The Third Circuit - Part One (now with a couple of new photos)

[Adder]

‘THE THIRD CIRCUIT - PART ONE' 
Mystery and Adventure amidst the skyways and neon glow of a concrete future
   
   

In the sprawling vertical city of Ultraville, Johnny Cego is looking for a box of chocolates and a bottle of wine with which to surprise his girlfriend, Eve.  Little does he know that this harmless surprise visit will completely alter his life forever, plunging him into a web of corporate espionage and robotic crime he'd previously only read about in his pulpy magazines.

‘The Third Circuit' is a cyberpulp murder-mystery.  The game features:

• Proper 320x200 resolution, without the jarring mixed-resolution issues I'd accidentally originally worked into it
• Hand painted backgrounds
• Which have been heavily pixelated.
• A ‘classic-though-hopefully-still-with-new-bits' sci-fi setting
• A split-inventory system which allows the player to collect the odd bottle of wine in addition to more ephemeral things such as ‘clues'
• An evocative, loopy soundtrack
• And what the creator hopes is an enjoyable level of humour.

‘The Third Circuit' will be released in a series of chapters over the coming, well, let's be honest, 'while' (is that honest enough?).

This game has been in-production for almost two years and I thought it was high-time I posted it on the forum â€" the first part (including what I hope will be the steepest part of the learning curve) is almost ready.  Having said that, I've been saying that to myself for almost two years now so…  Soon, I hope.

Progress:
Story: 100%
Backgrounds: 95%
Character animations: 90%
Music: In my only properly successful delegation to date, I've got a talented artist working on this and I'd estimate it's about 50%
Sound: The above-mentioned artist is also working on the sound FX, let's say 30%
Scripting: 90%

I hope to have a website live in the very near future.  In the meantime,

I've set up a facebook page, where I'll be posting a few things: The Third Circuit on facebook


I hope I've piqued your interest.  Thanks for reading.

UPDATE 9/12/2013
I've added a couple of new photos to this post.  I'm still working away on the game - all the backgrounds now have moving bits, woo!

[ThreeOhFour]

The mixed resolution is a bold decision, and one which will probably gain you some heavy criticism. I personally think it looks ok (though would be interested to see what the game looks like at pure resolutions of either 320x or whatever the chars are at).

The colour palettes are absolutely stunning, and I really love the atmosphere they bring. Beautiful work. Cyberpulp is an excellent genre that needs more games, and to see this one so close to completion has me very intrigued!

[Armageddon]

Looks amazing. Was wondering when I'd see those backgrounds again. I agree, the mixed resolution is weird but could work okay.

[Secret Fawful]

What a unique art style! There needs to be more games that look this good!

[Adder]

Thanks for the encouragement guys! 
I'm afraid I'm so new to this (bar a couple of years of chipping away at this project) that I didn't even think of mixed resolution - I just scan it in and pixelate it a bit.  This does mean the characters get a little (sometimes a lot) less pixellated as they scale down but I couldn't think of a way around it.  Also, the sprites are still unfinished in these screens, so perhaps it will improve...  Thanks for drawing my attention to it.

[ThreeOhFour]

It could be because you have "smooth scale sprites" option on - although the hotspot text and cursor image betray your game's actual resolution anyway. If you're not too worried about it, leave it. Cart Life has mixed resolutions on purpose and looks magnificent.

[JSH]

Wow, looking great, love me a cyberpunk game Looking forward to this!

[Ilyich]

LOVE the look of it - excellent, interesting colour choices, intense amount of detail and a charming hand-painted feel. And there can never be too many cyberpunk games. Colour me excited!

[Eric]

I don't even fully understand what mixed resolution means, but I know that this looks lovely. Moreso than the art is beautiful, it's atmospheric. I get a sense of your world, just from these two images.

[Stupot]

Looks wicked, Adder.  Consider my interest piqued. Best of luck, man.

[Trapezoid]

Thanks for the encouragement guys! 
I'm afraid I'm so new to this (bar a couple of years of chipping away at this project) that I didn't even think of mixed resolution - I just scan it in and pixelate it a bit.  This does mean the characters get a little (sometimes a lot) less pixellated as they scale down but I couldn't think of a way around it.  Also, the sprites are still unfinished in these screens, so perhaps it will improve...  Thanks for drawing my attention to it.

So your game's at 640x480, but you're "pixelating" it to low-res quality before loading it in AGS?

