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This is a walking animation test for the main character in my game. The pencil style drawing was rendered with Poser's sketch render tool and combined with flat color layer in Photoshop.


If you've seen my earlier character art post, you may notice that she isn't as pale in this version. I thought it was just too monochrome, and while it fit well with the other background, most locations in the game will have at least some color. It's lost some of the stylized look, but I think it will work better, when cutting to almost realistic dialog closeups, than it would with the old look. Tell me what you think. Did I screw it up?

I should add that I will of course correct the error with the boots breaking through the pants.

Also, if anyone has an idea about how to resize an animation without antialiasing the outer edges, please do tell. Even if it has to be done frame by frame. Preferably while still allowing for bilinear resampling of the actual image. I'm seriously considering installing my old win 3.1 version of Micrografx Painter, because incredibly that old program could do it, if you selected the actual picture area before resizing the whole image. But Photoshop always antialiases the edges unless I use nearest neighbour resampling, and Jasc Animation Studio can't even do pixel resize without messing up the edges!

If I find no other solution, I'll have to render the characters at the actual size they'll be in the game.

Edit: Relating to this, I have a few questions to those with experience in these matters. How many frames would you consider necessary for a walking animation (for each direction)? This is 12 frames. I thought of cutting it down to 8, like Indy FOA used. Also, what's a good (pixel height) size for a character in a 640x480 game? At first I wanted the player character to be larger than the other characters (so she could get closer to the camera for some scenes).  But then I realized it would cause problems with the walk area size settings if I ever wanted the npcs to move around. Final question: Does number of colors in a sprite matter if you import it into a hi-color game. Is there any file space to save by reducing the palette before importing?

I was wondering, if somebody here could help me find a good title for my game. It's beginning to get a little tedious to just refer to it as "my game", and I'd hate to change the title during production because the first title was chosen in a hurry.

It's a Gabriel Knight-style mystery relying on detective work, npc-interviews and research. Like the GK games combine historical facts and real-world occultism with fictional conspiracies and supernatural horror, this game explores the history of motion pictures as well as more occult/philosophical subjects. The style is serious, suspenseful, at times horrific. Similar to GK, but without the Indiana Jones elements (the short visit to Africa in GK1 and the final chapter of GK3), in some ways closer to the Blade Runner game in mood.

It's set in modern day Los Angeles, where a young woman, who tracks down prints of rare films for a living, comes across a film by a long forgotten director of the 1930's and 40's. Her research into the past brings her deep inside the dark mirror image of Hollywoods glamour and glitz. The main themes of the game are of reality and illusion, seeing and believing, the authentic and the imaginary.

The first working title I had was "Sunset by Night", which I really liked. But it didn't say too much about the game really, except the setting and the mood. I'm still going to use it, but only as a chapter title. The two current titles that I'm considering are "Shadowplay" and "Shadowland".

"Shadowplay" came first. It's a direct reference to the medium of film as well as certain thematic elements. I would like to have at least some sort of connection to movies or projection, and right now I hate Roberta Williams for having used the title Phantasmagoria already. It would have fit perfectly (the word is, among other things, the name of a predecessor for the movies, a magic lantern of sorts).

"Shadowland" was the result of brainstorming last night. I like it's suggestion of a location, an uncertain world of phantoms. Right now I imagine a stark black and white picture of a Hollywood street, let's say Sunset Blvd., except the only thing you see is the shadows, shadows of palm trees, shaded parts of the hills in the distance. The rest is just white, as if overexposed beyond visibility.

I've played around with film technology expressions such as "Persistence of Vision" and a few others (you know, like the Antonioni film "Blow Up"). They may sound cool, but they aren't very informative about the game.

So, I'd like to hear your thoughts. Any ideas spring to mind? It's actually very hard to come up with a good title for a serious game. Humorous games can always play on movie titles or be outrageously silly, but serious ones are more difficult. No matter what you come up with it sounds like a cliché, or worse, there is already a game of that title (I recently saw someone making a Laura Bow fan game called "Eye of the Beholder", as if that hasn't been used before). I probably should add, that both "Shadowplay" and "Shadowland" have been used as film titles (the former is only a short film, the latter is the 1993 film about the life of Narnia-writer C.S. Lewis).

Looking forward to any suggestions

I think it's great that there is a custom inventory window GUI in the new game template. But maybe there should also be custom save/restore/quit/settings GUIs - if only to make it easier to customize the colors and look of those windows, not necessarily the functions. I just hate those ugly grey boxes. It would also make sense to have LucasArts style save/load screens along with the LucasArts interface and Sierra style settings screen along with the Sierra GUI.

Edit: Sorry for posting in the wrong forum. I just figured that it was  a beginner sort of question, and besides,  it wasn't really an AGS engine suggestion for Chris, more of a suggestion for those out there making templates.

I've been playing around with Animation Shop from Jasc the last few days, and it seems like a great tool for preparing animated artwork for AGS. However, it seem I can't resize an animation (in Animation Shop) without also antialising the edges of the character? Even when I set the background to translucent, I still get antialised edges that look terrible in AGS. Anyone know how to avoid this?

Maybe this has been discussed before in the forums, but I thought it was an interesting topic. For a long time, I've been thinking about how to implement a romance between the player character and an NPC in the game that I'm writing.

