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What's the character's personality? That usually shapes their designs, and we got two conflicting ones here.

You've got to design the character around the character, not around Tetsuya Nomura's designs.

To be honest, the only SCI I'd like to see being used is SCI3. But this does look pretty neat all the same!

Reverse engineer it, create a variant on SCI Studio, then we'll talk .  I can only use what's available! Besides, I love EGA. It's awesome. It's also a challenge I haven't completed yet. Can't run before we walk, and learning how to effectively use 16 craplousy colours will help me appreciate colour when finally I've reached 32k colours. I want to wring the usefulness out of each videomode. I'd only really go as far as SCI1-2, too. I haven't seen what SCI3 could do that the others can't (and is SCI3 even supported by ScummVM?)


Did some tweaks based on ProgZmax's suggestions, added stuff to things to make it more interesting, removed half the dithering I had.


And made the panda attempt to walk rather than rock forward, and added in some drag to his arms and belly.

Done the dining room.


And front walk cycle:

Not sure if I should swing the legs forward too.

Fixed the hair on the sprite, now it looks cleaner and clearer.

Does anyone know how I'd animate him walking? He has ludicrously stubby legs. Do I just make him waddle back and forth? x3

No need to do an edit on the table, I did it myself. Will add a light fitting when I get around to doing the ceiling. x3



And these are the EGA colours. I've been using no other colours, just the core 16.

That better?


Also, another WIP room:

Let's 'ave a go, then. Just a quick paintover.



The problem was, the movement of the twist was too subtle. With low resolutions, you don't have the luxury of subtle movements, you have to make every pixel count. If you want his body to twist, it must twist a fair bit, and still have smooth movement. It also looked wrong the way you did it because you were changing too much with too few frames. It lead to it flashing and not animating correctly. You also only had it on one side of the walk, so he was just moving his body on one leg, then staying still the other. x3

Even at low resolutions, you gotta ease in and out the movements, and make sure it animates correctly. It was okay without, but with a little extra, the animation can really be pleasing, rather than functional.

The orientation thingie is cool, but when I make the slightest of clicks on a control and having forgot to use LOCK on it, it moves. That's terribly annoying, can we somehow enable and disable new stuff. Same goes for that +. That's annoying as well.

Perhaps you should only be able to move selected GUI objects, having to click on it once to select it, and again to actually register the movement? People don't as often accidentilly double click items.

I have a bug. The RGB colour selector only works up to Index 31. The rest of my palette slots are represented by the 16bit colour space (blue, in this case). This is incredibly annoying, as my palette has 64 colours in it with three control colours in indexes 252-255, and I don't want to keep tabbing from the palette pane to the GUI pane to fix it. Perhaps the RGB colour selector should check if the game is in 8bit and adjust itself accordingly?

I know it's that, but how do you make games with it? I thought it was for Sierra only.

With great difficulty. Well, actually, you use a program called SCI Companion/ SCI Studio. But it's still very rough.

In terms of actually going for a style, I just want the pictures to look as good as they could possibly be in EGA, wringing out every little bit of it's potential, rather than sticking to an established style. The Sierra EGA backgrounds were rather lifeless and stiff sometimes.

Armageddon: Are you talking about the hair on his sprite, or the hair of the design itself? I was trying to break up the monotony of the black and white with some highlights, and black and bright colour is very stereotypically emo. I wanted something appealing and easy to animate.

If it's on the sprite, it's probably because the hair is bending the wrong way. I'll fix that and upload it.

As a stress reliever, I sometimes pixel things in really restrictive video modes. I'm taking a break from DWEF for a while while I focus on other things. In the meantime, I'd like to experiment with SCI, since it has some really interesting restrictions and foibles in it, especially considering it's the only EGA game engine out there. I'd like to make a game in it.

So, I'd like some critique on these pieces, so I can get more into the EGA mindset. I'm not sure whether I'm doing this right. I got all the 16 colours and I love working with them (I'm sure I must be the only person left in the entire world who feels this way).

Character: A sad panda. Emo. He is jaded with everything, sigh. Based on a drawing a friend of mine did, I just had to pixel him. I wanted to keep the design simple and push the "world weary" angle more than the emo fashion angle, which looks rather ugly. I kind of like the no-pupils look to him, as well. It helps make him look less engaged.

I'm thinking the deaths in the game will be based around mild discomfort more than actual death, keeping the dangerous Sierra zietgeist, but making it amplify really stupid stuff instead of killing off the main character.

And an attempt at an SCI background:


And as a bonus, an SCI font based on the Magic Boy credits font.


So, what y'all think?

