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Will John Howard feel bad that I said that? Even less likely because he'll never know.

Apologies for the levity. I'm done now.

I joined MySpace when this topic started a year ago. I barely use it, but for some reason I do check it relatively often. Anyone who has a passing interest in doing so, feel free to drop in and say hi.

Mahvelous. Then I am planning on making a game for this month's MAGS... Hopefully it works out.

A question, if I may - the rules do indeed state that you "must not get anyone else to do any part of the game for you", but I was wondering if that meant that team efforts are out? I seem to remember one entry at least that was made by a team, though I can't be completely sure.

The image itself is quite well designed and detailed - I think that the largest issue with this background in particular is that it seems almost too spacious. I agree with Steve McCrea in that the bottom half is all that is really necessary in the image for game purposes. You would, of course, lose your cool-looking stained glass windows, but at the moment there's a whole lot of open air and not quite enough interesting stuff up there to warrant it. Granted, huge churches like this often evoke a certain feel of gargantuousness, but for a background used in an adventure game you generally want to almost limit the area a player will focus on, or they tend to get distracted. A good cropping point may be just above the door on the second floor.

Aside from that, it could possibly use some dark foreground elements to break up the bottom of the screen, and if you would rather keep the vertical space, I'd suggest adding at least a hint of the ceiling. As the walls don't really end anywhere, vertically, the mind usually misreads it as traveling upwards into infinity. This can be fixed by even adding a slight inward curve about the top of the wall.

I haven't been inside a church in ages, I have this little fear of bursting into flames on holy ground, but it seems to me that perhaps your pews are a bit too far apart from one another. If I remember correctly they tend to be close enough that you don't need to lean very far forward to take a bible or whatever out of the back of the next pew up - these seem almost distanced enough that a grown man could walk face-on between two without any problems.

Hopefully this helps out a bit.

Not sure which you're referring to, but there seems to be a large community based around speed runs, such as this one, but aye, for the most part, at the very least, they are done on emulators, to minimize mistakes. I've seen plenty of people with ridiculous speed playing skills before in real life as well, though.

I'm all for marathon-playing a game series or two, I've played all four Monkey island games in a few days before, but I really don't see the point in speed-running an adventure game. There's not exactly a lot of skill required once you know the solutions to the puzzles in the game, after all. Seeing someone beat Super Mario Bros. 3 in ten minutes was impressive - Contra in 8 with no continues, awesome, but skill-based games are the sort of things you can really work towards beating gratuitously fast with.

If this guy beat all 12 games in 24 hours and had never played any of them before, I'd be impressed - that would show some amazing problem-solving skill and creativity - but honestly, I think adventure games are something you're just supposed to relax and enjoy the experience of. If you're just blazing through to the end, not reading dialogue and skipping cutscenes, the entire cerebral entertainment part is lost. Kind of like fast forwarding through a movie just to say "I watched the entire Lord of the Rings Trilogy in an hour and a half... I had no clue what anyone was saying, but hey, it was fast!"

[ProgZmax]

Well, the deadline has come and gone, it seems, and only two entries. Oh well, better than one or none - and two animations is still pretty good, as they will now be available to the RON community for use. Good work, ProgZmax and Mozza, thanks for participating. I personally liked ProgZmax's animation for its smoothness and realism. Subtle and easy to implement. Lovely.

So congratulations, ProgZmax, you get to host another Ani-comp - and are a step closer to a grand slam.

Applause, everybody.

Well, I thought I'd do a sort of vague update on one of my existing projects - the same one I hinted at in the last release something thread. These are two character detail sheets for the game. They're both still a bit rough, and my color job is atrocious, but there they are anyway.

The hero, Tytan


The first mate, Caine

Ah, pardon that little typo there. It was three in the morning when I typed that up, and I'd been animating the Animation Competition text the whole day. Fixed.

[A]

She has used an engine called RPG Tsukuru (I think), I haven't heard about it before, but it certainly doesn't sound bad

Heh, RPG Tsukuuru is the japanese name for RPG maker, actually - though she may well have been using a more up to date, commercial version of the program. I saw a copy of it for the PS2 the other day when I was game-shopping. Thought about picking it up for a moment, then slapped myself mentally for even thinking about it. I can barely divide my time between the projects I'm working on in AGS, much less mess around with a new one that only I'd be able to play anyway.

I'm definitely all about AGS. Hell, with all of the extra game types being built with it, like platformers and RPGs, AGS is almost seeming like a misnomer or understatement.

Ahoy ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Animation competition. The rules are simple, but for the sake of posterity, I shall post 'em right here for you to read.

Ahem:

• A sprite is supplied, with a theme.
  
  
• Participants must use the given sprite for their animation.
  
  
• Each competition will last 11 days.
  
  
• The starter of each competition will decide on the winner.

The winner, who will decide on the next competition's theme, must also supply a sprite.

And without further ado - the sprite! (Many, many thanks to Steve McCrea for his wonderful sprite)


Meet Mika Huy, reporter for Reality-on-the-Norm's local newspaper, The Realiser. Some of you may already know her. Well I thought I'd help contribute to the RON community a bit by featuring a RON character in the competition, so we can have a little more animation, and with any luck, help to spread the word about this great series. There are no limits to what you can make her do, the only thing I require is that it be a loopable animation that starts and ends with the above picture as frame 1. Make it as long as you want.

