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Just wanted to show you something really quickly. I know it seems like too much of a pain to switch to low res now, but,I mean....

And this is the re-make of it I'm currently kicking around the idea of making into a full game:

So...I dunno. I know your game isn't nearly the extreme like this is, but I really think the switch would help.

It certainly looks easier. But I'm on the fence about the efficacy of low res adventure games.

The Lucas Arts (and other) classics were more limited than boosted by the low res environment. Just look at the concept art produced for them.


This stuff wasn't low res or low detail. As far as I know the low res format was purely a result of technology limitations at the time.

That said, it is now it's own art style / genre -- which is perfectly fine. I just wouldn't want to lean on it for lack of being able to produce (or learning to produce) high quality work.

Btw, I fed your neat night scene into this vector tool I have:


If you cleaned that up a little you could probably up-convert to a higher resolution if you were inclined toward such.

You've got to decide if you want to
a) produce backgrounds quick and dirty and move on to creating the rest of the game
b) invest some time and practice to create decent backgrounds.

Many thanks for your suggestions. I'll take option 3 and mix suggestions with my own style.
And I'm positive you won't want to play any of my games. So don't bother looking at my threads

"number of algorithms"?

What is that? 

You didn't painted this then?

The image immediately above was a photo taken in Antarctica. I adjusted the hue and touched up the sky, reduced the palette, then I ran it through a raster to vector program.

Damn, I just spent 1 hour trying to come up with something to help you. I failed miserably.
=(

@Jim

Thanks for your effort all the same.

For some of my outdoors backgrounds I'm using a number of algorithms and photo editing.

This is supposed to be set on a meteoroid.

I think it matches the style. But I am completely incapable of criticizing my own work 

I'd say hi-res is great for 3D graphics or rendered backgrounds, because with those, you don't want to see individual pixels as in they try to imitate reality.

For hand-drawn backgrounds though, lo-res doesn't just save work but also looks better in most cases (except for specific graphical styles like simulating actual paper drawings and the like, but again, those try to imitate reality).
Tracing photos essentially produces line art, and thus it's important to have clean lines and well defined shapes. Lo-res is the way to go here, IMO.

I can definitely see the appeal. I've already got 4 puzzles done and about 10 rooms, so I won't change now.

I do have my graphics tablet here though, so I might go through with art rage at the end and put some detail into the more plain backgrounds.

I'll also find time to redo my characters from my concept art in high detail. Perhaps toward a more CMI look and feel.

Thanks for the advice guys.

However from a personal, selfish perspective there is no logical impediment to life long stasis. if you wouldnt know the difference and your life would be perfect what would stop you?

Because you know the difference now. And the only point of having knowledge is to better one's self in the future. If one knows that action A causes a consequence equivalent to death, then why would one undertake action A, unless deranged to the point of suicidality?

From a personal selfish perspective -- the only perspective -- your actions will conform with your internal values. If your internal values are toward self-termination, for whatever reason, then maybe tank-life would be an option. But if your values are toward survival and reproduction, as most people's are, why would you even be remotely tempted to act against these values?

The stasis tank is a bad example because it suggests the system can be unplugged. A better example is the veil in the fifth harry potter book. It's a one way entry to a kind of death.

You can put whatever you want over there, but in so far as people are unable to satisfy their life goals there, they will be no more tempted to enter there than they would be to enter an active gas chamber.

DeepNet will keep you under in perpetuity and keep you healthy which no ill effects.

Well that just depends on your definition of healthy. I would define health as the proper functioning of an organ or organism. Which would case both drug use and deepnet into the unhealthy category.

Anyway, cool story. Keep up the good work.

I think your forgetting the 48 hour constraint :p It's hard to form a cohesive and consistent story in that period of time.

Yeah that's true. It is quite an achievement for 48 hours.

DeepNet was a corporate entity that could offer people a "better than reality" experience. They said that you could jump into the pods and be happy for the rest of your life. You'd never know you were in there and life would be perfect.

