Kate and Shelly Stick Together

[Gurok]

Kate and Shelly Stick Together (Working Title)

Blurb:

Kate and Shelly are best friends who share everything from toothbrushes to
totally embarrassing gossip. It's no surprise that on their first day at
university, they should both fall for the same boy. He's a dark and charming
stranger, but his mysterious past threatens to divide them. While one girl
can't keep her hands off him, the other begins to suspect there's something
very wrong. Are their lives in danger or is she just paranoid? It's times
like these you need a best friend who doesn't think you're going crazy!

Features:

• Engrossing mystery/thriller with a huge glob of Sweet Valley High romance
• Friendships will be put to the test
• I don't want to spoil anything, but there might be some betrayal
• Two distinct endings
• Two playable characters
• State-of-the-art 320x200 graphics
• Hand-painted backgrounds
• Pixel art sprites and portraits
• Clear progress system that punctuates your adventure
• Simplified two button user interface with a radial menu for extra actions

Planned:

• Animated cutscenes
• Voice acting of some sort

Projected release:

• Not before June, 2015 2016

Progress:

20% -- Art and scripting are well on their way. Story is finalised. Introduction is blocked out. First third of the game is completable. First few cutscenes are complete.

Team:

• Writing and programming: Benjamin Penney (that's me!)
• Background art, storyboarding and animation planning: K. Williams
• Sprites, portraits and general animation: Richard Mallory / Andrei / Various

Screenshots:

Outside the library.


Colour-coded inventories.


A spooky corner of the campus.


Near the gate.


Radial menu for extra actions.


More dialogue and... suitcases! OOoh

[Ilyich]

This looks quite excellent!
Great artwork both in the background (lovely colours!) and the portrait (that hat ^_^) departments, and the premise sounds fun!

Best of luck getting this thing done!

[CaptainD]

Looks interesting, and the artwork is lovely!

[Snarky]

Holy heck! Graphically and in terms of setting, that looks eerily like a game I was working on, only quite a bit better. Actually, it's probably more accurate to say it looks a lot like the way I intended my game to look. Very nice-looking graphics, for sure (though the curved perspective distortion in the first screen, presumably intended for use in a "camera tilt"-type pan down, looks pretty odd). Reminds me a bit of Nightshade's art: slightly lilac/pastel color scheme, similar "smooth" brushwork creating texture with very little noise.

The story sounds fun. Love games with multiple playable characters, and I've always thought a university is a good setting for an adventure game. The retro fashions are neat as well; is it set in a particular era (80s, I guess â€" I could have sworn the bowler hat outfit is from a movie, but can't quite place it) or is it just stylistic?

Good luck with this!

[Gurok]

This looks quite excellent!
Great artwork both in the background (lovely colours!) and the portrait (that hat ^_^) departments, and the premise sounds fun!

Best of luck getting this thing done!

Thank you! It's amazing to get feedback like this!

Looks interesting, and the artwork is lovely!

Thanks!

Holy heck! Graphically and in terms of setting, that looks eerily like a game I was working on, only quite a bit better. Actually, it's probably more accurate to say it looks a lot like the way I intended my game to look. Very nice-looking graphics, for sure (though the curved perspective distortion in the first screen, presumably intended for use in a "camera tilt"-type pan down, looks pretty odd). Reminds me a bit of Nightshade's art: slightly lilac/pastel color scheme, similar "smooth" brushwork creating texture with very little noise.

The story sounds fun. Love games with multiple playable characters, and I've always thought a university is a good setting for an adventure game. The retro fashions are neat as well; is it set in a particular era (80s, I guess â€" I could have sworn the bowler hat outfit is from a movie, but can't quite place it) or is it just stylistic?

Good luck with this!

The hat and all of the outfits are kind of pseudo 80s/90s fashion. I'm not locking it down to a specific decade, but it's pre- mobile phones.

I haven't seen this game you were working on, Snarky. Was it ever announced?

[Ilyich]

I haven't seen this game you were working on, Snarky. Was it ever announced?

