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I haven't mucked about with it yet but there's also FreshDownload @ http://www.freshdevices.com It's free, has no spyware, and.. it's free.

Just a little meanness for Darth here.  Odd that the stairs' shadow's furthest point is pointing so very near the open door's light.  

Anyway, don't get stuck too much on realism or ultimate perfect perspective.  That BG's turning out great and matches the style of the stuff you've recently posted.  Absolutely excellent.  My only concern at this point is whether you're going to use the char sprites you've been having C&C'd for awhile.  This BG seems to be higher on the realism scale with harder lines.  I hope the two styles mesh okay.

One thing that interests & irritates me is people's ignorance about fire and flammable materials.  In the USMC, working on diesel generators outdoors toward the end of a 32-hour workday, generator's tank is sealed, no leaks around, step 5 feet away and light a cigarette.  An officer stomps up to me, grabs my smoke, breaks it in half, throws it on the ground and grinds it out with his boot.  He proceeds to yell at me for being a careless dimwit who probably is more interested in his mother than he ought to be (language cleaned up severely here), proceeds to lecture me on dangers of smoking near fuel-using machinery.  

Maybe because it was a long day, maybe because he was dense in a brainwashed sort of way.  I ask if I can smoke 20 feet away.  He lets me. I light up and promptly walk over to a 5 gallon bucket of diesel fuel we'd drained earlier and drop the lit cigarette in.  Of course, it's extinguished.  I mutter, "Ah, break's over, time to work" and do that.  The guy never said another word to me.

Disclaimer: Don't try this at home kids, there's always a chance of circumstances being just right.

I still have not played the Grim Fandango, will it play on XP?

Gave it to my ex for Xmas so she could play it again, running superbly on a Gateway 1.8Ghz w/ 256 RAM & GF3ti200/Win XP SP1 with no special patches or slow-downs.  I was surprised.

By the way, I'm getting the feeling that Eric's gotta import AGS friends since nobody here likes him.  

I was sitting here mentally mocking those that struggle with spam (The laughs have an interesting echo to them) as my mailbox never receives any.  I have to munch on my words because I finally got one:

It's from: jennifer@surfersarepeopletoo.com
With the very informative subject: ADV:ADLT from your ex
She writes:
hey it's krista, i know you said you didnt care what I did with the tapes of us doing it so I sold them to some california hot shot for his site. Brandon, you never should have cheated now the whole world is going to see your little dick on camera Payback's A Bitch Isnt It, I look good on video, to bad you don't LOL I'm showing everyone

A bit quirky. She seems to be as confused about her name as she is about mine.

Another method. If you're planning on setting a friend on fire, follow him around with a bellows so you can blow the flames out.

Mine's overall pretty crappy. One of the dullest lists.

Chuck Conners (Name's vaguely familiar)
John Madden (Heard of 'im. Couldn't care less)
Mandy Moore (Am I utterly doomed here? Jeez)
Haley Joel Osment (Cool little dude, destined to become a severe jackass)
Joseph Pulitzer (a bit cool, low on bragging rights)

Looks like a new spin on an aging scam.  The old one had variations from inheritance to a company being shut down by the government.  It only counted upon people's greed to garner responses.  This one preys a bit upon emotions as well.  

Death to spammers indeed.  It seems odd to me that more of us don't have a friend or family member (that we know of) that spams for a bit of extra income.  Given the multitude of spam that's sent out, the fact that many of us are quite computer literate and know others of the same mindset, and our international membership, it seems like somebody here ought to know somebody who does this sort of thing on a regular basis.  If you do, and you're just not speaking up, I urge you to consider killing them.  I'm not heartless, make it a swift & virtually painless death if you wish.

checking the serial numbers against known existing serial numbers to ensure that the "printed papers" aren't detected.

. . .one of my ancestors. . .
. . . was sexually active with the nun (Who was his cousin... ) . . .

That actually explains quite a lot.  

The song by Outkast (can't remember the title..1 of 2 I've heard) won't make for nostalgia in my case.  Perhaps I'd have to be more open-minded about music or more of a general music-lover to see the virtue in it.  Maybe it's just not my style, almost every aspect of it makes me cringe.  I was trying to pick a more neutral group but couldn't come up with one; an example of non-original, flat music that's become popular for who knows what reason.  

Since we're venturing into the realm of pet peeves & music, it's one of mine when people adore a song (usually a 1-hit wonder type) and don't get it.  They miss the irony or the tongue-in-cheek glibness and take it at face value.  

A couple examples: Bad Touch by The Bloodhound Gang.  I dug it for awhile, then it got too much overplay by people that didn't understand that it was essentially satire.  It's sad when satire of pop-music becomes popular and most miss that it's a parody.  Another example is the song, "Popular (Can't remember artist)." For awhile, I noticed that people & movies took the words at face-value.  I'm not an "If too many people like it, it blows," sort of person, more just ashamed that many people are superficial and thick-skulled.
[edit: Since I've already got far too many posts on this page, quick mention -"Every Breath You Take" is my friend and his fiance's song.  They plan to have it played sometime during their wedding.  Talk about creepy.]

