came up with, to give you an idea of what I'm talking about:



Not sure if having the glow come from around the outline of the gloves, top of the coat cuffs, belt and shoulder strap really looks all that good, though. I'd think they'd look better in black or darker versions of the colour (i.e., darker orange around the belt buckle, darker brown around the belt, etc.)...

Hm. The moon is going to be the only light source, but I'm not sure what branch you're talking about exactly, or what you're suggesting exactly.

Okay.  Well, I thought about it a bit more and fiddled around a bit, after looking at this topic: http://www.agsforums.com/yabb/index.php?topic=16169.0 .

Here's the result. I'm a lot happier with this so far (the added texture to the path adds a lot, I think). Does the added shade on the trees help them look any rounder, though?

Holy crap, Ginny. After having read your contrast increase suggestion (but before you posted the picture), I got to work on that and a few other things, then checked back. Our pictures were awfully similar-looking, save for the fact that I'd darkened the sky substantially. Well, I like your sky better, so I fixed that for my latest version (even if it isn't much of an update).



Does anyone else find the trees to look a little flat, though?
And could the path use more detail (if so, suggestions are appreciated), or am I just picky?

(OH! And thanks for the kind words about the sky and trees -- I just found a way of doing clouds I like today, and have typically had trouble doing trees I liked, so I was especially happy with those elements, too.  )

I've been working on a background that will be leading into an area that's a sort of haunted forest kind of place.



I'm sort of happy with it, but wish that I could:

1) make the trees look a bit more "round"
2) add a little bit of detail to the path.

I've not been successful with either.

Any suggestions for these, or other comments and criticisms would be welcome.

Thanks in advance.

(also note that I plan to blur the background trees and clouds a bit, and I might add creepy red or yellow eyes in the tree knotholes)

Personally, I find its biggest weakness is its size. I've only been in a helicopter once, and it wasn't exactly roomy. To give a better feeling of it being a small, enclosed space, you may want to make it smaller (narrower especially) overall, possibly with a substantial black boarder around the area, to give the player a better sense of the cramped space.

Just a thought, though.

I had a bit of a thing going on with this one girl online while I was, I believe, in my first year of university. We eventually sent a few letters back and forth (before either of us had scanners) so we could exchange some pictures and artwork (she used to paint for me, the sweetheart that she was). It was an interesting time... but nothing much ever developped from the whole thing beyond that. Save for similar music interests, the fact we're living in the same country and an almost obscene obsession with Dr. Mario, we didn't really have all too much in common.

My younger brother did meet his now ex-girlfrind online, though, and eventually she flew out here to meet him (she lived out in Utah [Western United States], and we live in Eastern Canada. In case you don't know any geography, look at a map and calculate the distance for yourself and prepare to be amazed), crazily, when she was only like 13 or 14 or something (mind you, she was pretty much a certified genious and very mature for her age). They continued to visit back and forth for a bit. She eventually moved East to the State of Maine (whcih one made things easier for them to see each other), but they broke up a couple years back, after six or seven years of (for a lack of a better word) dating.

And as if that's not nutty enough, my older brother met a girl online when he was at university, while the Internet was in its infancy. She eventually flew out to see him from the State of Maryland (or possibly Washington at the time... I don't remember) after they'd talked online and over the phone a lot and exchanged pictures and all that jazz. Anyway, they hit it off really well and (I forget the exact sequence of events) eventually the visits by each of them became more and more frequent. Anyway, eventually one thing led to another, and they got married. And they have been for something like seven or eight years now, I believe.

In a much scarier story, a cousin of my older brother's wife was (apparently) robbed and quite possibly killed by a guy she met online. Last I heard, the investigation was still ongoing, and they never aprehended the guy for questionning.

Alternately, you could go with a look that's even more cartoony than that, which would allow you to tackle a lot of difficult and sensitive issues more deeply by sheer contrast.

I don't think the sprite you showed looks too cartoony, though. Some shading could probably spruce it up a fair bit and add to the bleakness of the subject matter. In fact, if I was trying to do a game of this type, I'd consider using a lot of screen tinting to fit the mood of given scenes.

The biggest thing I notice right off the bat is that it looks like there's no chin. It's as if his face runs straight (and flat) into his neck, without any sort of curvature.

Personally, I don't much like the added green colour for the eyes.

Especially considering it doesn't seem like the theme's gonna' be "YAY! Killing yourself is FUN, kids!", I think it'll be alright. Heck, I encourage it, even.