Messages

Thank you all! This is some very helpful feedback. I decided to remake the walkcycle from scratch, trying to incorporate your suggestions.

[imgzoom]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1891681/walkcycle2.gif[/imgzoom]

Is this better? I'm not quite sure about the arms, do you think they move too much?

@cat: It's not a problem if it looks a little bit like 3D. But it's important that the sprites blend well with hand-painted backgrounds. But for this I'll probably open another topic in the critics lounge soon.

@Anian: Yes, it's Blender's toon shader. I had to play around with the settings a little bit, but it wasn't too difficult to get the shading right. The outlines were more complicated. That's something that Blender doesn't do very well by default, because the thickness can't be adjusted easily.

Hi everybody,

I'd like to get some feedback on this walkcycle:

[imgzoom]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1891681/walkcycles.gif[/imgzoom]


It's a 3D model animated with Blender, and so far I'm quite happy with it. But please feel free to tear it apart and comment and criticise everything. This walkcycle will be used as a base for quite a few other characters, so I want to make it as good as I possibly can.

The quality won't change at all and the image will still be the same. However the printed result will be smaller, because a higher dpi setting means a higher print resolution. It's simple maths: convert an image from 100 to 200 dpi and it will appear at half the size when printed, though the quality and size in pixels is not touched at all. So you'll have to make sure that the printed images are still big enough after the conversion. If they aren't they'll have to be rescanned.
The size in dpi or pixels are relative values. What you really want to know is if the image resolution is high enough to be printed with 300 dpi at a given size.

[not]

> Try to haggle the price and order new robes.

+1

...and we should not tell her the current state of our finances, that's none of her business. We're the king, and we have a reputation to lose.

That's an interesting theme, but imho it's too limited for a recurring competition, it would wear off quickly. Though it would make for great MAGS theme.

I'd like to use 3D characters in a pre-rendered background.

I think you already answered your question. WME would probably be a good choice for you, if you want to go 2.5D. I've played around with it some time ago, and it wasn't too difficult to use. But of course you'll have to do some coding, you won't get around that.

I hope my uneducated rambling in the world of AGS hasn't annoyed too many people

I don't know what communities you've visited before, but you'll have to work harder if you want to annoy people here

The most important things have already been said, the only thing I can add is this: If you really want to make a game, just make it - no one here wants to discourage you. The best thing you can do is to work on your game until you have something to show. Then you can decide if you want to recruit other people to help, and if your concept is good enough for a crowd funding campaign. Maybe it's a good idea to make a small one-room game first to get some practise. With your first complete game, you're bound to make a few mistakes. And why not have a look at the "Competitions & Activities" section? We're all crazy here anyway, so you've got nothing to fear.

This would make for a great news headline.

A had way more fun with this then I should have

Yeah, that's the spirit!

This topic must be kept alive!
I've recently experimented with toon-shading for some project.

Couldn't resist to apply that to the cow...
[imgzoom]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1891681/cow-toon.gif[/imgzoom]

and make a low-res version:
[imgzoom]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1891681/cow-lowres.gif[/imgzoom]

So, what happens to people who lose control of a situation... in your country?

I think the game is german.

Could it be one of these games?

>Lend Jonas an escort and secretly tell Lancelot to instruct his men to keep an eye on the noble and try to find out what he's up to.

+1

Wonderful, your new take on Woo looks gorgeous! Now that you've presented us with this, there's no way around Woo II, it must happen one day.
Your other animations are lovely too, great style. As for the jumping animation, I agree that the arms are a little late and should swing back more, but that's nitpicking.

I must admit, I never really got the hang of 2D vector animation. It worked great for side views, but I gave up trying to create a front view walk cycle - that turned out to be a complete wobbly mess.

Before we consider offering a letter of marque, we should agree to the deal and see how it turns out. If the pirate clan proves to be reliable, we can always come back to this idea.

> Agree to the trade deal with the Forkbeak Clan.

+1

The project WILL happen no matter what. The publishing house has published more than 60 titles thus far and there's no reason for this one to fail.[/li][/list]

Pssshh, don't say things like that - it might discourage people from pledging if they think their pledge won't make a difference

But seriously, this looks (and sounds) like a wonderful project! I'm short of money right now, but I hope I'll be able to pledge by the end of the campaign. This is worth supporting, and I'd be interested in both the the digital score and the recording.

Well, almost any engine (including AGS) can be used to code a management game, but it will require much more coding than what you've done in AGS so far. I don't know of any engine that specializes in this kind of game. For a management game, the code is more important than the actual engine. You can code a complex management simulation without using a real engine, just by using text and numbers.

So if you want to create something like this, I suggest that you learn a programming or scripting language from scratch. That's not as difficult as it sounds, buy a book or work through an online tutorial. Then code a very simple text-only management simulation to get an idea how to organize your code, data, etc. When you feel more comfortable with coding, you can better decide which game engine is suitable for what you want to achieve.

Same for me (Linux+Firefox), there's no Google+ button. The Tweet button works as you would expect, it lets me share a link to your website via Twitter.

> Thank the man and let him leave.

+1

I loved Gemini Rue. Honestly, it was one the most exciting adventure games I've ever played. The atmosphere was wonderful, and the pacing was spot-on. There was a feeling of urgency and danger throughout the whole game, something that very few adventure games accomplish. That doesn't mean that puzzles have to be secondary, but it was the right decision for this kind of story.

What I didn't like was the lack of character interaction. Especially in the Delta-6 part I wished there were more dialogue options. Information about the other inmates was reduced to the bare minimum needed to progress in the game, and that made these characters feel a little bland.

I liked the shooting sequences, and the time pressure in some scenes. Usually I don't like that, but it worked very well for this game. Often action sequences feel out of place in adventure games and distract from the story, at least that's my impression. But in Gemini Rue these game mechanics serve the story. They probably wouldn't work in a different setting though.

So I don't think we can learn many lessons for adventure games in general here. But one thing we can learn is that the story and setting come first, and everything you do about the gameplay (puzzles, interface, gameplay elements, dying...) has to match these. Gemini Rue succeded in making the right decisions gameplay-wise, but what works for Gemini Rue doesn't have to work for other games.