Topic: MAGS feb: Claire

[Relight]

I've been absent but I wanted to finish a few things, including working on DQII and eventually making my RON game.  Coming up next will be my weird one-hour game.  But first, this MAGS month was a good one, you'll see how I did completely my own thing while keeping to the rules.

So here it is.  Please download from the AGS games page so that I can see the count.  Don't everyone overwhelm Sylpher's server all at once.  Lastly, please read the readme PDF before you play the game, if possible (you'll need a relatively new version of Acrobat Reader).

http://www.agsforums.com/games.php?action=detail&id=181

I will of course appreciate any comments you post in this thread.

[Timosity]

That's a cool little game Relight,

some of the graphics were good, and I liked the use of photos.
The 3d animation at the end was pretty neat, the only dissappointing thing was the use of roger.
who was the celebrity, was it someone in the xfiles locker photo or was ed or maria a celeb? I didn't recognise any.
some people may have the same problem with mine

Good luck

[Relight]

Thanks for the comments.  As for Roger, the only excuse I have is the one in the readme - I can't draw, much less animate, a character to save my life.  As for making a 3D character to match the graphics, I'm not that good at 3D animation.  However, I would have made a basic 3D character if I'd had more time.

Well, don't look if you haven't played it yet, but just so you know I stayed on the rules, the celebrity is:

The celebrity is Claire.  All the pictures of her are from a well-known CG female movie character.

[Relight]

Thanks to everyone who took the time to download Claire the first day after it was released.

But please let me know what you liked and what you didn't like about the game (except for the fact that Roger is the player character).

One thing I'm usually proud of is to script a solid game, including interactions that always make sense, in general to make the game very "tight."  It's obvious and painful if a game doesn't do this even in a minor way, but when a game does it hopefully you don't even think about it.

EDIT: Well, are we all having fun posting promo posts at the end of our threads now?  I'll have you know that my MAGS game is the only one without spelling or grammar errors!  So make sure to vote for it today.  Remember, if you're one of the 80+ people who downloaded Saddson Issein you can't vote for it yet until you play mine  Actually I'm impressed 29 people downloaded Claire so far because of the larger file size (I clicked the download button once to make sure it worked), so thanks again.

[Barcik]

That was a lovely concept you had there. The one thing I can say is that it doesn't really fit a short game - it would have been perfect for a game at least a couple of hours long. But I can say that you did pull it off very well with great tunes, backgrounds and messages that hit right the spot. You should really consider doing a full length game like that. And just wondering, who is the celebrity here?

[Relight]

Thanks Barcik, that's a big compliment to me!  I will make a full-length game, which will be my RON game.  It will have the same cinematic style as this game (except better), and it will actually have much more "game."

Alright, I'll de-mystify my above post just for everyone's clarity.  The celebrity is Aki Ross from the Final Fantasy movie, except she's disguised as Claire  That's not exactly what the rules meant, I think, but the rules did say "in any way" so there you go.

As for Maria and Ed, they're just pics I grabbed off the internet.  Can anyone identify whose pic I used in the closing cutscene?  

[|Alky|]

I think the game is damn cool..
The celebrity is that babe in the wierd dreams, right?
but the second criteria was it had to have something to do with Iraq... :

[Relight]

Yup.  Well, in the intro to the game it sets the stage that the solider player character is in the country Iraq and holed up in this base.  And it talks about the war, and in the closing scene it talks more about the war.  So, um, yeah, that does it for me  

[Quickstrike]

Tight!  My mouth was agape when the final scene played.

[Relight]

Thanks Quickstrike!  And now I just wanted to make a few closing comments to this thread.

The guy's image who I took to represent my character in the closing cutscene is the main hero guy from the Wing Commander movie.

Secondly, you'll notice the Dad's Creme Soda product placement  In all of my "larger" games I like to put stuff like that.  Abstract and Paint were too small to bother, but you'll remember in Night Of The Plumber I had 2 product placements (although they were much more hidden than in Claire).  You can be sure that any future medium-large games of mine will also have something similar in it.

Thirdly, I want to bring up an idea.  My next game (excepting if I release my one-hour "game" first), is gonna be huge.  I thought it would be fun to release not a traditional demo, but a demo with a small sidestory such as the SQ6 demo (wow what a great demo that was).  What does everyone think of that idea?  It's such a great idea, I'm surprised not many people do it.  Besides SQ6 demo, the closest I can think of is sorta like shareware arcade games, where you get Episode 1 and then when you buy it you get more episodes.

[Barcik]

Can you please explain more about this SQ6-like demo?

[Relight]

Well, do you know the SQ6 demo?  In the case of SQ6, it was a little story in the same location to prequel the game.

In my game, it will be a short pre-story that will setup a few things that don't really belong in the game.  In the game, you might say "well, what about this?"  Instead of putting it in the game where it doesn't contribute well to the flow of the game, in fact it even doesn't belong in the game intro, you can have a mini-game to tell that little bit of the story and get people excited for the full game.  Does that make sense?

[Nostradamus]

Very interesting game Relight!

I need help:

I slept in the bed, took the knife but I can't progress from here. Can't open any door nor the panel even with the knife. What do I do next?[/hide[

[Relight]

Everything that you tried before, try again.  It's so simple that it's stupid.  In other words, not very logical puzzle design.  Use your hands, then go back to each location.