I remember seeing a shot from it somewhere (Critics' Lounge, probably?), and it was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw the screenshots for this, actually! Not that they are too similar, but it's a fun connection. One of those "great minds think alike" situations!

[AprilSkies]

Very good! Very good!
It was a long time since I came across a game that makes me jump out of my chair like this.
Oh damn! June 2015 is too far away!
Can't you do it faster?

[Snarky]

I haven't seen this game you were working on, Snarky. Was it ever announced?

I remember seeing a shot from it somewhere (Critics' Lounge, probably?), and it was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw the screenshots for this, actually! Not that they are too similar, but it's a fun connection. One of those "great minds think alike" situations!

Yeah, I don't want to derail the thread, but no, it was not officially announced, and yes there were a few threads in the Critics' Lounge. Consider it canceled.

[Ghost]

You had me at "campy", Gurok!

Looks really nice, and the plot sounds interesting and original. Hurry up! Ghost needs games badly!

[Gurok]

Thanks, Ghost! Hope you can get back to Spring Break someday.

AprilSkies, thank you for the lovely comments too!

UPDATE:

I haven't posted in a while, so I thought I'd update to fill everybody in on what's been happening.

The past month and a half have been spent working on door interactions, cameras, mapping out hotspots, squishing bugs and blocking out the intro. What do I mean by blocking out? Well, it's very professional. Far more professional than what I'd normally do. We've got storyboards and animation roughs and the whole intro has been laid out with placeholders so we can get the timing right.

I've been working on the progress system and internal stats that track how much you use either character. The progress system will double as a system for displaying game credits, which is handy.

Right now, I'm focusing on the 9 rooms that have complete art. I'm also checking in occasionally on how the next 3 are being painted. Oh, and of course, submitting pull requests for AGS!

A lot of the next few days will be spent filling in examine interactions around the campus and perhaps working on the first puzzle. Exciting times!

ALSO! I've taken a month off my day job to work on the game, so expect another update at the end of the month.

[Nikolas]

The hat and all of the outfits are kind of pseudo 80s/90s fashion. I'm not locking it down to a specific decade, but it's pre- mobile phones.

So there's a puzzle that could be solved with a simple mobile phone, but we don't have these available in the game, huh?

Looking good Gyrok! Very very good!

[ThreeOhFour]

Oh man, this looks awesome!

[SarahLiz]

Wow...I love everything about this!  Graphics, setting, storyline, characters...looks & sounds amazing!

[Adeel]

I can't wait to play this game! Looks very nice.

[Gurok]

Nikolas, nice try, but I'm not giving any details away about puzzles. I think the lack of modern conveniences will lead to greater variety in the puzzles. You won't just be able to search for clues/answers using your phone.

Wow, thanks for the words of encouragement, SarahLiz, Adeel, ThreeOhFour and Nikolas! We're really motivated by the praise. Going to try to live up to those expectations.

Status report for the end of June:

Some numbers:
- 10/35 playable rooms
- 1 playable quest

Surprise, surprise, I got less done than I'd hoped this month. I restructured a lot of the code so that my GlobalScript is now just a series of stubs. I think this is the nicest way to organise things.

We've got sounds! Hooo boy have we got sounds. Everything makes noises. The doors, footsteps... well, that's it for now. But the footsteps are in stereo, which sounds really nifty. I also have a few music demos from an (as of yet) unnamed contributor. I've been giving those a listen and they sound very promising.

The game is divided into a series of quests that you can track through a Progress dialogue box. They work in a similar way to achievements, but consist of several points each and contribute to an overall score (e.g. 4/5 + 3/5 = 8/10 total score). As noted above, the first quest is playable, but it still needs some work to flesh out descriptions. Plus, it's only really completable for one of the two characters right now (gotta' fix that).

We're really close to getting 2 more rooms in. Once I get those, I'll start fleshing out the next scene. For now, I'm going to focus on building backstory, hotspot descriptions and fleshing out the first quest more. Flesh.

I might wait a couple of months before giving the next production update. There wasn't really that much to report on this month :/. Things are going well though, and I'm still really motivated and genuinely happy with how things are working out! Until next time!

