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Think the lack of contrasts, as already mentioned, is the biggest issue.

Another thing is the lighting. In the original version the light is coming from, what I can tell, the front. This isn t a very interesting lighting in my experience and makes the image less interesting than it could be. (In my version it s coming roughly from the top right)

To demonstrate the points, I whipped up this modified version based on Bens:



Original:

Hey thanks RickJ, it works really well.

Thought of using listboxes never occured to me. Had tried labels, textboxes and pretty much everything beside them.

My game requires textmessages with over 300 characters.

So far I havn t been able to produce such quantity on the screen due to the codelinelimit and stringcharlimit. Any ideas?

Definately prefer the second one. Reasons I come to think of:

(i) stronger contrasts which make it less flat and generally improve the looks.
(ii) less saturated colors which makes it less childdrawinglike
(iii) blockier objects which gives it depth.

I really like the new style, hope you ll stick with it.

Couple of more questions:

Do you know some chords (do you know how to play an A minor chord for instance)?

Do you know how to use a MIDIprogram ('sequencer')?

Are you familiar with MIDI?

What style would you want the music in (medieval? lord of the rings? etc)

i need to make my own music

Do you know anything about composing? Do you know how to play the piano? Do you know some chords? Do you know how to write melodies? What do you know exactly?

The piano roll:



I think the pianoroll is pretty much the optimal tool when editing/writing midi and very intuitive. I ve had friends try out writing some music through the pianoroll and they grasp the concept very quickly, whereas if I put them infront of a notationprogram they re clueless.

Like I ve said before, notationprograms are imo only handy when writing for instrumentalists. The control you need to create a convincing lifelike result aren t present in notationprograms, (the ones I ve tried anyway) which creates a very dull and mechanical sound. This crappy result can ofcourse be blamed on the fact that it s only midi, so the result is inevitable, an argument in the same style as people blaming their drawingprograms for their inferior results.

By comparing yourself to Galileo, you suggest that you are the misunderstood genius, rather than just another opinionated punter.

I think we re getting a bit personal. DGs argument was simply, as I understood it, that the majority isn t always right, an argument Remixor implied when saying:

You're the only person in this thread with that opinion

Even though we re down to semantics these kind of arguments aren t valid and only creates a lousy atmosphere.

The same goes, imo, for your own namecalling in the quote, where you imply that DG is a 'opinionated punter'. You could argue that you didn t call him that, but since you don t seem to hold him for a misunderstood genius, the implication is easy to make.

Let s stick to criticising arguments.

I can t help but to think that the movie-book analogy had an imortant point in it.

The point that I tried to make wasn t to compare games with movies since they re obviously different in many ways. But I think the relationship between a book/script and a movie is analaguos with the textadventure-graphicaladventure. That is, if you d say that a movie relies on visuals then a graphicaladventure does as well. Here s why I think it seems valid:

You ve argued, as I understand, that a graphical as well as textadventures games rely only upon narrative and interaction. The graphics and sounds isn t necessery since it can be translated into text or it can be cut out all together, given, and I think this is very important, that the game is redesigned.

What I mean with redesign is that if the visuals were simply cut out the game the game wouldn t be playable. So the game has to be rewritten/redesigned.

Now, if we look at movies, they rely on visuals as you say. But do they really given your 'coretheory'? What differs a graphical game from a movie, as I see it, is that what differs a textadventure from a book, namely interaction. A graphical adventure that didn t have any interaction would be called a movie.

Musn t we, if we adopt the reductive theory you ve presented, admit that in the same way that graphicaladventuregames can be reduced to textadventures, claim that movies can be reduced to scripts, given once again, that they are redesigned?

If we were to cut out the visuals from a movie it wouldn t be percieveable, as the graphicadventure with the graphics cut out, but as with the game, it could be redesigned into textgame/a script/book. Some atmosphere would be lost but the core would be the same.

The core would be the story, and it would still be told with the script but without the unnecessery cosmetics that is the visuals.

I think this is a necessery implication given the reductive theory you ve presented.

I m guessing that you may argue that there s still a difference between a movie and a script. A movie per definition has visuals; it s what makes it a movie and is therefore necessery. But in line with the same thinking a graphical adventure would per definition have graphics and therefore be necessery.

Edit: modified the last paragraph

I m not sure about the black outlines. Why I prefer the second one is because the black outlines gives it a much needed contrastboost. So I d experiment with the hicolorversion without the blackoutlines but with stronger contrasts.

