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Looking awesome so far, everyone - I can't say as I'm familiar with Tony Tough, but it's a commercial game, and just 'coz I don't know it, doesn't mean it won't be qualified. Looking great. Also loving Sam, Max & Ben. Loominous, great rethinking of the DOTT cast. For some reason, I'd have to say Hoagie is my favorite of the characters you've got showing there... Not sure why, but it just seems to fit.

Honestly, I'm super old-fashioned and would've preferred to see the sprites altered not to have alpha channels but to be a solid one-color backgorund (Hence that whole: 'One color so that I can change it to transparency' thing), as when I open it in my image editing program and change the color of the background with a fill tool I get all kinds of wild and unusual things. Still, that is the way to avoid a jaggy outline, so I'm going to accept it.

This has no bearing on the results of the contest, so don't feel obligated to make any changes, but consequentially for the Hi-Res folks, if you use a traditional 'fill' tool with tolerance set to 0, are you seeing the weird things going on that I am?

I'd like to avoid going too far off topic, so I may actually open another thread in Adventure-Related, but I'm just interested.

Edit: Topic made. I'd love it if you guys dropped in and gave your two cents as well.

Awesome, congratulations

Spoiler

Ben304

[close]

A well-deserved win! I'm really looking forward to the next competition.

Sorry for the late entry. Just threw something together at the last minute to take a break from a ridiculously long animation I've been working on.



A very unpleasant amorphous black slime creature crawling out of the depths of an old pit.

Ahoy again, folks,

I'd like to apologize again for the late response after that last competition, I'm afraid I wasn't accessing the net for a few days. I'm back now, though, and ready to start us all up on a new Sprite Jam! I'm not great at working up themes for these Jams that are overly complicated, but this one came to me on a train ride today, while contemplating how some adventure games would play if you changed the setting that the characters were in.

I'd like to see a reimagining of a character from a reasonably well-known adventure game (Commercial games or Independent adventure game characters are fine, as long as they're established - Pib, Larry Vales, Rode Kill are fine with me as much as Bobbin Threadbare or Sonny Bonds), but I'd like to see how you'd present them in a different setting (Example, Guybrush Threepwood in an office environment - Larry Laffer... In Space!)

I'd prefer to avoid paintovers in different outfits, if possible, so all I'm looking for is to be able to recognize who the character is, and what kind of setting they've been re-assigned to.

For this contest, size and color depth are free, but I will still be making sure that sprites are viable in-game (If you're going to make a sprite, scan and resize, please clean up the outline so that it will fit on multiple background colors). Please make the Background of the sprite transparent (Or at least one color, so that I can change it to transparency).

Looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with!

Hey, guys,

Sorry for the late response - I didn't realize that I would be winning this one - My money was either on Progz or JBurger - I'm stunned, honestly! But thank you. I will be working out an appropriate theme for the next contest and getting it going within the next 24 hours. I've been busy celebrating my anniversary, and hadn't even logged in to the AGS forums for about 2 days (Shortly before this announcement, it'd seem).

Anyway, again sorry about the late response, and I'll get right on top of the next contest very soon.

And I must say, awesome entries everyone else! I really hope that the momentum we've got going this year keeps on keeping on.

If I might throw my two cents in, I think that as opposed to making it another competition where the goal is to create a sprite, it should be based more around the character creation process, maybe something where the contest starter comes up with a theme, like: You have to come up with a design for a main character in a piratical caribbean setting. The character is young and a little geeky, weak - and is described as 'looking like a flooring inspector'. His motivation is to become a pirate.

Then the contest entrants would sketch, design and ultimately release a few images to illustrate their concept, before the sprite phase (or even the final sprite, high or low-res as per the entrant's needs and/or the rules of the creator). The main difference between this and the Sprite Jam would of course be in that the new contest is all about 'concept', a 'Concept competition', if you were, where the Sprite Jam focuses around creating a finished, viable product within very specific constraints.

The entrant whose character design fits the concept the best, regardless of their medium, would be the winner in this competition, and it would revolve not around a specific set of artistic skills so much as creativity and the ability to develop a character to convey a certain 'look'. This is a very important step in the game creation process, and I imagine would help people work on their character development skills.

