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I decided to try making a picture using my Wacom tablet only. It's about time, too. I'm quite satisfied with  the results so far but I need some help with one thing.

Here's the image:


The sea. I can not leave it like that, but I don't really know how to make it look more alive. Any tips/paintovers are welcome.

Also, the beach might look a bit empty and I know that. I will take care of that, I just want to finish the sea first!

Thanks.

As Trapezoid hasn't been around here in quite a while I guess he doesn't mind if I plug this one for him...

Damn Skippy

Get it. I will. It will rock.

[Unfinished stuff]

Hullo.

I was browsing through my music folder and found a bunch of fine stuff. I thought I'd post some of them here to get people's opinions on them so here they are.

Unfinished stuff
http://personal.inet.fi/surf/presents/unfinished1_mm.mid
- This was going to be the main theme for a secret and totally awesome game. Apparently the production halted but I'd really like to see this game being made one day.

http://personal.inet.fi/surf/presents/unfinished2_supahero.mid
- I think I once posted this here... anyways, it's superheroish tune, modified version of The Faketrix main theme.

http://personal.inet.fi/surf/presents/unfinished3_search.mid
- Hmm, not much to say about this one. I dig the melody but I have never really gotten further with this one.

Old stuff
http://personal.inet.fi/surf/presents/old1_blurredremix.mid
- Back from... uh, 2003 I think? This is actually a remix of a tune that wasn't made by me. Let's see who recognises the original tune.

http://personal.inet.fi/surf/presents/old2_horror.mid
- Teh horror!1 This was originally made for Vel, but his game never was finished. Then it was meant to be used in Demo Quest III: Source of Dreams but I think that game is on hold... It's rather cool tune though, back from 2003 I think.

http://personal.inet.fi/surf/presents/old3_annie.mid
- Yet another old one, this was made for Annie's (OneThinkingGal's) MAGS game that was never finished. It's pretty simple tune.

Used stuff
http://personal.inet.fi/surf/presents/used1_desert.mid
- I'm really proud of this one. I'm not going to tell in which game this tune is going to be, but I really love this one. The game is going to be awesome too.

http://personal.inet.fi/surf/presents/used2_jazzybassy.mid
- Another simple tune that is going to be used in a certain game.

http://personal.inet.fi/surf/presents/used3_ahoy.mid
- I'm proud of this one aswell. You can probably guess the style of the game just by listening to this one. Again, the name of the game shall remain secret.

http://personal.inet.fi/surf/presents/used4_scary.mid
- Scary and atmospheric stuff. Some of you might recognise the melody in this one. This one is actually my most recent tune.

So there, comments are welcome. I've noticed I use poppy drumbeats quite a lot in my tunes and in future I'm trying to get rid of that habit. Anything else you think would improve my music, just let me know. There's still a lot for me to learn about music making.

BTW, if one of those tunes was made for your game and you don't want people to hear them, just let me know and I'll remove them links.

(and if I learn someone used some of those tunes in their games without my permission, I will call on C.leksutin. So don't do it if you want to stay alive!)

Yesterday I heard this song on the radio but as I was sitting in the bus and didn't pay that much attention I missed the title of the song. So I quickly whipped up a midi of the song and it goes a bit like this.

(Use this thread to find out the titles of the songs that has been bugging your mind.)

Hullo peeps,

we had a small discussion about this at Brittens and I thought I might aswell let the rest of you know. I will be going to the army on Monday (10th of January). I'd rather not go but you know what kind of place Finland is.

As for how long I have to be there, 6 months probably (and I shall do my hardest to be free on 8th of July!) but maybe 9 or 11/12 months as well.

I will be allowed to visit home every now and then, maybe every other weekend or so. Of course during this time I can not work on anything AGS-related stuff other than coming up with ideas. I would like to apologise terranRICH, Vel, Creed Malay, Squinky and Magintz for not getting your music done in time. I was very inspired before Christmas (and I worked a lot on Goldlagoon) but after that I have had very little inspiration to do anything game related work. So you guys might want to ask someone else to finish up the music unless you don't mind your game delaying for months.

I heard the first two months are the worst and after that it just gets easier and easier. I guess I'll manage okay, I've been preparing myself for some time now (running and stuff). And when I come back I expect to see lots of new games being released. Also, if I'm free on 8th of July I might be able to attend Brittens again! (if you held them sometime in July - August...)

Uhm, I guess that's all. See you when I'm here.

-Pete

[EDIT:]

I recently started playing an awesome game called Terranigma (play it NOW). Just for fun I tried drawing a Snes-type RPGish character based on Terranigma's main character Ark, but I soon encountered some problems. Here is what I have achieved so far.





