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Maybe not a bad idea to showcase a few different art styles since you can do whatever you want and as a game dev it's sort of easy to forget that.  But I'm happy to contribute a background or some characters or really anything like that.

It's definitely not a perfect system but I think most of that has to do with Instagram's compression algorithm making the pixels blurry than anything else.  Anyway, I'm having fun with it and I thought a few people here might get a kick out of it as well.  If you want to follow Brick Sundown and Ham Embargo's adventure feel free to check it out:

Several minutes of content!

About halfway there so it's almost time to get started!!

Newwaveburritos: Very mysterious behavior.
Snarky: Pretty standard stuff.  Did you read the documentation?
Newwaveburritos: Very mysterious indeed...

I had a bit of trouble getting this to work in AGS 3.6.0.35 and I can't really explain it so I thought I would mention it.  I think the problem was basically that it was not loading the files correctly.  Eventually, I discovered that it was writing in the warnings.log what was going on:

Game : (room:2)[R 369] FileOpen: FAILED: c:/Brick Sundown 3.6/Brick Sundown/Compiled/Windows/sync/Bric1.dat

When I had the files name 1.DAT and 1.WAV it wasn't working but when I renamed them BRIC1.DAT and BRIC1.WAV it started working.  The name of the character is "Brick" so it sort of makes sense and seems to work fine now once I determined that maybe I should rename the file to the one that it's looking for.

I'm using Papagayo for the lip-syncing file.  The .DAT file is in Compiled>Windows>sync and the .WAV is in Compiled>Windows>Data

Anyway, it's working great now and I really like the module so thanks for making it!

In brainstorming ideas for a new Background Blitz I took a look around my workspace where I do all my pixels and thought to myself "is this an artist's studio?"  Maybe, maybe not but that's what we're gonna do here this month!  How do you work in a studio?  What makes a studio?  Maybe the studio is a crime scene.  I think I remember seeing an AGS game with an artist's studio as the scene of a crime.  Anyway, your imagination is the only limit.

So, for this competition you can do you own studio, your dream studio, an imagined studio, or really any place an artist could work.  The whole world's a studio!

Deadline: June 21st, 2023.  Of course, this is made up and we can fool around with it as needed.

Voting:

Concept: Your background should tell us something about the place you have depicted.
Playability: does it have clearly defined walkable areas, things to interact with, etc?
Artistic Execution: does the image convey the wanted atmosphere? What's the feeling of the place?

Good luck and have fun! Can't wait to see the results of this somewhat meta theme!!

Oh, wow, thanks everybody!  Great entry, Creamy!  I guess I better come up with a theme and post it!

One thing that confused me about inventory items--and this may just be the BASS template--but in the custom properties you can set the item "InstantUse" as well which changes the behavior somewhat.  I didn't realize why it affected some inventory items and not others.  There's also the setting "display multiple icons for multiple items" that may also be worth mentioning.

I think what you're writing sounds great, though.  It fits the tone of the manual and helps explain things a bit further.

Okay!  I did it.  These days the only vacation I can imagine is the kind I have in my dreams.  But on vacations I like to go to a new city and look around a bit so I decided to try to bring these two ideas together and have a dreamy, surreal cityscape for my vacation themed background.

Well, that's amazing!

I've never bothered to worry about dither-mania on a non-CRT but also I've never actually seen something I did on a CRT so maybe I should!  Just keep up what you're doing and you'll do great!!

Oh wow!  It's nice to be recognized.  I'm glad I could have any effect on something like this!  I fooled around with this for a bit.  Mostly I just used the Aseprite gradient feature to add some dither to the area between fully lit and shadow.  Honestly, that gradient tool is awesome and I use it all the time.  I also really like to add a little schmutz around to break things up a little just like a little dirt on the wall or floor.  Another thing to bear in mind especially with EGA is that sometimes the color you're looking for isn't as important as the brightness relationship between two pixels.  Like, sometimes you don't want green but adding green doesn't read as green because it's either brighter or darker than its neighbors.

You're right your character there doesn't look bad in the shadows at all.  Honestly, I might not even change that.  Just kidding!  Playing with light and dark in the EGA palette is the most fun you can have so seize every opportunity!!

I'll also DM you a link with a bunch of stuff I've done so you can look through for inspiration, ideas, or just just steal it lol.  It's been a process!

That said, I really only ever work in EGA so I feel like it must be my time to shine!  Overall I think you're doing great.  One thing to bear in mind is that your character is going to look super bright if they walk into the shadowy side of the room so you may want to consider a different version and maybe use regions to determine which character to use.  I often use a blue dither for shadow rather than a straight up black but that may just come down to personal taste.  In fact, everything I say can be chalked up to personal taste. Anyway, I think the dithering pattern on the right side is a bit distracting and might look better with a more normal pattern and in blue. I don't like to use black outlines if I can help it but it does keep your character from blending into the background and when you've only got this palette to work with can be a real problem. 

I also use a lot more dithering just in general but that's also because I like it and I'm generally going for more of a late EGA vibe where dithering was more widely supported rather than an early EGA where you didn't see it as much.  Like, Maniac Mansion or Zak McKracken versus the OG Monkey Island.  The girlfriend character is also asymmetrical which I always like to see since it's more interesting to me.  And I love to use that dark purple color in night scenes because it looks so good to me.  One other trick I like to do and you seem to have this down is just picking a light source and just going to town on highlights and shadowing.  It really helps bring a piece to life, I think.

I really love this, though.  I'm always super tickled to see somebody working in EGA and I also love to not shut up about it.  let me know if I can help out in any way and keep it up!  I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this!


EDIT: I've also got a whole shitload of castle interior EGA art that looks similar to this that I've done that I'd be more than happy to share but also I realize that doing the whole thing yourself has a great appeal as well.  But I can also send it over and you can mine it for ideas as well.

Can you post the original size, please?  I wanna try a few things out and resizing it is proving problematic as not all of the pixels seem to be the same size.

This isn't a background or much of a vacation but it is what I've been doing. 

Spoiler

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I have been working on some real dumb stuff that I can't even shoehorn into this blitz...so I think I will have to buckle down and do a good old fashioned background soon.

You can also use the view's name instead of a number to help you read the code.  Like:

Code: ags

cRich.LockView(VRICHHANDSHAKE);

Congrats @lorenzo !  I never mind losing to you lol since you always produce such great work!  Great job to everybody else as well.  This was definitely a fun one!

Maniac Mansion itself does a little flubbing with the vanishing points to get away with having more "usable area" so you can definitely fudge it.  It's just a matter of fudging the right things.  As an aside, I have a decent treasure trove of EGA adventure game art I've done for myself that is scaled to about the same size as your guy there, Jason, if you want some.  Obviously, I doubt it will be a perfect match but it's there if you want any.

Personally, I would make that a GUI so you can leave all your room conditions alone and you don't have to mess around with keeping those straight.  The GUI code will go into the global script then.

The general idea for a combination lock is that you save the number of each tumbler in a variable and then when you push the button you check those variables to see if they are correct.  Each tumbler would be a separate GUI button (which can also animate if you want, by the way) and the button on the right there in your example would also be a button that checks the variables.