The main gripe about the Sprite Jam is that a lot of people do find the rules to be very constricting. I'm particularly hard on my contestants, because I require that the sprite will integrate well into a game, and like to limit size and palettes to a large extent. This isn't always going to be the case, but ultimately the contest is about building artistic sprite-creation skill. A large percentage of the time in a 'low-res' environment.

Obviously, this does tie together with the Sprite Jam in a number of ways, but it does focus on a different skillset. The Sprite Jam is about creating an image - at times is also something of an art contest. This concept contest would, I imagine, broaden the base of people joining the contest, and if it didn't, then such is life. I think it does have potential.

Put together a quick entry as a brief break from working on my most recent project. Hope you like!



Samurai. 40x110 pixels, 18 colors + transparency.

Fact: There are also 15 ninjas in this image.
Edit: Added a katana in his right hand, just for fun.

Where does this silly notion come from? Have heard it several times before and I have no idea what it's based on.

Honestly, I'm happy to hear if it's not the case - I always got that vibe since your general attitude towards the whole low-res scene seems a little standoffish, generally speaking. Word choices like "Mutilated by the technical standards of the '90s" sort of imply that you don't like being limited by an anachronistic style. If I read too much into it, all the better. Regardless, your art is definitely top-notch stuff, whether it's traditional pixel art or otherwise. I'd love to see what you can do freehand at the pixel level.

[Babar:]

Ahoy, pirates and pir-ettes.

Okay, so here we are, and it is time for me to arbitrarily pass judgment upon the contestants of the contest to decide whose sprite is the winner. I'd like to start, however, by offering some constructive criticism and comments on the sprites individually. So here we go:

Babar:

Firstly, I think that conceptually, the sprite is great - A strong pirate woman with a big rifle and eyepatch, the pose is dynamic and interesting, and I always love an eyepatch (which, incidentally, all but BoG's sprites have). If I were to change anything specific about the sprite, I'd say you may want to straighten her up a little, as she's a little lopsided as-is. Also, the high-contrast shading on the white shirt is great, but there's not a whole lot of shading elsewhere to keep it consistent. I'd love to see a few more shadows on this sprite, to give it a little more punch.

loominous:

What can I say? Talented as always. Not sure what you mean by mutilated by the technical standards of the early '90s, but I know that you dislike low resolution sprites, still, your buccaneer there certainly does translate well on a smaller scale - though you have a lot of superfluous colors on the background that I had to edit out ultimately to get it to 'just the sprite'. This led to some jagged edges, and it doesn't really read well on a dark background. Mercifully, the forum displays pale blues, so it isn't a really glaring issue, but it would make it difficult to implement without either dark outlines, CMI-style, or making sure he only shows up on a very specific background. I'd love to see you challenge yourself with actual pixel-by-pixel art, and see what comes out of it. With your talent, I'm sure it'd be awe-inspiring.

pilferinloot:

Ah, the pirate's best friend - the parrot. The words even sound similar: Pirate - parrot. I really like what you've done with this little guy, he has a lot of personality. The main problem I could see would be the black outlines and a handful of double pixels, maybe some of the lines could stand to be smoothed out as well. But that aside, like it. The texturing on the body, pegleg, belt-strap... All very well done, and definitely they add a lot to the feel of the sprite.

BoG:

I don't know what it is, but I like it. I guess he's some sort of ant-pirate with a bitchin' beard. I really have nothing to criticize about this one, except I think it might possibly stand to have one more shade per color grade, just to even things out - it's very high contrast right now, and for some reason comes across a little flat. But I love it all the same, and would for certain be shivering in my timbers if I saw that thing scuttling towards me.

Alpha2T:

Yar indeed! Kinda reminds me of the Terminator or R2-D2 on the high seas... Probably the glowing red eye. The main issues I could take with this one are that I think a few of the lines could be smoothed out a bit, and for some reason, it had a really strange pallette when I imported it into GraphicsGale to view it (No fault of your own, I'm sure, but I had to actually take a screenshot, since the transparency layer came out black). It's cute, and I think it'd be fun to play a game with a similar style.

