Messages

1

General / Re: Aquaria fanart [spoilers]

« on: February 07, 2011, 02:24:52 am »

Very amazing! I love it too.

Thanks a lot!

D'aaaaaaaw! 
As an artist myself I can understand and appreciate how much love and care Alec puts into his work (and how much care you must have put into making this).  This captures that feeling perfectly.  Awesome work. 
It'd make a pretty cool "coming soon..." advertisment for Marian.

Haha, maybe? I have no idea how soon Marian is, but I'm sure Katie can make promotional art way prettier than this is.

O sheesh, that's just amazing. Even though I'm usually not very font of art that has a deeper meaning to it besides what's in the picture itself. AKA, you have to know what and who it is in there. This one looks really great though.

Well, it's not like most art doesn't have that going on, but I think I can sort of understand. I never had a problem with people not understand my drawings, though - I'm fine with them liking the picture if they don't like the characters or whatever is depicted.

I'm quite flattered you still like it, though~

2

General / Re: Aquaria fanart [spoilers]

« on: February 05, 2011, 01:31:59 am »

Totally fantastic!!!
Is that Alec holding baby Marian!? I love it

Haha, it is, honestly.

Actually I once had a conversation with him somewhere and I called games his babies. I just had to draw it. I would've snuck the other parents in there if it wasn't so hard to figure out all the poses and distributing the space.

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General / Re: Aquaria fanart [spoilers]

« on: February 05, 2011, 12:07:37 am »

She looks just fine to me no, better than fine, fantastic! She's meant to be about 16, but to my mind she is a bit precocious and a bit juvenile, so I don't think she will necessarily look her age at all times.
As for eye color, unless it's changed recently, they are blue 

Awesome fanart, all! I'm so inspired looking at it!

Haha, thank you~ I just love drawing Marian for some reason... I can't really explain it. Thanks for the heads up on the eyes and age!

Annnnnnnnd surprise, surprise:



This was originally with more stuff on it, but it felt like negative space and I'm a little insecure about this piece. I hate the lighting and colours (though I love how the perspective came out), but it took so long that I don't really want to let it waste away. So I'll just be bold and post it. 

I completely forgot what child Naija looks like, I'm sorry. She's wearing a dark nearly invisible suit here.

EDIT: Forgot to add: props to Senorctenophore for their fanart. I really love amusing fanart like that.

4

General / Re: Humble Inde Bundle Steamified

« on: December 29, 2010, 12:38:04 am »

Well, just finished both Braid and Machinarium. Sadly enough I'm not too much a fan of Mach, seeing I always get stuck and always look for a walkthrough. It was an incredibly beautiful game however, funny as well.
Braid was an amazing game to me. I've always been a fan of time travel and this game had every kind of time travel. The puzzles; as in levels, not the jigsaw ones, were fairly easy to me.
I was baffled by the last level though. I think I played through that one about 4 times, just to watch every little detail.

Not going to try the whole game's time attack though, pfff...

Haha, well, Machinarium sticks out quite a bit in this bundle since it's the only game without combat as it's main focus. I found the game challenging as well, but I didn't really need the walkthrough with most puzzles. I love about everything of this game, too bad you've seen about all after playing through it once... unless there's secrets I don't know of.

Did you get the full ending by unlocking all the secrets? I know there's secret stars or something, but I haven't gotten around to collect them... mainly because they are hard to find and I had done something irreversible that made it impossible to get them all (which is my goal). 

5

General / Re: Aquaria fanart [spoilers]

« on: December 29, 2010, 12:31:48 am »

I think I made Marian too old, though...

And question for Alec: What eye colour does Marian have anyway?

(If Marian has mod tools... I can smell neon pink eyes with lasers coming up.)

6

General / Re: Aquaria fanart [spoilers]

« on: December 28, 2010, 06:46:20 pm »

Higher resolution (wallpaper size?):  http://aerendyll.artician.com/portfolio/Marian-Naija/

I swear, I don't draw fanart often. But I find it hard not to draw Naija and Marian. =u=

EDIT: Also, I almost forgot.

