Wow those are really great!
The only suggestion I can come up with is for the kissy face.
You may want to go with a more traditional male anime kissy face
which wouldn't have the lips colored so strongly.I can't find an example of it
but I know I've seen it before. It sort of looks like the face the angel one is making
only the lips are more heart shaped.

Also the 3rd one confuses me a little..is he sticking out his tongue?

Hmm everything looks nice pep, the only thing I see that looks a bit off is that the water detail/style doesn't seem to
match up with everything else. Do you have a sample of the tileset in action? Maybe I'm just drunk on sleepy.

yeah that's me. I still make AGS games. The AGS community is probably the nicest and most jerk-free community of those revolving around game-making engines. It's my original home on the internets.

I was poking around their forums and yeah they, seem like a nice group of people. I've heard its hard to make
cutscenes with AGS without being a good scripter, is this true? Is there anyway to import a cutscene "animation" that
just plays instead of being scripted using the game sprites? I'd love to make a game in my spare time but I'm afraid I'm terrible at scripting and programming.




To Crab:

5 days a stranger actually freaked me out somewhat, the person tells the story very well.
Make sure you try "No action Jackson" as well, its very good.

 Many people have expressed their interest to the KQIX group
that they would be interested if they did  their own game. So hopefully they do.

There's a big difference between putting up with a bit of an ego or a little quirk and sacrificing your whole staff to please one person which is what I focused on for the most part. The "get rid of them immediately" attitude comes from 2 1/2 years of letting myself be tortured by people who thought that having talent meant we should do whatever they wanted. I didn't write this article based on cutesy little ideas I thought people might like or find "smart", its based on real bad experiences I've had, and boy oh boy have I had lots of them.

If that artist/ programmer/musician etc isn't worth the junk they put the rest of the team through then they need to go down the laundry chute. You need to trust your gut when it says something stinks like a big rotten ego.I've never found getting rid of a person like that kills the momentum of the project. Usually when someone actually gets fired its a big relief. A lot of artists complain to me that they lose their desire to work with someone like that around.

Great thread! Haven't had a chance to read over all of st0ven's stuff yet, but one comment for FaeryShivers:

I don't think that the person with the design vision should necessarily be the project leader. Project leadership requires a lot of extra effort and leadership skills that a good designer isn't always going to have, and requiring them to both design, do their normal work, and lead, could be a pretty significant hindrance to your project - I've heard stories of this being a real problem in both large-scale commercial development and indie development.

You're right, but its an easy way to ensure the game vision stays in tact on a smaller team where there is not much money
to influence people to follow the game design and not try to "overthrow" the project with their own beliefs so to speak.
If you know someone who is a great leader and is dedicated to keeping the original game idea intact thats great. Its just really hard to find  that on a smaller team especially one without anything to keep peoples minds focused, IE an income. As sad as it is, almost everyone has a price at which they will accept money in exchange for their time without question as to what they are doing.
It is harder to keep volunteers from wanting more control of the project as they do not always feel they are getting something for their time.

On more than one occassion I've had people quit just because they assumed that because we did not change the game the way they wanted to every time they made a suggestion, we were not listening to them. People will often also quit a free project if they cannot do as they please as once again they feel they are not getting anything for their time. Its more common with programmers than artists in my experience but it does happen. Beware of the person that assumes that because you do not do exactly as they say all the time, you are not listening to them. Especially if their ideas are usually ones that would completely change the way several systems work.

Please don't get me wrong here, volunteers are to be appreciated but, there are some people who get onto a game team with an agenda that was not disclosed immediately