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Sounds good!

Since I don't have my copy of Star Trek 25th Anniversary here with me, I found a screenshot lying on methodshop.com



I hope it helps.. it looks soo cool, I love itÃ, 

[Real-life video]

Hey, video compression is sort of my "area of expertise"!

Well the video coded you should employ definitely depends on what type of video you are trying to compress.

Real-life video

The general video codecs (like MPEG, DivX, Xvid, Theora, WMV and the like) work are best for real movies, and work fine for cartoons, too. Roughly said, I'd divide these into two categories: MPEG - older codec, lower compression ratio, but much less CPU load, the rest - newer, higher compression ratio, more CPU load.

If you experience bad quality/size ratio with these codecs, it's usually due to poor quality of the source material. These codecs are VERY sensitive to (white)noise in the source, as white noise contains a huge amount of data and they will try to encode it.

My experience: A quality full-length widescreen(=less picture area) movie (e.g 2 hours from a DVD) can be compressed with DivX into resolution as high as 480xsomething and fitted on a single 700MB CD (~500kbit/s)

A quality full-length 4:3 movie recorded from DVB-T, in 720x576 resolution compressed with DivX can be fitted on 2CDs (actually 2CDs are much more than enough) (~1mbit/s)

Both with great quality.


On the other hand when recording from analog TV air-broadcast with ATI-All-in-Wonder, I had to reduce the resolution down to 352x288 and use bit rates as high as 1mbit/s to keep the visibility of artifacts reasonable (but they would still be perceivable and the quality being just ok, but not very good)

As for different versions, I only have long experience with DivX, and I can tell you, that DivX 4.1x is the ultimate version. The later versions brought nothing really beneficial (no crucial bugs fixed, still can't encode some video dimensions), on the other hand the licencing policy changed, and many useless features were introduced.

Computer game animation is a whole different story

The codecs listed above usually have problems with the crispness of computer-game animation.

For limited animation, like used in most adventure games, i'd say the best is a non-lossy compression, in the spirit of FLI,FLC or GIF. (FLI/FLC use RLE compression, which is VERY fast, but not very high compression ratio, GIF uses LZW compression which has higher compression ratio, and is still quite fast to decompress - actually it's insanely fast comparing to such monsters as DivX)

As for VfW (that is AVI, which you can use in AGS?) there is a codec called Microsoft RLE, but, to be honest, I never tried it, but I suppose it might be equivalent to FLI/FLC.

Alas I don't know of any VfW codec that would use LZW or something similar.

Curse of Monkey Island

Now if you recall Curse of Monkey Island, it had great FMV, which was a sort of cross between game-animation and cartoon animation. It looked fantastic! LucasArts apparently did a great job of creating a special codec for this kind of video.

In areas of the picture that were changing rapidly, it used some sort of lossy compression, and in the relatively stationary ones it gradually improved the picture until perfection.

The results look just amazing. Unfortunately I know nothing closer than what I deduced from observing the videos, and I don't know of any publicly available codec that would be capable of such things.

Conclusion

Anyway, if there would be interest, I might look into this problem. If I can find out how to create a VfW codec, I would be (100% sure) able to create one with GIF-like compression.

As for CMI-like videos, I can't say anything. If it employs techniques similar to MPG and the likes, I would probably not be able to produce anything similar, since it's just too difficult to get it right. On the other hand, there are simpler (but much MUCH less compression ratio) lossy compression schemes, like Microsoft Video 1, or the very similar texture compression in modern graphic cards.


EDIT:

lossy compression (MPG,...) => higher compression ratio
lossless compression (FLI,...) => perfect crispness

Hey, nice work!

I'm a Star Trek fan too!

I don't really like this kind of view of the bridge, since it's so unnatural. You would never see anything like that on TV - since the physical impossibility. You might consider rather having two or three views from cameras INSIDE the bridge.

This would allow you to do cuts and make the whole thing more movie-like. But then... for a game bg this might be better.

On the image itself:
I'm not acquainted with the bridge of Deadalus class, since it didn't appear in any movies or TV series, but I'm really confused. I recognise the consoles on the far left and right (science/communication/engineering) and but I don't recoginse the three other things. Is that a captain's chair in the middle? The two other things look like some benches to me. The closest one is a console or the main screen?

I think one problem is proportions. The door is so huge comparing to other things and the captains chair is so small... can't tell exactly, don't know how big the bridge is supposed to be.

No Star Trek ships had white walls or floors.

I think you should dig out a tape with ST-TOS and have a look at Enterprise 1701-A bridge, which will be probably the closest thing you can have a look at. It should give you a pretty good picture how the doors, consoles and stuff should look like.

Anyway nice job and don't take this too hard - I am a perfectionist 

Thanks for the help, guys!

I think you've pretty much hit the nail on the head.

The fact that you didn't get many votes, or didn't win, was not due to your poor BG

Actually I was surprised and pleased about the votes. But that's not the reason I did the blitz for. I want to learn something... and while I was drawing the picture I just couldn't figure out how to draw the sea+beach+sky, that's why I posted the picture here.

EDIT: No, it's not EGA. 57 colors.. to much for EGA, too few for VGA.

The beach does not look like a beach really.

