Nice progress!

1 bit of criticism/advice that may solve your issue: you are applying outlines too soon. Think of outlines as little extra bits of definition, detail or flair to put in farther along through a drawing.

Start by shading in the mass on the page. Loosely sketch out circles, squares and lines that can be used as building blocks to "sculpt" a drawing. Get your main structure and feel of the shape that way. Apply shading with rough hatching, or by turning your pencil sideways. You want to shade in block of color or light & dark, not outline them.

Once you have enough of the fondation "sculpted", you can then add some extra definition by "carving in" the outlines.


Using this process to draw still-lifes, or to draw from a model (maybe your girlfriend  ), is a great way to learn to really "feel" the form of what you are drawing. Drawing from a photograph can help you memorize where all the little bits of anatomy go, and give you a chance to practice shading, but drawing from life is very different. The single lens of a camera has a very different perspective on the world that two human eyeballs.

Actually, if you have enough experience, it's usually pretty easy to tell if a drawing/painting has been done from a photo.

I like think about about what people will think 50 years from now, looking back on our "realistic" games.

"What, these people just used a keyboard to maneuver a floating camera around the ground? And just wiggled their mouse to point the camera around? And there's just these two mannequin arms that are attached to the bottom of the viewport?"

"You can't even interact directly through your character? All you can do is hit physical buttons that correspond to an in-game item's function?"

Not to criticize these games, I can really get into something like STALKER. But I think that we are still far from realism in interactivity. Because of that, there are times when something additional (like music) can add to the player's sensory input. Sometimes this might help make up for other ways that our input/output systems are lacking.

Every project will have it's own unique needs, and everyone involved will have their own input. The holistic experience at the end comes from the proper balance of all of the elements in the game; sometimes this may include background music, sometimes not.

I think Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a great example of ambient music put in place to establish a feel. It adds to the atmosphere, but no one track is "song-like" enough to stand on its own or distract from the environment. Many times, they do end up ditching the music entirely or simply playing tracks from in-game radios or other sources.

So, I guess my point is that "serious" or "immersive" games can be made many ways. If you were to just take STALKER and slap some heavy metal in any time there was a fire fight, then yes, that would be a poor way of handling the situation. But that is not the only type of "serious" game possible - we haven't even discovered all of the possibilities yet!

Currently I'm reading the Polish to French to English translation of Solaris.  It's interesting though I find that some of the descriptions in it can get baffling at times.  Either that or I'm simply mentally exhausted from adapting to a new work schedule.  Again I find myself wondering how much more I'd get out of it if I was a native Polish speaker.  Gosh darn-it, why am I not fluent in every language!?

Solaris is one of my favorite novels. It has great insight on the human mind and how we relate to anything external to us (including other people).

Recently a "Definitive Edition" was released, with a new Polish to English translation. But for the moment it is only available as an audiobook. I'm hoping that they release the text in novel format.

Recently finished Roadside Picnic and Paradise Lost.

I just finished Roadside Picnic a few months ago as well. It was thought provoking, though at the end I was a little unsure of what to make of it.

Now I'm slowly going through Turn Right at Machu Picchu by Mark Adams. I am spending most of my time on my Learning Processing book by Daniel Shiffman. I found his syllabus for his Nature of Code class, and am "taking" it now. This class also lead me to The Computational Beauty of Nature by Gary William Flake.

I'll be at Fantastic Arcade this Sunday to see the director's commentary on this game! Hopefully I will make it there tonight in time to see the competition too!

  from a fellow compo entrant.

That's really interesting. I've recently been trying to figure out how to implement cinematics working with Processing, but my approach is very botched. I was using a structure like:

Code:

currentCinematic = variableNameForThisCinematic;
if(isCinematic)
    playerCanControl = false;
    // load stuff attributed to currentCinematic
    // poorly organized

Adding in "steps" seems like a great idea.

Oh, I wouldn't. But it is an interesting theory.

Lem wasn't a person.

Interesting theory...

It is rather apparent that Lem specifically references America (mostly politics or social climate) a great deal, but if his books are "design by committee," they have to be the best examples of "design by committee" that I've ever seen.

So I'd say just go through life without worrying about what to label thing

Pretty much my attitude, but encountering this hipster thing everyplace, and rather often here in TIGS got me thinking how it was connected to indieness.