[Adeel]

Best of luck, Gurok. It's good to know that you're still really motivated. Don't lose it, ever.

[Gurok]

Hello all, it's November and I'm still working on this cursed game!

Over the past few months, I've made quite a few changes, including changing portrait style. The new portraits have a more cartoon-like look that I'm pretty happy with:



The direction of the story has changed a bit. I spent a long time wrestling with how to end the story. I have finally, finally planned out the last puzzle in the game and I believe I have a satisfying conclusion to the whole game. Unfortunately, there's not really much horror happening anymore. It's become more of a mystery/thriller and I don't think there'll be much blood. I hope nobody minds.

I still only have one quest fully implemented, but I've spent a lot of time creating cutscenes that follow on from the first quest and tie the story together. So current numbers are:

- 15/33 playable rooms
- 1 playable quest (starting on #2 and #3)

The total number of rooms has gone down from 35->33. This is partially due to streamlining. It's also the result of me planning out the end game properly and deciding they really weren't necessary.

Finally, I'm going to have to push the release date back from June, 2015 -> June, 2016. The way things are going, the backgrounds won't even be fully painted by the end of this year. It's sad, but as is the case with 99% of game projects, I underestimated the time required to make it.

[CaptainD]

Those portraits are lovely!  Nice work.

I can sympathise greatly with having to push back the release date... had to do that too many times myself.

[Gurok]

I can sympathise greatly with having to push back the release date... had to do that too many times myself.

It's sad, but not disheartening. It seems like it's impossible to gauge the finish line from the beginning. Perhaps as you get closer to the end, the estimates become more accurate. I don't know. I don't remember the last release dates you quoted, but  I hope you get the finishing touches done on Captain Disaster Act III & Troll Song Chapter I soon.

[Fitz]

Yikes! But that's game development for ya -- a zillion of things you hoped would get done faster, and another zillion of issues you've never even thought of randomly popping up. Suffice it to say I'm still working on my unfinished MAGS August project

Aaaanyway... looks so awesome I might even forgive the lack of gore

[AnasAbdin]

THIS my friends is AGSing at its finest really love the art and story

[KodiakBehr]

Those portraits are fantastic.

[Stupot]

This looks great, Gurok. Not sure How missed the thread before. Looking forward to seeing more of this :-)

[Snarky]

The direction of the story has changed a bit. I spent a long time wrestling with how to end the story. I have finally, finally planned out the last puzzle in the game and I believe I have a satisfying conclusion to the whole game. Unfortunately, there's not really much horror happening anymore. It's become more of a mystery/thriller and I don't think there'll be much blood. I hope nobody minds.

Sounds great to me! I was always more excited about the mystery aspect of it (along with the school tale/friendship drama), so I'm glad to hear that will be more in the foreground.

The new portraits look even better than the old ones, though Shelly looks slightly cross-eyed.

Good luck with continued development, and hope you can keep up your enthusiasm for that long!

Edit: Oh, and I don't think I mentioned before, I think it's a really good title for a game like this. Very Daisy Pulls It Off!

[Lasca]

The new portraits looks awesome!

[aikex222]

wow this looks fantastic, hope to see more o the project and get to the final version
so we can put our hands in it.

continue and improve the great job done until now 

[Creamy]

Really nice!
Will the two characters be playable anytime (à  la day of the tentacle) or in a specific order (à  la Broken Sword)?

I can't wait to see other characters populate this gorgeous university

[nihilyst]

With these portraits and the background art, I can't not think that this might be a version of "The Colonel's Bequest" where Lillian decides she didn't want to go to the bayous, but hang out with Laura instead.

Spoiler

[close]

Great work. I will wait for this

[Gurok]

Yikes! But that's game development for ya -- a zillion of things you hoped would get done faster, and another zillion of issues you've never even thought of randomly popping up. Suffice it to say I'm still working on my unfinished MAGS August project

Aaaanyway... looks so awesome I might even forgive the lack of gore

I must admit, it sucks when all of those little issues stop you from checking off areas of your game as complete. Still, any progress is good progress. Gotta keep that positive attitude!