Ben304:

I love it. Actually, I used to wear my hair like that. Despite the small size of the sprite, it reads very well, and the design is simple enough to really get a good feel for. Maybe the right foot (her right, the one still made of meat) could stand to be brought in a pixel or two, but that's all I can really think of as criticism. Zak the Kraken was also an awesome sprite, and the tiny rubber ducky is super-groovy. If you made this game, I would definitely want to play it. As far as style, I think I'd like to have this as my protagonist the most out of all of them - the character just has a whole lot of personality, and I imagine that you could animate it really, really well.

IndieBoy:

Very simple shapes, solid black outlines, but I really dig the way it presents itself. I think that stylistically, it's a great choice, and though I still think black outlines can have a negative effect on the sprite, I see no reason it would really immediately need any drastic changes. I neglected to add any of the props or the background that you supplied, though it really shows that the style translates cleanly, and it would be a really charming adventure to play. Incidentally, of the props, I really, really want to see the parrot in action.

buloght:

And bulought, what can I say? For pixel-pushers, you're amazingly talented, and I wish I had the patience to put something together that detailed. I zoomed up to about 5X and had a very close look at them, and it's amazing what a few colors can do to make an image work. It took me ages to wrap my head around some of it, especially with the amazingly small color pallette. 15 colors +1 for transparency? They're both awesome. If I were to criticize, I'd say that the woman pirate seems just a tiny bit lopsided, leaning forward. If you rocked her back just a pixel around her thigh area, I wonder if that wouldn't help. Honestly, I'm grasping at straws.

All in all, a whole lot of awesome sprites. Still, I'm obligated to choose one winner. So, for blowing my mind with the complexity but surprisingly smooth read, I'm going to have to go with buloght.

Thank you all very much for entering, and I really appreciate everyone's great work. Now, let's see a bunch of new pirate adventures with these guys in them!

Avast, mateys!

Alright, it looks like we saw a pretty good turnout for the competition for this, our first Sprite Jam of 2009. I'm really glad to see everyone participating in the contest, and it's going to be a tough decision. I'll do a quick critique and justification for my decision in the final post, but if anyone's still working on their sprite, it's still 6:00pm in Honolulu, so I'm going to leave the final decision for the last possible minute of January 16th. If anyone is really close and wants a slight extension, I'm willing to give it to them, but if I don't see anything in the next five and a half hours, I'll be closing up and making my judgment.

I've removed the backgrounds from sprites that have them, so that everyone can see the sprites themselves, and added them below for everyone to see and compare:





Anyone else?

Well as an animator to a fellow animator, I can tell that work really must've added up. Considering the volume of small animations on each screen - even four or five frame loops, that's redrawing at least part of each frame and effectively quadrupling your work even on a simple animation. It must've taken you ages to finish all that, because I know at least that it can take me four or five hours to get a good smooth animation for one character sprite.

But truly, those ambient animations in there really do add up to something special. I don't think enough amateur game creators really realize just how much a small animation - though it takes a bit of extra work, can really change the whole feel of a room. Also, the balance necessary to make sure that rooms don't become too busy as well. My hat is off, old friend.

Thanks for mentioning that I'm behind, I'll definitely need to go play it again soon and see what kind of rating I can scare up next; though at the moment I've been inspired by your hard work and decided to do some of my own, and finally see if I can get something awesome done for a gaming project. Stay tuned... if you dare.

But Personal PR aside, I'd like to say that though I haven't played all of the games around right now, I can definitely say that in my opinion - humble though it may be,  Limey Lizard has to be one of the best AGS games of '08.

Actually, I've spent the last two weeks watching basically every Mythbusters episode in existence in sort of a Mythbusting Marathon. It's pretty awesome, though I'm kind of on science overload right now. Just finished watching the MacGyver myths episode and though not all of these equate to 'myths', they are testing some pretty relevant movie stunts to see if they actually work (Jumping through vertically stacked awnings a la Indie Jones 'n the Temple of Doom).

