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Back in the midsts of time, there was a much unloved hand-held gaming device known as the Neo-geo pocket*, and on this obscure format was a strange fan-service card game known as SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters Clash, which was packed with caricatures of popular videogame franchises;-


They tend to get nicked, recoloured, and used as forum avatars.
a full list can found at http://sdb.drshnaps.com/game.php?game=860


The task is as follows;-

Using the card format above, do a card for any Adventure or AGS game character (or characters). You don't have to use the SD art style (or anything Japanese), but you may find it helps when trying to pack as much detail and personality as possible into a small area. There's a limited overlap you can use to make the character(s) 'leap out' of the card.

But, just to make things interesting, there's a few restrictions;-

* You can't draw any of your own characters. So Ponch can't do barn runner etc.
- In the case of shared IPs (RON, OSD, etc), Characters that you have previously drawn are restricted. If you're in any doubt, it's probably best to assume I'll be a b'stard about it.
* You have to draw the whole thing yourself. - No copy-pasting a sprites from existing titles. 
* There's no palette limit, however bonus points will be rewarded for clarity. Pixel art is preferable to scaled images.

For some reason the trophies this time around are card playing bunny girls, everyone else will receive a Schrödinger's grue trophy.

- First - Second - Third - (I've lost the grue somewhere)

The situation is this;-

I'm mucking about coding a turn-based war game at the moment, and I have some reservations about the save game option. The problem with allowing players to save at any time is that it can mutate into a 'I WIN' button that allows players to avoid the consequences of their actions. This throws a major spanner in the works of the learning \ difficulty curve, and destroys any sense on tension or fear.

So, I'm weighing up how best to discourage it, and the possible options;

1. Enforce Ironman. - The game is automatically saved when you quit, and you only have one save slot. Players can potentially save-scum and ALT-F4 around this.

2. Disable saves in battle - On average, a battle should take about 30-45 minutes. It's turn based, and AGS runs in a window so there's no urgency.

3. Charge for it. - The game does have a finance system, so potentially I could charge for each save, unless the player is broke, in which case it's free. Since money is finite (awarded after each battle, used to buy units for the next), this discourages people from saving too often, and kinda rewards players who avoid saving, since they have more money to buy stuff (which in makes life easier for them.)

4. God doesn't play dice. - AKA the Sirtech method. All random rolls are on a base 100 system, so I could script the game to pre-roll 50-100, and call them in order. This way if you have 'bad luck', reloading won't help. The weakness of this is that players can reload, and reorder their actions for the best results (i.e. avoid attacking, so the AI gets the bad dice roll).

5. Turn the difficulty up to 11. - If some people are going to save all the time, make the game so hard that virtually everyone has to. - A little too extreme for me.

6. Count the saves. - Track the number of saves a player makes, and adjust the difficulty of certain situations based on this. This just encourages more save\loads, unless the situation becomes impossible.

7. Give up and let cowards win. - Who am I to judge? It's none of my business how often people use the save option and I should stop being an ass about it.

How do people feel about the various options, or does anyone have a better solution? I don't want to get into the trap of providing people who don't save with quasi-useless bonus content if I can avoid it (I've saved that for the difficulty option).

No, there's no filth here, well except for the unfortunate fact that when this animation is looped it almost looks like she's pulling knives out of her cleavage....

I've got a couple of things to fix on this animation before I apply any highlights or shadows which shouldn't be a problem (fringe, hair, skirt flow+shading), however I'm a little stuck regarding what to do with her left arm (the one on the left in the shot). Currently there's just a pace holder there, but I can't for the life of me work out what to do with it.

Actual size:
Double sized:

I do have a some limitation because firing animations have to use the same formula;

Frames 1-4 are the 'wind up' frames (so in another case it would be aiming a gun or drawing back a bowstring)
Frame 5 has to remain the 'action' frame, since the script picks up this frame and spawns bullet object(s) at this point.
Frame 8 is the 'wait' frame. The animation pauses at this point until the script calls another animation. So she won't actually loop like she does in the above image. Ideally the arm position in frame 8 would be close to the position in frame 1, to allow for loop,wait,loop scenarios.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I got a little bored over the weekend and dug out some old sketches for a fantasy wargame ( i.e. warsong \ Langrisser ), although I'm not completely happy with how they turned out;



I was assuming a 320 x 240 game, with out 30-40% of the screen area obscured by status screens. I went with the darker outline to try and keep a cartoony \ 16 bit feel.

The original idea (or at least what I can translate from my scribbling), was to use a primary colour for each faction, and a separate trim colour, then add little quirks like plumes, feathers, horns etc to add character.

Lastly, for anyone who takes an interest in this kind of stuff. the sketch to sprite process for them;
http://i858.photobucket.com/albums/ab150/Victorsix/warsongcreation.png
(Not extremely informative, but it does show roughly what I was doing)

So....After 2 years of reading the forums and one project lost to harddrive annihilation, I seem to be getting somewhere with AGS for once, so no more lurking for me.....

Romancing the blade (Working Title).

Falling about mid-way between ripping off Princess maker 2 and Quest for Glory, Romancing the blade follows the final years of the protagonists life before he comes of age. Weather he chooses the path of a scholar, studies the arts, climbs the social ladder, or battles the evil that lurks beyond the city walls, his actions over the next few years will set the scene for the rest of his life...

Random Screenshots:-

Magicmissilesc spellcasting (probably required by rpg law or something.)

Late night violence\entertainment.


Shopping.


City map (with assorted testing icons again....)


Sleeping through class.


Interface screens (7/1/10) :-

Equipment screen.


Skills screen or bar-chart nightmare.


Some of the kingdoms residents:-



Progress wise, the main structure of the game script is done, however I'm taking a modular approach towards development, so I honestly have no idea when it'll be complete.

Update (7/1/10).
Actually most of this was done months ago but the whole 'christmas' thing got in the way  :.
*Main interface fixed, correct date, cash, and time displayed.
*Central interface (skills, stats, equipment, map) makes sense, as opposed to just spewing numbers across the screen.
*50% of the study events implemented.
*Combat system now correctly uses modified stats, and more to the point, the right stats when calculating hit and damage.
* Reputation system actually works correctly (well....mostly.)

Update (30/5/10).
Traditional post-new years PC meltdown has occured. On the upside I found an old backup to work from....
Changes and general implemented stuff:-
* Combat system is done. I mean it.....well ok, so the fireball spell still doesn't do any damage, and maybe the spell-crit animations don't go off right, but the math \ coding part is done**.
* Pre, and post-battle trash talking.
* A combat output box that actually works....
* It's now possible to beat numbers out of people, however they can also beat numbers out of you.
* Unfortunately this means it's now possible to lose (Previously the combat system politely let you keep on hitting your opponent until they lost).
* Getting your ass kicked now effects your reputation.
* Pretty transparency effects put in.
* Expanded spell selection, now up to 8 (+5 if you count the spell-crit animations), so that button in the middle of the combat options actually does something.
* Physical combat idle and attack animations now change based on combat skill.
* New icons *ducks flying rock from the shaman forums*

**Done. as is 'working as intended'.