Let's build a new AGS demo game!

[cat]

I like the overall concept and the hotspots to look for the key.

I think the door should open to a different room, it could be inside the treehouse. The many paths also seem a bit complicated, different walkable areas will be covered in the next room with the bridge.

[Crimson Wizard]

I think the door should open to a different room, it could be inside the treehouse. The many paths also seem a bit complicated, different walkable areas will be covered in the next room with the bridge.

Hmm, I have an opposite opinion, imo it's fine to have a number of demonstrated features in one room so long as they don't disperse attention. This makes the demo more "condensed". If there's 1 feature per room, rooms will feel empty.

After all, rooms may be logically divided into visible sections, where each section has a noticeable feature.

If I understand correctly, the "bridge" room is the one where the walkable area gets disabled and enabled? This seems distinct enough to allow more than 1 walkable area in a previous room.
I.e.:
- room 1 shows that you may have several "locations" defined by walkable areas.
- room 2 shows that these areas may be manipulated with, turning them on and off, allowing to walk between; and then shows that you may have other kinds of regions too (looking at your feature list on the previous page).

That is, unless you insist on each room be dedicated strictly to 1 feature / game element and everything related to it.
But imo combining few things in one room makes a more curious exploration experience. This also makes things feel more natural, closer to real game.

[cat]

The "inside the treehouse" was because I think the main point of room 1 is to show how to open a door and change to another room, a very basic and very important feature that is used in so many games.

[Crimson Wizard]

The "inside the treehouse" was because I think the main point of room 1 is to show how to open a door and change to another room, a very basic and very important feature that is used in so many games.

Ah, I see.

I wonder if this will be fine if the interior of a treehouse had 2 exits, both leading to room 1, but one placing character at a door and another at a balcony. That would illustrate that you may use ChangeRoom to enter in different places even if you come from one room.

[RootBound]

I can draw a revised room outline and simplify the walkable areas. I can also include an "inside the treehouse" mock-up as well. I'm going away for a few days, so that will probably be late next week.

One thing I've seen coming up in the forums, unrelated to any particular room, is different speech views. It seems like both LucasArts and Sierra with Portrait and Background would be useful to include in the demo, and having, for example, a "happy" speech portrait and a "sad" speech portrait for the same character might be called for as well. Maybe that should go in the "complicating characters" room listed above?

For just the first three rooms, probably sticking to one speech view is best, but it seemed worth mentioning.

[cat]

I can draw a revised room outline and simplify the walkable areas. I can also include an "inside the treehouse" mock-up as well. I'm going away for a few days, so that will probably be late next week.

Awesome!

Other than that, I have no strong opinion about speech portraits.

[Danvzare]

I don't know if we're assigning roles or accepting volunteers yet. But I just want to say that I would gladly make all of the inventory items if you want them in a consistent style. 

I rather enjoy drawing inventory items, even when there's a lot of them. And if you've seen any of my games, you probably have an idea as to how I draw them. Just tell me what to draw, the size limitations, and palette limitations if any, and I'll make them. 

Then again, someone else might want to do it (or might be better suited for it). I just thought I'd throw my hat in the ring just in case. 

[RootBound]

@Danvzare I think the discussion here has settled on 640x360 as the game resolution, but I'm not really sure if the GUI discussion is still ongoing, so I don't know if the resolution for inventory item images is clear at the moment.

I doubt anyone in this thread is turning away volunteers, though! Right now the only inventory item I am aware of would be a key for the first room. But a gem image for the score counter would be welcome as well, I think (I'm certainly not in charge here!)

As far as pallette limitations go, I think the game has a generic fantasy theme. I'm working on designing forest and treehouse backgrounds but final colors are undecided, and I believe one goal is to show a variety of styles.

@cat any thoughts?

[cat]

I think it is a good idea to have the GUI and inventory consistent in a rather universal style that fits the general fantasy setting. We will not change the UI graphics for every room.

A general color palette is an excellent idea. While different styles of background (pixel art vs. painted vs. 3D render) will look very different, a common palette that is used by all graphics and also the GUI will help to keep it together nicely. However, I'm really bad at making palettes, so this is nothing I can help with. Maybe create a draft and take it to Critics Lounge?

[RootBound]

I'm not great at making palettes either, but I went looking through a bunch of them on Lospec and found a few I think might work:

CC-29 by Alpha6 (29 colors)
Nanner Pancakes by Afterimage (32 colors)
Apollo by AdamCYounis (46 colors)
comfy52 by bess (52 colors)

I like the middle two best myself, but I can see the benefits of any of them.

