Messages

To be honest, I am against the notion of calling it the "AGS E3". This has been something of a tradition in AGS, let's own it and keep it as our own. I understand where you are coming from, but let's keep this our own.

Man, we have some beautiful stuff coming out! I think we should definitely agree on a deadline, though, before we all get carried away.

As for someone being in charge, the concept of such a thing is a little flawed. The whole thing is up for discussion by anyone.

Also, Release Something isn't just about releasing games, it is about releasing screenshots, tech demos, animations, prototypes, trailers and of course full games, and as far as I know always has been! You're quite welcome to post a preview, you're also very encouraged to think "Hey, I might see if I can get that old game and maybe polish it up into something that I can release".

For a deadline, a month seems like a reasonable amount of time for me. Any comments on this period of time, or preferred deadline dates?

Yeah, I think a deadline is important to keep motivation up. Some people are bound to miss it, but that will always happen sadly.

I also think Release Something type affairs are much lovelier if done once a year or so, making them exciting, rather than a thread where people post tons of crap really quickly and then it dies out after a while.

(I lied about the authority thing.)

You filthy pagan!  :o

[NO]

The hell with it, I ain't a mod, and unlike Cooper I have NO authority  :'(

How can I be cross when your anarchies are so delicious and sweet, you cheeky scamps!

Still, it would be nice to set some dates (if we're going to get excited and ignore a start date, then at least a finish date).

Ben304 now bows to veryweirdguy's *AUTHORITY*

Ben304 releases veryweirdguy

Run free, my pretty!

I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I think historically we're supposed to set a date for the event to occur and say "Have your things polished up for this time!".

Still, thank you for releasing something. I hope it is a weight off your soul 

Arj0n: I have no idea what goodies to bundle it with though, but I'm sure we can come up with something. Bundling a preorder with goodies feels mandatory if you ask me

Soundtrack, (Digital) Art Book, Concept Art Poster, TJD-HD Mouse Pad, Developer Diaries :  

And stickers  8)

(Ben304 loves him some stickers!)

Pretty sure I already said this in an email, but you got my full support with this man, it's awesome news to see even more effort going into the project.

I hope you guys succeed 200%

[Update:]

Icey/Studio3 recently mentioned his idea of "AGS E3", and whilst it may appear foolish to try and copy this aspect of the AAA game design scene, I think it would be cute and positive if we *did* have an event where we could showcase our stuff - unfinished projects, demos, screenshots, trailers... or even knuckle down and tie up those last few loose ends we've been putting off doing for months and actually finishing that game we've all had sitting around forever waiting to be done.

We used to have these under the guise of a "Release Something", and while I never participated, they were great fun, it's amazing to see all the different members of the community showcase little parts of their projects. I think having a date, an event in which you know people will be interested in this sort of thing and all your buddies will be doing it, really motivates one to tidy something up for people to look at it. And, if nothing else, it gives you somewhere to finally show off those couple of screenshots that you know aren't going to be in a game anymore, but you spent hours working on and might as well do *something* with, even if it does just mean posting them for people to go "oooh, I wish that was a game!" over.

As far as I can tell, the last Release Something was February 2009. We had something a little in the vein of this last year in May when ProgZmax set the mags topic to "Release Your Game" and the comp was clearly a great success - 6 entries in a MAGS comp is a great showing by anybody's standard, so the interest is clearly there.

That was over a year ago - perhaps it's time for another release something?

(sorry if this is in the wrong board)

Update:

With no objections having arisen, I'm going to go and set the deadline for this activity as the 10th of July. You have one month to polish up your games/tech demos/demos/prototypes/vertical slices for release! Keep the sweet stuff rolling in guys, it's awesome to see!

Hilarious!

My favourite part was

Spoiler

Coughing up cigarettes

[close]

But the whole thing was suitably... deranged 

Congrats, made me laugh quite a lot.

You guys make me so F$%$& horny!!!

Is there anything that doesn't?



Seriously, though, if the instagib mutator was a lady, I would attempt to marry her.

Clearly I wouldn't survive, but man it'd be worth it  

Looks very stylish

(BTW If anyone knows WHERE I am supposed to ask for music help, or could just help with the music, let me know!)

Those requests go here!

There's a whole bunch of ways to give warmth to a scene after painting it, I just focused on the simplest method here, because simple is good!

