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I also use MilkyTracker whenever I want to do do XM music. I rarely do that anymore, but it's still fun. And sometimes it's a good choice for game music, smaller than MP3 yet better sounding than MIDI, and you can easily put more than one music into a single file and control the music through scripting.

Yes, reading that AGS supports those old formats was a pleasant surprise. Hehe, I noticed you are about the same age as me. I take it you had the same fun with the old trackers in your teens as I did. 
  I rarely use any old trackers anymore either. I been mainly using Musagi these last years.  (That is a nice lil program for creating chiptune- or custom synths like music. It can also support wav samples and some stuff. The only downside to Musagi is when you want to restructure songs, the interface is not too helpful for that.)
Havn't been very productive myself last months either way. I might however open a general WIP thread in the comming weeks and share some of my musical experiments too.

And now for something completely different.
Here's a short piece of "classical" music. Sometimes all you need is a piano:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1891681/music/demo/hesitation.mp3

Oh Kinda Chopin, Bach and Yann Tiersen all in one exploration, sweet.

Yeah, apparently people in this thread now think about losing outlines all together? But what MurrayL meant was that black has the habit of jumping into the foreground. Especially when you start to do the whole bells and wistles thing with desaturated backgrounds for depth effect.
The easy way is to adjust the brightness along with it. But I am not convinced this is the real hate Squinky has for these images yet. lol

But now, for those who like to compare, here's the original version of the captain tune. It's an oldschool FastTracker Module:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1891681/music/demo/captain.xm (not every media player can handle these)

YAY FT2
Hehe, talking about melancholy: I just had to open it in Milkytracker since ft2 is crap under windows these days. VLC works to play it.. but not see it.
Yup, thats more quirky already. Hehe, shame the violin/strings didnt make it into that one. But yeah, thats more charming to me than making things sound like they "should"... and more humorous too. I think thats why I suggested some freak instument, the writing is fine. Although I think in the "refined" version you vary the measures in between parts at some point... but I might be wrong, hehe, i don't feel like counting.
Anyway, thanks for uploading. 

Whelp, (...)  advice. Something to break up all the flat color and get rid of the black lines?

Hmm, well one handy practice (for finding the right values and having control over them) is: just copy/paste everything as layer a few times. Then play mostly with the color levels, hue, saturation, and lightness settings.  Then use the eraser tool with a few well picked brushes to get the desired effect. Working your way down rather then up. Taking away: rather than adding.
This approach is handy for some fast revisions of colour etc. but also works, for example, when you are working with multiple source material. -Like when merging photographs of different quality.

Another simple idea is adding subtle, less cartoony fog, light-fall, smoke and so on "on top" of your scenery. So it can just kinda hang there fluidly muffling the cartoony contours. However it's easy to overdo that.

And another idea is confronting the hate a bit rather then going around it. Hehehe. What is wrong with a crisp, consistent, down to earth cartoony style? Why not focus on making it better in its own domain? Why go wide, more or less put time in concealing it? Since that will indeed bring the extra hours of work.
Btw, not saying adding more depth and polishing it is a bad idea. But I kinda wondered what you hated about it initially.

It almost seems to suggest the end/begin of a bridge-like structure this way. I think it would do wonders making it steeper:

Btw: even steeper than in this outline thingie. But you get the point.

I like what you are doing/showing here. And I also agree with Crimson about the "light" effect from that first post. It is so distracting and detached it almost seems like a cheap watermark on top of some real nice artwork.

Thanks for sharing.

Hey, nice tracks.

Lovely progression in the SciFi Demo 1 one. Love that tiny twist around the 1 minute mark.
If anything, I think, I would make SciFi Demo 1 into a loop.  Lose the outro. Cut the last bit off: from around 3:03/3:18. Since, the unwinding/repetition/breakdown from that point seem to make the total weaker. The fade seems out of place too.

Depending on what kinda game you made Captain for... As tune on itself I would like to hear a more quirky version of it. Not by redo/expand the lines... but rather by using some weird tempered instrument. One that sometimes freaks out, hehe, just a little. Dosed to keep the slumber going- yet teasing.
Anyway keep em coming!

