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Another take on the craters. I lightened the endges and darkened the interior a little further. Are we improving, or degrading?

I've finished the concept and design. Will start to draw final graphics in the upcoming few days and hopefully will get to coding by the end of the week. I'm aiming for a simple little game with a bit of replayability and lovely retro graphics. Perhaps some music as well, although I'm afraid my usual musician might be unable to work on this one.   If you want to make some music (preferrably something with a chiptune sound to it) PM me!

I aim to have:
- replayability without being frustrating
- voice acting
- intuitive controls and gameplay
- cool SNES style graphics (320 x 200)
- Alternate endings
- ACHIEVEMENTS! (Every game HAS TO HAVE achievements!)

Here's a little concept art:

Scenario: you pick up an inv item in room 3, you need to use it in room 7... now if you don't pick up the inv item what do you do when you need it?

A: hint and allow the player to go back and get it?
B: give player another option to the solution?

I think that A should be the default, but if the story or game's progression demands that Room 3 is now unaccessible, use B. Optional solutions are always nice, and I also try to employ:
C: Allow player to bypass the entire puzzle, exchanging it for a different challenge later in the game. For instance, failing to complete a locked-door puzzle in Room 7 in time or not having the correct item means the player will have to take a different route from Room 6, which leads to a different puzzle or a maze or something.

A: Arrows depicting exits
B: Mouse over Hotspots
C: Combining more than 2 inv items

A: These are OK, but often do not blend too well with backgrounds. I myself use light sources (the Valve method) to mark out exits. I also make a point to keep the doors clearly visible whenever possible.
B: Cannot answer, as I am unsure what you mean by this? Hotspots that get triggered by mouse simply hovering over them? HATE! HATE! BURN! BURN!
C: Why not, but I recommend making it possible to combine the items in any order. This can be done by adding 'tween items, or by forcing the player to assemble the item on a workbench etc (see assembling the bomb in Bioshock).

I second what Mad said. I can see gazillion technical issues with getting characters to blend in properly with these backgrounds, but it is not impossible. In any case, all of them are fantastic, beautiful and detailed with care!

I just realized I REALLY should update my AGS as well. (3.1.2 SP 1)

Good show, Mr Pumaman, Sir! Good show, indeed!

Thanks for the replies!

I'll have to look at that tutorial and see about lighting up the edged of the craters a bit, as NickyNyce said. Will post back later today.
EDIT: looked at the tutorial. It might just be a bit too detailed for this graphical style, but I'm sure I can pick up some tricks from it. I'm thinking of having flares and explosions create light effects that cause directional shadows on the craters and other objects.

I tried darkening the craters and adding some simple noise for now. Improvement in my opinion. Also added some more junk and cover.

Here's another test image I made, open for critique.



I'll get back to trying out some tricks with the craters now, what I really need are some good reference pictures  fotos.

@ Moresco: The FF6 project is a different game, and a longer project altogether, I'll use that thread to get critique on the characters for that project. I just decided to use that sprite as a base for these characters as it felt small and simple enought to animate for a quick MAGS project.

I'm trying to get a fairly simple graphical style down for the upcoming MAGS.
Any opinions? Ideas? If someone has any ideas on how to improve the craters, I would be giddy with joy!

@Sepiroth: This is the main character. He is intended to be a "blank slate" and his character is one that likes to be discreet and one who blends in alot. This is a design choise as the player can alter how the main character acts, what weapons he uses etc. The other characters in the party will have far more personality and detail, but I will be using this sprite as a base I work the others from.

On a side note: the character is a sort of a monk in a robe.

Did the other sides as well, and added a test downward-walkcycle:

First attempt at improvement:

Anyone else notice the worried-looking smiley-face on the smokestack on the IMDB poster?

Helloes!

I'm thinking of workig a side project with a friend and make a couple of quick sprites. We're aiming pretty close to the style of old Final Fantasy games. Any ideas on improvement. Myself, I am not entirely happy with the side view at the moment...

Can't I just resubmit LaSol? 

I love time as an inventive in a game (Infection 1 had it, Infection 2 will feature time very prominently and LaSol was purely time-based) so I'll be looking into getting something out for this!

Redesign took off properly in the last few days. Game design documents are taking better shape and I used last night to re-draw over 100 sprites worth of door animations. I also decided to re-design the cool map I had for the game with a few new and improved ideas, and then the really coold stuff:

Infection 2 will have achievements! Since achievements seem to be all the craze nowadays (minecraft is likely to have them in the 1.5 update), I decided to have them in Infection as well!

Will try to post more, and am looking forward to getting a new website up for this project soon. Had some outside help, so it might be a bit more manageable this time around.

My proverbial two-cents: Photo backgrounds can look good in games that use FMV or photorealistic characters. Generally this is extremely hard and laborous to do, and as such my short answer to your question is: "Yes".

Just noticed this. I'll be trying to get something small-scale scribbled together by the end of the week. Love the theme, hospitals and medical areas are nice and versatile.

Thought I'd contribute:

All the music to all my games so far (Music created by Tony "Ferrara" Caven: http://www.ferrara.c64.org/)

LINK: http://www.whamgames.com/downloads/Music of whamgames.rar

Works like a charm! I had not realized that the scrip actually called the CHARACTER as an entity. I was under the false impression that the Character.GetAtScreenXY(x, y); function returned the NAME of the character. Now I know better! This will greatly ease my work, thank you once more!