[Armageddon]

Thanks for the encouragement guys! 
I'm afraid I'm so new to this (bar a couple of years of chipping away at this project) that I didn't even think of mixed resolution - I just scan it in and pixelate it a bit.  This does mean the characters get a little (sometimes a lot) less pixellated as they scale down but I couldn't think of a way around it.  Also, the sprites are still unfinished in these screens, so perhaps it will improve...  Thanks for drawing my attention to it.

So your game's at 640x480, but you're "pixelating" it to low-res quality before loading it in AGS?

Yeah that sounds kind of not good. You should let AGS scale it up with nearest neighbor.

[Adder]

Haha - I see what you mean now!  I'll see what I can do.  Whoops.

Also, Armageddon, I wanted to say thanks for remembering the sketches from all that time ago.

[qptain Nemo]

Personally, I don't like the palette of the game much.
BUT
I still very much appreciate the unique look and looking forward to discovering more of it in the game. There's little I like more than games that look, feel and play like nothing else. And to me cyberpunk and adjacent genres are like home. So you've definitely piqued my interest. Good luck with finishing it.

[RetroJay]

Hi Adder.

I love the look and feel of your game.

I am with Eric

I don't even fully understand what mixed resolution means

Can someone please enlighten us?

Jay.

[Trapezoid]

The backgrounds and NPCs seem to be pixelated, but the main character, text and cursor are not. Those screencaps are 640x480. The backgrounds are 320x240, scaled up x2, which looks jarring against the elements that are not x2.

[RetroJay]

Thanks Trapezoid.

I see it all now... some of it.

Jay.

[Adder]

Thanks again for the feedback everyone.

Thanks Trapezoid for the explanation, I now work to fix it - let the learning curve continue!

[Wicked]

wow looks great kinda reminds me of that cartoon heavy metal

[Adeel]

Excellent artwork, Adder. Looking forward to play your game. Your backgrounds look close to reality. Btw, I have a question: Will your game be commercial or free?

[CosmoQueen]

Loving the graphics! So happy to see your two years of hard work so close to completion! Looking forward to it

[scab]

It's very nice. I like the "night-life" district.

[Pinback]

Damn that's pretty - you paint it all up in PS or are there some traditional mediums involved?

[m0ds]

Looks very nice! Best of luck. And the artwork had made me wonder if you had perhaps kidnapped Pinback, but it's good to see he's safe and well ^

[Snake]

My fancy is tickled, that's for sure. I LOVE (absolutely LOVE) the backgrounds, which is what drew me in to read about it.

I'm looking forward to this! Please keep us updated

PS
Personal opinion here: Mixed resolutions just don't work. It looks unnatural and always gives me a cheap, unprofessional impression which tends to ruin it for me. By the screenshots, cheap and unprofessional is not what you are, so why not keep the resolution at 320x200(or 240) or whatever resolution the BGs are made at? If you need the game to run in a higher resolution but you want to keep the pixelated look, there is an option in AGS somewhere that will scale all the text, cursors and sprites to the lower res... or something of the sort... it's been a while for me

Maybe it is the "smoothed scaled sprites" as Ben has suggested...?

[Adder]

Thanks everyone - great to get this feedback after so long in a virtual vacuum,

Adeel S Ahmed:  This first part of the game will almost certainly be free, although I am considering possibly putting up a 'donation' button or something - just to claw back a bit of remuneration perhaps?  Not sure.  But I'll probably put the paintings up for sale because:

Pinback: All the backgrounds are acrylic on paper.  Originally so were the characters but the amount of tracing paper I was using was just insane, so now they're on the machine.

And the artwork had made me wonder if you had perhaps kidnapped Pinback,

That is high praise indeed!

I hope to post up some new pics soon - I'm currently transferring everything into one single, unifying, pixelly resolution.  In the meantime, here's a portrait of one of the NPCs (not yet reolution un-mixed)

[Pinback]

@Adder Aha, I should have guessed! Wonderful stuff. Glad to meet a fellow artist who starts out on paper first, just like the good old days. Props for doing it ALL on paper though, major props man. 

@M0ds Hehe, nah I've just been busy with mad science.

[Adder]

Well, I've been steadily chipping away at the character animations.

Here's the main character picking something off the ground, or maybe exercising?



And here's an alien bartender pouring a drink:

[Armageddon]

Really nice animations. Bartender has some nice detail. Does this take place on earth with aliens or?