Mythbusters is hands-down my favorite non-scripted TV show, and I sure as hell hope that they're still going when Adam's Jamie's age and Jamie's starting to prodigiously use the 'I'm getting too old for this' line.

Fun Fact: When I lived in California, I drove right past M5 frequently on my way to and from San Francisco. Anyone else living in the area, you can see them off the 280 or the 101 over Cesar Chavez/Army Street.

Wow, ProgZ, This game kicks some serious ass. As most people have already said, though retro, the production values are top-notch - the abundant animations and huge menu of available interactions makes it consistently entertaining, and I definitely was motivated to play it all the way through. I've achieved an 'acceptable' rating and finished it so far (Found that creating a map as I go through the waste tunnels helped a lot), and will probably load it up again very soon to see if I can find anything I missed.

The Whack-a-rat game at the end there was pretty hectic - do you have an algorithm set up to make sure that at least 50 rats pop out in the 30 seconds you have allotted? I haven't failed the whack-a-rat game yet, but I haven't beaten it by a healthy margin once yet.

I know it's a few months past already, but I really think it's a great game, and hope that there's a lot more Limey Lizard coming in the future. I'd love to play a full-length Limey Lizard episode.

Hi, Technocrat.

Firstly, I'd like to say that the character's coming along nicely - Looks good, though I do have some concerns about the sprite from a practical point of view. Honestly, if you're going to go low-res, I'd suggest trying to even keep her under 100 pixels. It's not all that difficult if you're smart about your pixel and color choices, and far, far easier to animate.

For a character with her level of simplicity (Nude except for an apron), it shouldn't be hard to get the idea across either. For an early project, this is going to do wonders for keeping your work level low, which unless you're working with a number of people, is very useful (I like to take this to heart even if it's for a single sprite that I'm never going to touch again).

Now, for the front-on view, I think that although the distribution isn't bad, your pose is what's really killing you for 'feminine'. Right now you've got her positioned in kind of a 'gunslinger' stance in that outline - you want something a little 'tighter'. I've also referenced an image from an article on body shape from Wikipedia which might help you right here. Have a look, and when you've decided which body type fits your catgirl best, you can start working from that. If you'd like some examples, I may be able to whip something up this weekend.



For a very simple idea of a female form to try to work off of, I threw together a few silhouettes of varying levels of voluptuity for you to look at. The dimensions are far from perfect, I just put them together like that to give you an idea of what I'm talking about: I've characterized them based off of the distribution of size on the top and bottom which creates the individual shapes listed on the above link. S for Smaller, L for Larger, the top letter indicates bust, the bottom indicates hips. The rest is essentially the same.

Obviously the first is the most realistic, and the 4th is Lara Croft.

Edit: I actually noticed that I've made the waists a lot more constricted then necessary in places as well. This can easily be rectified by lowering the grade of the curves between her bust and hips and taking the center point out a pixel or two as necessary

I'd like to third the statement of the other Old Boys. Back in the day, GameFaqs and the AGS forums weren't around to give you any hints on how to play your game and get to the end. Fortunately, I have the patience to try every ridiculous object on every other ridiculous object, and pick up everything that isn't nailed down mentality so far ingrained in my mind that in my youth, I would actually collect random knick-knacks that looked like they might be useful someday that I found that wasn't obviously kleptomaniac urges. Keys found on the street, rubber chickens with pulleys in the middle, etc.

That said, as far as successful completion of games, I completed Hero's Quest (Quest for Glory) 1, 2 and 3 - 4 glitched out and I still haven't made it to the end, 5 I gave up on pretty early in. Of the more 'puzzle based' ones: Secret of, Return to and Curse of Monkey Islands, King's quest 6 (Heir today, Gone Tomorrow), Space Quest 3, 4, 5 and the VGA remix of 1, Sam & Max hit the Road, The Longest Journey & Dreamfall, and a handful of others. Most of these took months of frustration and on & off playing. Fortunately, most of my close friends, including my brother, were Adventure Gaming geeks like me, so we could usually throw ideas off of one another if one of us got stuck. A lot of the games were also 'multiplayer' experiences insofar as my brother, friends and I would sit crowded around a computer brainstorming on puzzles.

