Messages

Aw jeez wow!  I'm totally flattered.  I'll have to give it a try since it looks totally wild!

Well, looks like we're gonna wrap this up.  Anybody else got anything working?

Thanks for getting the ball rolling @jwalt !!  I look forward to seeing what everyone else comes up with.

Ah, the salad days!  "Enjoy your college years, son, because that is the time in life when least is expected of you."  That is a quote my uncle told me years ago was from Citizen Kane.  It's not and indeed I cannot determine what, if anything, it is from.  But it is the theme of this month's Background Blitz!

Academia, the Quad, parties, new relationships, Spring Break, road trips, sports, competitions, cramming, term papers, final exams, hot professors, hard-ass professors there's a million things that can happen in college!







As usual the votes will be tabulated and entries judged on:

-Concept
-Playability
-Artistic Execution

The jabby sword animation is an easy one to explain.  I used the Quest for Glory II animations as a rather direct influence.  Like, very direct.

Another tool I use that I forgot to mention is an Aseprite extension called the EGA-ifier.  What it does is matches the colors in an image to the closest color in the 64 colors EGA represents and then replaces it with either that color or the dithered equivalent.  Now, this does look like a lof noise if you use it directly but if you use it on something already a bit simplified or quantized in a different program like Paint.net it yield better results.  It almost always needs some hand editing though but that's good because it makes the art look like it was done by a human being rather than a program.  It works great for me because it does the two things that I want: EGA palette and dithering.  I was trying to write the thing myself in LUA for Aseprite because I couldn't conceive that some maniac would have already written it but indeed some maniac already had.  So, in this manner you can take photographic or illustrated references rather directly and then get them into it rather easily.  The icy statues in Dracula began life as a photograph of the Art Deco bridge in Cleveland.

But I think one of the strengths of working with the same palette over and over again is that you get really used to what it can do and then work in that direction rather than trying to shift the palette to something it's not as good at.  Like, uh, faces. 

But thanks and glad you liked it!!

I'm happy to talk about my process although I think perhaps we end up in different places style wise.  That is, I'm pretty much only a 320x200 EGA palette guy.

I do tend sketch it out beforehand.  I've gotten into trouble plenty of times because I got a bit too excited and ahead of myself and didn't take some simple measurements to make sure that my characters would look correct on the background.  I know that lots of people recommend super simple art like wireforms first and then fill it in later.  I can see the wisdom in this but also it's not advice I tend to take, because I refuse to learn I guess!

Another lesson I have learned is that it's important to trust the process.  About 40% of the way through I look at what I have done and remark about how terrible it looks and how it could never look good and I'll want to give up on it.  But if I don't it will get over this hump and I'll have something I'm generally very pleased with.

One trick I have been using recently is using AI to do some of the sketching has helped speed up the process immensely.  First I'll have an idea which I may or may not sketch out depending on the complexity.  Then, I'll use the AI to put some of the components together and then dial it in another step.  By the time I'm finished it won't look too much like the AI weirdness that I started with.  I also do this a lot for characters as I find that using the AI to "pose" them is easier than trying to pose them any other way although I'll still an actual figure sometimes or a reference photo if I happen to find a good one.  I'll also note that the AI seems to be much better at outdoor scenes than indoor ones.  Anyway, once things are blocked out and I'm adding details this is where the lighting and shadow comes in.  Lots of times I have a sprite or some part of the background that I think is finished but actually needs to be adjusted for lighting.  So, the shape and nature of it doesn't change just some color values.  I'll then go over in a new layer with a 2x2 custom brush that is a blue and transparent sort of checkerboard for additional dithered shadowing.  I do a lot of dithering.  I love dithering.

I have also hired cheap line artists on Fiverr to get something on paper but that's often more trouble than its worth.  That is, starting from nothing is tough for me. 

Anyway, these are just some tricks I have learned along the way.  Hope something in here is helpful!


For reference, this is my reddit profile where you can see a lot of what I've done.
Here's my reddit profile where you can see some of the stuff I have done.

