Anarch Universe

[SpacePirateCaine]

0xDEDD00D5 presents:
TM

"My name is Dave. I'm a regular guy who was born on a tiny, unremarkable planet called Earth.
A year ago, my biggest concern was whether to get the hazelnut latte or a hot chai for my commute to the internet startup I worked for.
I was blissfully ignorant to the fact that the entire universe is populated by aliens - most of whom are hostile,
led by a 'Creator Race' called the Altareans.

Unfortunately for me, one night after a pretty sweet office party and a few too many shooters,
I was abducted by mistake by a pair of space pirates making an emergency stop on my apartment building roof.
Honestly, I was kinda pissed off about the whole thing at first.

But if you were suddenly offered the chance to experience the whole universe, instead of working nine-to-five, what would you do?

So here I am: Captain of a galactically feared band of space pirates, on the run from the Altarean Galactic Police Force.
Stranded in space with a pair of guys who treat interstellar larceny like a day-job.
Their biggest concern - aside from getting vaporized by the GPF - still being where to find a good drink.

Funny how that works out."

Synopsis:
Anarch Universe is a story about a couple of guys, living in space, trying to make a buck. You take on the role of Dave (A.K.A. The Dread Space Pirate Captain Tytan), a reluctant member of the galactic community and ex-resident of planet earth who is now the head of a band of intergalactic space pirates. You've been killed, resurrected, you've been the savior of an entire planet and you've seen a supernova up close, and now it's time for a little R&R.

And what better way to start your vacation with a little new tech? Ship's engineer Jin (A.K.A. Twisty) has devised a plan for a piece of technology that will greatly enhance your life in space: You just need to build it first. You've got everything you need except for one last piece. All you need to do is pull a heist on a luxury space station. What could possibly go wrong?

Features:
Graphics in glorious pixelated 320x200 (Scaled to preference!)
Simple, user-friendly context menu interface
Full voice acting!
Multiple solutions to puzzles: A story that changes based on how you solve problems!
Full OGG Soundtrack
Developed in AGS 3.3

Notes:
Anarch Universe is planned to be a Full-length commercial Adventure game. Planned release date is within 2015.

Team:
Art, writing, scripting, music, biz-related stuff: Luke "SpacePirateCaine" Rideout
Additional Art: Greg "The Serpent Sage" Gibbons

Progress:
Story/Puzzles - 50%
Scripting - 10%
Graphics - 10%
SFX/Music - 5%

Dev Diary:
February 17, 2014: Publicly announced the project. Working at breakneck pace to get everything moving and intending to make regular updates on this page to keep motivated and keep me and my team honest.

[selmiak]

Now this is where these screenshots in the Tech forums came from. Space pirates and interstellar burglaries are something to look forward to. I'll sure keep this on my watchlist!

[SpacePirateCaine]

Indeed it is! Thanks to you and everyone else in the Beginner's Tech Forum, it's finally in a state where I can share it!
You can likely expect no small number of continued questions on the tech forum, though, as I've got a long way to go yet.

[Armageddon]

2001, very nice! The art look amazing. The fonts are really hard to read though.

[KodiakBehr]

Looks like a lot of fun.  Will be watching for more!

[Eric]

Those dialogue bubbles look fantastic.

[Baron]

Exciting!  Sign me up for a voice acting audition, if you are still in need of "talent" (*cough* ).
      I too found the font hard to read, I suppose because it is a ttf font that's been resized?  It looks ok when I scale the screenshot back to 320x200.  I'm not sure how many people scale up these low-res games when playing (I do), so you might consider a different font.  If you're keeping this one, another issue is that the kerning (?) on the left side of the "L" is wrong: it bleeds into adjacent letters.
      ...But I realise this isn't the critics lounge: this looks like an exciting and fun-filled game.  Good luck!

[SpacePirateCaine]

Thanks everyone for the feedback and interest! I'll take the comments on the font under consideration and see what I can do to increase readability. At the moment I'm using a BlamBot comic TTF font with AA that may indeed need to be reconsidered if the consensus is that it's tough to read.

And the great speech balloon module is called "Phylactere" - from the French AGS forums. I'll link it presently if you'd like to have a look.

And Baron - VO is a ways off but I will definitely get in touch when I get to that point!

Edit: Phylactere can be found by clicking this link. - it's in French, so a little hard to sort through everything if you (like me) don't speak the language very well, but the module itself works like a charm once you've spent a little time looking it over.

[Calin Leafshade]

I think part of the readability issue is the fact that the text is all uppercase. We tend to find it easier to read properly cased words.

[Andail]

Stellar sprites!
As people have already commented on the font, I'll refrain from doing so myself

[selmiak]

the only font I find hard to read is the font under LUXURY STATION and on the use-interface-menu. The speech balloon font is readable to me.

[Daniel Eakins]

I also find the text in the verb menu hard to read. I "guess" it more than I actually "read" it.

This is easily fixable and the rest of the graphics are amazing though! It has a really nice comic book feel that I wish we'd see more often (there was a pretty cool action game on the Megadrive called Comix Zone which was like that, and also the scrapped, epic AGS community project called Awakening of the Sphinx).

[Gribbler]

2001, very nice! The art look amazing. The fonts are really hard to read though.

+1

[Mati256]

Looks amazing!

[Eric]

I think part of the readability issue is the fact that the text is all uppercase. We tend to find it easier to read properly cased words.

And yet, the traditional...American at least...way of doing word balloons is all-caps. So you should weigh readability versus cultural norms. You may also want to make sure that, if you stick with all-caps, you don't have any characters named Clint Flicker.

[Stupot]

Looks great, man. Best of luck.

My main issue regarding the fonts is that the Y looks more like a V, but I have no problem reading in upper-case.

[SpacePirateCaine]

Thank you again to everyone who has shown interest in the project - It's my hope that after 10 years here in AGS, I can finally contribute something really substantial and I'm working hard to make sure this is a game that my fellow adventure game enthusiasts will enjoy.

Regarding the text readability thing, the decision to use speech balloons and all upper-case writing was definitely a stylistic one, as the game is meant to invoke feelings of a comic book. I won't be abandoning the cultural norms that surround that as such, but I am looking into my options for fonts that are more readable at 7 and 5pt, respectively. The boldface font for the very same may even be sufficient, but I will be experimenting and very possibly submitting some samples to the critics' lounge in the next few days (As what fun is a game if you can't understand what's going on?).

Your feedback is greatly appreciated, and I'm looking forward to having a lot more to show soon.

[mitlark]

Heheh... more discussion about the fonts, but it's all I want to say aside from the fact of the beautifulness of your spriting technique <3.
Haven't you considered dropping TTF and using a bitmap font instead? Either making one, or getting one, or converting your TTF one to bitmap and thinkering a little with it (though making a standard 5~7pt font it's not hard).
And fixing the "Luxury Station V" text. It's way too blurry.
(Anyway, me hating the antialiasing algorithms "OTL).

Anyway, I'll be looking forward for any news regarding this game.

[Chicky]

This is looking brilliant SpacePirateCaine, really excited to play something from you