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I know I seem to start one of these threads every 2 months. Sorry about that 

I realized the other day that I had tried my hand at doing a non pixel style of background for ages and it is something that I keep wanting to learn. Seeing as I had some free time this evening, I thought I'd take another shot at it. It's about dang time, really.



Most of the elements here are inspired by Loominous' various backgrounds, but I kept the layout pretty simple for now because I didn't want to break my head trying to draw all sorts of neato stuff. I'm actually fairly happy with how both the foreground and the background turned out, but I know that there's new techniques you guys can teach me, so I eagerly await your critics! If there is a single thing I have to point out that I dislike it would be the lack of texture on the grass.

Technique wise I used 2 layers for this image, one for the sky, clouds and moon and one for the hill and shack. To do the background I used a large soft edge brush with the pressure sensitivity set to opacity and size, and to do the foreground I used a small soft edged brush with the same settings. I forgot to time myself but I'm guessing it was somewhere between 15-30 minutes (a long time, I know  )

As with all the past times, your time is very much appreciated.

Sally is taking a walk outside one fine day when she comes across a strange box.

Curious as to who would leave such a strange box lying around, she opens it - only to find herself in a very strange place indeed.

Help Sally uncover the true nature of the box and find her way home!

Control Sally with your left (use) and right (look) mouse buttons!



Get it here!

The following people have my thanks for their awesome help:

Sebastian - as always, magical music and good advice about how I can improve my ideas.

Funkmast - jumped in at the last minute and filled my game world with sound effects aplenty!

Ghost, Bicilotti and Pittiz - had the boring job of digging through my work to see where I had made mistakes and telling me how to improve!

Edit: Clicking your mouse button on this link here will take you to another link from which you can obtain all of the songs from the four games Sebastian has jangled his tunes across for me! If this does not make you clap and shout, then surely you are not one to clap and shout at all!

Edit2: And there's a German Translation of the game here.

It has been far too long since the restless dead have featured in our sprite jams.

This ends now!

You have until the 12th of March to draw an unholy sprite of something not quite alive but not quite dead either. Wikipedia lists undead as the following:

Revenant
Skeleton
Zombie
Ghoul
Ghost
Wraith
Spectre
Lich
Ghast
Mummy
Vampire
Wight

However, if you have an idea that cleverly interprets the theme without being one of these specific entities, it is certainly allowed (providing you make it clear as to how it fits the theme).

Ghost may not draw a picture of himself. Sorry. Unless it's a picture of himself undead, which would be fine  .

You are limited to drawing a sprite that is fully functional for an AGS game - ie, it must fit on screen and must be drawn in a manner which allows animation.

You may begin.

You've just battled your way through the first level of the mage's tower/infected space ship/irradiated sewer/abandoned mine and you've found the stairs that lead to the next level. It looks like you're going to have to get past this thing first... but hang on, what IS that thing!?



Outline can be flipped/rotated in any manner you please, have the canvas resized etc. The outline can be broken or added to, providing it is clearly recognizable in the final image.

I look forward to seeing some cool entries!

Time for another Backround Blitz!

Theme: Graveyard

This theme is open to interpretation; while you are welcome to do a spooky cemetary, I would also love to see some entries like old car junkyards or similar sorts of ideas!

Restrictions: Background must be drawn at a resolution supported by AGS, however if your background is clearly scrollable this will be allowed. No other restrictions.


Voting starts 11th Feb 2009, unless more time is requested.
The voting will be done in these categories:

Idea - The underlying idea to the background. Doesn't
necessarily have to coincide perfectly with the theme of the
week, just strike you as interesting/amusing/inspiring; a place
you'd really enjoy visiting within a game.

Atmosphere - How well the image manages to evoke a certain feeling or mood.

Design - How well the elements in the image are designed,
such as landscapes, buildings, decorations, clouds, doorknobs,
etc.

Composition - How well the elements in the image work
together/are positioned in relation to each other.

Functionality - How well it would work when adding sprites,
including appropriate walking distances, a good angle for
character sprites, clever walkway solutions, easily understood
exits, etc.

Technique - How well the ideas are executed in form of
rendering.

Have fun, and I look forward to your entries!

[BIG]

Annie Android has her eye on that handsome Mailbot, but is shocked to discover that she has been assigned to be another bot's partner!

Help Annie win the heart of Mailbot and defeat the nasty RoboHQ!



BIG thanks to my awesome testers Ghost and Bicilotti (and Sebastian of course)!

Apologies to The Ivy for doing the robots + love thing (I wasn't trying to copy, I swear )

More apologies to ProgZmax who tried to give me graphics advice, which I ignored and stuck with the 6 colour palette 

Get the game here!

Hey there, Critics Lounge folks.

Sorry I haven't visited you guys much lately, but I am looking for a bit more help.