I have had to resort to walkthroughs on a lot of the 'one wrong move gets you killed' Sierra titles, like the Police Quest series, but it makes me feel unclean after I'm done looking at the solution to a puzzle I've worked so hard on and eventually gave up. I guess the draw of Adventure games is how hard it is to solve, and the sense of vindication on solving a puzzle. Sometimes the lateral thinking is a little tough on the ol' noggin, though.

[Arr!]

Arr!

Ahoy there, fellow pixel art enthusiasts. Sorry for the delay getting the new topic up. I was intending to post it last night, but the forums went down for maintenance, and only now have I reconnected. During the down-time I was contemplating what we should have as our next topic. I've been having a tough time coming up with something for a while, so I decided to just say 'Screw it, let's go with pirates'. Everybody loves pirates, right?

Theme:
Make me a sprite of a pirate. Man, woman, pet, whatever strikes your fancy, but they should be a potential terror on the high seas. I'm looking for swashed buckles and dogs of the scurvy variety.

Rules:
I want the sprite to fit the following technical criteria:

• The sprite must fit within 150x150 pixels
• The sprite's color count before transparency should be 32 or less
• Backgrounds and other props may be included, but will not be counted toward the final product. If included, please also include a separate image with only the sprite
• For others to learn from your process, those that wish to include WIP images will be appreciated (Again, not obligatory)

Feel free to make multiple sprites if you feel inspired, I'd love to see a lot of good entries.

I hope this isn't too tough, and I'm looking forward to a good turnout.

Well, then, swabs! All hands on deck!

Yaay! I guess I don't feel like so much of a dork anymore for staying up until 6:00am alone in my apartment doing sprites for this contest on New Year's day anymore. I'm really glad they were well received.

I guess it's time for me to come up with a theme... The worst part about getting 1st place in the Sprite Jam is that I can't participate in the next one. Nonetheless, I'll get the next one started as soon as I can come up with an appropriately interesting theme for the first Jam of '09.

Thanks again!

Good morning, folks and folkettes, I'm glad that everyone's enjoyed or is well on their way to enjoying the new year. I myself just woke up. Honestly, my whole 'new year' party was pretty sedate, considering I was the only one involved. The girlfriend's in Korea, family's back in the States and friends are all either in their respective countries of origin, or spending it with their families (As is tradition in Japan).

But that isn't to say I didn't enjoy myself. The first 6 hours of the new year were spent spriting (See the current Sprite Jam) and intermittently watching Mythbusters and replaying Half Life 2. Today, I will likely go back to sleep for a while, get up, exercise, make lunch, then watch a DVD. I might go out for a walk as well, but most stores are closed here today.

About saying Happy New year, 新年おめでとうございます (Shin-nen Omedetou Gozaimasu) works, but you're most likely to hear 明けましておめでとうございます (Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu), or it's shortened and more punchy version, 明けオメ (Ake-ome).

And as a bonus, for the Korean-speakers out there, 새해 복 많이 받으세요 (Sehe Bok Mani Baduseyo)!

Happy new year, AGS Forum boys 'n girls. The clock just struck here in Japan. I wasn't particularly active on the forums this year, but I'd still like to wish everyone a wonderful new year and wanted to make a tertiary resolution that I'm going to try to make some sort of lasting impression this year to make up for 2008. Good luck in 2009!

Like everyone else, apparently, I started with my version of BA. I decided to move away from the xyz-taur trend, though and decided to answer the question - What would T look like as a dwarf? The Answer: Not very pretty at all. Next, I've made my half-breed... It's not a 'taur' by any right, but I think 'Lizard-man' fits the bill for our "Howling Mad Murdock". Third, we have our 'anything-goes' creature, and I've decided who would make a better Faceman than a Doppelganger? So that gray-blue thing with a lazy smile and fab hair is our Templeton "Faceman" Peck. And last, but not least, our human, in fashionable English Full Plate, Jonathan "Hannibal" Peck leads the team.



And all four of the team, in one handy package.



Finally, here are the WIPs. I've saved the images along some key points. Sadly, didn't do it with B.A.