When I was LiveStreaming that drawing some Aquaria fan (not sure he's on the forums here, forgot his/her name) talked to me about the eye colour of Marian. We couldn't agree whether it was brown or blue, since the Marian teaser trailer suggests brown, but other art shows blue(ish)... I hope Alec can help me out there?

Nevertheless, we came up with an alternative version of the drawing. It all started with the person I talked to suggesting neon pink eyes...

"Symbolic" version of the art here: http://www.twitpic.com/3kl96h

7

General / Re: Core reason you like Aquaria

« on: December 28, 2010, 04:25:37 pm »

Core reason... core reason... I think I'd have to say the whole game as a whole.  I can't really choose a core reason for something that exists out of components that rely on each other and tie together that well - taking one bit of it won't feel as good as the whole.

I really have to say I'm impressed with how Derek and Alec managed to make an underwater game that's varied in scenery and colours. It doesn't seem easy to be at all, but I also have to admit to being very uneducated about life underwater. The whole Aquaria world has a very interesting and amazing atmosphere to it, so that certainly helps me. The way you interact with it and the music that plays only adds to it.

8

General / Re: Humble Inde Bundle Steamified

« on: December 28, 2010, 03:47:22 pm »

I just bought it, though I didn't pay as much as I did last time seeing I already owned Cortex Command and having 2 games that are in development just doesn't cut it for me.

CC's a very fun game but their progress has been frozen MANY times, not even talking about all the crap on the forum they have been through.
Osmos is a fun game that I tried a demo of, it's pretty much "Eat everything that's smaller than you" with the twist of shooting away your own mass to go forward.
Braid and Machinarium I can't say I know much about, so surely I'll play those.
And I once took a stab at Revenge of the Titans, I believe also a demo, or it was one of their earlier game, but that needed a lot of updating.

Anyway, those were my 2 cents, not an amazing pack as last time (Lol <3 Aquaria), but surely still fun. :3

You mean you didn't play the two games I mainly bought the bundle for? Awww.  I actually played Machinarium's demo before I bought the bundle and it was all the more reason for me to buy the bundle. It's (sort of) a point-and-click adventure game, though, so that has to be your thing.

Braid I wasn't really sure about whether it would be fun, but I actually found it very interesting and funny. The ending also screws with your mind a bit, but not in a way you can't understand if you think about it.  A very fun game, which I recommend to anyone that's into platform games with puzzles.

Oh, and I own Aquaria twice now because I paid more than the average price paid. I find that seriously amusing. (All those people paying just one dollar disgust me, by the way.)

9

General / Re: Consider updating the pricing

« on: December 28, 2010, 03:38:35 pm »

Some things to take into account:

1) Aquaria has already dropped price once - it was $30 when I bought it. (And I never regretted it either, the demo won me over for sure.)
2) Aquaria has been on the Humble Indie Bundle TWICE. This means the game has already been dirt cheap, since you could set your own price for it during the Humble Indie Bundle periods.
3) Not all games drop in price massively after becoming older. If I look at how expensive Super Mario Galaxy and other older Wii games are at a local store that still sells them as new (40 euros, which is over 50 dollars - those games started around 50-60 euros), I really wonder how one can think that $20 is cheap.  In fact, most of my second-hand games I buy for 20 euros, which would be at least 23 dollars. 
4) Alec and Derek might not be very interested in making another whole lot of sales. It's good that their games reach out to more and more people, but they make more games than just Aquaria. Who knows when their next game is done? You don't want Aquaria to overshadow new works. More Aquaria sales would help them promote themselves, but it might actually be a bad thing if taken too far. 

Personally, I think Aquaria already HAS been on sale. Twice. (Humble Indie Bundle, yes.) So I really don't get why a price drop is all that mandatory - it's something that's purely Alec and Derek's business.

10

General / Re: Little Details

« on: December 28, 2010, 03:18:05 pm »

Just like Aristobulus, I like the reactions Naija has to her environment. It's very rare to see that in games and it's been very well done in Aquaria.  Her reactions to making a lot of Sea Loafs is also one of the things I never get tired of.

Another thing would be the rays of sunlight that you see in the game. I've always had a weakness for those and they really add to the atmosphere if you ask me.