THIS my friends is AGSing at its finest really love the art and story

You'll hear more about the story before it's done. I've been deliberately vague and awkward about it because well, there's that feeling in the back of your mind that if you say too much, people just won't bother with the game. I think everyone developing an AGS game probably thinks the same way.

Those portraits are fantastic.

I hope I can deliver a game to match them!

This looks great, Gurok. Not sure How missed the thread before. Looking forward to seeing more of this :-)

That's alright! Thanks for the encouragement!

Sounds great to me! I was always more excited about the mystery aspect of it (along with the school tale/friendship drama), so I'm glad to hear that will be more in the foreground.

The new portraits look even better than the old ones, though Shelly looks slightly cross-eyed.

Good luck with continued development, and hope you can keep up your enthusiasm for that long!

Edit: Oh, and I don't think I mentioned before, I think it's a really good title for a game like this. Very Daisy Pulls It Off!

I agree that Shelly looks cross-eyed. There was another cross-eyed character we fixed. I spoke to the artist and he kind of got away with this one because she's looking upward, so it's not as obvious as the other one. I may or may not fix it depending on whether I can live with it.

Also, yeah, it's a reference to those cheesy, old timey adventure stories. It's only a placeholder title though! I have to think of something less ridiculous for the final game.

The new portraits looks awesome!

Thanks!

wow this looks fantastic, hope to see more o the project and get to the final version
so we can put our hands in it.

continue and improve the great job done until now 

I hope so too! I will be sharing more artwork, I'm just cautious and trying to ration it out. There's a lot more done than I've shown in the screenshots here. Once again, I have an irrational fear of spoiling the whole game if I share too much. We'll see.

Really nice!
Will the two characters be playable anytime (à  la day of the tentacle) or in a specific order (à  la Broken Sword)?

I can't wait to see other characters populate this gorgeous university

To begin with, they'll both be playable. At a certain point in the game, there's a pretty dramatic event where they both go their separate ways. From that point on, the game will decide which one you are playing at any given time.

There are about 12 principal cast members. I plan to have muted grey silhouettes for other university students in the background. The university grounds should end up being a lot more populated than they are now.

With these portraits and the background art, I can't not think that this might be a version of "The Colonel's Bequest" where Lillian decides she didn't want to go to the bayous, but hang out with Laura instead.

Hmmm... unfortunately, the story takes place in a different location and time period from The Colonel's Bequest. No direct links, sorry. However, portraits from The Dagger of Amon Ra were used as references to establish a style for the game's portraits. In particular, the directly front-on perspective, the backing board and the shapely neckline that flows down past its boundaries were all things I requested to try to convey a Sierra feel. I hope that's enough of a connection for you.

[aikex222]

wow this looks fantastic, hope to see more o the project and get to the final version
so we can put our hands in it.

continue and improve the great job done until now 

I hope so too! I will be sharing more artwork, I'm just cautious and trying to ration it out. There's a lot more done than I've shown in the screenshots here. Once again, I have an irrational fear of spoiling the whole game if I share too much. We'll see.

well, i guess you're right if u just put images of every single new thing, we won't have nothing new while playing xD

[Armageddon]

That art is too lovely.

[Voedino]

Please make the Russian language, in Russia this game will be a great success

[theo]

Awesome palette. I really like that you dare use all those happy fluffy colors. Me likey.

[Gurok]

MERRY CHRISTMAS

It's that time of the year where I get all sentimental :'(. I just wanted to quickly say thank you to everyone in the community for your support and friendship throughout 2014. I wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy 2015. I'd especially like to thank the following people for putting up with me:
Crimson Wizard: For your patience with my requests and thanks as always for leading the charge with AGS
Babar, JimReed, Haloa, Hedge, BSP and Adeel: For your company on IRC and the great fun we've had over the year
CalinLeafshade: For your constant encouragement with engine development
AprilSkies, CassieBSG and everyone from Devs-Anon: For being the best support group I could have wished for this year
Slasher: For your excellent games that inspired me to get more done this year
AnasAbdin: For sharing what you've learnt with me and just generally being a pretty friendly person

I've been busy putting together a two-puzzle demo to show my nieces (all eight of them) this Christmas. They'll all be in one place at the Christmas get-together, so it'll be the perfect time to let them loose on the game to get their impressions and see what sort of bugs they can find. It's also a bit less embarrassing than showing it to complete strangers.

