Gray

Started by Fitz, Wed 22/09/2010 15:26:07

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Fitz

The Game is Released!!
>>> THE INVASION STARTS HERE <<<



THE ALIEN INVASTION STARTS ON NOVEMBER 30!!!

After two years and three months in development, and some recent, unexpected hurdles, the game is finally allllmost there. The final round of beta testing is almost over and I'm adding some final touches here and there. So unless we get invaded by aliens, the game will premiere on Friday, November 30! Check for more news at the bottom of this post.

The game tells a story of Gray - an alien living on the moon. One day he decides to (drumroll!) go visit Earth. And as he speeds through the atmosphere - surprise, surprise! - something goes wrong with the ship and - SURPRISE! - Gray crash-lands in a corn-field. What he has to do now is... Yes, you guessed it: find the ship and go home. How original indeed!  ::)

Gray is your good ol' point'n'click adventure game - with a smart and somewhat sarcastic protagonist. Expect him to say something about everything he sees, do crazy things and have a snide comment for every one of your failed efforts.

Gray quickly makes new friends - both humans...


...and little critters of nature...


The game runs in 320x240 and utilizes only four colors: dark blue, red, orange and beige. I love experimenting with limited palettes, my webcomic also makes heavy use of three-four color sets. This time, however, it's more than just my whim - in Gray the four colors play a vital role. So I really hope the above screenshots didn't make your eyes bleed!

Here's a little walking cycle of Gray:


and for those who liked the farmer, here are two idleness animations of the hygiene-aware redneck:


UPDATE: October 1, 2010

The game's got a musician on the team now :D Swordofkings128 contacted me last week and offered help - which I was more than happy to accept! The guy's a real pro! His creativity and versatilty never cease to amaze me. Here's a sample of a beautiful in-game music track he did. Click to play!


And here's the location that the song is for:


UPDATE: November 10, 2010

Swordofkings128, who's supplying the music for the game, made a whole bunch of wonderful background themes for different locations and different times of the day. Added a whole dimension to an otherwise humble project. Which, in turn, made me want to expand the whole game! There will be more interactive characters and MANY more puzzles.

Current progress stats (as of November 10):

   Story: 100%
   Backgrounds: 90%
   Animation: 75 %
   Coding: 10%
   Music: 50 %

UPDATE: May 1, 2011

The game had to be put on hold for a while due to work, work, work/college, college, college, some weird health issues plaguing the team etc. But work was finally resumed last month and continues at a nice pace - with yours truly dividing time between graphics, animation and coding. It's hard to estimate the progress in all those areas percentage-wise, because the game grew expotentially, but it's much, much, MUCH farther than the last time I posted an update and it's coming along nicely.
ALSO, a new member joined the team - Sephiroth, who's a great artist and an amazing coder. He's helped me out with some CRAZY pieces of coding (and believe me, I have CRAZY ideas) and a couple of nasty bugs that were driving me even crazier than I usually am.
Be sure to check out new screenshots above (replaced the ones that I originally posted).

UPDATE: January 14, 2012

Check out the newest posts for news and sneak peeks!


UPDATE: April 30, 2012

We have close to all in-game songs and the game's basically playable from start to finish -- but most conversations, Look At's and interaction responses are still in the works. There's still a FEW things to do that I haven't even started, like sound fx, the outro and the Polish translation. I'm hoping it'll be ready for beta-testing in a month or so, so we could then release by the end of June.

In other news: the dev team grew! By 100%! So now there's four of us:

- SwordOfKings128, who's stuck with me from almost the very beginning, does the music -- and blows my mind on a daily basis.

- Sephiroth is back and assists me with some serious coding. I just think of something crazy I'd want in the game -- and thirty seconds later he sends me the code.

- Paul Franzen, the newest member on the team, offered to proofread and edit dialogues (and monologues) in the game. Ah, poor, unsuspecting soul, didn't know what he was gettting himself into :-D

Speaking of which, here's a sample of Gray's rhetorical talent - the all-time adventure game classic:



And this one of the game's milestones -- the game's own Quit GUI:



Because, obviously, a game with only four colors couldn't have a GUI that is GRAY ;)

UPDATE: September 6, 2012

After two years in production, the game is allllmost ready!