That is all.

Thanks a lot, guys - Too bad so few people entered the competition, the sprite itself was awesome/fun and easy to animate, and both Scourge and Mozza did great jobs in their sprites as well. Thank you Krysis, for the sprite, and everyone else for the ego boost and friendly rivalry. I'll see about getting a sprite ready for the next competition right away, and I hope you all participate in the next one.

I had a quick crack at the barking animation, since you said you wanted to improve upon it a bit. There's a big dog living at one of the houses along my walk to school, and it has a habit of going psycho whenever I walk by, so I've had lots of chances to get a good look at a dog going agro from the safe side of the fence. One of the big things I noticed is that when that dog lets out one huge 'Worf!' at somebody, before it starts howling up a storm, it does so with such force that it usually knocks itself off balance - forelegs flying of to the side in a little mini-jump, so I incorporated that into the animation to make it look like so:


I also poked around moving a few pixels and so on. There's about twice as many frames now than there were before, but I hope it still looks alright to you, Farlander.

As for the walking animation, I agree with Aussie that number one is most suitable - your shoulders don't bounce that much unless you're doing it on purpose. At best they sway side to side - and as he's been likely beaten and disgraced by this point in the story, it's unlikely he'll have all that much spring in his step as to get his shoulders a-bouncin' as they are in 2 or 3.

LOOM was basically one big compendium of great classical music. Granted, as the music was run through 'inferior' soundcards when released (by today's standards, of course), it isn't perhaps exactly what Kinoko was talking about, but it still had a great feel to it. When I first played it (As a wee laddie) I didn't realize it wasn't original to the game, so I was blown away. I recognized some of The Nutcracker, and maybe a bit of Swan Lake, but things really don't connect at that age like they do now. Back then, I'd spend time even just sitting in front of the computer, listening to the music (A habit I carry to this day, though not necessarily the LOOM soundtrack exclusively).

Ahh.. Lovely.

Something more recent, and not public domain (like the LOOM soundtrack was, by and large) is the music in the WipEout series (A 'futuristic' racing game released on the Playstation, Sega Saturn and for DOS, for those not in the know). Particularly "Wipeout XL". It featured some awesome techno of the day, by Fluke, Future sound of London, The Prodigy, Chemical Brothers and so on. It fit the game really well, and had the sort of high energy generally needed for such a game.

And I agree, the Neverhood and Skullmonkeys had awesome music as well. I want those soundtracks.

I think I gave myself carpal tunnel making this.


This little guy does the moonwalk on the moon.

I stand corrected, I s'pose. We get 'barbecue' flavor in California, which I suppose has a vaguely meaty taste - though primarily 'barbecue sauce', but I'd honestly never seen a 'meat' flavored chip before I came here. Oh well - the mascot's still cute.

The way I see it, 'beef' flavor is an odd thing to put on a potato chip. Maybe it's just my prissy elven heritage; granted 'meat and potatos' is nothing new, but am I the only one who finds 'meat' an odd potato chip flavor? Especially when added seemingly arbitrarily just to round out your flavors...

[really]

Ah, the wacky engrish of Japan - I've encountered no small number of occurrances of Engrish and its like in the years I've been here. I also just so happen to have a few on file. So, since this is the thread for it, I think I'll share.

Exhibit 1: Salt & Beef Potato Chips.


I know the english isn't exactly incorrect, being a valid potato chip flavor, but I still wanted to pimp out the marvelous Yamayoshi brand "And Beef" potato chip series. Other favorites include Curry & Beef, Mayonnaise & Beef, and my personal favorite Wasa-Beef (spicy).

Exhibit 2: 'Alcoholic shirt'



It's been a while since I had pretty, long blue hair, but take a look at that sweater. The front and back seem not to really agree with one another. I fall into the 'back' category, but I do love my alcoholic shirt. It's not pictured, but on the sleeve is printed: SAME: Success or Failure, it's all the same to me
...Yup.

Exhibit 3: Toothpick


One could argue, of course, that this is one of those 'cover your ass' situations, where they want people to be sure they know that if they poked a sharp wooden object, the mini-stake generally wins, but still... is it really necessary?

That's all I have for now. If this thread's still going Thursday night, I'll take a picture of the side of the local casino. It's pretty damned baffling.

Well, the doormat indeed is going to end up looking something like that when your VPs are close together like that - I've had the same sort of trouble with BGs as well, and when it comes to perspective, it's best, honestly, to move your VPs as far away from one another as possible - otherwise you end up with a warped, hard-zoom like that. At the very least, I'd suggest you push one or both of your VPs off the edge of the image, if nothing else than to make it easier to keep objects closer to the edges from getting too out of whack.

Also, as Nikolas mentioned, the welcome mat ought to have the inner edge at least partially visible. One of those problems with simple shapes in close perspective is that when they go off the edge of the page, oftentimes you really can't tell where they're supposed to stop. This can theoretically be avoided by adding some detail that'll give people more of a 'doormat' idea, but as much as it sucks to have to redo an entire BG, I'd suggest reworking the image with more distant VPs.

Also, though you may or may not need nor want it, this site provides a lot of really handy insight into perspective work.