The art style for player sprites has changed a bit and annoyingly, a lot of backgrounds will have props that need to be redrawn because the girls are slightly shorter than they were before. There's a lot of churn right now, but I hope to get back to new backgrounds early next year and chip away at that total progress percentage a bit more.

That's all I have to report for now.

P.S. Theo, Armageddon and Inventive Mind, thanks for the high praise! Especially Theo, your SkyGoblin AGS fork is kind of responsible for getting me into AGS hacking a few years ago.

[Gurok]

I've been a bit scared to post here. It's been a long time but we've been steadily making progress on the game. 21 out of 34 of the rooms are painted. The portraits are still being redone. We're now redoing the sprites too. I thought I'd show a few screenshots of how things are looking. You can see the new sprite for Shelly in the first pic. Kate's sprite isn't quite as far along.

It does feel like there's a lot of churn, but I think like the portraits, the new sprites are going to be a marked improvement over the old ones. We're probably going to do a final pass over the UI before everything's done too.

If you were to break the game into three acts, the first one is done-ish. Nothing's ever done! Oh my goodness, that's something I'm discovering. But anyway, you can play through and complete the first act, so that's something.

We have 21 rooms done, but so many others in progress. I'm posting some background WIPs because they look so cool. They're also from later in the game, so there are some vague hints about what happens (too vague to spoil anything though).

Isn't art cool??!

[AnasAbdin]

Wow! great work. I love seeing the WIP work. Hope to see the finalized version soon too

Isn't art cool??!

Very

[Lasca]

This game looks absolutely awesome. AWESOME!!!

[Cassiebsg]

Looking great! Love the WIPs! 
Thanks for sharing and keeping us updated. And keep up the good work! 

[SilverSpook]

Super awesome look!  The fashion is spot on.  Reminds me of Mr. T's instructional video on 'styling'.  Shelly has 'Jeanine, cool as a peppermint ice cream' vibe with the hot pink ensemble, and Kate's hat is very 'Athena'.

Looking forward to this!

[CatPunter]

Hey Everyone!

I'm CatPunter, the main artist on this game project. Gurok forced me to sign up so here I am

I wanted to thank you all for your kind words, criticism and encouragement. It means a lot to me, especially since I won't see the finished product (aka the game) until everything is put together. I'm glad to invest so much of my time and life in this project and hearing people getting excited for it helps me paint a little longer every time I pick up the digital brush. So, thank you all from the bottom of my heart. If you have any questions or want to chat about stuff just let me know, I'll squeeze you in my schedule.

Here's some previews from other backgrounds I'm currently working on.






Until next time!

[Myinah]

Did you intend to make the main characters look like Kate and Riki from Garfunkel and Oates or was that a happy coincidence?

http://s1.ticketm.net/tm/en-us/dbimages/175399a.jpg

Game looks great! I hope to see it finished!

[AnasAbdin]

Hi CatPunter and welcome to the forums
glad to get a chance to know the artist behind these great drawings. Hope to see more of your work and of course hope to try the final product as well

[Cassiebsg]

They look awesome CatPunter, keep up the great work!

[CatPunter]

Did you intend to make the main characters look like Kate and Riki from Garfunkel and Oates or was that a happy coincidence?

http://s1.ticketm.net/tm/en-us/dbimages/175399a.jpg

Game looks great! I hope to see it finished!

Haha! That's adorable. I've always been a fan of that pregnant women are smug song they did. I wish we based them off these two, but the characters were already set in stone before I started working on the project (I got hired just after the original sprite artist). The references and clothing Gurok wanted for them were completely different from those two, so I think it's just a happy coincidence. One I'm very fond of now.

Hi CatPunter and welcome to the forums
glad to get a chance to know the artist behind these great drawings. Hope to see more of your work and of course hope to try the final product as well

They look awesome CatPunter, keep up the great work!