Dialogues: done
Graphics and animation: pretty much!
Music: last song in progress

I plan/hope/play for the game to be out within a month. I'm currently in the process of adding sound effects. Once that and the outro song are complete, we'll run the final round of beta testing.

Oh, and here's the new logo:



UPDATE: November 25, 2012

THE ALIEN INVASTION STARTS ON NOVEMBER 30!!!

After two years and three months in development, and some recent, unexpected hurdles, the game is finally allllmost there. The final round of beta testing is almost over and I'm adding some final touches here and there. So unless we get invaded by aliens, the game will premiere on Friday, November 30!

Also, my long-time friend, Ellana Dayligaun of the incredibly talented band Invisible Animals, let me use one of their otherwoldly songs in the game's outro sequence. The result was MIND-BLOWING!

Gilbert

Wow! Looks great! Definitely looking forward to it. :D

CaptainD

My eyes only bled a little  ;D 8)

Looks interesting.  I think the limited colours give it an eerily alien style.  I'll definitely be playing this one when it's released.
 

cianty

For some reason it reminded me of my game boy days...

Anyways, this project looks really nice and I can't wait to check it out. The logo is pretty cool too, by the way.
ca. 70% completed

Fitz

Thanks, everyone! The positive response so far REALLY helped me in motivating me to work harder - because I've been getting kinda lazy lately. Luckily, the work's progressing nicely so far, with the most crucial animations and all backgrounds for chief locations being complete.

CaptainD: There will be some intense color combos in further locations, especially towards the end of the game ;D So I suggest getting eye-drops! As for the colors, they make me think of my very first attempts at computer graphics, waaay back in the Commodore 64 days. 16 colors to pick from - as opposed to 16 gazillion colors these days. Funnily enough, this particular set was not accidental - I picked dark blue, red, orange and beige after the 4 rubber stamps I use at work.

Cianty: I never had a gameboy! I feel so deprived! The colors make me think of Mario, though. Good old NES days! As a homage to the classic arcade games, I made the game a side-scroller of a kind. The walkable area is just one pixel thick and the character walks in a straight like only, left and right. As for the logo - glad you like it! I got the idea just today as I sat down to draw it.

cianty

Of course it doesn't look like much like a Game Boy game since that didn't have colour... until Game Boy Colour, of course. So it is indeed more like NES I guess, which again I did not own (only SNES)... Anyways, I do enjoy the retro look and I'm glad you're feeling motivated! Now get cracking! :)
ca. 70% completed

Babar

Beautiful!  :o

I really love the atmosphere the art and colours create. Very pretty.

Err....not got much more to say. Makes me remember that I'm still missing Chicky's Herman Toothrot's Monkey Island game...
The ultimate Professional Amateur

Now, with his very own game: Alien Time Zone

Fitz

#7
Cianty: D'oh! That's right! ::) Never had a handheld, anyway - except a bunch of these way back in the commie days ;) No SNES, either. And my NES was actually a Pegassus - BUT it had all the NES innards and ran all NES games.
And I AM cracking! Doing a backround for one of the cutscenes as we speak :)

Babar: Thank you! The colors do wonderful - and sometimes crazy - things to the atmosphere. You'll be able to visit most locations at various times of the day, and some look so much different every time.
And which Monkey Island project do you mean? I see a MI-inspired game being made - and looking truly GORGEOUS - in this very section of the forum!

Babar

The ultimate Professional Amateur

Now, with his very own game: Alien Time Zone

Swordofkings128

Oh man this looks sexy! :o Aliens are incredibley fascinating to me!

Looking forward to playing.


Igor Hardy

Look really stylish!

And yes I too was reminded of that cheeky Herman Toothrot game.

Fitz

Swordofkings: Sexy? Hmm... Oh well, whatever floats your boat, my friend ;) Seriously though... I've always been fascinated in aliens and UFO's, too - even if this particular story doesn't represent very deep thoughts on the matter. I just wanted to do something humorous :) I'm a huge fan of the old LucasArts classics (with Day of the Tentacle being my all-time favorite).

