Messages

I'm not sure if it is really the font. In the dialog the font looks ok, i think its because of the color and the black outline.

The description text on the other hand is just plain white and does not have an outline (respectivly the outline is not visible because of the black background)

Have you thought of changing the color of the description text? White text on black background looks somewhat hard and cold. Could you use the yellow that is also used in the gui?

[Let's go shopping!]

I don't know to what I do owe the honor of starting the new blitz, but here it is 

Let's go shopping!

I want you to draw a shop, either from inside or outside. It can sell anything from clothes, vegetables to voodoo supplies, whatever you feel like.

Size and color restrictions: Anything that AGS can handle.

I hope this time there will be more entries. Come on folks, let's get this competition back to life!

Voting has started!

The 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.

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.

Voting ends on 10th of October.

You might also want to look in this thread:

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=30116.0

For "The Eye of Geltz" just check out the first post of the production thread, it is regularly updated and far from abandoned 

Ever wanted to walk on water? Now you can, with Sea of Galilee water ski rental!

I'm looking for this thread in which Grundislav offered a role to an AGS member in this game (the prisoner in the second cell). Can anyone remind me where that thread is, please?

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=32731.0

I didn't want to start a fight here, that was really not my intention. The results of this blitz were very interesting, but the updates came more and more rarely and thus it became quite boring.
I don't want to stop your project, but it would be nice to start a new fresh background blitz that allows spontaneous participation for people that do not have that amount of time.

I think noone will mind if we have to activities, the background blitz and the workshop blitz 

Is this going to end some day? I really miss the old background blitz  :'(

I don't know what the brown thing on his shoulder is but it the shaded versions it blends with his hand.

His eye looks weird. Otherwise I like him.

I don't know your comic, so I can't say if the style fits. Now the character seems to be fine for a space parody.

Regarding the size: It depends on your backgrounds. With 320x200 he is probably a bit too tall. Have you considered using 320x240?
If you decide to make him smaller: Try to take your sprite, resize it and then put a new layer on top and trace the resized/blurry original one. Maybe you will have to skip some detail then...

Hi!

Just some feedback on the trailer:
I like the music and the texts, the pacing is done very well, BUT:
the ingame screenshots are WAY to fast. It is hard to see anything. I think you should focus on some scenes, dialogs whatever and show each one for atleast 3-5 seconds. Choose some lines that are typical for the main and NP characters so the person that watches the trailer gets into the mood of the game and wants to play it.

Hi Samjwm!

Maybe you could post your attempts on the legs so we can tell you how to improve them? You will learn more if you do it yourself then just asking other people to do it for you.

What version do you use?

I had some problems that black was changing into blue with my backgrounds.
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=33582.msg435879#msg435879

Maybe this is related? According to CJ this issue was fixed with some new AGS version.

I like the walkcylce. Especially the slapping of the shoe when it goes forward looks very clownish. The only thing I would suggest is to change the size of the shoe when it is in the back-most position. It is too small now.

Is it day or night? I can't say from the picture. The bright yellow hills and the dark sky don't really fit I think...
If you want the hills to be lighted by a very strong lightsource (bright spotlight,...) the items on the hill need loooong cast shadows in the other direction.

[Switch tasks]

Switch tasks

If you don't want to make backgrounds anymore switch to animations or coding. There is always enough to do.

FPS in AGS? Has this ever be done before?

@ Keyboard:

two days ago I had some strange keyboard problems. Finally I figured out, that pressing ctrl+shift (or was it alt+shift?) changed the keyboard layout.
I press ctrl+shift very often in my drawing applications.

On XP I fixed it this way:
Go to settings-> Regional and Language options -> Languages ->Textservices and inout languages -> Details... button -> Key settings... button
There you should see the combination to switch back to your layout. and when you're done with it, better disable the switching 

Hope this helps...

There are many interesting point mentioned which I was thinking about a lot in the past few days.
First I thought "He is right, actually only look/interact is needed."
But then I started to think about this whole stuff and some issues appeared to me.

1) Accessability
First of all not all people have a right mouse button. A friend once played Monkey Island on his mobile phone in scummVM just with his pen input device -> no right click.
Also on some notebooks with touchpads doing a rightclick is a pain in the ***.

2) Inventory:
For example the BASS inventory gui was driving me crazy. It just didn't work for me. Additionally it limits the actions that could be performed. A torch for example could be switched on but it could also be handed to another person.

3) Limited possiblities:
Usually there are more ways to interact with an item. You could, for example sit down on a chair, but you could also push it somewhere and stand on it to reach something or you can use it to block a door.
It has happened in adventure games that I had a certain idea how I could solve a puzzle and when I tried to interact with the needed object something completely different happened. It's some sort of "well, I managed to solve the puzzle, but I wanted to do it totally differently" which I think is very bad for immersion.

Also, having a contextual verb coin would work here well.  A contextual verb coin doesn't have "Talk" "Look" "Use" on it, it has a different set of commands for each object you click on.  So, a potted plant might have "Look" "Break off a leaf"  "Push to the left"  "Push to the right" "Hide behind".  Not all of those would be needed in the game, but adding them can add that complexity and sense that you still have to figure out what you're going to do with it yourself.  And it's a choice that requires more thought than "Hmm... should I use 'Use' or 'Talk' on this plant... Duh."

As far as i remember, in Bernhard's Room you have to talk to a plant

However, the contextual verb coin could be a good idea. I usually don't like verbcoins because they increase time needed to do a certain action, but in this case this could work out very well. However, I think this is very hard to implement properly. If you could (let's take the chair example) move, sitdown and pickup the chair, every chosen option should do something. If you have the option "sit down" and then you get the response "I don't want to sit down" this is quite useless. The more options there are, the more implementation (animations, coding,...) is needed which will result in huge workload.

So actually I don't know what the best solution is, every GUI has its advantages and disadvantages...

* Removed room height limit of 1400 pixels.

Yay! Good to hear that!