BIZARREMONKEY'S PROFILE

author=facesforce
The yellow is a bit stark.

Well, the end result of me working on my ascii project has pretty much come down to me making a coffee shop/relaxing with a cigar sim more based off of a random procedural generation of your guests, stories behind each one, and day to day basic human drama. Also coffee. So, this is the design of the cafe so far, complete with potted plants, a sign out front and yes, the "Ð" is a chest for your beans, and a piano.

What are your opinions at the design thus far?

Man between you and ???noBody??? I'm gonna end up trying to make my own ascii game by the days end. :I

I really like the aesthetic, though I'd recommend changing the colours of each different entity to reflect a little more on the scenery.

Those look pretty cool neike

On my progress, well as it turns out I'm currently uploading a very early alpha build of M:R on mediafire for a couple employees of mine to test out, still much to be done before it's ready for the public's eye, but it's a milestone cleared.

Started doing stuff with game maker. Movement is fairly smooth now, working currently on dialogue.

author=Crystalgate
Almost all of your work is based on other works. However, what you can ask yourself is how much you chop up your work.

Imagine you create a character. You have many different options, but let's look at two of them.

1) You take an existing character and give it a new name and appearance. You make a minor change to personality where you replace one undesired trait with another from a third character.

2) You take the concept of an existing character, but make it's personality by borrowing traits from multiple different characters as well as borrowing the background story from yet another character.

In both cases, the character is 100% based on other already existing characters, but the second case has the character far more chopped up into tiny bits. It's also much harder for the audience to identify where you borrowed the ideas from if you use the second approach.

Personally, I prefer a very choppy method. I also base my work pretty much entirely on fictional characters instead of real people.

I use option two whenever I can.

See this enormous inspiration chart for just three characters.

author=Dookie
@Bizarre

I wasn't ragging on MSPaint, thats all I use as well. And I have nothing against cartoony style (see anything I;ve done), but my biggest complaint was the lack of detail... So I tried to put my money where my mouth is and in 5 minutes do a quick touch up.

Okay holy shit that's awesome.

I see whatcha mean. God I'm not even that good at MSpaint waaa!

The shading and detail is by no means perfect (or even very good), but I think it has a little more life and character. (Still doesnt match the map imo but thats a tileset issues ((outlines or no the textures and colors dont lend itself to the portrait style)))

Ugh, now I don't know what I'll do! :o This is gonna be needing much more thought.

SO I mean, yeah, saying that its too much work is a bit of a cop out. I'd say crop the portraits smaller, and up the amount of colors and detail. It doesnt need to be photo realistic, but I think you can do better.

You've inspired me to certainly consider it.

p.s. what is it with these giant portraits? When did that become the thing?

Only since virtually every visual novel ever to exist. Comparatively mine are pretty small.

author=SnowOwl
@Monkey
I don't think "it would be too much work" is a excuse that will work if you're actually serious about improving the game, which you seem to be, at least.

The Remaster is to fix a whole heap of gameplay issues and focuses on making the storyline more clear cut and the characters more charming and human. It's not a HD remake.

author=SnowOwl
Apart from the already mentioned problems with clashing styles, there are also problems with the mapping. It's suffering from the very common problem of the maps being too large and too empty.

Ahahaha, well I'd be happy to kill some of the size in maps, most of that is at fault for me using the sample maps as a template. I usually do make maps pretty small and cluttered (see Haven).

The contrasting styles is definitely an issue I'm going to look into. It would still actually be a lot less work to upgrade it graphically all around than to simplify the realistic looking graphics. Menagerie is very much a victim of time overload, since most of the tilesets that actually look good are on display in some of the best maps I have to show, I supposed it'd be ideal to update it all to that sort of style... I could do it-- it'd take a while, but it may be worth it.

Just to give a little context of how many things would need to be updated...
Yes, that thing down the bottom is the scroll bar, to clarify, some of these are already in a HD style (mostly planetary stuff) but this just gives you a sense of scale.