The object of today's drawing practice was for me to practice both the female form (which I have struggled with for some time now) and human skin colours (as opposed to my normal blue and green skin tones )

The end result is basically Ben304 drawing half naked ladies. Hey, it worked for MashPotato

Anyhow, this is where I have gotten:



As you can see, the one I hate the most is the light skin tone - I cannot stand it so much that I had to stop drawing with it. I'd love some pointers on how you go about getting your skin tones, especially light ones.

Also any other comments you have or edits or whatever are always appreciated by me, in case you forgot since last time .

Thanks for reading!

I've always been a big fan of those atmospheric sci-fi and fantasy scenes that people paint, and really would like to learn to "paint" (with a computer) those sort of scenes.

I've decided to have a shot at doing one - I would have done it bigger, but my current monitor is only 17" crt and 640x480 sits kinda perfectly in the middle of Photoshop at 100% zoom. I hope to have a newer monitor soon...



This is the rough layout I've worked up to for my image so far. Probably took half an hour or so. Some notes about stuff you might ask/suggest:

-Composition wise, I've followed the rule of thirds/golden ratio idea thing I've read about (albeit roughly), placing the main spaceship roughly around the 'Golden Mean' (I think) and the bigger building slightly off the other point.
-Colour wise I didn't think too hard about it. I looked at a few fantasy paintings for ideas, and tossed up going either greeny yellow or orangey yellow. Settled for greeny.
-I used a basic perspective illusion to hopefully make the city look like a pretty big one.
-Birds flying away idea stolen from a billion other fantasy artists. Sorry
-Lighting the ground and building orange with the jet flames seemed like a good idea but looks kinda crappy. May need reworking/scrapping.
-I used a big (maybe 39? I can't quite recall), plain brush here because I wanted the emphasis on me creating the image, not the brushes.
-No sketch for the image (well, unless this counts) because I am terrible at drawing things on paper with pencils.
-The image was mostly done on 3 layers (basic sky colour, clouds, city) but I went overboard and added another three afterwards, one for each ship and one for the birds .

Obviously it needs tons and tons of work before anyone would begin to call it 'done' but I think it is best if I get advice now before I go and put in details .

Thanks for your time!

Hey all,

I haven't posted in here for a while, but it's time to give Ben more advice .

Drew this last night as tablet practice:



The background isn't meant to be anything special, just something nicer than a white one to draw on.

I'm not too happy with the brushstrokes here. I found that I'd either make them too sharp or to blurry and had trouble finding a happy medium. I'm guessing that this could be fixed by moving to a higher resolution, which is something I'm planning on doing soon-ish.

Anyhow, any advice with regards to colours, the posture and general anatomy of the girl, that sort of thing would be appreciated .

Cheers

Hey all,

I was just compiling a new build of a small test game and I got the following illegal exception:

Code: ags

---------------------------
Illegal exception
---------------------------
An exception 0xC0000005 occurred in ACWIN.EXE at EIP = 0x00442D88 ; program pointer is +72, ACI version 3.00.1000, gtags (2,37)

AGS cannot continue, this exception was fatal. Please note down the numbers above, remember what you were doing at the time and notify CJ on the Tech forum.



Most versions of Windows allow you to press Ctrl+C now to copy this entire message to the clipboard for easy reporting.

An error file CrashInfo.dmp has been created. You may be asked to upload this file when reporting this problem on the AGS Forums. (code 0)
---------------------------
OK   
---------------------------

This error only appeared to begin after I added a second timer in (the same error occurred in an earlier much simpler build after I added the second timer as well) so I feel this may be the issue.

I thought perhaps if I posted the bits of code that seem relevant it could help you spot this problem so:

Code: ags

function repeatedly_execute() 
  {
    if(IsTimerExpired(1) == 1){
    if (GetGlobalInt(1) == 0){
      cShip.ChangeRoom(1, 0, 0);
      cShip.Walk(160, 110, eNoBlock, eAnywhere);
      SetTimer(2, 45);
      SetGlobalInt(1, Random(3));
      SetGlobalInt(3, 1);
    }
    else if (GetGlobalInt(1) == 1){
      cShip.ChangeRoom(1, 0, 200);
      cShip.Walk(160, 110, eNoBlock, eAnywhere);
      SetTimer(2, 45);
      SetGlobalInt(1, Random(3));
      SetGlobalInt(3, 1);
    }
    else if (GetGlobalInt(1) == 2){
      cShip.ChangeRoom(1, 320, 200);
      cShip.Walk(160, 110, eNoBlock, eAnywhere);
      SetTimer(2, 45);
      SetGlobalInt(1, Random(3));
      SetGlobalInt(3, 1);
    }
    else if (GetGlobalInt(1) == 3){
      cShip.ChangeRoom(1, 320, 0);
      cShip.Walk(160, 110, eNoBlock, eAnywhere);
      SetTimer(2, 45);
      SetGlobalInt(1, Random(3));
      SetGlobalInt(3, 1);
    }
  }
  else if(IsTimerExpired(2) ==1 && GetGlobalInt(3) == 1){
    if(GetGlobalInt(2) == 0){
      cShip.Animate(4, 1, eOnce, eNoBlock);
      cHealth.LockViewFrame(3, 0, 1);
      SetGlobalInt(2, 1);
      SetTimer(2, 45);
  }
  else if(GetGlobalInt(2) == 1){
      cShip.Animate(4, 1, eOnce, eNoBlock);
      cHealth.LockViewFrame(3, 0, 2);
      SetGlobalInt(2, 2);
      SetTimer(2, 45);
  }
  else if(GetGlobalInt(2) == 2){
      cShip.Animate(4, 1, eOnce, eNoBlock);
      cHealth.LockViewFrame(3, 0, 3);
      SetGlobalInt(2, 3);
      SetTimer(2, 45);
  }
  else if(GetGlobalInt(2) == 3){
      cShip.Animate(4, 1, eOnce, eNoBlock);
      Wait(20);
      QuitGame(0);
      SetTimer(2, 45);
  }
  }
  }

function cShip_Interact()
{
  cShip.ChangeRoom(0);
  SetTimer(1, 100);
  SetGlobalInt(3, 0);
  SetTimer(2, 0);
}

If I have done something silly here and not noticed it, please point it out for me. If necessary, I will be happy to post the relevant .DMP file and/or the game source code for further investigation.

Thanks for your time

Greetings all,

I hope I've not missed something simple in the manual - although I have checked I could not see the solution to this problem.

I wish to change the background at some point in my game, and so I have added a second background frame in with the intention of using SetBackgroundFrame(); to do this.

However, the background I've imported is distorted whenever I import it. I've tried importing it multiple times, in multiple slots, checked the colour depth (32 bit) but whenever I import the background, save the game and then go back to check the background it appears like this:

Image link removed because I am a secret squirrel 

Not only are the colours completely different, it also appears to be double width. I am beginning to get a little frustrated with this, and would be most appreciative of any help .

If there is some restriction on secondary backgrounds that is causing this, a workaround would also be very nice

Thanks!

EDIT: Oh yes, and I am using AGS 3.00

Shoot, there ain't nothin' Bob Cornhusk likes more'n sittin' on his truck and watchin' the sunset with a few beers after a hard day's work.

But dangit, a feller can't even sit down fer a quiet moment without them UFO critters suckin' yer up fer a bit o' probin'.

But heck, Bob Cornhusk ain't a feller to be takin' a probin' if there's some way he can be stoppin' it. Time to get escapin'!



This game was created in just 3 days for the first Adventure Developers design competition. It is rather short in length, however you should get a few minutes of fun out of it .

My special thanks to Sebastian, who only got my email requesting music yesterday and came back with a cosmic hoedown quicker than Uncle Leroy can load up his raccoon gun.

A quick note for the easily offended: The game does, on rare occasions, have elements of toilet humor in it. I doubt anyone will find it overbearingly crude, but if jokes* about bottoms and their associated functions are incredibly offensive to you, you may wish to give this game a miss.

Play the game!

*Note: “Jokes” not guaranteed to actually be funny.

Hey all,

Sorry about the potentially confusing title, but I have a strange issue and am not sure how to get around it.

Unable to change the idle animation delay for a character (that I am aware of) and needing to do this, I adapted the following piece of code to have my character run an idle animation at the delay I wished. It is in repeatedly execute:

Code: ags

if (IsTimerExpired (1) == 1 && GetGlobalInt(11)==1 && GetGlobalInt(16)==0) {
   cBoy.LockView(19);
   cBoy.Animate(0, 1, eOnce, eBlock, eForwards);
   cBoy.Animate(3, 4, eOnce, eNoBlock, eForwards);
   SetTimer (1, GetGameSpeed()*15);
}
else if (IsTimerExpired (1) == 1 && GetGlobalInt(11)==1 && GetGlobalInt(16)==1) {
   cBoy.LockView(26);
   cBoy.Animate(5 , 1, eOnce, eBlock, eForwards);
   cBoy.Say("y hallo thar");
   SetTimer (1, GetGameSpeed()*15);
}
  else if (cBoy.Animating == 0 && GetGlobalInt(11)==1) { // i.e. won't run during idle anim
    cBoy.UnlockView();
    }

This all works fine and dandy until GlobalInt(16) = 1. At this point, nothing occurs.

Is there something I missed here? I thought it might be the timer needing to be reset, which I tried, but this didn't seem to fix anything. Just for notes: GlobalInt(11) is to make sure the player is in the room, because having a blocking animation running in another room is not good . GlobalInt(16) is when the character is no longer holding an item, therefore the idle animation needs to be different.