Notice:
- Tell me what you think.
- I'd need some help with hair. Maybe just some examples for different hairstyles and stuff like that.
- The black outlines are part of the style.
- I think he looks a bit fat, how could I make him look less fat? After all, he is meant to be a young boy.
- Yadapops.
- You got to believe me, I made it just for fun!

Cheerios.

EDIT: A slightly modified version:




- Sligthly smaller shoulders.
- Changed the shading, removed the black line around the waist and changed the brown thingy on the shirt (whatsitcalled).

It's once again time to ask which (AGS) games you're looking forward to play in 2005. I know Run Hot, The Legend of Leitor's Edge, FoY, Roger Foodbelly etc. will be mentioned, and I too am looking forward to playing them. But what else? My list would be something like (in no specific order):

- Coell Decka
- Cattus Migrus
- Monkey Island 1.5
- Perils of Poom Deluxe
- Tulle's World 4
- The Journey Home part 2
- Donna: Avenger of Blood
- Stan & Sancho and Pirate Provencher's Gold

And of course, Goldlagoon.

Okay, something weird just happened.

In my game I'm having sounds for footsteps and I'm changing the sounds with SetFrameSound(); command when the character steps on different types of ground/floor. Everything was okay until I converted all the .wav sound effects to .ogg. Now some of the footstep sounds can not be heard anymore. All the other converted sound effects are working, but the footstep sounds are not. I tried rebuilding .vox-files but it didn't help.

I'm using AGS v.2.62 on WinXP, if it helps in anyway. Any help would be appreciated.

For the past week or two weeks, I'm not entirely sure, my internet connection has been acting weird. Here's the problem:
When I'm trying to send stuff over IRC or MSN, everything goes fine for a while, then the upload rate slows down and stops. Sometimes my internet connection dies at the same time. It takes a couple of minutes until the internet works again. However, when I try to upload stuff onto my webspace, everything works fine. Also, I'm having no problems with downloading or receiving stuff. If I try to send a small file, like a midi or small picture, it goes fine because, as I mentioned earlier, the upload rate starts slowing down only after I've been sending stuff for a while.

I'm not entirely sure what I did before the problem occured. I think I might have updated my firewall (Zone Alarm) to a newer version, along with Ad-Aware, Spybot and Antivir Personal. I think I might have downloaded some security patches from Windows Update, too, but I'm not sure. I'm using Windows XP with service pack 1 installed.

Help would be muchly appreciated, thankies.

I recently found out how to get the midi sounds for my current soundcard (SoundBlaster Live! blahdeblah) to sound as good as they sounded on my old card (SoundBlaster 128 PCI) and I wanted to work on something. So hereby I present this track which you might find familiar if you have played one of my old games.

Kaboom!

I'm very happy with it so far, though the intro isn't that good and I'm having some problems with the chorus type part. Critics are welcome, as are other comments.

Here's a short piece of this tune I'm working on at the moment. I'm rather satisfied with it, but one thing bugs me big time. The strings. I feel the chords are all wrong. Any comments appreciated, but especially I'd like comments on the strings.

Download here.

EDIT: Ah, now when listening to this tune with speakers, some instruments appear to be too loud. Oh well, I will fix it after I get some comments on it.

[What on earth is a Photoshop Phuesday?]

What on earth is a Photoshop Phuesday?

See this link k:
http://www.somethingawful.com/photoshop/

And for other examples, see here:
http://www.worth1000.com/

The two above websites should give a fair idea of what is involved. Also you can check out the earlier Photoshop *days in this forum.

Note: Photoshopping isn't drawing a completely new image -- It's editing images to create a new image, such as editing one image or combining several images.

Also, you don't have to specifically use Photoshop -- Paint Shop Pro, MSPaint, or any other programs can be used.

*****************************************************************

Hullo! This week we will get to witness our fellow AGSers' musical skills, for the theme for Photoshop Phuesday is...

AGS Opera!

Photoshop an image of AGSer(s) or AGS games characters performing a musical act. It can be anything, Roger rocking with his broom, Helm having a heavy metal concert etc.

For example, last week we saw rather interesting concert, Andy Penis and m0ds performing well-known AGS Opera song 'Andy Penis':



Have fun!

My friend recently introduced me to this fine website, http://www.pixoff.net

It's a Finnish website with lots of homemade short films and animations and I thought some of you might find it interesting. Apparently there doesn't seem to be English version of the website, but it shouldn't be that hard to navigate... I think. For starters, click the link 'Elokuvat' in the top of the site to get a list of the films.

