Messages

Actually, occasionally, when I do get deep into it and start coding, I find myself playing weird beats with my hands whenever they aren't exactly typing. Coding blends into this - like some weird kind of music. It's the best thing ever. I coded some of my best stuff slamming Tin Hat Trio beats on my computer table - probably explains why my coding sucks - at least it had rythm

I don't usually like fiction where the main character is insane or doubting his sanity - seems like too much of a carte blanche for the storyteller to make the story twitch in any which direction he desires - it will all make sense anyway after the like 10th awakening to real real real reality - a cliche. I can't attach to a character whom I expect to suddenly "wake up" and prove me wrong in everything I supposed. It's storyteller megalomania.

At the first sign of this, as a viewer/player all I can reasonably do is sit back and wait for the ending that will reveal real reality. Getting involved along the way is just fooling myself. Not that it can't be done - it's just extremely hard to surprise people once you play the insane/alternate reality card - they'll be expecting anything from you. It can be done. The Matrix movie did it, first time I watched it (but notice how it didn't succeed in the sequels), and Fight Club got pretty close - Simpsons did it constantly.

However, imho it's much more interesting to insist on one level of reality and show how absurd even that can be. Even to the point of exploring what drives people insane. Show insanity, don't tell it. If you don't know anything about it, chose another subject. Or if you just want to entertain, insist on the "insane reality" throughout the playable part of the game - for immersion - like Weird Dreams did.Ã,  We can all accept an insane reality if that's all there is - we pretty much have to

Well, you got the perspective almost right - the back wall needs straight horizontal lines.

Image Google some pics of padded cells for inspiration - you need more tones to properly shade the padding, and the bed would probably be built-in and padded in some way. Lamps, I think, would be embedded in a very high ceiling.

Edit: Here's a rough 5-minute 3d sketch with inspiration for perspective and shading:

Hey, congrats on your decision...

The movie was great - reminds me a bit of that old Vampire movie (what's the name), and that painting by Munch.

For crits, maybe the black nail-polish for Death was overdoing it a bit - then again, I guess Death as a character could be allowed some caprice.

Good luck on your further studies, looking forward to seeing more of your movies.

I have that too, mostly when there are too many things going on to concentrate fully on any of them. Or when I'm feeling uncertain about the future. It's not always simple. I guess if you asked an expert, the answer would be something like: Take control. Set a clear goal. But sometimes you just want to have a break from all that. Allow yourself to play games, drink, or well... draw bunnies. Do it for as long as you can cherish it.

Also, thinking back, when I've felt like that for longer periods of time, I've most often come out of it by meeting new people who have inspired me. Going somewhere new or meeting new people can really set things in perspective.

Anyway, much the same technique could be used with 1-pixel colored brushes with low opacity - in case the shadows and highlights should be say, darkblue and yellowish-white respectively, instead of pure black and white. But yes, that would be harder and require that one keeps track of the colors used for highlighting/shadowing, or consistency in the picture would be hard to achieve.

Hey, great tutorial - thanks alot

I agree, it's also one of the best first backgrounds I've seen - good job! Did you make some backups along the way, they would be really helpful to look at while reading about your method? Like the vines - did you paint them in just one color, or more tones before anti-aliasing?

It's not exactly new news, but George Lucas seems like a guy who may actually back up his wish for better speech recognition in games with cash.

...the movie-maker expressed he wants artificial intelligence and speech recognition to improve "to a point where you can talk to the game and it will talk back."

Article

I've coded in Jess myself (rule-based AI) and it is indeed possibe to have huge language-processing rule-sets to create semi-intelligent dialogues. Nobody is fooled for long, though, and often I prefer some really funny/well-scripted dialogues to AI. I doubt that those will ever be surpassed by AI, even considering the learning aspects (like in Spookitalk), however interesting it may be. Also, I didnt like the weird iconic language from Sims very much.

You mean this?

Code: ags

[spoiler]Secretly hide this text away[/spoiler]

will result in:

Spoiler

Secretly hide this text away

[close]

Or you can use these ones from Nitro



more screens

It's really nice for a first background, but I think you're using too many styles at once - or maybe it just needs cleaning up - the many places where brushes overlap. The lens flare kinda freezes the image in time, like a snapshot - which may be bad for a background with real time action (are characters gonna go in front of the flares or behind them, etc?) But a little cleaning up, and it could work :-)

Impressive!  I especially like the sequence where he's about to enter the lighthouse - very effective and suspenseful (nice effect to see in animated 3d where everything is usually just a little too fast-paced) Also, the match being dropped is nice use of the medium, imo. Technically, I'm sure you're aware what's more hi and low quality respectively, so thanks for showing the result.

I think the room looks great and the shading makes sense already for a kind of diffuse light coming from many sources. I'm not sure where the light sources really are - there's some coming from the red pushbutton, some coming from the holographic display, but where is the rest coming from - from outside? Or from the ceiling? If you want sharper shadows, just place the lights (even offscreen if that's where they are), and trace where the shadows would fall. But as I said, I think the room is great already, so a few extra shadows wouldn't do much.

Looking good. I think I would add a little texture to the sidewalk, and maybe to the house walls. The garden behind the fence does look large, maybe some distant trees would help? Or some vague buildings in the distance? There could also be a tree in the front yard that would cover part of the the fence and maybe part of the roof (it'll make shading it easier too  )

That Plasma Pong is so cool! Somebody please make a plasma-plugin for AGS!

I had a student's job for one of those statistics companies once - we would call people and ask them in meticulous detail about every newspaper they read in the past year - the interviews tended to become rather long and confusing ("So you read this newspaper 2-3 times during the past six months - is there any chance you have read it at least once within the last week? The last two days, yesterday? today? Do you still have it? Could you find it and look at page 5? Do you remember having seen this commercial before? What did it make you think? Did you find it informative? humorous? rude?" etc - and this would go on for each newspaper they had ever touched).

On the TV side, families were chosen to represent the demographics of the country on a small scale, and they had to report their viewing activity by keeping a kind of TV-diary. This was some years ago, by now they probably have automatic sensors in the tv-sets as well. Having worked there, I'm pretty amazed how accurate the statistics can be for some things - the result of elections are usually remarkably precisely predicted.

Credit the users - yes, we will do that - we have gotten loads of suggestions, some new and some that we had thought of ourselves and had to skip during production because of university deadlines and such - the forums at the site used to hold a lot of threads with these suggestions from people, but I'm having problems restoring them from the old site - although all threads are in an sql-file, new user ids and forum-ids at our new site make restoral a mess, so it'll have to be done manually when I have time for it. There will also be an updated official suggestion list so people don't keep suggesting the same things to us - we get a lot of those emails, and it would be hard to give everybody due credit this way. I think we will credit the best suggestions individually, and then maybe give collective credit to all the forum users because most of them contributed in some way.

I actually read a booklet by some design guru a while back who said it's always better to present a sort of unfinished concept first - it's the best way to get people involved and let them put their own ideas into the product. It will make people feel they are part of the project, and they will never forget that. And if you look at the amount of money game companies put into user testing and quality assurance, I think it makes sense for small  developers to take public criticism and ask for suggestions. Sure some people are annoying, and your vanity can take some serious blows - but it's a way of getting for free what companies pay for. I'm kinda enjoying it. I only wish I had more time at the moment...

Amazing use of color for the site. Good job! 

I think the mixing of styles and resolution is cool and interesting to look at - go for it! I actually think it adds a lot of character to that guy that he is so pixely. And I think the grayscale backgrounds are needed - they kinda tie the whole thing together. Use other colors, like you already do, but stay more in the style of the original post than the background in your last post.