I can post this in the Critics' Lounge if that's a better place.

[cat]

I like Apollo. Do you know anything about license? Can we just use it?

[RootBound]

Do you know anything about license? Can we just use it?

That's a good question. Couldn't find anything on the website, so I joined the Lospec Discord and asked the question there. Will let you know what I find out.

[RootBound]

Seems like we're fine and that sets of colors can't really be licensed. The image itself depicting the palette maybe could be, but not the actual color scheme.

So if we want to use the Apollo palette and be nice and courteous, we could just add a line to the credits: "Game art uses Apollo palette by Adam C. Younis, available at Lospec.com."

EDIT: did some more digging, just to be safe:

This is from ColourLovers.com, not Lospec, but the priciple probably applies (emphasis mine):

How can you copyright a color palette?
FAQ Home | How can you copyright a color palette?
We recently added a Rights Management System that allows members to select several different licenses for the content they share on COLOURlovers, including color palettes. There is often confusion about how somebody can copyright or protect the rights to a combination of colors. You can't really protect or copyright the usage of a combination of colors in new works. Ie, if you take a color palette and then draw an illustration using those colors. But, what is protected is the arrangement of those colors into the rectangular shape that they are on COLOURlovers displayed along with their names. This is treated like a picture or work of art and can be protected... ie, you can't just scrape a bunch of palettes and put them as they are displayed here in a book you sell.

[cat]

Very interesting, thanks for investigating. I agree about giving proper credit.

So here are the Apollo colors in a totally non-protectable format (I used Notepad++ to create BBCode)

██████████████████████████████████████████████


As for usage, I would suggest the following:
- The GUI and inventory MUST use the exact palette colors
- Pixel art backgrounds and sprites should try to adhere to the palette if possible
- Painted backgrounds should use the palette as main colors and add others as needed
- 3d renders should use textures using mainly the palette colors.

I think this should make a somewhat consistent style while still allowing enough artistic license.

[cat]

Regarding license: We should think about which license to use for the demo game so every contributor knows what happens with his or her submitted assets.

I think the code should be public domain. The purpose of this demo game is that you can copy parts of it and use it for your own game. Do we need some disclaimer about liability, though?
What about art and music assets? Should they be public domain as well? Or some CC attribution license?

[Crimson Wizard]

What about art and music assets? Should they be public domain as well? Or some CC attribution license?

I think at least CC BY-NC license should be used (attribution + non-commercial use only), as contributors may not like their art to be reused in commercial games.

About other variants, they are briefly covered by this paragraph:

All of our licenses require that users provide attribution (BY) to the creator when the material is used and shared. Some licensors choose the BY license, which requires attribution to the creator as the only condition to reuse of the material. The other five licenses combine BY with one or more of three additional license elements: NonCommercial (NC), which prohibits commercial use of the material; NoDerivatives (ND), which prohibits the sharing of adaptations of the material; and ShareAlike (SA), which requires adaptations of the material be released under the same license.

[cat]

Giving attribution might be difficult, though. It will be hard to find out the author of a certain sprite. Maybe attribution should be made solely to "AGS Demo Game Contributor" and not each individual person. I hope artist are okay with that.
Of course, the game itself should contain an elaborate credits section that lists all contributors.

[Danvzare]

Giving attribution might be difficult, though. It will be hard to find out the author of a certain sprite. Maybe attribution should be made solely to "AGS Demo Game Contributor" and not each individual person. I hope artist are okay with that.
Of course, the game itself should contain an elaborate credits section that lists all contributors.

Sounds good to me. 

Right now the only inventory item I am aware of would be a key for the first room.

Would something like this be ok:

I made it with the Apollo palette, and I tried to give it a fantasy style. Although being a key, there's not really much you can do in that regard. 

[RootBound]

Looks good to me, @Danvzare !

I'm trying to finish my MAGS entry today but hopefully after that I can keep working on the first room background.

Will post one more mock-up here for design feedback before drawing it in earnest. This is exciting!

[cat]

Yeah, it's starting to get serious

I had another look at licenses and found the BSD 0-clause license we could use for code
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses#0-clause_license_(%22Zero_Clause_BSD%22)
It means the code is basically public domain, but without warranty. People can copy it freely to their projects but cannot blame us if it doesn't work.
Maybe I will talk with my colleague about it next week, he knows quite a bit about open source licenses.