Makes me think of: Abre los ojos meets The matrix.

because i mean logically there is no reason NOT to get into the pod and yet something about the human condition makes us want reality more than a more favourable fantasy.

Well there is actually. The utility function of a gene is to promote the continued existence of that gene. Accepting life-long stasis would be a form of suicide, if there were no way to get out once under.

But we don't need to look to the future for examples of this. People use heroin right now to exactly the same effect. And even though it's as readily available as cigarettes in most cities, most people don't run out and dope up. Why? Because they have their lives to lead; Another way of saying their genes push them onward toward reproduction.

Genes only know how to do one thing: maintain themselves. The cells in your hand only know how to be a hand, and make more hand cells. Your brain and heart and liver and lungs are a means to an end from the perspective of that cell. Each organ in your body exists in nearly perfect ignorance of the other organs. They are all cooperative parasites on your brain, which is a cooperative parasite on them.

But the selfish desire to survive is the very definition of life. The purpose of life is to replicate. That's why it still exists. Any dynamic system without a bent toward continued existence will cease to exist. Life exists because the meaning of life is life itself.

Our hero awakens in a strange world, tethered to strange machines, unsure of how he got there and if he wants to go back...

I thought artistically it was well put together. The backgrounds, animations, interface, music, etc.

But the moral of the story... to me at least, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense;
Deepnet is a pretty explicit analogy for the state. But if talking the state out of violence actually worked, then wouldn't we all be free already?

If all that was needed to stop organized crime was to sit down with mob bosses (and likewise politicians) and explain to them that humans are not their chattel, then surely we would not have had 10,000 years of grinding poverty and slavery...

Remember in 1984, Winston doesn't win. Talking doesn't work, because the people inflicting violence are psychopaths.

The other thing that doesn't make sense is that this centrally planned economy with all the vats and enforcers etc could even exist in the first place. The government can't even run a public school or fix major roads once a decade, even with > 50% of the resources of the productive sector. If everyone is in vats, how is it managing to maintain itself?

back on track, I see you say this is your first game...so why go hi-res?

Why go low res? Convention?

I've redrawn both backgrounds in clean lines now.

I strongly suggest to ditch the gradient, and do it all by hand. Didn't you read what Andail said about gradients up above (his tutorial)? Also, it looks plain because you need to add random clutter around, eg. books, shelves, pictures on the wall etc.

We're hijacking this thread. I'll try to post something in your thread about this BG ( I think you did start one?) by tomorrow.

It's fine. My time investment in backgrounds is already over-budget. But thanks for your help.

Incidentally I did read the guide a couple of times. I have tried some of the techniques in there before, and I don't find them to be as applicable to high resolution backgrounds.

Now it's already a little more content. I must check that radial lighting thing. The thing you did there isn't quite what I'm looking for but maybe if it's used with an extremely soft touch...

Yeah, I'm not sure.

You might want to just add shadows and highlights manually.

Incidentally, to add shading like this, get a layered paint program, create a blank layer on top of the image.
Put a greyscale gradient on the blank layer, and set the layer to 50% transparency.
Bind the two layers together, then adjust the contrast to bring back the colours in the image.

As you can propably see the background is still under construction but it's already obvious that it's too plain and a bit too happy/colourful for my intentions. I'm not looking for a filmnoir type of dark atmosphere but a little more realistic aproach than the current candyland scheme. But as I'm kinda new to these things I'd like to hear your advice how to accomplish my goals.

I'm by no means an expert. But if it's an outdoor scene, and it's set at midday, then you can use hard shadows and vivid colours.

You might also want to try using a radial lighting scheme like this. Photos taken on real cameras have a sort of additional brightness in the center of focus, and less exposure toward the edges.

I think your image has too much white, so objects don't have easily visible outlines.

