Riddle me this
 

Why are all independend adventure games so crappy looking? I mean, why can't some people get together some promising artists and aanimatoers and jsut make something that looks real good, you know, it deosn';t seem so hard, theer are good artists, writres and you know everywheers or so it seems, they just need to be milked? How hard is that? :confused:

if the purpsoe of you post was to make you sound like a jerk it worked. if you did'nt mean to sound like that i sugest that you change it. (thats how i read it)

it's not that simple. it takes a lot of time and planing. i have'nt maid one my self but i'm sure it's not as easy as your saying it would be

Guybrushguys got a good point but I definitly would'nt say that all amateur games look bad. Some freeware games look great and keep in mind that goodlooking games like Tony Tough and Gilbert Goodmate started out as amateur projects.

Rex I suggest you go and find one of these many artists simply laying about, waiting to be "milked," and tell them you want them to make you 20 pieces of award winning background art for an obscure computer game that maybe 500 people will play, and be sure to tell him/her that you won't be paying them anything. Surely they will be instantly interested in the project and have an unending desire (and equally unending amount of free time) to dedicate to you. If its that easy.

I eagerly await your visually stunning freeware amateur adventure game.

Maybe he still has a point about the fact much more talented programmers/scripters are willing to produce near-professionnal quality work for free on their spare time than talented artists.
Don't know why though.

Haha!!111 *D

I think games such as Apprentice, Roger Foodbelly, Project Joe, and many others look pretty good. Some of them are commercial quality.

--Erwin

& Bad Timing, of course :D

Ditto.

Well, I'll just tell you this, i'll see waht I can do.

Doppleganger:

Have you even ever looked around at some of the fan games out there? Try AGDI (Formerly Tierra). Two beautiful, soon to be three, remakes of classic Sierra adventures. If I would've played those back in Sierra's hayday and someone told me they weren't made by Sierra, I would've called them a liar.

There are tons of projects with amazing looking graphics. Indiana Jones and the Fountain of Youth, Zak McCracken 2 (Whichever one you look at), and my own project Quest for Infamy.

Fan Adventures can have amazing graphics. But that isn't the selling point of them. I have played many games that are better than alot of commercial games with not so good graphics. Pleurghburg: Dark Ages by Gaspop is one of them.

Because programmers and scripters are a dime a dozen, and great background artists are nearly impossible to find.

Anyway, I second everything Jake said, except let me add that even offering money doesn't help in the quest for a good artist. Though maybe doppelganger is going to different forums than me...which I hope he'll post the URL to...

Yeah, good background artists that are happy to work on another persons project (and I don't blame them, I only enjoy my own projects) are hard to come by. I've offered between $500-$1,500 for a background artist for one of my projects and I still can't get anybody on board.

Maybve you wern't vocal enough.

I give mad props to anyone who makes an AG. I know that if i were to make a game as a side project, it'd probably look like garbage because i can't draw. maybe most programmers who write the games are in the same situation.

I want to see you make a great looking free game doppelganger rex if it's that easy.

I think it's pretty cocky to imply that someone hasn't tried hard enough if you haven't actually experienced looking for an artist yourself (unless you have and you didn't mention this :) ).

Mmmmh. Maybe because they just don't want to donate their valuable time.

At work, we have the same trouble finding great programmers and great artists.

BECAUSE THEY WILL MAKE THIS COMERCIAL! and this will not be "independent" any more; like Dark Fall

Hey sure, my game will rock. It is rocking along quote nicely.

You...

No? You go have a try, then. I tell you what, I'll give you a $20 Amazon.com voucher if you can find me a suitable background artist. 8-)

How about me?

The funny thing is that you now owe me 1500 and 20 dollars in Amazon vouchers.

Is that so, is it? 8-) You any good, then?

Of course I am. Wait a while til I get deeper into the game I am working on right now, I'll post some more screenshots.

Hey, didn't you work on a game about an udderless cow a long, long time ago? It was supposed to be the showcase game for the legendary vaporware SCRAMM engine.

--Erwin

Ugh, how do you remember that? I looked through the art that I did for that recently and I wanted to cry. It was really horrible. I also started working on Backfire Killed The Sly, but I stopped because it was tedious having to whip a team around. This new one I am making alone.

I find it interesting that Scramm and Glumol, which were supposed to be fully functioning when released, died, whereas Agast, AGS and other engines that were first released as betas and development versions are still alive. Probably has something to do with getting people actually to use the engine and give input and feedback, which in turn will give the engine developers an incentive to keep on working.

Or maybe Scramm only existed on paper. Does anyone have any insight?

Oh yeah, I remember Backfire too! That game had neat character designs. :)

--Erwin

It's weirding me out cause way back when I didn't even go around as Kingzjester...

I actually think that the art is pretty good in amateur games. Sure, a large number of them have really poor visuals, but those are usually ones that are entirely done by one person. Apprentice and Out of Order in particular look great.

Personally, I think the art is far better than the writing in most cases. It seems like most fan adventures are started up by some fan of the genre who wants to make one themselves, and so decides to write and design it on top of organizing the project. Judging by the quality of the games, you definitely get the impression that the writers have no real experience, and they know very little about game design and structure (of course there are exceptions, don't get offended by this if you've written some yourself). In contrast, you can easily tell that it isn't the artist's first time ever trying to draw something.

I remember you always were either Yorick Kingzjester or just plain and simple Kingzlebub. In any case the most recent Backfire page was definitely connected to your current nick and the Fried Egg design page. And besides, you are easily recognizable - when you aren't doppelganging, that is.

Every time I open this thread I see that veins-post of mine. It's starting to freak me out. So I'm just going to extend this thread onto page three... (I hope one post is enough).

EDIT: Of course, delete works too.

The old incarnation of the Backfire Killed The Sly site had be in the credits as both myself and Kingzjester. After that I decided it was too bothersome to be two identical people so I Yorick-Kingzjesterified myself. It may be time to start phasing out Kingzjester for something that is closer to my real name. Well, here we go: call me Panama Steve from now on.

Panama. Check.

Kako se ti stvarno zoves, na Srpskom?

Four Five consonants rifght after each other. Impressive.

Five.

Jäääär

Those are totally vowels

OMG! You're a genious :P