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I'm probably derailing the thread a bit here :, but I've been toying with the idea of making games with features that are common today (3d, physics) and placing them within the stylistic confines and hardware constraints (as in video, audio. not processing power) of the 90s; in particular, the old Sierra SCI games <3<3<3. Kind of the reverse of what this thread is about.

I've even uploaded a video of one such game, which I originally had much loftier goals for (including adding adventure game elements and using AdPlug for adlib emulation, rather than it just being a sidescroller with barely a whole screen of a level). It's more or less just a tech demo atm.

Here's a pic of it, if you can't be bothered watching the youtube



If anybody's feeling particularly adventurous (this is very alpha code and I'm not sure the installer managed to pick up on all the dependencies), here's a download link (~14mb) so you can try it out. And here's PhysX (~40mb), if you don't already have that.

Ironically, it has rather heavy system requirements; I'm running a pretty beefy quadcore here (yeah, it's "kinda" multithreaded) and only end up optimizing code when it runs awful on my system.

Yeah, just doing some quick and simple transforms fixes most of the issues Andail mentioned. I thought the shading in her face was a bit inconsistent, so I tweaked that a bit, too. Two tone shading seems more appropriate, so I removed the orange and the bright yellow. Amazing work on the body. Love the shading.

This is what it looks like on Vista Business:



Seems like there are some aliasing issues, and dunno if the grey drop shadow is intentional (black shadow is the usual consensus with alpha icons). Otherwise it looks good.

I suppose trash is a bit tricky, since it's something that isn't of great interest rationally. But it does have a lot of visual content, so I'd suggest putting some things in it.

I'd change the highlights and shadows to better emphasize hills/bulges in the trash and stuff.

A quick paintover using the suggestions:

I prefer using div/span because you can then skin the site fairly easily using css and change the layout without doing pretty much anything in the html code (if you do it correctly and somewhat well thought-out, that is).

Also, it loads faster (or rather, you can see the page while it loads, which doesn't work as well with poorly implemented table layouts).

That's not to say tables are bad. They have their uses, but I wouldn't use them for layout, especially because they ruin the presentation/content separation. Just my rant, though.

About the site:

I'd turn down the contrast on the background, because the huge contrast makes it pop out a bit.

You should resize the title image to the size you're using on the site, because you shouldn't rely on browser resize capabilities (they usually suck, and it does give aliasing on my firefox).

The blue color on the links doesn't work well with the color scheme used elsewhere on the site, but I read you're going to change that. Definitely do that.

Getting fairly nitpicky now, but the space after the black/yellow "under construction" (or what it is)-bar after the page title is a bit annoying, especially since it's inconsistent. This could be fixed if you started the first paragraph underneath it on each page with a header (as you do on some of the pages).

made walls less saturated. hue shifted slightly to blue (i'm playing 7 days a skeptic, so the wall color seems more "right" to me like this atm ^^). added some lazy/messy shading on walls and floor. shaded pipe. added depth to lockers. moved back of chair one pixel to the right. added some slight shading on wheels. moved top of photo one pixel to the right (so it appears leaning). added some window pane effects, shine on stars. oh, and windows 95 background color on the desktop.

great stuff anyway.

Something like this?

I just couldn't resist fooling around with this beautiful piece. Changed the sky (dunno if it really fits with the foreground, but I liked how it worked with the background trees and ground) and made an attempt at defining the borders of the tree a bit more. Added some of that dark shading I liked from your first pic. This might not fit with the style, though.

Dunno if you've decided to call it complete, but I just thought it was such a shame to have suchy a blurry, slightly undetailed sky background when you've got such a great foreground.



I added some highlights to the clouds, did some slight posterizing, less saturation, a bit brown tinting. I thought the brownishness fit a bit better with the industrial theme.

Looking good, but why does three of the four screenshots have a green hue to them? Part of the story?

My method was slightly more involved than what the above poster wrote, but it is basically correct.

What I did was I added some outlines (and a few stripes inside to get a little more bushy look) to the trees (should've done this with the bushes as well) to better separate them from the background.

Then I converted the picture to indexed (without any diffusion/noise) using a colour palette I grabbed from a ega screenshot.

Did a little clean up, then I converted it back to 8-bpc, resized it to 320x190 (the 10 pixels above are used for the title bar) with bicubic interpolation. After that, I did two separate conversions to indexed (one with no dithering, the other with noise dithering) and used a mask to decide where I wanted noisy textures and where I wanted solid colours. Easy!

mmm agi style

i think it looks nicer if it's scaled to sci ega resolution and with proper colours. kinda like this.

Yes, I could... If there was anything to give thoughts on. Guess you removed whatever there was?

his head does seem a bit big, and instead of using lines to indicate the coat ripple/flares(?), you could draw the shadows the ripples cast.

btw: this guy wanted me to tell you he wants his trenchcoat back

Some tablets also know what angle you're holding the pen in, which is great for airbrush effects. /me wishes he had an intuos :'(.

The AGI resolution is, internally, 160x200, so if you want to stay true to the AGI feel, you have to use double-wide pixels in the x dimension (especially on the hobo). Great stuff, though.

I bet Roger the gangster didn't imagine he'd be looking for other people's pants and fixing showers, when he signed up for the mafia.

Edit: hey, you just removed the roger will look like a gangster part, so now my post doesn't make sense.

erm... my style of art (on the computer at least) revolves around the SMEAR tool, if i 'layed off it' there would be no detail at all, just a few blobs of colour. And, are you supposing that I am attempting cartoonish graphics one usually sees in AGS games? i'm trying to remove myself from that as much as I can, so if that was what you were meaning by 'low detail', ie no well defined edges etc. then yes, i'm going for low detail.

Well, it just screams photoshop. I think smudge (which is a synonym of smear, FYI) doesn't add any detail, it just gives a bad impression of trying to add detail since it actually degrades sharpness.

About lower resolutions: i have no problem with pixelated graphics, especially in AGI (60x80 i think),  but the facility is there in AGS to go up to 800x600 and its much easier to create an original, clear artwork that sets an atmosphere, not unlike the original, when you have lots of room to work in.

Sure, if you had clear artwork, but you make your artwork blurry and unfocused in order to hide the fact that you don't have any detail. More pixels means more work, not the opposite. When you work in a high resolution, people will expect sharp graphics, so again I suggest that you go for a lower resolution. You'll probably get your game done faster doing that, as well.

[edit]BTW: I have nothing against working in a higher resolution than what the game is in.[/edit]

Character:
Hm. He's scratching his balls. Or is he trying to zip his pants?

Background:
Ugh. Don't mix photos and npr (drawn) stuff. Do either, not both. [edit]oh, right. that's already said.[/edit]

and yeah, 2x zooms would be nice for us lazy people.