Hey, guys, sorry about the delay!
Diary pages have been implemented, but mainly for testing purposes at the moment.
I'm trying to limit the diary pages to six lines per sheet and two sheets max per entry. I think some slightly wider margins would be nice, and I haven't updated the kerning pairs yet, but that should give you an idea of how big they'll be at most, contentwise. Next, we'll have to see what it looks like when displayed in the background.
Edit:
/edit
This is for the dual page entries. I thought I'd try something a little more natural than some kind of indicator icon. Think it reads well enough?
I hope you don't mind, but I took a shot at the skulls you're working on:
The metals were definitely a challenge, gold being the most difficult mainly because of that annoying pink/orange. I think the gold one was the worst.
On the silver skull, I took out a lot of the blue hues which made it look a lot colder and icier (unless that's what you were going for.)
I also changed the width of the skulls, since I thought they were a bit too chubby.
They might not be excellent, but I hope this helps. good luck 
EDIT: after a few iterations, I managed to get this:
the only downside is dithering, which may take away the smoothness of gold.
Hey, thanks! I used the tiny skulls as bases, and that made them a little too square. Narrower is definitely better, and I agree the silver skull was too blue to look metallic. I also agree that dithering should be avoided for smooth surfaces.
How's this?
If you ever want to do a flash port of this project, i'd be more than willing to help(i'm a flash developer). Hell I can even help with the pixel art if need be (big EGA fan).
Thanks for the offer, but I think we're pretty far away from even considering ports at this stage. At the moment, the restrictions on the engine make sense since we simply can't do it any other way. If we'd gone with Java, like our initial prototype (or any other, less limited platform), it would have turned into a completely different game. My main concern as far as graphics go, is that it's going to be difficult to combine the EGA palette and realism to get something that doesn't look drab, but at least now the limitations serve a purpose. As far as the engine goes, I imagine we'll be cutting back on features and simplifying a lot to squeeze into the target system specs. I think a flash game with the same restrictions would seem a bit crippled, so I don't really think a port is a good idea, personally.
If you want some graphics to play with,
here and
here I have some far less limited Creative Commons art you can use, although the tile sets are a little unwieldy. Otherwise, I don't mind if you play around with the stuff in this thread.
Any details about gameplay?
We have a general idea of where we want to take it, but we're still in the planning stage as far as gameplay goes. The trickiest part is going to be meeting the performance requirements, so I don't really know what's feasible at this stage.