Oh, and would you like to list the programs/your setup you use for these? 
Thanks for sharing.

My development process(...) sticky note open, I can jot them down really quickly and carry on testing, then fix it all in one go when I'm done.

Thank you so much! That kind of breakdown is indeed something that fits this thread. I hope people didn't get intimidated by it, hehe. Small ideas also should fit in here.
It might even be nice if people showcased their little notes and such as addition.
I am glad for your fast and interesting response.
Hmm, I don't take apart my own process often... blame it on magical thinking but sometimes thinking spoils things: over-analyzing and what not. But it might not be a bad aim in the long run.
Thanks agian.

[please feel free to share your ideas, methods and experiences!]

"Just do it"-The Dig

This thread for users/creators who want to discuss workflow and motivation related issues. Perhaps people can provide some insight in how -and why- they structure their time while working on a game. And how they keep it interesting to themselves: more particularly relating to personal home brew projects.

To shed some light on things like:
-How intuitive or planned is your process, and why?
-Is there any order of priorities that seem to work for you best?
-Are there any helpfull tricks you use, in this regard, to keeping yourself passionate about your own projects?
-What does your planning consist of? Maps, storyboards, ect?
-... anything you might think useful to the discussion.

Of course I am aware that these these things will vary from person to person- aswell project to project.  But I figure it would be helpful and interesting to discuss regardless. Since it seems all too common for creators to be plagued by procrastination and perfectionism. Getting lost in details and losing sight of things. So please feel free to share your ideas, methods and experiences! Or even just sum up all the projects that didnt see daylight. :-P


"You can always make a game better and never release it, but you can make a good game when you know when to say stop."- Frederick Raynal

I know there are other workflow related threads out there, but didnt find a more general thread to discuss these matters.

---


OP starts off:
I never made a storyboard in my life. And deadlines usualy only rise when working with others. Any homebrew, full-blown game ideas -that require oversight- seem too ambitious to bring to an end (so far). So my interest is in the experiences of generalists who have commited to make a game from scratch by themself.
But apart from that I like to contribute to the discussion too. And rather than a concrete workflow tip share a view/trick that implies its own method.  A simple yet freeing idea that came up talking earlier with a friend. Namely that making a game could be viewed as merely an exercise in telling stories based on a much bigger world. This sounds all fair and obvious perhaps. To view a game as means to an end seems an nearly inescapable perspective after thinking about it. But sometimes its good to be reminded of those simple things. And this one in particular gives room to breathe to those who seek a compulsory space for creativity to thrive.

Heys, I am new here.


Sam and Max and The Dig onwards I always have appreciated the point&click genre, from some distance I might add. My favorite bigger title is the old Broken Sword -from before it got slaughtered. :-P  Ashamed to say I never played Monkey Island, Space Quest, or kept up to date with what been going on in the adventure game-sphere.

Neither do I think of myself as a real gamer, I just love games.  Hehe, even before I learned how to manipulate *.bat files in the DOSeditor I been facinated by the idea of making games. And almost a decade ago I made a few tiny point and click games in Flash, hahaha... But I won't bother you with those.

I am here because a sense of community can perhaps help fight some procrastination, lol, or enable it. Either way... this AGS tool seems potent.

Here is a list of free programs I like(d) to use:
FT2
MilkyTracker
musagi
sfxr
Audacity
Blender
Sculptris
GraphicsGale
GIMP (well I don't really like the use of the GIMP, but you get the point)

As you can derive from the list I am not a scripter. It's the big bottleneck for me. But with sweat, modding and using examples I can make things work. So THANKS in advance for all those user made modules and templates! -I already looked into some of them.
I hope I can add AGS to that list soon.

So yes, hi.

(...)

Okay, changes made. Still not sure about the sky. I originally had the hills the other color because here in Idaho, hills look like that

Any more advice folks?

Hi, you might indeed want to use a non-gradient. The old blue seemed fine to me.
Also, the old saturated background hills appeal to me much more, both in colour and consistent style. So unless you are going to use some parallax effect on those I would consider going back to the old.


Hmmm also, the perspective here almost demands the sky not to show at all.