Ascovel: I love the graphics in that game! For some reason it makes me think of Atari games (the computer, not the Infogrames aka Atari Interactive). And of a comic/children's book about a humanoid goat I read as a kid. Hmm...
As for the graphics in "Gray", I wanted to keep it simple, without the DotT-style twisted perspective or crooked houses. Ok, so that tree looks a bit weird - but I like to think it's "artsy" rather than bizarre ;) The "technology" I'm using is similarly old-school. I'm doing all of it in good ol' MS Paint, with a mouse (lent the tablet to my sis). Yesterday I worked on the background for one of the cutscenes which I knew would be the most difficult: the cornfield. The whole problem was how to keep it clean and simple. But it turned out even nicer than I thought it would :)

Alun

Quote from: Fitz on Wed 22/09/2010 15:26:07
The game runs in 320x240 and utilizes only four colors: dark blue, red, orange and beige.

Huh... hadn't noticed this the first time I looked at the pictures, but just glanced again and this time noticed that they do have a little bit of black as well as the four colors you list.  There's so little black that, especially given what you said above, I wonder if this is a mistake, or is somehow a product of the way the images were saved?  (Specifically, in the first image, there are a few pixels of black along the inner edge of the farmer's right hand, and in the second image, there's a small solid black circle about halfway between the alien's stomach and the big white flower left of the tree.)

Soup - The Comic Strip
http://www.soupcomic.com
Gods, heroes, monsters, and soup


ThreeOhFour

Nice palette!

Fitz

Alun: You've got one hell of a hawk-eye! :o My bad! The black flower is so obvious, right there in the front that I'm kicking myself for not noticing - but the the farmer's hand I'd have never noticed. It's part of a talking animation and this is him scratching his side. And since I did most of the graphics with nothing more than Paint, there are still some stray pixels here and there. Will have to check and re-upload. Thanks for pointing it out!

Ben: Thanks! It's not nearly as crazy as the one you used in ! and I did try to make it easy on the eyes - but with the intense red it's a tad difficult.

ThreeOhFour

Oh, I wondered about the extra colours in certain places then realized you have uploaded jpegs! .png might be a better choice :)

Good to see you round as well, and sorry I didn't recognize you straight away  ;D

Chicky

That farmer looks awesome! Pretty way of drawing the tree, too! Thanks to Babar and Ascovel for the plug  ;)

Fitz

#17
I've updated the original post with some great news - and a little bit of in-game goodies. Something for your ears to enjoy! So scroll up and... well... ENJOY!

Oh and thanks, Chicky :) Doing idleness animations for that guy was lots of fun, too.

Fitz

#18
Check the original post for some great news on the game development AND some idleness animations of the farmer (specially for you, Chicky!). They're so much fun that I'll probably make more of those.

EDIT: Also added the background of the location that goes with the song I posted earlier. Fully animated!

joelphilippage

Funny thing, I picked my nose just as I saw him do it.

Besides that point,...
Um,....

Looks great!  ;D



ThreeOhFour


Fitz

#21
Joelphilippage: Funny, I read an article today about aliens controlling our minds ;)

Ben304: Graycias ;) Today's update wasn't all that much to look at - but I'm just trying to avoid spoilers. And saving the most precious eye-candy for the players to see in the game itself when it's done and out :)

Edit: I couldn't help myself! I posted the image of the location that song is for :D

cianty

Ha ha, those are really cool animations! I love the style and feel of this.
ca. 70% completed

Fitz

Yes, it's been 6 months since the last update - but the game's still alive! Check the original post for news and two new screenshots :)

ThreeOhFour

Love those character and scenery animations!

Matti

Yeah, nice animations. And that's one cute alien..

Sephiroth

The palette/characters are just so fun you can't go wrong. And I've witnessed how much love has been poured into this game, attention to details and animations are just awsome!

Of course I'll do my best to help and I hope you'll be able to focus on creativity and stop worrying about coding issues ;)

Fitz

Ben304: Those were so much fun to make, especially the farmer's idle animations (there's half a dozen of them already and there'll be more!).

