Alpha Channels & Music
I've decided to put the fire into the background so alpha channel related slowness isn't as much a problem. But I've got another room where its raining and it would look weird if the rain only fell behind the character. So, that'll have to be alpha channeled in front of Alice. Hopefully, it won't turn the room into something out of a John Wu film (lots of slow-mo). It's a delicate balance between having too static a background and too much animation so that performance suffers. All music and SFX are built into invisible SWF files. I couldn't get mp3's to work with LASSIEAS. (as you know.)

Hey Tucker... you're on the Lassie website =)

Sweeet!
So honored to be featured amongst the LASSIE luminaries. To my fellow developers, don't be fooled by Greg's humility...his culinary skills match his programing expertise. The lasagna was delicious.

Which Alice?
As I create chapter two, I'm finding the rooms to be more photorealistic. (Check out the story section for some screenshots. http://www.somethingamiss.com/story.html) I'm thinking of rendering Alice in a more photorealistic way to match, but I wanted to get several opinions. Do you like the toon or realistic version more? Would you mind a toon character in a photorealistic environment?

I tend to the toon version! :) I don't like 3D-adventures and such that much, to be honest! ;)

amm.. I like the 3-D character more... :o In my opinion, it will fit better using the 3D version.

i much prefer the realistic, but thats my own personal choice anyway however with a more toon style you can get away with a lot more, and problems are easier to fix my Harry character unknown to me has a small part of his calf showing throw his trousers in multiple frames of animation, back and right rear moves lol my biggest bug bare with toon rendered 3D is the eyes never look right

I think both look really good, but would need to see them on one of your game's backdrops to see which fits best with your game's style.

Alice in the Environment
Here's an example of the two Alices in a new room environment.

Well I personally think that the more realistic one fits in far better with the room style (and it would look really great), but im guessing it probably involves a lot more hard work? To me the toon figure and the photorealistic background (which looks brilliant) kind of clash... I really like the photorealistic-yet-cartoony style you use on the left, I think if you got this standard of photorealistic imagery to work in your game it would look really amazing... and take a LOT of work! Really starting to look forward to this next installment.

Yes, 3D character - definitely! The background looks awesome! Don't forget to add a shadow below the character!!!!

I'm going to have to vote for the toon character. The rendered one looks... well, it just looks 3D. It's kind of shiney and smooth and just looks like a 3D rendered poser character... which by nature remind me of plastic barbie dolls. I think the toon render at least gives it some style, while still looking crisp and 3D. Also, I'll make the case that I think it matches the background style better than the render. Truth be told, you're using photographic elements in the background so *neither* character really "matches" per-say. Either one is going to be a skew from the backgrounds. The difference though is that I think the 3D render looks like it was tried (unsuccessfully) to match the background style, where as the toon looks like a purposful choice in breaking the character's style continuity. And on that subject, making the character look different from the background is actually a GOOD thing, it makes the character stand out and be easy to follow. Geeze, look at CMI or Grim Fandango... the characters in each are stylistically different from their backgrounds, and I have never once heard a complaint about that!

How were the characters in CMI and Grim different styles to the backgrounds? Grim characters maybe had to be made with less polygons than the pre-rendered backgrounds.. but i always thought they fitted in as well as the technology allowed at that point... they fitted with the style I thought. And the only difference in style I can make out in the characters in CMI is that they have flatter colours - little or no shading. But maybe my untrained eye is missing something.

i agree Poser models look kinda wooden, adventureman are you using Poser6? the walk designer is a lot better than the older versions i've had a bit play to: both are actually rendered in DAZ