I think we can take that as a no lol. 

Thanks for the kind words!  I'll think up something fun and post it here tonight or tomorrow and we can get started on a new one.  Excellent!

This was a little tricky at this resolution since everything is a bit "blurry" to begin with.

In case you don't know these cool guys.

Just played through it and had a nice time doing so.  Can't wait to finish it!

Oh that's a fun idea and some nice example photos.  I have no idea what to do lol.

Oh, I'm the guy that @Khris was responding to before because I had the exact same issue where I wanted more of a pixel fade than the Transparency++ in the manual.  That script he posted is for a character but I think you could either edit the script or more hilariously make a screenshot a character and then fade that out.  But I've used that script quite a bit and just made everything I've used it on a character rather than edit anything.  It's pretty great!

Yes, i love disguises! Short but good little game, strong re-play value . I'm gonna use disguises in my game too, probably not like this tho. More in a tradional *use tinfoil-hat on playable character click*

I will admit that setting the system up was rather annoying but once it was working it was actually a lot more versatile than even what you see here.  Especially since the "walking around" character was only ~45 pixels tall there was a lot of room for fudging.  You can see the rough edges in certain places where you sort of intuit how the character is assembled.  There are three walk cycles which represent the shirt colors, a different dummy head character (which will disappear and reappear when clicked, a debuggin mechanic I forgot to remove) for all the heads, and finally a dummy speech view character which is essentially flapping lips over everything that work with all permutations.  But this is also why there is only a single walking view and the same flipped.  Doing up and down would be 300% more stuff to draw although you could probably get away with some more fuging like duplicates and the "up" speech view just being the head moving up and down which you could script instead of animate.  If I were to make this a longer game though I would lean into this some.  I do think it's a fun concept.  Essentially this is a combination lock puzzle where you play the part opf the combination yourself.

As to replay value I wanted to include more but obviously ran out of time.  I really wanted to add the classic sitcom gag where you have to be two different people in the same place and constantly making flimsy pretexts for why you have to leave for just a moment.  But there are two endings at least!

But anyway, glad you like it and thanks for playing!

Ah, hearing that you could immediately recognize my style from a guy with an immediately recognizable style is really quite a thrill!  Thanks!

Hmmm...a baton pass, eh?  I don't mind if it makes your life easier especially in regards to a MAGS entry.

Congratulations Creamy! This was a fun one and I look forward to whatever you come up with for this month. The more ridiculous the better as I always say...

Done for the $107 Adventure Game Challenge.  Classic EGA graphics and resolution.  A quick little tale where the main drive is wearing disguises in order to pull off a heist.  I had a blast making it and since I already had a lot of useable backgrounds I could concentrate on adding a few little character animations and trying to set a mood. 

Two endings!  Nobody has picked the second one yet!!

AGS Database

Itch Link[/ur]

This was fun. And while visiting your Itch page, I also tried out your efforts to try it out in a game, too. Cool and fun game mechanics!

I even noticed the statue from your background blitz entry, so I guess I now either know whose building that was, or where he stole it from.   

Oh dang that was supposed to be hidden!! At least until the jam it's intended for us over lol. Well, try again in six hours if you like and you can play the "finished" version. 

This is pretty much all I do, actually.  Although I'm probably more 1990 EGA than 1988 EGA lol.  I can probably help out here and there over the course of time.  Or I may actually have something lying around that could work for you.

Not every day you hear someone recommend the EGA palette lol.

I will say that I love dithering but the reason (aside from a creative or stylistic one) is because you're trying to represent a color you don't have in your palette.  So, it's seems strange to me to have a low resolution image, dithering, and a large color palette.  With the foreground tree you've got a gradient of quite a few colors but you use the dither patterns on the ground.  To my eye I prefer the dithering but I'm a dithering guy.  Working with a pre-defined palette is good advice though.  That's what I started with (EGA) and I never moved on even though I have to use magenta a lot!