Thanks! I'll try my hardest to keep this thread a little more updated than usual.

[AprilSkies]

Hi CatPunter,
nice to meet you!

I think your artwork for this game is amazing!
Well done!

[Lasca]

Hi catpunter!
Your artwork makes me salivate (not in a perv way, more of a nerd way).

[CatPunter]

Thanks everyone!

The game was put on hold so Gurok and I could participate in the MAGS competition for July! We fought the entire way but with a lot of spite and some help from the lovely people in the IRC channel we managed to finish it. Pheeeeew. I need a week off or so before starting up on the Kate and Shelly art again, but we'll get there.

Go check out our entry, "The Jimi Hendrix Case" when you get a chance!

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1944/

edit by Darth- removed non-game related image

[CatPunter]

Would anybody be interested in me recording a video of painting a background for the next set so everyone can see what kind of process I use? Would that be helpful or interesting to you guys, or would you just prefer good ol' screenshots?

[Cassiebsg]

We love "making off"...

So if it's not much bother, please do.

[Mandle]

Would anybody be interested in me recording a video of painting a background for the next set so everyone can see what kind of process I use? Would that be helpful or interesting to you guys, or would you just prefer good ol' screenshots?

YES PLEASE!!!

[Gurok]

We'll post a link to the archived stream when it's over, but if you'd like to watch CatPunter paint live, go here now (as in right now!):

http://original.livestream.com/catpunter

[[delete}]

Watched the livestream with spectacular and fast drawing by Catpunter/ K and live commentary by Gurok. Quite a blast, the art of Kate and Shelly really gonna rock!

[Mandle]

After coming back and looking through this thread fully for the first time in quite a while I must say:

This is one of the WiPs I'm most looking forward to finally playing when it's finished! This game appears to have it all: Charming characters, great artwork, interesting plot, adventurous feel, and that most elusive and hard to define feeling you get when you are experiencing a truly great game!!!

So please: take your time to get everything just right and hurry the hell up and release this game!!!

[CatPunter]

Merry Christmas everyone!

[Mandle]

MERRY CHRISTMAS right back at you!!!

Now please hurry up taking your time so I can play this game as soon as possible...

[SilverSpook]

Merry Christmas!  Let's get this indie gem shipped and frontpaged on Steam! 

[Gurok]

Wow, it's almost Christmas again. Thanks for the good wishes, Mandle and SilverSpook.

*cough*

*COUGH*

There's a lot of dust in *this* thread too! I can't believe almost a whole year's gone by.

I'm still working on the game, doing bits and pieces after work and on weekends.

I wanted to wait until I had something nice to show you all, so here it is. These are the thirteen characters that are going to be in the game!



Fine work again by Catpunter! Yes, one of them is basically Stalin. You should see his moustache when it's animated!

--

Making a game is tough when you have to work full time. Without wanting to make things too depressing, I won't get a chance to work on this properly until midway through next year. I plan to take time off, and this time I *will* resist the urge to do MAGS. I've been tinkering with little bits in between (mostly systems stuff), but to do any proper writing, I need to be away from work, stress and people in general.

Top of my to-do list right now is adding support for a fourth option to the verb coin (which is only presented when there's more than one action to choose from). The four-option mode will be used for controlling things that go up, down, left and right.

Looking back at the old screenshots, it's interesting to see the old antialiased font. I like it better in some ways, but I've since pared it back to solid black+white with *really* minimal antialiasing. This was mostly a reaction to my mum's comment when I gave her a demo, "it's nice, but why is there a blurry effect on the text?". I think I might contact Grandma Zoo (if you remember her) and get it done properly.

Well, that's how things are going in my world. Hopefully it won't be 10 months between updates next time!

[AnasAbdin]

Amazing variety of characters   
Man with this quality I prefer you take as long as you need.

[CaptainD]

Fantastic portraits mate!  Really pleased to hear this is still in development.

[Stupot]

[Stranga]

This looks amazing! I love your artwork! Wish I could be this artistic! Keep up the great work!

[DBoyWheeler]

Man, I like the progress your making.

