Messages

Going for a stylized comic style might be a good option. The character arts have very little contrast - use these render settings for the environments use simple but consistent geometry and let the textures do all the work. Kind of like this
[

ironically going to the cartoon style actually means more 2d painting - because they all heavily rely in textures - which you cant take from a database cause they have to be unique.

Wellthe BGs as you see them represent one sprite.
I know what you are suggesting, it just seems very complicated to pull off.
How would I setup my walkable areas and hotspots? Also constantly loading 640 sprites into an object might cause the game to lag.
I wonder if using AGSBlend would be quicker than using AGS own blending routines - any ideas?

Yeah they can be sharpened and they already are - it has probably to do with the brush I'm using - but I'm not ready for the had edged 18 round brush just yet

Well I don't think the buttons look even half bad. I think their quite decent, nobody expects the graphics to be 100% perfect.

Am I the only one who understands Calin's game as a metaphor for communism?

Before I played the game I also though McCarthy was about communism

anian - well that could work and it would make my life easier - now that I looked at it again I also realized that the colors are somehow odd.

ryan - I had this before and it does look better - Unfortunately AGS can't handle it even at D3D. As this is a platformer game even slight slowodowns get anoying, especially when jumping because itr has to load the jumping frames.

I just played syberia again and realized the good looking 3d backgrounds are hard to do even for professional products (I don't want to say the bgs in syberia are bad but they are far from perfect)

I think anian is right - to speed things up you'll probably need specialized software.
I'll proof this point:
Look at this Bg for example

Looks nice doesn't it? Well it took me 5 min to make it while writing this post. How you ask?
Well my 3d skills really suck -so I cheated


Uploaded with ImageShack.us
So I went into sketchup (I use sketchup because I suck really hard at blender/3ds) went into the 3d warehouse and got me a nice gondor town model (probs go to daniel papen who does awesome detailed ready to use models). I exported the model got it into vue (in whioch I have a nice realistic radiosity setup). added a tree and some grass (didn't place the grass - too lazy - just let vue create an eco system on the grass texture)
Placed the camere and rendered it. Now the cool things about 3d come in handy. As I exportet the whole city I can make an infinite amount of BGs in that city even animation (If I had a workstation at home at least).

I probably know less about 3d than you (at least I couldn't make a character from scratch like you),and I don'T want to say become a lazy bum like me - but I say there are ways to make the creation process way easier and more pleasant.
And I dont want to say cheat like me - Its also really easy to do buildings on your own in Sketchup as it is to create landscapes in vue.

You can use ogg compression for speech and music - that should reduce the size.

@straydog: right these are the ones

I did another one and now I ran into a problem: You see the house? everything elseis fine but the house is awkwardly shaded - i just didnt know how to approach the shading - suggestions or even an overpaint are highly apprechiated.


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Hm Khris sounds kind of hard - but he might be right. 3d always sounds tempting but it has to be done perfectly and even more important: it's much more work.
To have a nice detailed BG you have to model everything out - like every book in a shelf, when painting you just do a few strokes. And especially the outdoor scenes won't work without something like this: http://www.e-onsoftware.com/products/vue/vue_9_complete/ or xfrog+3d max at least not in a reasonable amount of time.

I don't say that its not possible with blender so don't be discouraged - I still think the player model is very nice.
But the learning curve for 3d is steep and you might still need a few years to get decent results.

EDIT: Ali you're also right I've seen worse art getting better comments - Sometimes I feel a little bias here towards everything that is not pixel art. But in essencse hes right

For the grass - the color and the render setting do not give you a realistic result. The color is too green and the roots are pitch black - in reality the roots wouldnt be black but get a little ambient light.
There are some ways to simulate this in renders - google for clay render or skydome.

ProgZmax:
I couldn't help but notice that you're latest posts are quite rude -just take it easy.

Ouxxey:
Thats a good idea - I had the same problem - when I arrived, I had to dig myself trough every page of the module board to check which modules existed. Then there's the dead link problem of course. I wonder if it would be possible to make a comprehensive list of all modules and a quick description.

Sure, Ben did a nice tutorial somewhere around here - he got me the idea to start with a plain dark shape and "carving out" the lightning. I also studied the BGs from Airwave, cause I thought they where lovely.

Theo did a quick tutorial of his workflow - sketching cleaning, volume shading (which was very helpful for me - doing the shading fist and thinking about color later). The HD screens gave me also a good insight into the way he was doing them

There's been enough said about the character already. Apart from that - I think it looks pretty good.