Adventure games rely upon interaction and narrative.

Thus:

[...]
Visuals in adventure games are peripheral and purely cosmetic.

I m guessing that you didn t bother to make the deduction logically valid since your point is made by it anyway, but I think it needs to be corrected to clear up a couple of things.

---------------------------------------------------------------
Adventure games rely only upon interaction and narrative

thus

Adventure games doesn t rely upon visuals.
---------------------------------------------------------------

Granted that the premise is true the conclusion seems to follow. I m not sure that it is though.

As 6DA possibly proves (I havn t played it yet) the premise contradicts empirical facts. And even if 6DA, or any other game to date, wouldn t prove this, we could still imagine an adventure game that would rely on graphics (for puzzles etc), which would prove that it isn t an analytical truth either.

The premise therefore seems highly questionable to me. What s left to claim, a claim I d agree with, is:

Most adventure games to date don t rely upon visuals.

I like the new version better. But still, why not use the first one? As I see it it s still the best one. Some shading is all that it might need.

I think it s a bit problematic to consider graphical adventuregames as textadventures with cosmetics. If that would be the case it seems as if movies would simply be books with cosmetics.

While this may be the case when new mediums arrive -- thinking of the switch between radio n tv where they d practically just would take footage of the radiostudio -- once the mediums have matured they develope their own unique language.

I m not claiming that graphical adventures has succeded in this but if or once they have, the visuals will be an inseperable part of them; as visuals in movies or fps for that matter. A scene in a movie isn t the same as the same scene describes via an author in a book or in the moviescript for that matter.

Claiming that the written word is more closely connected with the 'core' of a story/adventure and therefor essential, whereas visuals n music is superfluous, is a pretty bold statement I think. Our minds consist of more than can be put into words.

I think the first version had a lot more character than this last one; the eyes n posture in particular.

The new version makes him seem, imo, like an annoying, cranky child, ready to call his mom at any moment; as opposed to the first version which made a very sympathetic impression on me.

Skill comes with practise. 3 hours of practise means 3 hours of skill which means crappy result.

The title 'handpainted picture' was a very appropriate choice in that case.

Think one problem could be that once you ve become pretty proficient in one field your standards in other are raised as well. The idea is that your standards in the writing field are perhaps too high because of your proficiency in musiccomposing. Because of these high standards you re discouraged when faced with the quality of your writingcreations.

If this would be the case you might need to realize/acknowledge regularly that people do infact stink when they first try out new areas, unless they re highly talented. If you re having these problems you re not likely as talented in the writingfield as in the music, but this doesn t mean that you should give up these other ambitions, just that it ll take you a bit longer to acquire the same proficieny in them as in musiccomposition.

So basically my advice would be to lower your standards as much as possible and accept that most of your productions won t please you in the way that your music does, until you ve improved your skills greatly, which will take some time.

One way to get more satisfaction out of your attempts is to focus on smaller areas within the field. I m not sure how to do this when it comes to writing but you could focus on, let s say, dialogs or enviroment descriptions for a while. Study works that you like and try to mimic just this particular area. This specialization means that your skills within this area will increase rapidly (at the expense of other of course) and give you more satisfaction since the improvements are very noticeable (as opposed to when you try to raise all skills simultanously). Kind of like in RPGs.

Guess he could ve used the 3d model as a reference but still ve painted it.

But I have to say it has a suspicious inconsistent look this painting/"painting".

my guess what be that he scanned some denim or something, some sort of texture and then just coloured on top of it, am i right do i win a prize?

It s actually original marvel comic "colors" picked out from scanned Batman issues from the '70-80s, so it should be almost identical to those comics.

The method used was simply, make textures, apply on pic. Pretty important though is not to use regular black or white for outlines n highlights but scanned versions. Makes a hugh difference.

So you want a prize for your mediocre guess ey? Well I guess you could have this:

http://w1.865.telia.com/~u86517124/Downloadable/lollipop_mod2.jpg

Trying out a new style. People sensitive to strong contrasts or downloads over 100 kb beware.

I m working on a technique for use in a game n applied it on the pic as a test.

The colors [in my version] are hardly interesting/inspirering but I thought it might be fun for you to see a very different version of your pic.

I m sorry about the large filesize but the pic couldn t stand much compression.

For the record, no filthy plugins were used.

~100 kb
http://w1.865.telia.com/~u86517124/Downloadable/lollipopc_mod1.jpg