Messages

I'm not an experienced animator, but here's how I'd aproach each cycle:
Don't worry about details, just quickly scribble the character at first.
Draw a basic view of the character between steps (neutral height)
Copy the basic view, shift it down a pixel or two and rearrange legs/arms (for the downstep)
Make another copy, shifting the basic view up a pixel or two, again redrawing the legs/arms (for the high point when the character is beginning a new step)

That will give you key frames for half of the walk cycle. The other half can be based on the first. Play around with that until you like it, and then start doing the actual drawing and any in between frames you want.

I hope that addresses your question. If you were wondering about something more specific, I'd be happy to try and help out.

This is a relatively minor character. He's a sort of general purpose laborer for a small airline. He carries baggage and helps passengers, etc. I'm drawing him first because I want to learn as much as I can before starting the main characters.

sketch and shaded version
He's supposed to be in early middle age, slightly droopy and not in top shape. He's wearing a somewhat stiff felty uniform with a row of buttons down the front. His feet are in fairly high black leather boots. I'm aiming to make him look dilligent and nice, but slightly bored.

All comments are welcome. I'm particularly interested in posture/emotion and shading. All comments, particularly ones that question assumptions, are welcome.

By the way, the palette is 16 grays.

Great style, I really like the sharp edged, slightly irregular lighting.

The execution is excellent, there are many well drawn details. I love the way you drew the monitor, plant, lights and ladder.

Most of my comments are about the early planning stages- I know it would probably take the same amount of time to draw a new background using these suggestions as it would to incorporate them into the current picture. So don't expect these to make it into the next edit or anything...

I think the overall composition could have used a little work before you charged in and started working. As joelphilippage said, less regular camera placement can add a lot to an image. It can be really powerful to angle the camera toward an object of interest or tilt it down slightly so the floor takes up more screen space than the ceiling. You're a great artist, I'd love to see how you handle more complex perspective.

Your lighting is so compelling, I'd love to see more variations in intensity. Maybe a dark corner, a burnt out or differently colored lightbulb, a pool of light from a floor lamp, or a soft glow from the monitor would be nice.

I like Darth Mandarb's foreground object idea in his edit. It might be nice to frame the image a little with pipes, an electrical box or something similar. And, as has been said, more clutter would be fun.

To change the way GUI's stack, change the ZOrder number. The lower the number, the farther in front your GUI will be placed. So if your Options screen is set to 6, set your save and load screens to 5.

Esper: 50 backgrounds! You're an industrious sort.

TheIvy: neat website. I'm looking forward to having more than 'Spooks' in the games section.

ProgZmax: those sprites are pretty different from your usual style, but they're very consistent. Nice work!

Auriond: The Marionette demo had a lot of atmosphere. I'm looking forward to the release. Sorry to hear you've been busy lately, game development is fun.

Thanks for your reply- I unfortunately had to quit without saving, but I've since rewritten all the lost changes. Luckily I was doing dialog, and the original draft of everything is safe in a notebook.

Maybe I'm remembering this wrong, but I don't recall a script line number in the error message itself. Choosing to fix the error via the button in the error dialog took me to the top of the global script.

Your helpful suggestions have been filed for future use. It's good to know exactly what is lost when you don't save changes. I'll also remember to check warnings.log the next time I have an EOF problem, that sounds helpful.

Great original sprite, and nice improvements with each update. I really like the style.

I like the way SteveMcCrea defined the chest shape with shading. Boston in The Dig is another good example of this. It might also look nice to use the same technique on the arms and legs: darken the upper arms slightly and darken the legs below the knee for a little more definition. If your final pallette limits you to two levels of shading, this might be harder to pull off.

I still think his right arm is short. I'd nudge his elbow down a couple of pixels and bring his hand down to mid-thigh.

Other than that, great work! I look forward to seeing future edits (if you make any) other new art from you.

When I try to test the project I'm working on I get an EOF error. I've read in previous threads that this is likely a typo like a missing semicolon, or an issue with braces.

The problem is, the error is in the global script. I'm not sure where in its ponderous depths the error is. I've looked for an hour or so, manually checking areas I've recently edited and using the 'match brace' function, but it seems like I'm not going to find the error any time soon.

I'm considering just reverting to the last saved version. If I were to close the document without saving, how much progress would I lose? Would it revert to the last point I ran a test? Would it revert to the way it was before the AGS editor was first opened?