The BGs are (sorry) horrible. A few suggestions to improve them:

- Extremely low polygon count
-> Use a heightmap terrain/ displacement material for outside areas and for caves.
-> For the models (chairs...), well I normally use the 3d warehouse (its like google images for models)
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/

- No proper lightning
-> Get some proper lightning setup in your areas (I don't know how to do this in blender - but you can do at least a lightdome for the outside areas)
-> Get a good render settings with radiosity, AO or what ever. It improves quality so much.

- No textures
-> http://www.cgtextures.com/

With this kind of premise its kind of hard not to think about monsters inc.
How about taking the neverending story kind of appoach:
The monsters exist because humans believe in them. Thats the reason only kids can see them at thats also the reason why the wouldn't kill them because they live on their imagination. It's also very true in a way.

[EVERYTHING UNDER THE SUN]

I don't know.  Everywhere you go, people are just so ready to jump in and offer a shitload of advice for EVERYTHING UNDER THE SUN and while well meant, it's all just personal opinions. 

Motivation is such a personal issue I couldn't even begin to honestly advise anyone (let alone myself) on the best way to do something.  For me, it's either do it or don't, but isn't that what motivation comes down to anyway?

Point being, I don't really see returns on a general question of how to become motivated.  You need to look inside yourself and find that answer.

Hm, I think its a little bit of both. I was very similar to icey during my former developements, which looked always great and i started with a lot of motivation but with little ideas where I was heading. So after the first enthusiasm was gone I ended up without a plan and ultimately abandoned the project.
Abduction was the turning point for me. And I had three simple rules for the development:

- Keep my first project as small as possible
- Having completely laid out my game with puzzles and "plot" before I do a single stroke.
- Having a deadline (in my case: MAGS)

I worked out as you all know..

But, it was only possible because I REALLY wanted this game to be finished. I was so convinced of the concept and so frustrated from not ever finishing something that I worked like a madman to finish this. It was hell at times, as I learned scripting and animation techniques as i went along and if I hadnt been so convined of the game I wouldnt have finished it.

@Tabata: Thats a cool idea. To be honest the engine, engine and graphics already quite far progressed but the story is more of a concept than a plot.

@Damien: I thought of this, but came to the conclusion, that it would take actually longer (at least perceived time) to separate,rearrange and blend them together - than just doing it. Im actually doing this kind of - i start of with the black silhouette style of Dacey I which I used to construct out of custom brushes (e.g. you can see it at the trees).

Thanks Jim, I'll see how this turns out.

Here's a screen with parallaxed layers


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Thanks anian and matti, thats really encouraging. The whole thing took me 4h from scratch which is already pretty fast. It's also not that long, fbut the game is supposed to have a strong explorative aspect - kind of like a platformer version of Zelda with puzzles - which means the game will need alot of BGs.
Well, I had so much fun doing this - i still might give it a try.

Hey guys, today a strange thing happened to me:
I always thought I was pretty untalented when it came to painting. So I always made my BGs using some workaround tactics. Actually I hadn't tried for a long time. I'm currently doing some work on Dacey II while avoiding to work on my thesis. I was prepared to do the BGs in the same way as I did them for the first part. But lately I've read some tutorials and looked at some good background art, namely Ben's and especially Theo's (whose ressources taught me a lot). Then I just stood up this morning and did this BG - no sketches, no second tries - i just did it. I think for my own standards this looks pretty amazing. I've never painted much with my wacom before, but now that I was doing this, it felt like the most normal thing to do.

Well here's the background (Warning it's pretty big, like 2 mb):
Dacey II is gonna be a explorative open-world kind of game and it will be platform controlled just in case you wonder. Also ignore the background for now - as there are several parallax layers to be placed beneath it.


Uploaded with ImageShack.us
Acutally I don't even know if this is going to be in the game - as I just started this as a test.
Anyway special thanks go to Theo and Ben for sharing their knowledge.
I know that there a some parts which still are sub-perfect so I'd also apprechiate some critics.

Now I have another problem!

Now that I now that the game could look like this I can NEVER go back to the old background style - because I couldn't live with it anymore - it was okay as long as it was the best I could do..
This on the other hand means that the game will take MUCH more time to make which, realistically speaking, will make its release more unlikely. But on the other hand I REALLY want to make this game as the concept is really cool I think.

This is really a dilemma!

Count me in Dual!

Hm, these B/W comics get their charm form the careful balancing between black and white shapes. Your picture is more of a lineart, try to add some contrast and mood by making some shapes black. Frank Miller was really good at this but it might be a little impractical for adventures: http://outnow.ch/Media/Movies/Bilder/2005/SinCity/comics.p/01.jpg

Alan Moores From Hell did also a good job at this: http://forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/Alan%20Moore%20Eddie%20Campbell%20From%20Hell%20panels.jpg