It's kind of weird, the only reference to a "hipster" I've seen are people who probably don't play games at all. Generally describing "indie music fans that dress funny". I guess that goes to show the uselessness of the term

Both abstract art and realistic art can be good or bad, and both can be of varying fidelity based on the artist's skills and knowledge (or just through sheer luck).

Realistic drawings can still fail to be art. Because of this, I wouldn't say that you should evaluate an individual work based on the exposure of technical skill. That skill is just one tool the artist can use to communicate. Well, furthermore, artists may have spent years and years refining their style, experimenting with new techniques and trying out new media to create abstract pieces. An abstract piece can still be made with a lot of experience and skill. Or not, it could have just worked out serendipitously. (also, the artists behind abstract work can still posses skill in realistic renderings, which makes you stop and think "why did this artist choose to not use these skills in this piece – obviously they're doing this intentionally)

Either way, I'd say it all comes down to the impression on the audience and the glimpse it allows you into the thought behind the piece, conscious or subconscious.

But yeah, Nix already did a good job of summing up thread

Memoirs Found in a Bathtub by Stanislaw Lem. Truly an amazing and entertaining author.

Some of his books have wildly different tones, but usually he's like a sillier, more mathematically-educated and "deeper" Douglas Adams.

To me, these labels can be superfluous, especially if you're trying to "compare" the two terms. "Independent," in the videogame sense, usually means something like "independently funded" (not backed by a major publisher, thereby more free to develop their game as they wish). It isn't a specific genre, but rather calls out the type of creative process or development that can go into it, which can in turn lead to a unique outcome. This can make the term "indie" valuable if it is used appropriately.

I hear "Hipster" thrown around all over the place (people refer to my town as the local "hipster capitol"), but it always means something different. The only somewhat-unifying case that I see it used in is in fashion, but who cares enough to talk about fashion. People outside of the status quo are called "hipsters", and that's the most concrete thing I've really seen.

So I'd say just go through life without worrying about what to label things  

This reply is long overdue, but I just thought you should know that I played this game with my gf, and now her nickname is 'turtybutt' when she wears her Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shorts. They have a turtle shell on the butt.

It's more of a pairing of info. "Redundancy" is a negative term, and would mean something like having two separate buttons that do the same thing.

Information pairing, I guess you could call it? Generally when putting elements together I'll say something like "pairing", or maybe "labeling/captioning" for specific circumstances. Maybe there's some fancy designer-talk out there that describes what we're talking about more clearly. Or perhaps this calls for a new word!

I figured that was what you meant. Sorry, I was just having a discussion about redundancy in a UI at work, and was just on that train of thought and it kept rolling.

But yes, I definitely agree that there are a lot of cases where pairing information along with a visual identifier or separator can go a long way to making the UI more readable or intuitive.

(redundancy in design is good)

I don't agree with this out-of-context quote, as redundancy makes the user wonder, "why is this redundant?" They're looking at 2 places for the same information, so they have to spend a little extra time working out for themselves that they are looking at repeated info rather than 2 different sets of info.

But, in this context, the icon-with-text would be paired, and thus not redundant Mor like a captioned icon.

On the subject of "should you or should you not use flags to select a language," I would say, in most cases, no. There are many more countries in the world than you will be making icons for, so you will simply be making arbitrary decisions about what to include or not include. Also, in the case of users that live in bilingual areas, it seems more sensical to let the choose the language they want, rather than choose their region, and rely on the designer to decide what language should be associated with that region.

It is common to see websites with flag icons, but this is generally not just a language selection; you are choosing your region. The language differentiation is just once facet of this; often content, contact information and legal details will be different from region to region.

tl;dr :  I would argue to use text for language selection, with each selection written in its own language. In some visual design cases it might be nice to include a flag icon, but be careful, as this is likely to suggest to the users that you are offering a "region" selection rather than just a "language" selection.

I recently came across Desktop Dungeons (and enjoyed it, of course). I'm also trying to learn the ways of the pixel, so I started a little tileset:



It's my first tileset, actually. Just the normal level and a few monsters so far. I'm just dropping off a screenshot as I'm not sure if/when I'll finish it.

Put a link to play it in your browser, this will be up until I upset my webhost

New mac build coming soon.

That's too bad, man! I recognize your tileset/style from Desktop Dungeons (it was yours?), and was looking forward to playing. Interesting concept.