The characters are looking good too--the art style, in a weird way, reminds me of the Laura Bow mysteries.

Keep up the great work!

[Mandle]

The AGS community will always "stick together" with you and if you need anything from me personally, even if you just PM me and say "Hey Mandle, could you find me 3 different sounds of breaking glass.." then I will get on it so fast you won't even have the time to say "Gee, you are okay!"

[selmiak]

Pretty awesome cast of different character you have there!!! The darkblue lines on the face of that grumpy old lady look too harsh imho but besides this it's perfect! So looking forward to this game!

[Cassiebsg]

They all turned out pretty awesome! Good job!

[SilverSpook]

That's some k-rad pics there.  I like how several of the male characters could be substitute lead vocalists for Depeche Mode or The Cure.

[ThreeOhFour]

These are so great! Looking forward to this even more now!

[Gurok]

Goodness, has it been that long already?

Thank you, Anas, CaptainD, Stupot+, Stranga, DBoy, selmiak, Cassie, SilverSpook and ThreeOhFour.

Yes, SilverSpook, there are some rather pretty gentlemen at this university. Coincidence, I assure you.

Mandle, special thanks for the offer. I will reach out to you if I need anything.

I've finally managed to get some time off work. I'm going to try to post every couple of days for the next three weeks. We'll see how it goes. Throughout the early part of this year, I spent weekends knocking off things on my to do list. I'm really happy to report that all of the systems work is pretty much done and I'm ready to do some work on the more creative aspects of the game like writing, putting together scenes and interactions, that kind of thing.

After I got those portraits, I got Catpuncher to make up some variations so that Kate and Shelly can emote in the game. Here's a sample:

Kate happy:
[imgzoom]https://i.imgur.com/oj6r0uA.png[/imgzoom]

Shelly freaking out:
[imgzoom]https://i.imgur.com/2WmtB2v.png[/imgzoom]

That brings me to... The Great Sprite Import

I commissioned a whole heap of work on sprites this past year and it's only just recently that I've got usable final ones. I've spent most of the weekend importing new sprites, including walk and run animations for each of the girls. Here's what they look like in the game at the moment:

[imgzoom]https://i.imgur.com/b076u6g.png[/imgzoom]

And here's almost the entire cast:



Kate and Shelly are both completely imported. Fernando (bottom-right) is also imported, but I'm noticing old sprites I never got around to replacing and well, keeping track of everything I've got is a task in itself. I've decided the import might have to be an on-going process.

It's hard picking up a project I've been basically treading water on for the past few months. To get myself back into the swing of things, I did a "warmup", which basically consisted of putting in descriptions and interactions for the room you see above. It wasn't particularly complicated. There's a cool sequence with the entrance where you'll get told off by the other girl if you try to exit. Kate telling off Shelly is particularly funny because Shelly's silent through the whole thing, just skipping towards the gate in an apparent daydream.

Anyway, that's it for today.

[AnasAbdin]

You. Made. My. Day. Week. Year. Life.

[eri0o]

Awesome Gurok! I love the portraits, they look great! Having different emotions is awesome and a lot of work.

This game looks so colorful and happy, can't wait to play this.

[selmiak]

sweeeet stuff you got there. happy importing!

[CaptainD]

Really glad to see this one making progress

[Cassiebsg]

Awesome news and great work.
Hope you can get this puppy running soon.

[Stupot]

Great to see things moving on this. :-)

[Mandle]

I need Kate and Shelly sticking together around about as much as I need my waffles sticking together, because that's what waffles (and Kate and Shelly) do...

And... enough of my ripping off The Simpsons... But, yeah, I really want to play this game!!!

[Gurok]

You. Made. My. Day. Week. Year. Life.

Oh dear. I think I'm going to be overwhelming you pretty soon. I'm trying to post updates to the thread semi-regularly, at least for the next couple of weeks.

eri0, it's pretty easy with the system I've set up. I just set the character's mood before and after a speech line. I have the same 6 speech frames for each mood, so it's seamless and works really well.

selmiak, it's laborious, but a labour of love. Almost all of it's done now.

