Search for Jack

[Wingy]

How many rooms have you completed, Joe? I've done ... about 30 rooms of Castle Basano. It's in the perfect shape of a castle, with two towers on each side, and a keep in the middle. It seems that just the castle isn't enough... so I made a underground place to get across the moat. I've already build an outline of the castle with bricks, and added the bricks inside the castle, ladders and badguys. Working on backgrounds and other stuff now.

[joeb]

Which one?

JMG - 72 rooms, waiting for 1.08 graphics

SFJ - 126 rooms about half done with custom graphics, waiting for expansion pack/critters. I did finally find a Jill I like, sort of powderpuff with the big hair but Jack like body. Doing the animations will be a little challenge and I'll probably get in some trouble with the idle animation, you know how JAC does the robot, she'll be doing something different.

DOM II - ~60 rooms done on paper - structure about halfway done on those, Matt is still putting the design together

HS2 - ideas on paper

Unnamed Super Maze - 75 rooms, structure is done but won't go any further until the expansion pack because I WILL need the multi-room platforms.

Suggestion Wingy; just about all castles have an underground section with dungeons for enemies of the owners of the castle. That should be good for 20 - 30 rooms.

Joe B

[Wingy]

Er... incase you haven't seen the screenshot of the Castle Basano starting room, YOU START IN THE DUNGEON!! :o The dungeon 10 rooms, castles about 20 - 30 rooms. Then after you beat the castle, you find yourself outside the main gate with the draw-bridge closed. So Jack must go underground and under the lava moat to escape! Then still, he must go through the guardtower and over the wall...

[joeb]

I'd change the dungeon entrance to an secret underground cave entrance and then ADD a dungeon under the castle. Again it's your mansion but if I was looking to add rooms that's how I'd do it.
FWIW

Joe B

[Wingy]

I'm making the mansion, I don't need your opinion. But that would be a good idea... I'll look into it. But you start infront of a open dugeon cell, like Jack just opened it INSIDE the castle's dungeon! I'm pretty sure I'll just add a underground zone under the lava moat...

[samskelton]

Joe- I'm going to work on the custom graphics for my next mansion, the haunted music house, but... When are you going to realease the 2nd tutorial? I need that to make custom sprites unless there's an easy way to do it...

[joeb]

I'm making the mansion, I don't need your opinion.

It seems that just the castle isn't enough

Wasn't an opinion just a suggestion based on the second comment above about not having enough rooms. And I did say

Again it's your mansion

Hmmm, but I did think this was a SFJ thread.

[joeb]

@sam skelton,

What do you need help with? You can PM or email me and I'll do what I can to help you but at this point I hadn't planned on doing another tutorial because I don't know exactly what the new MM is going to look like and why write something that has nothing to do with the new software.

Depending on what you want to do there's a certain level of difficulty so none of it is

easy

, but there are some things which are REALLY difficult, like replacing Jack. Even there you can do it the simpler way by just copying the positions of Jack's body and putting another character on top of the same positions or you can do a full reanimate of your own character like I did in Dominator with JAC. And even there I had to use some of the Jack

standard

poses. It really depends on:

1. How far do you want to go with your changes
2. What software tools you have
3. How much time you have
4. Your level of skill and artistic talent

That doesn't mean you can't come up with some outstanding creations if you don't have all of the above. Although I have come up with what I think are some neat things my actual artistic talent is very low. I often don't have enough time to do what I want and as I am finding out there are times when my skills with the tools are lacking. To overcome these things I look at commercial artwork and see what makes it stand out to me. The time issue is addressed by letting Matt do a lot of the mansion content and he's starting to not get frustrated working by himself on the computers. And finally although I do have WAY too much software I have found that getting on forums is a terrific way to find easier, faster and better ways to do things which in the end produces MUCH better results.

I have to be gone for a couple of hours but if you send me something I'll try to get back as soon as I can.
Does that work for you?

joeb

[Wingy]

@Sam:
I can tell you this: Making the Ted character was not easy. I had to make my own grid with black lines, and make sure ALL the

teds

in the picture where in the same place. Then they don't move back and forth and up and down abit when Ted is climbing a ladder, or doing push-ups. If its off by a pixel, I'll to go all the way back into ResEdit, get the image, copy it to Color It! 2.3 and change it. It takes awhile, but I think its really worth it.

[joeb]

Good point Wingy. Keeping characters aligned from frame to frame is VERY important. I might have to get a copy of Color It and see if I can give some pointers with that application. I am VERY Photoshop centric and have used it from PS 1.0 But it is VERY pricey and may be out of the range of a lot of people. I also do a lot of my animation in Toon Boom Studio because they I can overlay multiple images and onion skin them to make sure they align.

Joe B