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Merry Christmas!  Let's get this indie gem shipped and frontpaged on Steam! 

Great job, and cool process-gif.  The lighting and crazy windowframes make the scene pop IMHO.    Pre-ordering now!

Jonesing for PC Master Modder Race nostalgia I reinstalled a few different freeware versions of Doom, GzDoom, FreeDoom, Boom, Groom, Schloom, Loom and this thing called Zandorum, and finally got Brutal Doom Version 20 revved up.  (Totally thought that was a typo for 2.0 but it REALLY IS VERSION 20!??!11tf?) 

Holy shit, the creator was in the gamedev version of godmode when he made this thing, which is a euphamism for unemployed and drip-fed an IV of Monster/espresso, because damn if this isn't the best First Person Shooter I've played in my demon eviscerating, ceiling-painting life.  And by paint I don't mean just blood splatters the Phobos station walls with 256 color decals, I'm talking Direct Mothafucking X 10 small intestines hanging like Christmas lights, blood dripping like ultraviolent snowflakes upon the Space Marine's open mouth.  There are 10-second cutscene FATALITIES to make Mortal Kombat blush, involving pulling the Cacodemons eye out of its head, which can then be used to BLUDGEON imps to death with.  As the posessed, immolated soldiers beg for their life, you can pick up their broken hellish bodies and use them as human shields whilst AKIMBO-PLASMA RIFLING down platoons of barons from hell.   (Which makes no sense, but then you realize you're playing a game where Gwar-concert versions of hellspawn are invading a goddamn Martian space station)

And then it takes it up a few more magnitudes.  I don't even have the time to elaborate on all the mindblowing improvements and added features here but I didn't even go into the FUCKING STEALTH SYSTEM.  YES A STEALTH SYSTEM IN DOOM THAT FUNCTIONS WTF!?!?!?!??!

Sometimes you wonder, being 32 with a stable 2-kid family, a regular pattern of adulting in jobs and tax returns, unable to understand this touchscreening, fruit ninja-ing and angry bird tossing crap, whether you're just becoming Teh Old and nostalgic, re-installing these games that were invented before resolution high enough to see microbes, "STORYTELLING!" and fucking *computer mice*, let alone fondling one's screen like a virtual kitten. 

And then you play a modded game like Brutal Doom and remember, no, you're actually right.  It was a Golden Age.

Hello Silverspook, 2 more cents?

IMO, the first one looks very well because you drew it entirely with a "fearless distrust" expression in mind.

In the third picture, his mood changes completely.

Let's take a look at Mr Cage :

His whole mouth moves up when he smiles. His cheeks become prominent and his eyes wrinkle.
Your character is so detailed that you can't render that with minor adjustments of the first picture.

Thanks for the comments and suggestions, Creamy.

I see what you mean about the smiling expression.  But the full human expression here doesn't really fit because he is a robot with rigid metal plates which don't all move like a human's.  The expressions have to be a little stiff.

You're one crafty cat Cat!

[Kumpel]

Alright, time to burn this pile of fags to the ground. 

(There's our sensorily, historically, and politically inflammatory phrase for the competition.  Goddamnit, if you want something burnt right you've got to burn it yourself.)

Ok, so I've pulled tallied the votes from the goblet of fire and here are the results:

3rd place goes to Kumpel.  If I had to vote you would've received most of mine -- as you got into the overly punny, flamey, spicy, sexy vibe with your hot camping chile vixen, which is what I was going for.  Also, most entertaining picture, certainly!  Congrats!

Here is your trophy -- the bronze, immolated guy on fire.


(it's orange I know but we're on a shoestring budget so we pulled out the orange Photofilter, so bah humbug)

2nd place goes to Grok.  Grok was blazing quick on the turnover, and if I needed to hire an artist for Neofeud who knows how to turn out assets ON TIME, he would surely get the job on the spot.  Also, beautiful watercolors and hell is the perfect setting for pyrotekniks.

I present to you, Grok, the silverized immolated guy as your trophy.  o/`Silver hells, silver hells, it's scorching time in AGS town... o/`




1st place, with a super-hot 7 votes goes to Monsieur OUXX.  We all felt Monsieur's technology-burnt pain as he scoured his soul and the AGS boards trying to get his background's palette cycling thingy to work.  The artists torch-ered soul is felt in the artwork itself, as he screams till his charred throat is hoarse from the fireplace, flames flailing his body, gazing woefully at the frying pan of simple art from which he has lept, into the fire of game development bugs and holdups.  Monsieur has achieved the embodiment of "Pyrotek" itself, a masterful painting and tour-de-force.  As Oscar Wilde once said, "Art immolates imitates life". 