Nihilyst: Wow, you've been busy. Nice work all around. You mention The Secret of Mana 2- have you played the third game in the series? If you like the art in 2 I'd definitely recommend it.
Darth Mandarb: I'm happy to see that Amulet of Kings is alive and well. I like the new sprites- I think the less cartoony proportions will work well in your game.
Peder Johnsen: Is that first person? It looks interesting. I'll download your mouse demo as soon as I can (I'm on a mac for the next week or so).
SpacePirateCaine: nice artwork. I look forward to more on this project in the future.
Akatosh: I was wondering what your avatar was about. I like the premise. I can't tell, but it seems like there are two storylines in parallel. That sounds fun.

These are from a previously unannounced project that has been in progress for a number of months. The placeholder title is Placeholder:


The room belongs to an elderly housekeeper with a gardening hobby. The accompanying image is an early sprite of the main character (in a sailor suit). He's an intelligent, somewhat quiet child with an active imagination. His placeholder name is also Placeholder.

Placeholder travels from his home to a faraway jungle research station where his parents are posted. Faced with busy parents and a brother with a terminal illness, he responds the way any intelligent, sensitive person will; by reading a lot of fairy tales and imagining he lives in a fantasy world. The story has a fantasy setting with a vaguely British 1840's-ish flavor with a few misplaced elements like zeppelins and gender equality. The game will be relatively short, with the focus on detail rather than length.

[Thoughts so far]

Vince Twelve:
Good point about visual feedback. I think you're right that it would be clearer to use a blank status bar for "walk to" and only show verb + noun text when we're over an object/hotspot/character. I'll definitely make that change. Thanks for reaffirming my goal of keeping things minimal. Regarding "Take painting" -> "I'm not an art thief." type interactions: I agree, that's not a useful interaction. It can also be frustrating to the novice player. Repeated "I can't do that." messages can create a sort of antagonistic relationship with the player character, which I want to avoid in this case.

GarageGothic:
(1) In cases where an object like a tapestry or painting only has a "look at" interaction, the status bar will say "look at painting" or perhaps just "painting". I've played with the idea that left click should also be "look at" in these cases. I'm a little worried that it would be confusing. The other option is having left click be "walk to" or do nothing. Hmm, here's an idea. What about displaying the object name in a dimly colored font in 'look only' cases, and using a brighter font and "verb + noun" text for more important interactive objects?
(2) Yeah, the right click is always the same. It's always optional, it never does things like "look at coat on coat rack > give player key from coat pocket". And that's a good point about immersion. I'm trying to balance simplicity and user feedback here, and maybe displaying "right click: look at noun" all the time is too much feedback. As Vince Twelve said, it might even be less informative.
(3) Use a pause menu? Yeah, those icon bar buttons always bothered me too. I think I'll do that, it seems like the best compromise. I'll also definitely have hotkeys for save, load, quicksave, quickload, and quit functions. Thanks for suggesting using the standard layout, I think I'll take you up on that.

Thoughts so far
(1) I'm currently leaning toward "noun" in a dim font for scenery, and "verb + noun" in a brighter font for important objects.
(2) It looks like so far people are against the idea of displaying status bar text for both left and right buttons. As a player I am myself, but I wonder if a novice to the adventure game genre would agree. I don't want to make the game inaccessible or confusing to beginners, so I'm trying to anticipate any problems people might have. I'll be curious to hear what other people think.
(3) The pause dialog with keyboard hotkeys seems like the best option, though I'd still be interested to hear people's thoughts on other options.

[The GUI:]

I'm not sure I'm posting in the right place, but as far as I can tell from "read before posting" threads this is the best place. I'm working on a GUI for an unannounced AGS project, and I'm putting a lot of work into making it professional and well thought out. The main goals are simplicity and user friendliness. I have a few ideas I'd appreciate feedback on.

The GUI:

• There's an inventory panel that runs across the top of the screen.
  
• Below that there's a line of context sensitive text.
  
• On launching the game, the player is presented with a splash screen containing "New game", "Restore", and "Quit" buttons.
  
• On entering a room, the name of the room is briefly displayed across the bottom of the screen along with a small icon.

There are three modes of interaction:

• Right click is look.
  
• Left click is multifunction- walk to/open/close/interact/talk/pick up. The text line changes to reflect what verb is currently appropriate. For example it might say "pick up matchbook", "close door" or "talk to Mr. Smith".
  
• Clicking on an inventory item changes the cursor to that item. Left clicking uses the item on the target.
  

Unresolved issues:
(1) How should the GUI handle non-interactive objects? To clarify, there are a lot of background hotspots like "painting" or "potted plant" in the game. Should both left and right click look at the object? Or should left clicking give a custom message to the effect of "I can't interact with that."?
(2) Should the text line display both left and right click information? It would be color coded it, and look something like this:
[color=333366]Left click: open chest[/color] | [color=663333]Right click: look at chest[/color]
I'm considering adding a picture of a mouse with color coded buttons that sits where the "|" is in the example above.
(3) How should I integrate the save/quit/restore options? I like how clean the GUI is right now, and would prefer not to add any buttons from that point of view. I'm leaning toward using keyboard shortcuts because of this. However, part of me disagrees and says that a few clearly labeled buttons would be more user friendly. A third option is moving those buttons to a pause screen (popup modal, comes up on <esc> or <space>). Are there other options I haven't considered?