[CaptainD]

Terrific animations - also a good basis for a calisthenics workout!

Is it just me or does that bartender look like George Foreman?  Does he sell grills?

[Adder]

Thanks.

Funny point about the Foreman similarities (now that you've mentioned it, I can't help seeing an alien George Foreman from Outer Space ) - it wasn't intentional, although the character does actually grill things.

@Armageddon, the story takes place on Earth but there's a sizeable immigrant population from beyond the stars - when we were first planning this my friend and I loved the image of a sort of extra-terrestrial Chinatown, full of strangeness and excitement.  It won't really feature in this first part but will become more central later in the story.

[Adder]

My, time flies.

I'm still working away at this.  Unfortunately, I've been very busy with some other stuff lately and have not had as much time as I'd like.

But it's certainly coming along â€" I sent the paintings off to get nice professional photos taken which are much truer to the original colours (even in this age of technological whizz-bangery, I'm still atrocious at taking photos)


       

Here we have an old photo on the left, a new one on the right.  I don't know whether the difference is much noticeable to anyone else, but I feel the new one looks much better. I can get a bit obsessive like that (and I've re-sized them here to 800 width as they look like little thumbnails on my screen otherwise).

Anyway, this has been a good opportunity for me to re-size the whole thing to a proper 320x200 resolution.  This has meant that I need to add a bit to the sides of each background, but that's going okay.  It also means I have to restore all the walkable areas and co-ordinates etc etc but this Part One is pretty small, so I hope it won't take too long.

Most of the character art is done now, I just have to put them all in there.

Still working on the dialogue â€" just noticed the font I was using doesn't display commas (ah no, my favourite punctuation!), so two steps forward one step, back.

Sounds have started to come through from the sound artist.

Still chipping away.

[Armageddon]

I like the colors in the left one more, it's also not as harshly outlined. The blue and green and red just pop more and makes the room much more inviting to look at. And even though they are the same resolution it's a lot easier to read the text on the signs in the left one. They're both good though, I can see why you'd choose the newer one, it's just a matter of taste.

[Darth Mandarb]

If you want opinions on new vs. old please post in the Critics Lounge.  Thanks!

[Honza]

Looks awesome! Not only the backgrounds, the characters are great too. I'm impressed and a bit envious .

I was just wondering though, is the pixelated gimmick really necessary? It makes sense to me if you design it in low-res in the first place, but if you have big detailed artwork, why shrink it to a bunch of pixels just to be retro? I would much rather explore those glorious backgrounds in high-res. Or does it spare you work on animation? I felt the same about Primordia and The Journey Down (which went high-res for a commercial release later).

[Adder]

@Armageddon Thanks for the feedback and at the same time, 'd'oh'

@Darth Mandarb I'm sorry about that, it won't happen again.

@Honza Thanks very much.  It's a good question about the low-res thing.  I kind of see it more as a tribute than a gimmick - I've always loved, and have always wanted to make something like, the old adventures I grew up with.  Having said that, it *is* also way more forgiving with my animations .

[Adder]

I've just added a couple of new photos to the original post. 

It's been a long time since I've posted here.  It's coming together.  I feel like that's my catch phrase.  But it is, progressing I mean.  Little animations in the backgrounds are all done now. 

[Ubel]

Wow, the look of this game has improved significantly since you first posted this! It looks really awesome now that you've fixed the mixed resolution problems! The premise of the story sounds a bit mundane the way you wrote it in your post but I hope it actually turns out to have interesting twists.

[Lasca]

This looks absolutely gorgeous! Very impressive!

[Armageddon]

Oh man those new shots look good. I'm so excited for this game. Keep it up!

[Adder]

Hi everyone,

I hope Xmas/New Year/Back to the Grind went well.

Just a quick update:  I'm still slogging away at this, it's getting *really* close - just an intro, some fine tuning and waiting on audio stuff (I think).  After which I'm nervously looking forward to getting people to test it and hopefully find it works/is enjoyable.
Unfortunately though, I have a couple of other super-pressing deadlines on the horizon so I'm not going to get too much time to finish it off in the next couple of months.

[CosmoQueen]

That's cool, we'll all be here waiting

[AprilSkies]

Really interesting, man!
It's so Blade-Runner.. and so Beneath a steel sky... and I like it so much because of that!
And I really love the artwork!.. Backgrounds art reminds me of "Rise of the Dragon" ... and of course I like it because of that!
I'm looking forward to it!