A well-deserved 1st place trophy, the golden burnt motherf***er to Monsieur OUXX.  May he rest in peace (knowing the competition is over!)



Congratulations and thanks to all of the entrants, I was worried for a bit there we'd be stuck with only two or three, but everyone came out in full force at the end!  Another congratulations on Monsieur OUXX's fantastic background and clear win, and see you next time on the Background Blitz!

Merry Pestmas as well!

Cat, are you a teacher of some sort by chance?

Lol, this sounds like some cracking good satire!  I have tried like 12 games recently and realized I can't even play war or fighting games anymore that glorify or turn war/violence into a party.  So this game looks right up my alley!

The animation is excellent and thorough as hell too!

Sweet, man!  I like the interesting ribbon-like window frames on the rear wall.

Great work and thanks for the assortment of pro-tips, Francisco and Ben!

I must say I feel Ben's pain in trying to make the switch from 320x240 to 640x360 or what the new resolution is.  Although not all THAT sorry since I am working in AGS 3.4 at 1360x768

As for playing more DOS games, I've been trudging through System Shock but the 30+ key assortment is proving too 1337 for me.  I do plan to do the yearly Christmas vacay runthrough of Doom, though!

Thanks for the input, Fitz.  I did end up thinking he had kind of a Rorschach look going on.  This particular character needed to be incognito, although not for vigilante justice-serving or such. 

The symbol on the face is actually supposed to be the Hebrew/Aramaic character "aleph" which is also the activating / deactivating keystone of the "Golem", the animated creature made from inanimate material in Hebrew mythology.  The character also resembles the olde-English (feudal) font version of the letter "N", for Neofeud.  I have to stop there or risk mass spoilerfication.

Looks really cool, man!

As someone of Pacific Islander ancestry grown and raised on a Pacific Island, I give my cultural-imperialism-proof / anti-cultural-appropriation stamp of approval to Rakkathua.  Wise decision to let the Mickelson Island or whatnot go. 

Great background as well!  The tropical color palette is well captured, and I like that you have the geo-tectonic details subtly worked in there (shield volcano in golden-years just before atol-retirement).  Good luck with this!

Eat your emo, tantrum-throwing Jedi heart out, Kylo Ren. 

No, I did not just go watch The Force Awakens and become miraculously inspired to mock up gratuitously detailed splash images of the Neofeud Nemesis.

Neofeud is basically Star Wars with less fantasy, more grit anyway.  Princes and Princesses and homeless robots living in shipping containers.

Thanks guys for the pro tips!

Thanks for the input, Stromvin!  The left eye as in his left or the viewer's left?

Nikolas, could you by chance point me to a sample contract for a small game developer and musician?

Also, did you do a revenue split or a one-time-fee type of deal?

(Click for full size)

Ahhh, girl look at that body.  Where did the sun go?

Oh, right, it's a cyberpunk dystopia.  Stupid question.

I'm considering using more dynamic sprites in my game but I'm worried it could cause problematic slowdowns in game if a lot of big dynamic sprites are generated mid-game.  On the other end, I have a lot of fairly large objects (300 - 400 pixels) that need to move around and rotate, and so if I make a lot of individual PNGs for the different rotations it seems it will take up a lot of space.

Does anyone have any experience and/or recommendations here?  Would it be better/faster performance-wise to have a single image and make a bunch of dynamic sprites for the rotations or just make separate PNGs and import for each rotation?  Thanks!

[Artistic execution]

Alright!  This Pyrotek competition was decidedly less inflammatory than I expected!  Damn you Christmas and your goddamn Hallmark marathon chestnut roasting heartwarmy bullshit!

Ok, here are the entries:

GROK



KUMPEL

[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/dTL0WeI.png[/imgzoom]

MONSIEUR OUXX



MANDLE

[imgzoom]http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c201/Mandle/XmasReleaseCandidate05_zpsufxwsuqp.png[/imgzoom]

CASSIEBSG



And a reminder of the categories:

Artistic execution
Playability
Most original/creative use of fire in a scene
Hottest - I leave this one as a wild card to be interpreted by each judge.  Use it for that extra special work that set you on fire but with excitement but you couldn't quite fit into another category.

Voting ends December 18th!

An extra incendiary thank-you to all participants in this Pyrotek background competition, and may not your fireplace fire singe off all of your eyebrows and you spill your scalding hot cocoa all over your Jack Frost-nipped toes.  BAH HUMBUG!!!

Thanks morganw! 

@Selmiak: Thanks for the offer, I will be needing some betatesters sometime soon so yeah I'll keep you in mind!