[Maquisard]

Sometimes, when I'm motivated enough, I'll draw stuff, and try and discover an efficient and unique way of creating graphics for adventure games. 'Cause, I'd like to make one, some day (getting there, I think ). Here's my latest attempt at a background.



Done entirely in photoshop, using both my drawing pad and mouse, in small res (340*200 originally, but my monitor did the blur effect ), so I wouldn't have to bother with too much details.

Any thoughts, suggestions?

[UPtimist]

Well, it looks a bit too blurry to be a game background, in my opinion, but other than that, it's excellent.

[Mervy]

This looks great. My only suggestion would be to spend a little more time on the plants around the house. The grass looks great, but the shrubs look too spindly. I'd fill in them in a little more.

Mervy

[friarphil]

Not a bad start! I especially like the chimney! What sort of adventure game would you like to make in the future?

[Fop]

I don't get how your monitor could blur the pic O_o This is what it would look like in 320x200. It would work great as an amateur adventure background.

[Maquisard]

Originally Posted by friarphil

Not a bad start! I especially like the chimney! What sort of adventure game would you like to make in the future?

That's a good question. I've had several ideas for games through the years. For the most part, It'd be important to me to have it be a short one, since I can't put much time into it. But I'd also like the have it be something original and compelling, funny, etc. (rather than a "looking for tv remote" kind of storyline)

The most recent idea I've had is for a Christmas themed TOS knock-off, where the three wise men look and act much like Kirk, Spock and McCoy. They venture upon a "Star Trek," or in other words, they pursue the Christmas Star from Persia to Bethlehem (in their camel caravan named Enterprise, or something similar ), maybe running into an astronomical conundrum on the way, and perhaps, Arab marauders vaguely reminiscent of Klingons? I'd also have certain guest appearances by Scotty, saying he can't get too much more power out of a camel, and Uhura struggling to speak Arabic...

Originally Posted by Fop

I don't get how your monitor could blur the pic O_o This is what it would look like in 320x200. It would work great as an amateur adventure background.

The monitor is a 19" flatscreen, and has a built in function of blurring things. It even blurred Monkey Island when I replayed it recently. You're right about how the pic would look like in 320*200, cause that's the size I made it in. Then I enlarged it so I could show you how it'd look in a game, which is when my monitor's function kicked.

[After a brisk nap]

The picture probably got blurred in resizing. If you use Photoshop, you need to set the "resample image" option to "nearest neighbor" instead of the default "bicubic".

On some forums, you don't need to resize the image to make it larger. You can set the size it's going to be displayed at in your post. I can't find any references for this forum, though, so I don't know if that's an option.

Edit: Your monitor's blurring of low-resolution modes has nothing to do with the blurring that happens when resizing small images. The two are completely separate phenomena. In order to avoid (or at least reduce) the in-game blurring in Monkey Island and other LucasArts and Revolution games, use ScummVM, which allows you to scale up (and even smooth) the resolution.

[Maquisard]

Ok, but the thing is, I was using Scumm when playing it, and I resized the image out of paint, not photoshop.

[After a brisk nap]

In order to get ScummVM to resize the graphics and thereby avoid blurring, you need to set an option in the config file. Open the file scummvm.ini and edit it so that it says, for instance:

[monkey2]
gfx_mode=3x

if you want to play Monkey Island 2 with sharp (but blocky) graphics. You can also set it to hq3x, which will create smoother graphics without blurring. More information is available in the readme file.

I don't know how Paint would blur your image for you. It doesn't to resize images for me. What procedure did you use?

I do know that your monitor cannot make an image file blurry for you. It can display it blurry, but it can't make it blurry.

[Fop]

Yeah, the monitor is strictly one way. It shows a signal from your video card but doesn't affect the operation of the computer in any way.