Matti: He LOOKS cute. But trust me, he ISN'T ;D And huge thanks to you and Khris, as well, for really helping me out a bunch of times.

Sephiroth: It's the awesome help and encouragement that I get from all you guys that inspires me and makes me want to give something back by making Gray as enjoyable for the players as I can :) And even in spite of some obstacles here and there, it's tons of fun to make :D

hedgefield

The game looks amazing Fitz! Color palette kinda reminds me of !. Looking forward to playing this one. :)

Takyon

I really love the graphics of this. can't wait to play it.
ghost.

Tabata

I'm not really sure if I like the game being a side-scroller of a kind with a walkable area of only one pixel thick and the character only walking to the left and right, but I like both characters you created and the animations.

What makes me curious, is that you promised: „ ... believe me, I have CRAZY ideas ...“. 
I think, you catched me with this â€" so I am looking forward to try it  ;D

Can you tell something about the puzzles (which kind of will be included) and the controls?

Fitz

Hedgefield: Bingo! ! was definitely an inspiration here in terms of wild color themes and limited color palettes. And It was actually through Ben's games that I found AGS.

Slightly: Thanks! Can't say when it'll be out, but we're all working on it :) I'll try to keep everyone posted on the progress of the game :)

Tabata: Don't worry, it's going to be a regular adventure game, not a platformer/arcade game. What I meant by "side-scroller" is just the fact that the character only walks left and right along a flat landscape (because I was too lazy to draw the walkables for "up" and "down" - but then I had to draw them anyway! Haha!). Otherwise, he'll do everything an adventure game character does: talk to people (and not only people!), pick up objects, look and comment on things around him, have an inventory, use stuff on other stuff, give stuff to people, etc :) Just an ordinary game, you see. OK, maybe not THAT ordinary - or at least I hope so ;)

Fitz

And so another 5 months have passed since I last posted an update... But the game's still alive and developing nicely, if a little slowly. Here are two little screens from the game's intro:

Gray eyeing Earth with a sinister spark in his eyes...


Klaatu barada nikto!


Btw, anyone heard from Sephiroth lately? Can't get in touch with him since... June? I just hope he's ok...

Igor Hardy

Looks very good and unique and I'm happy to hear you're going forward with it!

Gudforby

Glad to hear the game is still alive. I'm looking forward to giving it a try when it's finished!

NickyNyce

This looks very nice. As you can guess, I too like little aliens. Everything looks really well done, all the animations look great too. It's good to see that you have most of the backgrounds done...what a great feeling that is.

Hope to see this soon.

Nickynyce

m0ds

Aliens are obviously the in thing this fall at AGS  8)

Looks great!

Fitz

Ascovel: Thanks :) Things are moving forward in phases - intense work every day for as long as I can handle, then some time off for as long as my conscience lets me :P - but it's progressing :)

Gudforby: I'll do my best not to keep you waiting forever for that to happen. Can't say when I'll finish it, but I hope it's not going to take another year. I'd say late winter. But of course quality comes first, so I don't wanna rush it, either.

NickyNyce: Yeah, isn't he cute and cuddly? ;) But that's just appearances ;D As far as the progress in the graphics departmens is concerned, backgrounds didn't take that much time to make. It's more about animations and cutscenes. But I'd like to think I'm far more than halfway through and done with the most challenging parts.

Mods: So it looks like I was ahead of my times, because I started working on the game last fall ;)

Knoodn

Good to see your game is progressing.

I'm looking forward to see this grey little fellow's trip to earth.

Mr.Dream



A new for this pretty game? *.*

Fitz

Wow, look, it's been three months since the last update! Yes, I'm still working on it whenever I can - and getting closer and closer to actually finishing it! :D I'm hoping to release it sometime in March :) I'll try to post some pics later today - and if I get my camera to work, a photo of... Shhh, that's a surprise ;)

Oh and psssst! Please read the FORUM RULES. Big bad Darth Mandarb doesn't like people digging up old threads to ask about updates ;) Game makers should do it themselves, only. As much as I'm thankful, because it did motivate me to crawl out from under a rock and say hi... rules are rules :) Let's stick to them to keep the forum neat and tidy!