Truthfully, didn't notice the plant on top of the sofa.  That could use the same treatment.  If you pick certain leaves that are supposed to be behind others or deeper "into" the plant, darken those a shade or two for depth while darkening some of the ones that are away from the light.  

I totally forgot to mention the thing I started the last post about.  The left part of the stair rail appears 2-dimentional.  I can see how it might be an angled block but the right rail being at a different height disrupts that viewpoint.  Just 1 flat shade darker on one plane of the rail would do wonders.  The pillars, elevator & walls were clarified quite a bit.  There might be a couple things that stand out here and there but definately nothing to cry too much about.  The angle and content of this BG shows a certain vision and IMO, that's the most important thing.

Well, with an example like that, it's more marketing than music anyway.  When portrayed as a chaste, innocent teen Spears sold as many albums as she has all the later ones put together.  Whilst tormenting coworkers about their appreciation of BS, I didn't encounter anyone who liked the music and didn't say something along the lines of, "She's cute/hot/sexy."  I personally disagree with that assessment.  While I'm sure to get at least one disagreement, I think Outkast is utter tripe and it's garnering radio airtime at a frightening pace around here.

The trouble with a lot of music fans is that they take whatever genre too seriously.  Every genre has its ups & downs, its masters and its stinkers.  I often listen to stuff that doesn't take itself too seriously, particular when in a wry mood.  As far as Techno, hardcore fans will tell you otherwise, but the "up" side of the stuff is that it's good for dancing too.  It's all about the rhythm the tempo and the bassline.  As for me, I hardly count techno as music at all, mostly as club/movie/game ambient noise.  

Yeah, he's there for testing but Pessi's original point (correct me if I'm wrong here) was that the demo game was a new AGS user's first impression of the engine.  I don't know about the rest of you but when I fired up a couple different game-making programs, I checked the demo game first thing, messed around with capabilities, checked out graphics and what kind of effects were possible.  

Especially since we've now got some advanced graphics options, there's a lot we could improve upon.  If the graphics are redone, however, they have to be consistent.  So, a competition wouldn't necessarily be a Sprite Jam but more of a conglomeration.  A kind of Sprite Jam/Background Blitz.  If there's going to be a new demo scripted then some coordination would be needed there.    

Or, we could vote/decide upon a style to emulate.  It would be quite cool to show a new user that the engine can be used to make a very DOTT or SQ type game.  

This thing looks great.  I like the detail & fairly flat style.  Since everything else has been covered, I'll just mention that I think you should ditch the use of black or near-black for everything (except maybe the tires, depending upon preference).  The lines are good all around but when you throw in some high-saturation colors (high numbered colors on the RGB scale) they tend to stand out like an opposable thumb on a giraffe.

I think the plant can be saved by some shading tucked in here and there.  It's got good detail but just looks flat compared to the two-tone shading of the rest.  If there are technical perspective errors, I don't think they matter much as the background (as a whole) is outstanding.  

The stairs (unless they're supposed to be flat-ish) could use a bit of work.  If it's an escalator, the steps still resemble those of a stair until they reach the top.  If it's a conveyor-belt arrangement then you might put spindles to show that.

The lines of the stairs are a bit dark, IMO.  Everything else has got a soft tone to it so the black really stands out.  Maybe a dark grey?  The elevator's divider looks a bit light.  Since there's almost always a gap of some sort there, maybe it should be 1-pixel wider and a couple shades darker.  It's also flush with the border and should probably look set back, at least a little.

There's a bit of shading inconsistency.  The left-most pillar has its bottom color reversed from what it should be.  The shadows seem cast from different directions and some things seem to cast a shadow while others don't. I'm also having a bit of trouble determining if the columns on the left are supporting nothing past their midpoint or if there's ceiling there.  Some shading or appropriate lines could clarify this a bit.  

Sorry there's so many nit-pickings.  I saw it and my jaw dropped, it's a very attractive background.  It wasn't until I got into c&c mode that I became a bastard.  

Not replacing it with another color of cup, god forbid!  Just meant giving it a nicer look.  

I'd be willing (and proud) to re-do as much of the graphics as I was allowed to but lack the skill that others could bring the project.  Hence, I become another member of the peanut-gallery.

Strangely, a good point is brought up in a round-about way.  I've been thinking along those lines for awhile now.  A replacement for the default bluecup is also long overdue.  No offense to CJ, but it'd be nice to kick AGS up to some really clean/professional-looking graphics for its demo.

The window & door thing is right but the building's structure might match perspective, depending upon how you look at it.  If the grass is sloping up towards the fence in the background, then everything's copacetic.  If that's the case, some shading might clarify the issue.  Other than that and the line under the hills, I think it looks pretty neat & clean and (most importantly) workable for gameplay.