Messages

looks good man! Don't be afraid to throw some light on the ground from those streetlights.

Right off the bat I'd say one of my favorite landscapes that made me truly feel something is the colorful yet gloomy atmosphere of some of the areas in THE DIG.



Really, does an atmosphere get more potent than this? The stunning palette and backdrop animation combined with the awesome soundtrack creates a totally unique balls out bombastic and original mood I have encountered nowhere else. Robert Patrick's brilliant lonesome yet brave voice acting probably also goes a long way in making this area really feel like a hostile yet beautiful world to explore.

--

Another gorgeous location is the port town of Rubacava from Grim Fandango. This isn't really a landscape but still is an area that shouldn't be missed by anyone.



Rubacava's beauty lies in the seedy people that inhabit the place equally as much as it's lovely art and music.

--

Anyhow... It's safe to say that in both cases it's the combination of different arts that create a good landscape that truly draws you in.  I'm sure this goes for all landscapes that have truly made an impact on a player.

The only AGS games I've actually bought are the Blackwell games, I bought them in a bundle at an insanely low price. I got my money's worth like crazy. Simply loved all three of them. If this deal is still available I recommend EVERYONE to go pay up.

Meanwhile in AGS land

Sweet! Glad to see JD nominated for so many different awards.  :o Thanks all!

I can't believe my multi dimensional spaghetti code didn't make it to best programming though. 

Kick-ass presentation btw, bici!

Ascovel: Thanks! I'm glad you like the look of it:) I think the trick is to keep everything as close to the original as possible, just cleaning up and adding details.

Armageddon: Heh it's not compression, what you are seeing is actually some of the aliasing from the original 3d model of the engine that I painted over. I was just too lazy to clean it up all the way. Hopefully I'll remember to give it a couple extra brush strokes, next time I'm working on it!

Been cleaning out Makena's kitchen today... Man, she sure had it in a mess.

Makena's kitchen interior

Can someone tell me how the graphics are?

pretty much plain fantastic! I recommend visiting the website. It sure rocked my socks off.

Personally, my opinion is definitely GO COMMERCIAL. Granted, it raises expectations, it's a lot more work, it will spread a lot less, and frankly, like my franchise, it most likely won't make you any real money. BUT it will allow you to do more interesting things AND it will all in all be better for the AGS community as it will help putting the stamp on AGS as a solid tool for making real commercial projects, not just some goofy toy for kid programmers.

I truly respect everyone who is bold enough to charge money for their indie projects, it's a very ballsy thing to do and it encourages entrepreneurship in others, including me.

Also, managing the commercial part of the project will most likely be a very good thing to have under your belt, for future ventures.

woah, titanium inlay that's awesome! That almost makes you a terminator, man.

I play nearly every AGS game full-screen.. even most 320X200 ones... Is this bad?

No. It's wonderful. I wish everyone had such good taste.  8) The whole "I play everything windowed, then the pixels still look proper." thing has me flabbergasted. I had no idea this opinion was so common. It's good to know though.

Looks great animated, man! Good job:D

Nah, if you want to update that game, you don't have much choice but do it before JD2 is out.

Believe me, I've had the same thought many times. Thanks for pointing this out to me though. I needed to hear someone else say it, heh.

We'll see what happens I guess... Right now I'm just working on it because I need the break from chapter two. Also, as mentioned previously, it serves as a very convenient testing ground for new techniques that I may end up utilizing in chapter two.

Oh, in other news there's a new JD interview on line. It is however in Swedish which admittedly does render it quite useless to most of y'all, but hey, I'd be an idiot not to spam about it.

I just finished the engine room! Might have to revisit this later though to add some control details etc.

Two lovely airplane engines to be, just waiting to be liberated!

If you're going for a misty look I recommend adding some fog to the horizon. The ocean line is sharp as a razor now. This would NEVER happen in even the faintest mist. Also, a foggy scene implies no direct sunlight which means your shadows should at most be blurry and vague. (and have no real direction besides the ambient occlusion.)

For more depth I recommend adding a simple foreground to layer it all up a bit. This would also help frame the composition.

rough anim looks great, man!

Doing roughs like this is a really good idea. I did that a lot on JD, just to get stuff in place and get a feeling for what goes where. They're a hella lot of work though... but it's worth it!

Keep it up!

Promising!

I'd recommend breaking up the intro dialog in some different camera angles and maybe cutting a few lines. This would give the introduction a bit more of a punch and make it feel less static.

oh. Good job SookieSock then!

Regarding gamma etc. Galen, you run a black n white horror game WINDOWED???!!! That's like watching the air duct scene in the first alien movie, in broad daylight.  :o

[ALL ABOUT EXPOSURE]

Thanks for the kind words and your thoughts regarding selling games. I enjoyed reading them:)

One thing I have understood is that it is, as you mentioned, indeed ALL ABOUT EXPOSURE. Nothing else really matters. Granted, if you've got a crap product and it gets loads of exposure, that doesn't mean it sells. BUT if you have a good title that also gets good exposure, you hit the sweet spot. Good titles with zero exposure are epic economical flops no matter how enjoyable they are to play.

Anyhow. I need to be clear here. The "HD" version of chapter one is (at least in theory) a commercial project because I think it deserves to be one. Not because I believe it will actually generate any decent revenue. (Frankly, I'll be happy if I sell 1000 copies, I know how difficult that is.) But IF I do charge money for it at least there's a chance it could become a financially OK release (if I'm lucky with exposure and good reviews etc.) If I don't, there's no such chance.

Anyhow, thanks again for your encouraging words and thoughts. I appreciate them.

I did some more cleaning up yesterday:

Aboard the yacht, outside the lounge

Good job! You hit the technobabylon style right on, but pushed it further with smoother shading!

Ha, well my rapid improvement of skillz might have something to do with getting someone else to do the drawing for me :p

hehe clever! who's doing the bg's?

Looks great, man! Good job! Glad to see you scraped up some balls with this.

Maybe add some cloudy mist at the bottom of the fall in the bg to add some ambiance? Would probably animate nicely too!