The problem is character interactions need to be specified on the character interaction pane, not the room pane. if you want that to happen, just go to the character editor, then the interaction editor and add an interaction for UseInv that way (AGS needs to link interactions to function names, so you can't just write a function and be done with it)

If the character appears in more than one room, just add an additional condition to the if function you have there:

if (player.ActiveInventory == iexampleitem && player.Room == exampleroom)

I Google translet pub master quest and I get that

I believe it should be translated as: Izakaya-kyō no Tsuikyuu : Quest of the Pub Masters.
"居酒屋卿 の 追求" ?

Pub Master Quest, if you wanted to make it said in gratuitous english (and not gratuitous japanese) it would probably be something like:

居酒屋卿 の 追求 : *♥ PUB MASTER QUEST ♥*

Edit: On second thought, that doesn't seem to translate as well as I thought it would.

When I defeat an opponent, can I pick up his or her clothing/items and customize my player character? That would be cool!

Yes, in one beta test we left every NPC in their underwear and stacked their clothing on the player model. It ruined the tension of some of the scenes, so we removed the ability to stack clothing.

Looking good! So will you be able to engage in combat with anyone on the street or will your opponents have to attack you first?

Opponents will regularily attack you. In fact, there is a 9/10 chance any step will lead to a random battle.

It will be intense.

[Update:]

Update: Battle system has been fully programmed and implemented. To spice up the game, I added random battles and a levelling up system, so people don't get bored with it.

There are only two playable characters at a time, so left click controls Jakob, and right click controls Ollie. Just mouse over their target and choose your action, verbcoin style!

Wait, but Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded could do that because they used 3D models with interchangable textures and accessories, modelled just so, so that it wouldn't interfere with the animations.

You'd have to redraw every single animation if you wanted to implement this in your game, since it's 2D. I highly recommend dropping this straight away. It's way, way, way, way too much trouble for what it's worth (very little).

Just finish your dang game. Stuff like this comes a lot later in the game pipeline. Like, it gives the programmers something to do while the beta testing is being done and the artists are polishing up graphics. Before you can even think about frivolous stuff like this, the main core of the game has to be top notch. The battle system has to work, the story has to be tightened and trimmed, everything needs to be in order.

No minigames. No flashy effects, no online chat mode. I think we all just want you to finish the game before you drag this out for years with useless cruft.

Ever heard of Feature Creep? This is what's happening to your game. This is what you must avoid. If you don't keep it in check, your game will never be finished. Ever.

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Yes, unless you know what you're doing. The characters have to exist in the same world as the backgrounds. A lot of games that use photo-backgrounds also tone the backgrounds so that they look like the character exists in that space, and modify them by painting over them. It's a heck of a lot of work.

With your character, photo backgrounds would look cheap, bring the player out of the game, and the exploration aspect would suck, because they're just a whole load of photographs.

I suggest going the opposite direction. Instead of having lots of really detailed backgrounds, take a note from Otto Mesmer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOtd2nCiHLE&feature=related
Felix the cat has a lot of nice animation, and it's backgrounds are very, very, very simple. So long as you have a nice composition, it shouldn't matter how much detail is in them. Got a forest? Copy Simon the Sorcerer - create a bunch of tree sprites and lay them out in a differing manner so that it looks like the backgrounds are more detailed than they are. StS made a lot of backgrounds out of a lot less, with unique backgrounds pieces just for landmarks so you didn't get lost. (and to show off their prettiness)

And don't forget you can reuse stuff, and simplify stuff just for placeholders. Have an idea for a nice background, but don't have the time to make it? Just dab on the sketch with a bit of colour, and stick it in your game until you're perfectly happy with it being there. Then you'll have the motivation to complete that background, since it's already in the game. Just add sketches into your game's alpha. The polishing can come later, once the game's elements have been tied down and you're sprinting the last mile with the finish line in sight.

Work on your battle system. Define it on paper first. Explain its rules in a post (but don't use all those fancy show-off terms you keep using for simple things!!!!!!!!!!) and ask for criticism.

I suggest basing it on an existing tabletop rpg. D&D is popular. It's what FF1 was based on. But most of all, it needs to be simple enough for you to understand, and scalable. No use having an rpg where it's just superpowers and damage strung together by badly written dialogue. Fallout was partially based on GURPS. So long as it has a good, solid resolution mechanic and is scalable over levels (if you're doing level based systems) it should be fine.

Maybe you should play some other rpgs for inspiration? And not just JRPGs!! FF has become stale and inbred. Ambermoon, Albion, Baldur's Gate, Quest for Glory, Temple of Elemental Evil: All good examples of rpgs that aren't just a fight, and implement rpg elements into every part of their being.

In any case, RPGs are 10% inspiration, and 9001% maths.

There's a couple of things that really irk me about this video.