Thankyou in advance for your help .

For this week's Sprite Jam, I'm looking for something that is out of proportion with the rest of the image.

What do I mean by this?

I'm looking for something in which one part is far bigger or smaller than the rest of the item/character would suggest. Examples include the following:

-Large man squashed into a tiny car.
-Small ant carrying something enormous.
-Small dwarf using a large weapon.
-Normal person with one rather large hand/other limb.

There are a number of possibilities here, so let your imagination run wild.

Restrictions:

- Image is not to exceed a size of 200x200 pixels.
- No more than 64 colours should be used to create the image.

Good luck, and I look forward to seeing some imaginative entries.

There are trophies:


Gold, silver and bronze replicas of nature's own out of proportion wonder-crustacean, the fiddler crab .

I've been painting a little bit with my new tablet, and this is where out adventures have taken us this time around:


Hooray, it is a big castle! (Made for the BG blitz)

It is a tree on a hilltop with an ancient runey stone.

Just as a note, I drew the rock roughly based on the rocks in Helm's game Caverns - hopefully I did a good enough job here.

I think the compositions might be terrible, and also some of the objects strike me as being out of place with regards to colouring. The castle seems to be pasted on top of the mountain, stuff like that.

I feel these still look very "beginner", any advice on how to get my backgrounds looking nicer?

Hey all,

Yes, this is another "omg new tablet, help!" thread by me .

Disappointed with the lack of clarity for the edges on my previous "painting", I decided to try to go with a more comic-y style of sketch while I am still getting used to this tablet thing. I had a bit of a play last night and today (I try and make myself draw every single day with the tablet in the interest of getting better with it [and at art in general]) and came up with the following 3 sketches:


A bridge!

A house!

A cliff!

I know I should focus on one image at a time, but I wanted to crank them out while I had a clearish picture in my head how I wanted these to look*.

What I'm looking for is advice on... well, everything. Are the lines too thick (I think yes), are the colours alright, the general layout etc? I've not bothered with any opacity variation here, setting the pressure sensitivity to just size. For the lines I used a size 3 brush and a hand that's far too heavy still () and for the colouring I stuck to a size 15 brush.

Any tips you could offer a newbie would be most appreciated .

*(ps, they looked waaaay better in my head )

As suggested by Andail over in the comp thread.

Yesterday my Wacom graphics tablet arrived in the mail and I set to work creating an image for the current background competition. This is the result:



It's the first time I've really tried to "paint" something, so there are many things I'm fairly unsure about. I've never really been an artist, I just like to draw, so I'm sure I've made many simple errors. I know there are some great artists out there, so I'd love some advice . I tried to mix the colours a bit as well but left them as the painting started because it turned out badly.

Thanks for your time .

Greetings all.

I believe this is the first time I have posted in here, so I hope my post is clear and follows the rules.

My problem is as follows: I have two images for each inventory item. One is the item graphic itself, with a shadow beneath it, and one is the cursor, with no shadow but a little arrow pointer. What I would like to do is set up the inventory so that when I select an inventory item, instead of making my cursor look like that item, it replaces it with the secondary image which is missing the shadow but has a little pointer.

I did a search of the forum and found some script here which I believed I would be able to implement, but unfortunately I have more inventory items than the game will allow me cursors.

I am thinking that perhaps I could create a number of views and have these replace the cursor somehow?

I am using editor version 2.70 at the moment - I checked the AGS 3.0 update list to see whether the cursors limit has been removed and I could not see it. Hoping to stick with the 2.70 editor until I get this game finished, because I am slow enough at using it as it is.

Is there something I've missed here? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Sorry if I have rambled .

Howdy all.

A bit underwhelmed with working on gamey type things today so I though I'd have a go at drawing a coolish kinda sprite - with high contrast and fairly high saturation values, and few colours.



This be the result of the excercise, however I feel I may have done it badly. I got the black outline idea from a set of sprites I remember Krysis posting ages ago, I was impressed by the technique and thought I'd give it a shot. Your help to make this look better would be appreciated. I realise I basically wasted a colour by only using a few pixels worth of it, but I think the nice warm colour stands out well against all the cools.

Cheers!

EDIT:

I guess finding out that I had a day off tomorrow made me decide I could waste more time on this.... Kinda did a scene, using 14 colours.



I did it in paint, and it's been a while since I've done anything in paint so it's probably a bit rougher than I'd normally go with, but I am pretty happy with it.

Howdy all,

I am hoping you will be able to assist me with my little problem. I am working on this background and I am unsure as to where the yellow lighting should start showing on the walls and the floor. As you can see I have made a start, but I do not feel that this is correct. I would like to get this aspect right before adding more things to the room.



Any help you could render would be greatly appreciated. Also, if you see something else you feel could be improved please point it out.

Thankyou in advance.