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This is the puzzle that prevented me from ever finishing the original text-based HHGTTG. It's supposed to be bloody unfair and horrible. So there.

I were you I'd be fuzzy about excactly HOW 'John' enters into the game world. Let's just say he blacks out and finds himself inside the game when he comes to. It's a drug thing, or a dream/nightmare, or both. Anywho, it is real to him and he will be stuck in drug psychosis/dreamland for ever, unless... well, what happens next is up to you, obviously.

First off: I need to make the room brighter, give it more ambient light, because this is supposed to be in the middle of the day.

Q: thank you for your kind words, but I do think this kind of thing is quite common, like in the MI series, for instance. About your issues:
- maybe there is "something" about that chest...
-it is, as I said, supposed to be day-time, so I'll brighten everything up.
-the cauldron will be more obviously a cauldron when brighter. I hope.
-There is some light emanating from the furnace. Could be more, perhaps. Also, the stove in the oter room.
-The room at the end of ladders will definitely be visitable (a sketch of it exists and is being coloured), it will be fairly bright (a tower room with big windows) and needs some work to look ok seen from this room. I was aware of that, though, but I posted a bit too hastily.
-The rug stays!
-I'm not actually sure where her arms are. The point is that everything btw her neck and her feet is supposed to be a little nondescript, fitting her unassuming (albeit acerbic) personality. I'm not sure I've pulled it off though. I think I'll start from scratch on her again. Now she's called Clara, btw.

Ryan Timothy: Thanks a lot! I think object and hotspot interaction is important for the feel and immersion of the game, so almost everything you see in this room is interactable in some way. Most of it is look-at-able at the very least.

Yes - this is way too dark on my office laptop. Looks brilliant on my computer at home, but sucks on a laptop. However, Andail, I've already done what you suggested: there's blueish light illuminating stuff close to the windows and a yellowish-orange light close to the fire. I'll just cranck up the overall brightness and see how it fares. I already did it a little bit on the newest version, but I think I can make it even brighter.

When I get back from work.

How now, brown cow?



A little bit lighter, removed black area, fixed some tiny mistakes here and there, included new sprite. She looks a bit too displeased with everything now, but fits much better into the background.

I won't touch the chandelier, though. If I were to do anything with it, I'd actually make it even more blurry and indistinct. Or remove it altogether (it IS a bit big for this hut).

What I'm aiming for is the "fairy tale for adults" type of atmosphere. I think this is on its way there.
Andail: point taken about the doorway, although it is going to take some work becasue I'll have to rely on my Photoshop skills (bad) rather than my paper and pencil skills (slightly better).

This one got sort of dark, but I like it. I think I'll have to make it lighter if it is to be usable. Or maybe not.

What do you guys think?

Thanks. I'll try to follow that guide. Currently recolouring the image from scratch. When it's been recoloured I'll post a mockup featuring the new sprite. Then I'll post another one when (if) I can get the shading right.

Bumping, due to frustration.

Yeah, candles are cozy. However, I have so far been unable to replicate what you did. Any tech tips?

Your drawing skills are very good!

Your shading skills are very good! This is too dark for my tastes (EDIT: No, I've changed my mind. Now I really like it), and I had imagined the bg with somewhat 'flatter' lighting/shading. However, this has helped me to see where some shadows should be. Thanks.

I've started recolouring from scratch now, but am a bit preoccupied nowadays, so progress is slow.
Today, I am going to use the scanner at work to scan a couple of new scetches, including a new protagonist sprite. I thought I'd make her 100% scale a bit bigger, so she'll be more flexible.

EDIT: I'm guessing at how you did this: Did you put a dark translucent square atop the image, and then puched holes in it for lighting (with layers, of course)? I've done the opposite: I've been keeping everything light, then I've added the shadows - which makes perfect sense when you're used to drawing on paper. Your way makes a whole lot more sense, especially on an indoor scene.

Hey, thanks a lot for the multiply and especially the magic wand tips. I only ever use that for copy/paste stuff, I did not know it could be used in that way, but I will now.

Actually, I could try drawing the GUI and the witch on paper too. Why not?

My girlf said the character seemed out of place too, but I did not see it. Apparently, she was right. Any tips about how to make her blend in more?
The reason there's such a discrepancy between the bg and the sprites is that the background was drawn with pencil, scanned and coloured in photoshop. It is a layer set to about 15% transparency above the colours. It's an attempt to emulate the MI3 style of background.
The character sprite and GUI were made as pixel art, from scratch in Photoshop. I've considered pasting bits of the pencil-layer onto the sprites, with the same transparency setting.

The "how to..." is actually a bit misleading, since it refers to [ url ] headers and not [ img ]. I'll use those from now on.  What's a good format for posting 800 x 600 32-bit colour images here? EDIT: PNG, apparently.

This witch is supposed to be a bland, plain and diminutive, but also sarcastic and likeable early-teens witch-in-training. The Hexams are coming up. Problem is, she havent studied and she doesn't really have a knack for magic. Result: puzzle-solving to get round spell-casting related problems. Her teacher is supposed to be a beautiful and powerful witch - for the sake of contrast and potential conflict. A drawing of her is coming up, once I get it coloured.

I honestly wouldn't know what code to post, since I haven't really made any changes to the original, supplied GUI code. I've only put in a few hotspots. They will work when on some areas of the screen but will not at others.

www.2dadventure.com/ags/Hekshus1_copy.gif

Please note that this GIF is 256 colours, whereas the original image is 32-bit.

This is from my game in production (working title Witch Quest). All in all I'm pretty satisfied with it, but there are bound to
be things wrong with it that I have not seen. Please let me know what you think before I start animating stuff.

EDIT: see www.wqpd.blogspot.com for more details and info.

Referring to this thread: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=32745.40

The bloody thing stopped working again. Same problem: the coin will not appear when I click objects or hotspots that are near the lower and right-hand edges of the screen when running the test game. I've tried all solutions suggested in the previous thread.
I'm at 800 x 600, using 3.0.1 and the most recent update of the GUI.
Also: the cursor won't change over hotspots anymore. It used to do that in the previous ver (after I found out that the active cursor was a VIEW and not a cursor), but won't now.
Sorry if I it's all my own fault somehow. I might be missing something obvious.

Yeah, I know about moving the buttons, and I just thought of a nice-looking way to do this that takes advantage of the cursor hotspot being slap bang in the middle (I'll fan the buttons out around it), but I still haven't figured out how to lower or move the cursor hotspot for the GUI. Ah, anyway. I'll direct such quieries to the Beginners forum from now on.
Thanks.

Ooh, just one more thing: When one presses the left mouse button to bring up the coin it defaults to "look at" or whatever button is placed in the middle. Is it possible to raise the coin or lower the hotspot for the pointer so that it does not open with the look at function already chosen?

Updated to 3.0.1 and the newest version of the verbcoin. All of it works now, and moreover, 3.0.1 contains some very nice improvements. Let's hope its stable (so far so good).
Thanks!