Pretty sure that's just how it goes. It's hard to get pictures exactly from your brain to your screen or page, I think. I don't think I've ever managed it fully. That's why we do different sketches, try a couple of different versions to see which works best. Sometimes I work on 5 different versions of a scene before I find a layout that i like - that's just how it goes.

OMG, did you just make that? That looks awesome.

Perhaps so, but as I've laid out for your, the process to make such a scene is really quite simple. A scene like that doesn't need much time to paint - the hardest part is getting a composition you like.

I've been meaning to reply to your PM about background painting for a while now Icey, but I've been a little busy (what with MAGS and all ), so here's a bit of quick advice.

I hope ProgZ will allow me to go slightly offtopic here. I think you're trying to do what I tried to do when I first started painting my backdrops - that is, going for a style that lets you paint scenery that looks nice without needing to spend months studying boring theory and techniques, and without taking hours to complete each backdrop, and I think that's a reasonable trait to pursue in a style, especially when first starting out.

I think you're getting quite a good handle on doing backdrops, but I can see you falling into some of the pitfalls that I fall into as well, and so here's some of the stuff I have learned that you may find useful!

I've taken your colour palette and tried painting an example scene with it, breaking it down step by step to show you exactly how I worked through it, and with a few notes for each step.



Step one involves having the sky backdrop and then painting over top with the solid colour. I quite like painting like this because you can see the silhouette and work with it to make it stylish and eye catching. Here I chose something really simple, not too straight but not ridiculously warped either, and with lots of room for players to walk around on (how much you want will always depend on the things you want people to do in your scenes). I find this ~1/3 ground ~2/3 sky combination is a pretty good ratio.

Step two involves a layer behind the first, with layer opacity set down a little - I'm pretty sure you know how I do this bit. It adds what I feel your scenes are lacking a bit, and that is some depth. It's a really simple, fast trick - I'm still painting as simply as possible, just focusing on adding detail and interesting shapes, and not having so much sky in the scene. You're painting a city now, and cities are full of human structures!

Step three is another layer, under the one we just did, with an even lower again opacity. It is really important to avoid tangents with these two layers - which is something I can't explain well, but I'll link you to a good explanation of it at the end. In any case, three simple shapes here really fill the sky up and add some lovely clutter to our city.

Step four is adding the highlights, you seem to have figured this stage out pretty well though! I'd say this is currently the step you need to be the least worried about, and instead focus on your shapes and compositions

Step five is adding some detail, some sign of humans being here, which is something that some of your scenes have and others lack. Graffiti literally takes half a minute to scribble on the wall, and it shows that someone lives here and wanted to make their mark. Litter shows that people here eat and read and some of them are careless, it helps to stop your city looking like you just built the whole thing yesterday, and the same goes for wear and tear on buildings.

Step six is a bit of an adjustment of contrast. I always fall into the trap of not painting with enough contrast, but you can use an adjustment layer on top of all the other layers to boost it a little once you finish painting, which is a quick solution, although it is a good idea to teach yourself to paint with more contrast in the first place to try and prevent this from happening.

Step seven is a handy little trick to add to your arsenal - I get a biiiiig soft brush, put a layer on top of everything (except the contrast adjustment layer) and with a really warm yellow I paint a spot of light in the area I'd like to focus on. Then I erase the yellow where the shadows should be, and am left with a nice warm glow.

The article that explains tangents is here. It's quite a good guide, I refer to it fairly often.

If you'd like the .psd for this (not sure why, but just in case) it is here

Hope that helps, sorry for taking so long to reply to your pm, sorry for the long and offtopic post, and I wish you intelligence with your games (because luck runs out).

Thanks for that! I've had a bunch of bug reports and comments, so I've tried to fix them all, and have updated the game's file. Thanks for all the feedback, and let me know if you find anything else <3

I AGREE!

(with LimpingFish ^___^ )

Spoiler

pick up the knife on the table

[close]

I have added a cheap rubbish mirror, with the pretense that it is a substitute for an actual real website 

The first Gobliiins game is free for download on DotEmu today!

Not sure when/if the deal expires, but hey, it's a free classic adventure game, folks!

[Igor]

Igor: The strange name thing is very valid - I would have liked to made up more interesting ones, but ran out of time and so just sat there typing out whatever popped into my head at the time. I get sick of names that don't sound like names as well! Glad to see the dagger thing worked out, I thought it'd be neat to design puzzles based off the stats of weapons, and am a big fan of some CRPGs too.

As for sequels, I hadn't even thought about such a thing 

Cleanic: Thank you