Anyways, here's some links to some of the pearls I found on that website:

Grand Theft - http://www.pixoff.net/fi/leffat/tiedot.asp?mID=225
Way To Go - http://www.pixoff.net/fi/leffat/tiedot.asp?mID=215
Pavlov's Blues - http://www.pixoff.net/fi/leffat/tiedot.asp?mID=114
Roadkillers - http://www.pixoff.net/fi/leffat/tiedot.asp?mID=301

To watch the movie, just select the quality of the movie by clicking some of the links under the text 'Katso'.

Enjoy.

Holy crap! AGS Operas are coming back! (right?)

Games in production

Now, my singing isn't as good as it used to be, and I couldn't get the vocals to sound as good as I wanted, but it's AGS Opera so it doesn't matter that much (right??). The zip file contains the song and lyrics, because it's hard to make out what I'm mumbling. The song is heavily inspired by Andail's 'The General Newbie' so it might sound a bit similar...

Now people, your turn to make more AGS Operas!!!11111exclamationmarkoneoneoneone

Okay, I have got a rather weird and annoying problem with my computer. Couple of times a day my computer starts humming really loud (they sound is probably coming from the harddrive, atleast it sounds like something is being loaded from the harddrive, except that the sound is louder than usual harddrive loading noise) and it lasts for several minutes. The internet freezes during that time, so I can't load any websites, downloads got stopped and MSN and irc freezes. After it's over (like I said, few minutes later) everything returns to normal.

I don't know what is causing this though. I'm using Windows 98. I'm suspecting it MIGHT have something to do with Symantec Live Update thingy, but I'm not sure. It got installed with Norton Antivirus which was my virus shield for quite a long time until I decided to change to a less heavy program. I haven't uninstalled Live Update yet, but I might aswell uninstall it soon to see if it does any good. As far as I know, no programs should be using it anymore.

Does anyone have any ideas what could be causing this?

I was reading the latest issue of Finnish computer magazine 'Mikrobitti' and reached the last page. The last page always includes sneak peek to the articles coming in the next issue. I was about to skip the page when suddenly my eyes catched something REALLY familiar.

http://koti.mbnet.fi/petteri-/indie_games.jpg

In the next issue of the magazine there will be an article about making indie games, and they will be reviewing some of the game making programs. But what I found rather weird was that all of those screenshots are from AGS games. From up to down, 6 days assassin, Norman Cooks in search for Don, Byzantine Demo and King's Quest VGA.

However, this isn't the first time AGS games are mentioned in that magazine. The magazine includes a cd once a year and Bert The Newsreader and King's Quest 2 VGA have been on that cd. Also, both King's Quest VGAs have been magazine's freeware games of month. Nice going, eh?

In another Finnish gaming magazine there was article about adventure games once, and AGS was mentioned along with some AGS games.

(I would have posted this in the another thread, 'AGS mentioned in a magazine' or something like that but I couldn't find the thread.)

'lo.

I've just found a bunch of excellent soundfonts, but some of them are in .sfArk or .sfpack formats, and the program I use for composing recognizes only .sf2 soundfont files. So the question is, is there a program that can convert .sfArk and .sfpack files into .sf2 ? I tried Vienna soundfont studio, but it wouldn't start because it didn't recognize my soundcard...

Hola!

Now everyone who can make digital music, listen to this. (It's an OGG file, which means that you can listen to it for example in WinAmp or AGS.)

Now - many people know I can do pretty good midis. But I want to get better with digital music aswell and I find it harder to do. So, now I'd like to hear what I can do better with this digital piece of music. I actually enjoy more making digital music, I can do some things that are not possible with midi.

So, rip it to pieces, thank you!

Hello.

I'm using following script...

ObjectOn(0);
while (counter<100) {
SetObjectTransparency(0,100-counter);
Wait(1);
counter++;
}

...to fade an object. Now, I know that using counter+=2; for example will fade the object faster, but is there a way to make object fading slower?

Thanks.

Well, today I thought I'd work a bit on graphics for Goldlagoon, so I took my latest sketch and was ready to scan it on computer, when I got this:

No scanners detected.
Please check if CanoScan FB330P/FB630P is connected properly.

Error Code: 0x00070800

Well duh! And this has happened before, but unfortunately I don't remember how I fixed it last time... Now before you go giving me your help, keep in mind that....
- yes, I've checked that the scanner is plugged in.
- yes, I've reinstalled the drivers.
- yes, I've searched internet and manuals for help.
- yes, I've fiddled around with parallel port settings.
- yes, I've restarted the computer.
- yes, I've tried many things.

Also, my printer is plugged in through the scanner, but I think it doesn't have anything to do with parallel port setting, because last time I fixed the problem I fiddled around with some settings... too bad I don't remember what settings those were...

So, help me!