Any and all feedback is welcome. I'd also be interested to hear what interfaces people have chosen for their own projects and why.

I second that, I'd be happy to see a game with art like this. What sort of character art style would you choose to go with backgrounds like this?

I particularly like the picture of the earth and moon. They're all very pleasing though. While they look nice. in terms of walkable area both the first picture you showed us (rock pillars) and the fourth (building in open plain) might not work very well. Great work regardless, I look forward to seeing future work from you.

You're right, after my grandmother went senile she used to walk to the post office in her bathrobe.

Nice edit, by the way.

If that doesn't work, you could create a boolean that is 0 during idle, and 1 during a conversation.

Creating a new variable

Code: ags

bool GryTalking = 0;

Addition to character script

Code: ags

GryTalking = 1;
// conversation starts here
GryTalking = 0;

Modification of the repeatedly_execute script

Code: ags

Ã,  if (GryTalking != 1) {
Ã,  Ã,  if (cGryson.Moving == true) GryWait = 10;
Ã,  Ã,  else {
Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  if (GryWait > 0) GryWait --;
Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  else {
Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  if (cGryson.x == 228) cGryson.Walk(139,114);
Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  else cGryson.Walk(228, 117);
Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  }
Ã,  Ã,  }

[Tiny nitpicks]

He looks good! The style is consistent and his face implies a lot of details without being noisy. You could stop now and have a perfectly decent sprite. But if you want to obsess and be nitpicky, read on. Otherwise please roll the rest of this post into a small ball and toss it in the trash.

Tiny nitpicks
His feet are a bit too far forward in the side view- his center of gravity would probably be under his shoulders.
Posture: heavier people are fat in the front, but not very puffy in back. He'd probably look more solid if his shoulders were further back.
Angle of view: as you pointed out, in the front view his feet are tilted downward as if we are looking slightly downward, but in the side view we appear to be looking perfectly horizontally at him. If your game is a perfect side view, the right view is OK and the front view should be changed. If your game uses a slightly tilted camera angle, the side view could use another leg behind the foreground one, with the foot slightly higher.
Symmetry: a lot of people seem to feel that asymmetrical poses are more lively and engaging. It's a matter of opinion, but in the future you might want to take that into consideration. This man looks like he's posing for a photograph or standing on the scale at the doctor's office, rather than lounging around his house in his bathrobe.

That's looking nice. Like SimB, I was immediately reminded of Another World. The solid color fill and sharp, sometimes polygonal edges are neat, I'd love to see someone do a project in that style. Here's a screenshot:
That's perhaps not the most representative image, most of the game was lower detail and looked more like your image.

Nice work Nihilyst. I especially like the avocado green color of the hill in the background. I'm at a friend's house and don't think I'll be able to enter this round, so best wishes to all of you who can! I'll be cheering from the sidelines.

If commercial games are included, I'll have to nominate Grim Fandango. I'm by no means a rabid Grim Fandango fan, but that title really has the best voice acting I've ever heard in a video game. Ben from Full Throttle is also nice.

Frankly, I can't say I've ever heard impressive voice acting in an amateur adventure game. It's a really difficult thing to pull off well, and bad voice acting often totally wrecks the atmosphere for me.

I second that. Even at the professional level, I'm almost always incredibly turned off the voice acting.

Nice work TheJBurger. I especially like the palm trees. The lights in the background are well drawn, they have a nice variety of sizes.

When looking at the background zoomed out I'm quite content with it. But when I zoom in it feels a lot less consistent. I'm fine with the level of roughness overall. I quite like the parts of the background with rough, more textured brush strokes (the floor, the left wall above the stalls, the right stairwell, etc.).

I 'm feeling a little conflict between the overall loose style and the tighter outlines in some places (The strip of lights above the balcony on the right wall, the chimney above the rear stall on the left, the benches along the center stall, etc.). I'm not against outlines; I like the looser, antialiased lines you use in many places (they're particularly nice on the back wall and the rear left stall). If all the outlines were done in that style I think I'd be happier with the piece as a whole.

The colors are pretty solid. The piece definitely has atmosphere. There are some neat parts where you vary a color across a surface. Little deliberate color impurities like that are fun. The touches of green in the sketchy lines along the back and right walls is another example of your use of color that I like.

Great background, I hope my comments are helpful.