Also, that fish-I-don't-know-the-name-of somewhere in Open Waters (near the home cave, middle right of the map, I think) that always greets you and plays around. That one always cheers me up. :3

I enjoy a lot of the more hidden areas as well. Like the forest fairy cave in Kelp Forest and a certain hidden cave in the Abyss holding two very peculiar, unique-looking fish...

11

Modding / Re: Aquaria: Sacrifice v1.05

« on: February 17, 2010, 09:39:06 am »

Cool! The heads look great. I'll look into how best to get this in game as Aquaria doesn't look in the mod folder for replacement graphics for the avatar as I recall. For any future images can you save them out with transparency... she has a weird white block around her head at the moment lol.

EDIT: I've figured out how best to implement this so we're good on that front.

*facepalms*

I blame my own stupidity for that. I kind of forgot that Easy Paint Tool SAI doesn't support transparency. Now if my Photoshop worked properly and exported PNGs it would be easier. 

Do you have Photoshop or anything like it yourself? I can give a PSD with all heads in the layers so you can export the files with transparency yourself.

I hope this isn't too much trouble...

12

Modding / Re: Aquaria: Sacrifice v1.05

« on: February 16, 2010, 09:58:36 am »

This might come out of nowhere, but...

About a year ago (if not more) I promised to make character sprites for this mod. (Most notably the main character.) Sadly college was being a real pain to me and when I did have time to work on it I couldn't find the files anymore.

But~

I f inished all the heads, at least. I'm still trying to work on a body, but I'm not sure how long it'll take and what it'll look like yet. (I trashed the old design I had as I didn't really like it all that much.)

So, ummm, I hope I can help with this?

The file: http://www.mediafire.com/?3jzoznzzzye
Password: Verse (with capital V)

(I couldn't use the attachments function of the forum, even though the file is like 40kb.)

EDIT: reuploaded the file as I accidentally save the sacrifice-head-pain.png file wrongly. It looked the same as the singing one.

13

Support / Re: Animation bug?

« on: February 07, 2010, 10:47:27 pm »

Just one thing that comes to my mind --> Reinstall.

Can't say much else, seems like either a missing script, a missing file or a corrupt one.

Since it has to do with the Nautilus Pet (or pets in general) and is only happening in that area I just don't use it in that area. But if more errors like these pop up I should consider reïnstalling, yes.

Okay, scratch that. Bug still pops up when in Energy Form without pets and it stays when I switch forms. :/ I couldn't really leave the area as I was ganged upon by nautiluses and moneyes. 

*sighs*

Off to reïnstalling.

14

Support / Re: Animation bug?

« on: February 06, 2010, 04:38:59 pm »

I investigated the error some more and I'm 100% sure it's an area-specific error related to the Nautilus Pet (not related to Naija herself).

The area:



I entered the problem area again without changing into energy form even once. Then the error popped up AGAIN. I had the Nautilus Pet out just like last time. When I hid the pet, the error disappeared.

What I think is that the Nautilus Pet and some stuff in the area don't like eachother. Truth is I barely use that pet in the first place since it hardly helps, but since it's the only one I have I keep it out for just that little extra. But guess what - it's animation clashes with the animations in this area.

I can't check other pets, sadly. I have no other ones at the moment and I lost my file where I have like every dungeon and sideboss completed except for The Body and the things after that. 

I'll report back if it shows up in other areas/circumstances.

15

Support / Animation bug?

« on: February 04, 2010, 08:44:45 pm »

Lately I restarted playing Aquaria and I just finished the Energy Temple. I'm in Open Waters to the east, just below the entrance to Kelp Forest. Naija is in Energy Form and has the Nautilus pet with her.

Suddenly there's some weird animation error going on and I'm not sure what causes it. From what I know it came out of nowhere while I was fighting off some enemies.  After it appeared once it kept coming back and I wasn't sure what to do since nothing seemed to work against it.

A screenshot of the error message:



In case it matters: the error messages don't pop up when the menu is opened.

I have a savefile from before the moment the message popped up, but I'm kind of afraid that this error will come back somehow.