Darth Mandarb

Hey Fitz thanks for the update!  Glad to know you're still workin' on it!

Oh and;

Quote from: Fitz on Sat 14/01/2012 07:56:29Big bad Darth Mandarb doesn't like people digging up old threads to ask about updates ;)

It came in 3 days under the 90-day deadline so it was technically okay but still ... :)

Mr.Dream

Sorry ^^'

Read a rules for a forum in a foreign language it's very long...

So, thank for the informations and good luck for the next x)

Fitz

Mr. Dream:

Yeah, sometimes it takes many, many words to maintain order. And a lot of patience to obey the rules ;)

Darth Mandarb:

Yeah, I've kept terribly quiet all this time, haven't I? The reason is EXACTLY because I'm so busy with the game. All brain power goes into animating, coding, etc... Haven't even played any other AGS game in a WHILE! :o Or read a book in... a month or two? Waaay too focused on this one task.

So... here are a few sneak peeks!

Gray is a traditionalist. There's nothing like cold weapons.


It's too bad most people pick efficiency over tradition...

WHAM

Don't think I've commented before, but now I shall:
AWESOME! I just love the limited palette and the animation is superb! I know nothing of the farmer and I already think he's an awesome character because he picks his nose!  ;D
Wrongthinker and anticitizen one. Pending removal to memory hole. | WHAMGAMES proudly presents: The Night Falls, a community roleplaying game

Fitz

Oh yes, he's amazing in every way. His awesomeness goes way beyond his nose-picking abilities. But my favorite is still Gray! He's all sorts of cute AND evil at the same time. Can't beat that! ;)

Igor Hardy

Still looking good and the color palette remains striking.

Any tentative release dates?

Fitz

#47
I'm *hoping* to release it in March or April. I'd say coding is at 90% and animations are at 95% - and progressing nicely. But then there are some thing that have been a little neglected in favor of honing the visual and functional aspect of the game first.
I'm also putting an emphasis on dialogues - and monologues - which are going to be a very important part of the game. Like, you'll be able to use every inventory item on every object, hotspot and character you meet - and you'll get a different response from Gray every time. I'm having tons of fun doing that - but it takes time, too! Also, I'm planning to release it both in English and Polish simultaneously, so there's some extra work in that area, too.
So basically, there's a lot of little things. Fonts. Sounds. And then the beta-testing, of course :) So... yeah, let's hope it'll be March/April after all :)

Fitz

Here's that little surprise I promised the other day! I know, it's not ingame material - but it's just so cute I couldn't help myself! Had to post it! :D





This is a little gray figurine of Clay! I mean... a clay figurine of Gray! Got it from my girlfriend - who's also the game's quality control department, alpha tester and the one that's been cracking that whip over my head for the past few months ;) AND a talented abstract sculptor - for whom this little dude (at about three inches tall) is not the first alien-like creation.

Gudforby

That is one cute alien!

Game merchandise already in production I see...  8)

WHAM

Wrongthinker and anticitizen one. Pending removal to memory hole. | WHAMGAMES proudly presents: The Night Falls, a community roleplaying game

Ubel

I must get a boxed collector's edition of this game with that statue included!

Fitz

Yeah, he looks so nice and cuddly, doesn't he? I bet he'd make a great teddy bear! ;) One who'd say cute things when you push his belly. Like, "Take me to your leader".

But, of course, let's not get ahead of ourselves here. First I need to figure out a way to start that one-person clay figurine factory AND not lose the girlfriend at the same time ;) But the idea of me cracking that whip over her head, for a change, sounds really nice...  ;D

Fitz

Hmm, it's the last day of April... Last time I updated this thread, this was the tentative deadline. BUT we're still working on it, working really hard. We have close to all in-game songs and the game's basically playable from start to finish -- but most conversations, Look At's and interaction responses are still in the works. There's still a FEW things to do that I haven't even started, like sound fx, the outro and the Polish translation. I'm hoping it'll be ready for beta-testing in a month or so, so we could then release by the end of June.