- The GUIs cover up the characters. When you have a battle system like this, you don't want to obscure the battle field. Put the GUI where the players and enemies aren't.

- The interface looks clunky and unintuitive. It looks like it's supposed to be controlled by a keyboard or controller, but it uses a mouse? That's two clicks and a mouse movement, where a controller would have just two presses. Mouse use is more strenuous than controller use (where lots of little interactions add up - an rpg like this one will certainly do so) - you gotta make it intuitive. Maybe you click on the enemy first THEN choose what to do if you hold down the mouse button, Verbcoin style (see: Temple of Elemental Evil), or just tell the player to use a keyboard. Final Fantasy style battle systems don't work very well with point and click inputs.

- The feedback isn't intuitive, either. I'd go one step beyond Final Fantasy, since you don't have the problem of limited cartridge space. Give each of the enemies a knockbacked frame, which you can put into their animation view as a new loop. Obviously they have an absolute x and y when you place them on the battlefield, so to automate it, just have their positioning change depending on their frame number, if they're hit, in the rep_ex function. That way you don't need to bloat up the game with the same sprite, but shifted to the right. And one thing that people really like in RPGs is flashy spell effects. They want to get their money's worth with every click. Fire spells should look like fire, attacks should look like attacks, and monsters should have intimidating ripostes. If your reaction to a boss' ability isn't "Oooh, that looked like it hurt!", it isn't impressive enough.

- Why are the players on the left and the enemy on the right? It's really unnatural looking when it's done like that, since every battle system I've ever seen has placed the players on the right and the enemies on the left. It just feels more right. Putting them the other way around feels like you're crossing the line, since traditionally heroes enter and leave on the right, and villains enter and leave on the left.

- The characters look really, really bored. Like, they've just woken up. Put some energy into them!

- The characters and backgrounds have the exact same saturation. Increase the saturation of colours on the characters, while reducing the saturation on the background. This'll help them pop out a bit more.

Finally, please don't add a "low health" siren to your game. It's really, really annoying.

However, I don't think that expecting a discussion (when did I ever use the word "lively?"), even if it is almost 20 years after the fact, is "peculiar." My original post was the day before the anniversary of James's death. I only revived the topic once, and that was the day before his birthday. Is it so strange to expect a discussion of something that many people still remember surrounding its anniversary?

What is there to say, really?

"The murderers were horrible people."
"The murderers were mentally unsound."
"What are the murderers doing now?"
"What is the family doing now?"
"Poor kid, he shouldn't have died."

And we wheel out the sympathy for this one kid who got killed and got media attention for it, we hang up his corpse so that we can gaze in horrified disbelief at it for another day long after the fact. We look at photos of that one kid, that one kid who is just one of many thousands, millions, who are brutally murdered. And then we put him back in his box until next year.

Round and round we go, digging up the graves of those long dead to mourn them, even if we didn't know them. Just one more face that we have to shed tears over forever, and ever, and ever. They can never be laid to rest. Dragging this out longer just causes more suffering as we are forced to tear open old wounds just to remember the pain. This isn't making the world better, what could we possibly gain from dwelling on this?

There is enough suffering going on in the present to cope with. Japan, as stated, is enough for a lifetime. Let's not have deliberate sideshow acts where we display indignancy, shock and disgust at the situation on cue. The media have already done this. You have no connection to him. There is nothing to be done, nothing you could do or could have done.  You do not need to champion the dead boy's cause anymore.

Just let it rest.

Just let him rest.

Those sprites are looking pretty okay.

[IMG]She is still going to be a fox, but I think humans and anthros can live together, but the furs are the lower demographic. I plan to say that the Zoo was built primarily for the humans entertainment, while a few anthros would find this act inhumane.

Bullet dodged.

I would avoid doing something like this unless you're going to go the whole hog with it (ala Cats Don't Dance). If the subjugation isn't a main theme, ignore the difference between the two. Just don't mention it. This girl is just as much a girl as any other human girl, but is presented in a different manner to the player. The difference between anthropomorphic animals and animals is as much of a difference between man and ape. We put apes in zoos. Sure, some humans might think that putting animals in zoos is inhumane. They're all people, at the end of the day.

Unless you can make it an interesting plot point, however. It might be if Picture Perfect Times was a wholly "human" company, and the reason she has to prove herself is because she is different. She could have no end of obstacles because of her background. I'd still avoid using words like "anthro" to describe her. "Your people", "her kind", and other such euphanisms would make it vague on what she's actually classed as. You'd still have to be careful not to be too ham fisted with it. I've read a lot of things along these lines and it rarely, if ever, works. You gotta be subtle. Gentle.

I can't wait to see this as an adventure game, though. The main character looks interesting and well executed, so I'm looking forward to seeing all the other art.