I've replayed some old games, and so far I haven't found a succesful example of it being done. There seems to be a number of approaches, most of them pretty stereotypical:

1) Player character in a relationship when game starts. Phantasmagoria 1 and 2 did that. Police Quest 2 and 3, and I suppose, a couple of the Larry games. Rise of the Dragon did it pretty well, as far as I recall. Often the love interest is used as a plot device (Damsel in Distress - if there is a girlfriend, she's bound to be kidnapped at some point) or just as a means of establishing the more emotional side of the toughguy detective. Steve Dorian in Dagger of Amon Ra, probably the most ridiculous love interest in any game (and not just because he's a guy), has a damsel in distress role as well - the trouble being that you hardly even know him and don't really care if he should step on a poisoned nail without his boot on .

2) The player character, for some weird reason (Love at first sight, destiny, magic) falls in love with some complete stranger, and pursues them either to the end of the game, or at least for a while. Sometimes the object of affection is the goal of the game (KQ2 and KQ6 come to mind), or a means of getting the player character further involved in the plot (Gabriel Knight). Monkey Island did this too with Elaine, but at least they tried to make her likeable.

3) Player character and love interest work together throughout the game, and - of course - have a love/hate relationship. Think Cybil Shepard and Bruce Willis in Moonlighting. Gk2 and 3 had plenty of sexual tension between Grace and Gabriel as did the Broken Sword series with George and Nico. Oh yeah, not to forget Indy 4 with Sophia.

As far as I know, very little has been written on the role of character interaction in graphic adventures as opposed to in IF (where dialog alternatives are much less obvious than in point and click. But I suppose it's related to different views on the player character: Is the character an avatar, a tool for the player to interact with the game world, or is he a role that the player is trying to act out, a character with a preset personality and emotions beyond the player's control.

Should any romance be written as a potential rather than a fact? Should the player be able to choose whether or not they would like to pursue the relationship? How much interactivity is needed for the relationship to seem plausible? I hated the way GK1 just assumed that I would understand Gabe's attraction to Malia. But I see how it would be extremely difficult to tell the story if the romance was optional.
Also, I would like to hear your thoughts on how romance and courtship should be "played out". Most games seem to deal with it as a simplified seduction, usually consisting of giving the right item to your object of affection - love as market economics. I don't even want to mention the Larry series, but even a lot of more serious games let you buy flowers or jewelry to convice the person of your feelings. Quest for Glory 5 was really bad in this respect.
But in what other ways could you imagine romance told through player interactions?

I think the most interesting romance in any game I've played was between Gabriel and von Glower in GK2, because it was an attraction between equals. And the NPC wasn't passive, quite the opposite, he was the one seducing Gabe. The only trouble was that this part of the story was only told in cutscenes. The player never had a choice. And I think that made it less powerful - because the theme of the game was very much one of choice, of following or repressing your animal nature.

The approach that I've currently chosen (but the game is still only in the design phase, so it could easily change, should anyone come up with something better), is - as in GK2 - for the NPC to be interested in the PC from their first meeting. This won't be a seduction subplot. The interaction will consist in the PC choosing, or not choosing, to open up to and let themselves get involved with the non player character. The player will have multiple choices - dialog options, actions (such as choosing to go or not to go to the NPCs party). But none of the available options will be out of character. The romance isn't part of the major plot, so it won't cause trouble with branching plot lines. It's used to reflect the state of mind and the growth - or lack of evolution -  of the player character.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

I made this as a submission for the last Background Blitz and am looking for any kind of critique (composition, perspective, color, whatever). It's my first go at coloring on the computer, and I'm pretty happy with it. I suppose that I could clean it up a bit more, but I like this kinda rough look. I didn't know which style I wanted (or could make) for my game before I did this, but I think it more or less established my style.



What I really want to know however is what style of characters you think would work with this sort of background. I was going to do the characters in Poser (going for a The Longest Journey sort of look), because it is so much easier to do the animation once and then rotate the camera for each view angle. But now I'm not so sure. I figure that I could use Poser's sketch style render and then color each frame in photoshop. But I'm not sure it would be worth the trouble.

I know it's not very important, but I figured that it might be easier implemented now that Chris is re-doing the walkable area and regions-thing.

I think it would be really nice to be able to assign some kind of surface material parameter to walkable areas, to allow for different footstep sounds for the character. It might not seem worth the trouble, because few people use footstep sounds in their games. But I think one of the reasons that people refrain from using the synchronization of sound with walking animation is that it usually ends up sounding like the Zak McKracken footsteps. Whatever surface you walk across it's the same thwack-thwach-thwack. It would just have to be a number, maybe you could have 10 different surfaces that you could assign for the whole game. And then you could let that number change whatever sound was being played.

Please don't hit me if it turns out, that this can already be done through scripting. Ok then, go ahead, hit me then, but not too hard, ok?

This is a terrible question, because it's not very specific. I'm not asking for a solution, just: "Can it be done?" and "Would it be really difficult?". But of course any suggestions about how to do it would be appreciated as well

I'm only just getting into AGS and have zero experience with scripting, but I'm learning while I'm writing the design docs for a game which I hope to start developing in a few months. So right now, I'm trying to find out what's possible and not, and make changes to the game design accordingly.

The question is simply: Is it possible to make a Gabriel Knight I style dialog interface in  AGS script? What I mean is a conversation interface without layers, but with new topics popping up in the main menu when you learn about them. And each time you choose a topic, you get a new reply, until the NPC has nothing more to add. I assume the graphical look of the GK dialog screen (faces on black background and the topics in the middle of the screen) is just a matter of setting up the conversation GUI right and then changing background when entering conversation mode?

Sorry for the rather vague question, this is after all my first post

Edit: I found a month-old discussion of the GK interface in the forum, but the thread seems dead now.