In other news: the dev team grew! By 100%! So now there's four of us:

- SwordOfKings128, who's stuck with me from almost the very beginning, does the music -- and blows my mind on a daily basis.

- Sephiroth is back and assists me with some serious coding. I just think of something crazy I'd want in the game -- and thirty seconds later he sends me the code.

- Paul Franzen, the newest member on the team, offered to proofread and edit dialogues (and monologues) in the game. Ah, poor, unsuspecting soul, didn't know what he was gettting himself into :-D

Speaking of which, here's a sample of Gray's rhetorical talent - the all-time adventure game classic:



And this one of the game's milestones -- the game's own Quit GUI:



Because, obviously, a game with only four colors couldn't have a GUI that is GRAY ;)

Igor Hardy

Still looking good. :) Best of luck realizing the current schedule.

How big is the game btw?

Fitz

I did a little speed-run a while ago, and at that point, without having to go through some dialogs, and knowing what to do and where to go, it took about 45-60 minutes. So I'm guessing you can double that if you play it for the first time. Add the intro, outro, dialogues (which aren't short, either), and I guess you get a short-to-medium-length game :) But it's actually more fun if you take your time with it. There's about 35 objects in the inventory - but about 400-500 possible combinations of using them on hotspots, objects and other inventory items, all with a unique response. There are going to be multiple-choice dialogs (typically 4), branching out into new multiple-choice options. There's very likely close to two-thousand speech lines, and that not the end yet :) When I think of it, and the translation that I want to do, I'm scared -- but I love making this a game that sort of awards you for anything you do, whether right or wrong :)

Sephiroth

I had the occasion to hear some wonderful tracks from SwordOfKings128, and Fitz is working hard to bring us this little gem in time!

Quote from: Pablo on Mon 23/01/2012 13:30:31
I must get a boxed collector's edition of this game with that statue included!
I want that too, and the game on a 12+ floppy disks set!  :-*

Cheers!

NickyNyce

Sounds good Fitz, although I'm working with 6 aliens of my own, it's not nearly enough. Hope to see the nose picking farmer soon

The Aliens are invading! One game at a time  :wink:

Fitz

Aw, darnit, you beat me to it, Nicky! ;)

Hey, everyone! To celebrate Gray's two years' anniversary of being in production, I posted a little update in the original post. The alien invasion is nigh!

Armageddon

I liked the old logo, nice to know you are still working on it though.

Fitz

It's not that I didn't like the old one, either :) But it had to go - because the intro has an animated sequence of a spaceship doing exactly what you see in the  logo. Ergo, it'd be kinda redundant to repeat it, especially that the said sequence comes right after the logo.

JSH

Nice looking little game Fitz, love the palette and art style. Will definitely check this out! :)

Fitz

UPDATE: November 25, 2012

THE ALIEN INVASTION STARTS ON NOVEMBER 30!!!

After two years and three months in development, and some recent, unexpected hurdles, the game is finally allllmost there. The final round of beta testing is almost over and I'm adding some final touches here and there. So unless we get invaded by aliens, the game will premiere on Friday, November 30!

Also, my long-time friend, Ellana Dayligaun of the incredibly talented band Invisible Animals, let me use one of their otherwoldly songs in the game's outro sequence. The result was MIND-BLOWING!



Fitz

If all goes well, it'll be there in a matter of 15-30 minutes. Uploading it right now :)

EDIT:

Yup, it's DONE :)  The release thread can be found HERE

PHEW!

I'd like to thank everyone on the team: SwordOfKings128, Sephiroth, Maggie, Paul Franzen, Arj0n, Tabata, NickyNyce -- and all the folks who followed Gray on the forums :) And especially ThreeOhFour, who was the one to inspire me to fulfill my teenage dream of making an adventure game :) And Densming, without whose AGS tutorials I would've never been able to get anywhere with the game. And Sephiroth, Khris, Matti and Geork, who taught me some more. Thank you all!

Darth Mandarb

Excellent!!  Congrats on finishing it.

You might want to include the link (to the completed games thread) in the first post as well!

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