You're right, it doesn'tÃ, . I just couldn't get it right :'(

I love the chair on top of the little house. I would love having vacation there...

Bingo! That's EXACTLY what I had in mind when drawing this pictureÃ, 

The camera is placed inside a cave, or something? Cause the black edges on the top make it seem so.

Yes, I wanted to give the picture maximum depth. You're right, it doesn't look very good.

I love the rope ladder. I would hate to use it whenever possible, but I love it.

Quite insane, ain't itÃ, 

Hi!

Hope I'm not breaking any rules by re-posting my entry from the previous BG blitz here. Took me 4 days. But I'm not very happy about it and thought you might give me some hints as to what or how could I make better.



I think the gradients on the sea and sky look strange, but I don't know what to do about it. Tried to put waves all over the sea, but it looked just too noisy.

Oh and the beach is terrible, yes. I absolutely couldn't get that right.

My artistic skills are literally zero so I greatly appreciate all advice and/or paintovers.

Wowee! Big brother, your paintover rocks! Great job! Really adorable.

EDIT:

to Big brother: Oh, the creator of the Apprentice series himself.. that explains a lot! Truly outstanding games, I love them!

to Mr. Punk: You should really REALLY listen to this guy's advice, he's the best, you know ~_o.

Hi, this game is simply amazing!
I love the graphics and the atmospere.

I'm stuck here:

Spoiler

I finished the block puzzle, but I have no idea how to transport water to the hole. (or whatever it is you are supposed to pour there)

[close]

Eh.. pardon my ignorance, but what exactly is a diner?

Praha (=Prague)
Czech Republic
Central Europe

Hello folks! Hey, I'm the first Czech on this thread.Ã,  :o Surely there are more, don't be shy guys!

Anyway, greets to:
- Best Willis, because he's Slovak
- to InCreator because he used a photo of Prague as a reference for his background
- to everyone else, because they're adventure game fanatics, just like me!!!Ã, 

Ok, should have made it clearer: neither of the two download links work, neither Download, neither Mirror 1.

Something's wrong. I get a 404 when I try to download the game. Same thing for Project Xenophobe.

It's Prague, coool!!!

Hey, InCreator, it looks awesome!

As a Prague resident, and a holder of a driving licence, I can confirm, that cars in Prague park the same way as in Brazil, so these cars are really parked diagonally. LOL!

This game looks promising!

But one thing that is completely out of place and spoiling it is

Spoiler

the bed&sink&diary "puzzle". Do you think it's fun clicking 1000 times before I get to the sink? Do you think it is good for training my brains? Actually after 30 minutes of insane clicking I gave up. My poor little mouse!
-

[close]

This would be definitely one from my (hypothetical) top 10 list of things that should never appear in an adventure game. It's not a fair puzzle. I won't be caught playing Mind's Eye unless you remove this.

Ok, here it is. My first background attempt.

2x


1x


Original size: 320x200
Colors: 71

Hi, when exactly is the deadline? I just found about this cometition today and I got an (IMO) interesting idea which I immediately started on. Unfortunately it's going to be probably very rough since it'd take me a week or two to paint properly.

So, I'd like to post it at the last moment, when is that, please?

Hi!

I think I know what the goal of the bonus puzzle is, but still have no idea on how to solve it. Can you give me a hint? Pretty please with wipped cream and sugar on top?

Ok, telling someone what to do is easy, so I made a paintover.

Eh.. I think I got a little carried away:



- changed colour of shirt and shoes
- made his shirt more fashionable
- added some details on trousers
- gave his shoulders a more natural slope
- moved his head 1 pixel to the right
- made his chin less blocky
- added ears
- added some extra hair
- added a wristwach
- changed his hands a bit (they are not better though, because I absolutely can't draw, you knowÃ,  )

Hey, this guy looks good! But you could still add some touches to make him even better. He looks too dull.

details - the body area is large, and you've put in so few details. Pockets, waistbelt and slit on the trousers

clothing - this guy sure has no taste for fashion - he desses almost a bad as I do
Give him something more interesting to wear - do not hesitate to have a look in a catalogue or something

attributes - if you add an attribute, people can recognise instantly what the guy is like. (e.g. tatoo, baseball cap, clipboard, ...)

colors - sorry, but I really dislike the color of his clothes, it really makes him look unhealthy - this is pretty much the blue-green combination which is really dreadful and you should avoid it like plague (that is unless you really really know what you're doing). Ever seen someone wearing this color combination? Yes? Really? Oh well... perhaps he had faulty color perception

Hi Dan!

Your characters and backgrounds look just fantastic! Proffesional quality, really! I wish you from all my heart that you finish this game successfully.

It is probably not a good idea to say this on an AGS forum, but if the fact that AGS doesn't run on a Mac is giving you trouble, there are other free game engines that you can use, and some of them are portable, so they should run on a Mac.

And also it is possible to write an engine from scratch (tailored to the needs of the specific game) -- this game more than deserves it. It's actually much less work to write an engine, than to create the rest of the game.

Anyway, in case you need someone to program it, I am a student of computer sciences with 17 years of programming experience and it would be my utmost pleasure to work hard in order to make this game a success. Want me to script it in AGS? To write a complete new engine? Name it, I'll do it.

If not, you just got another dedicated fan, that can't wait to be able to play the game!