Anyway, here's an example of what I'm trying to tell you:

http://i46.tinypic.com/2epol0p.png

The first one is the original image.
The second one is the image reduced to only 8 colours in GIMP.
On the third you can see how I traced the table, and cleaned up the stray pixels.

Yes, it's still a lot of work, but Gimp gives you the colours (and where to put them) and shapes, and you work from there. Some drawing practice is desirable also. =)

Hi Jim,

Thanks for your advice. I took a shot at the limited pallet redraw:
http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/1605/bedroomnew.png

The result looks ok, I think. But it still seems a little plain...

The trolley is empty, therefore she has nothing to lose by going away? That's her whole life in that box...yes, her life is very...empty.

It's po-mo art;

As I interpret it, it's just an expression of nihilism. The box that follows you is just 'stuff'; emotionless and empty. And all that can be said is 'stuff' follows you around in life. There's no purpose to any of it; It's just things that happen, and stuff that apparently exists.

The lack of overall meaning I think is the goal of the piece.

But man lighten up! Art is supposed to make you feel richer for the experience. Ordinary life has enough despair in it already without dark nihilistic art dragging everyone down!

Well, not to barge in on Andail's turf, but I'd firstly reduce colours to only 8 or something as low as you can manage (Gimp can do that, just don't use dihtering while doing it), to get cartoony looking surfaces. Then you trace it (if needed), and add some colours by hand back on. If you don't understand my mutterings, I'll gladly provide an example.

Hi Jim,

This is along the lines of what I've been trying to do. But it doesn't look particularly convincing. If I take out too many colours then the surfaces blur together which just looks washed out.

http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/2980/bedroomshot.png

I'm guessing that the only decent way to give it a lucas arts feel is to redraw from scratch via pixelart techniques; But I may be wrong...

Also, a short aside: I wanted my game viewport in 16:10. Is this actually possible at high resolutions? Say: 1400x900

Thanks,
Sythe

Allright, I've been hung-over and ridiculously productive this weekend. Here's the first chapter of my guide, comprising 5 backgrounds sent to me by generous AGSers.

Please note that this is not primarily a technical tutorial, it's based on very general art principles applied on various backgrounds.

Hi Andail,

Any techniques you'd recommend for converting a photographic background to cartoon?

http://www.gas13.ru/v3/tutorials/sywtbapa_making_fighting_game_sprite.php

Take a look, i'm sure it will help you!  (take a look at the other lessons too!)

Nice find. I could do with some lessons myself.

But getting back on topic I like the way you drew her but of course like I said I'm kind of going for her fighting pose or stance to begin with. Then I'm going to try to animate her. Again to all who have helped me so far thanks.

Well fighting is all about balance, and balance is all about the positioning of your feet.

I suggest you don't worry too much about the high heels until you have the basic bone structure down. Effectively the heels should make the legs appear slightly longer, and will make the shin to ankle angles more extreme.


Only a very rough copy, but you might be after something more like this:

Thanks Ben but I only meant that I was keeping the cursiveness. As for the skirt issue I will correct that when I redo her clothes.  Oh and I slightly modified the face that you made where she is now wearing make up. Blue eyeliner and pink lipstick.

Not sure exactly what you're aiming for, but this is along the lines of how I'd draw her:



One of the issues I find I have with drawing women is I tend to accentuate the curves far far too much. (Male brain bias, of course.) If you look at a real woman for what she really is -- the flesh and bone -- you will notice that her curves are accented through their subtly and continuity and only very rarely through any heavy divergence from a normal form.

This is my first AGS game, and I've been having some trouble settling on an art style.

I wanted some feedback on whether these two rooms should be redone in the same style, or if you think the mixed style works.






NB: I haven't painted the player character yet because I'm still doing all her animations.

Spoiler

copy the .exe and rename to .txt. Open the file with notepad and search for a part of the riddle. The answer is written there as well.

[close]

Ha, that's sort of funny. I did pull the literals from the executable and from memory several times, but never spotted that.