CaptainD, Cassie and Stupot+, thanks for the encouragement. Mandle, it's going to be a fair while longer. I might even need another month after this, and I'm not sure when I'm going to get the time :|

Puzzle Surgery

The last few days have been spent tidying up imports. After my warmup a few days ago, I felt ready to tackle something that had been bothering me for a while. It all centres around the first puzzle in the game.

[imgzoom]https://i.imgur.com/Bq7Y0WX.png[/imgzoom]
This is the foyer of the residence hall on campus. When the girls attempt to get the keys to their room, they get asked for some paperwork -- namely, a contract signed by their guarantor.

[imgzoom]https://i.imgur.com/MX0EXTU.png[/imgzoom]

Depending on how you navigate the conversation, it can be in either girl's suitcase. The puzzle involves working out that the contract hasn't been signed and forging a signature.

Now here's where the surgery started. Originally, I thought there wasn't enough puzzle going on, so I added another layer of complexity. You needed a pen to forge a signature, that pen was chained to the desk, and when each girl searched her suitcase, a cutting device would fall out. Kate's was a rusty pair of scissors and Shelly's was a manicure set.

At the time, I thought it was rather clever. The item would pop out behind the suitcase, so you wouldn't see the item until you moved. The idea was that you could use this item to cut away a pen that was chained to the desk.

Today's task was to remove that part of the puzzle. There are several reasons why I wanted to remove it:

• It's supposed to be the first puzzle in the game. I'm very aware of difficulty ramp, and I want to keep it straightforward
• The manicure set was a bit too one-dimensional for Shelly for my taste
• Cutting a chain doesn't really WORK anyway. I mean, it's nonsense. A pair of scissors to cut a metal chain?

The solution? I just removed the chain. There's now just a pen sitting on the desk, which you can take. And the whole flow of the puzzle is so much better.

The steps to solve the puzzle are:

• Talk to the clerk
• Talk to Shelly or Kate about the contract (and decide whose suitcase it's in)
• Take the pen
• Leave the area and get Kate to forge a signature
• Give the signed contract to the clerk

There are still 5 steps to solving the puzzle, but it doesn't feel awkward now. I really like the idea of stuff falling out of their suitcases and I'm still hoping I find a good place to use it. In the Jimi Hendrix Case, there was something similar when the fish scales were revealed, and I saw that it connected well with players when I watched let's plays.

Bit of a side note: each puzzle (quest) in Kate and Shelly Stick Together has a name. Whenever you get a point, you get a little Law-and-Order ding and an indicator of how far through the quest you are:

[imgzoom]https://i.imgur.com/u2CA37v.png[/imgzoom]

I took inspiration from games like Skyrim. There's also a Progress window that you can bring up from the inventory bar that shows you which quests you've completed, grey silhouettes for stuff you haven't encountered yet and a total score. The total number of available points is just the total point count from all quests.

It's pretty late as I'm writing this, so apologies if anything I've written here is jumbled. The next few days are going to be spent working on what happens to girl B while girl A is out dating. Note: I have to phrase it that way because the game is set up so that either one can go on dates while the other has to stay back and take care of things at the university. It all works out, I promise.

[Cassiebsg]

Looking awesome!
The other comment you already have it.

[Riaise]

The game looks really good! And that was a great explanation of your thought-process while designing the puzzles.

[Hobo]

It's good to see this game progressing. All the new art looks very nice and I've always enjoyed reading about the behind the scenes design stuff, keep 'em updates coming

[Creamy]

Interesting update

I like the funny perspectives of the last 2 backgrounds.

[Gurok]

Thanks for all of the comments, guys. It's so nice to hear words of encouragement from other game creators I admire. I'm trying to keep the updates coming!

Thanks Creamy, a lot of the backgrounds are almost isometric, but the ones with different perspectives are really interesting for me too. In particular, I love the gate piece.

Thanks Cassie. Yes, I got your other comment.

Riaise and Hoob, I figure I might as well share everything with you guys. Almost all of us here are developers. More to the point, I think that not talking about what I'm doing for fear of spoilers is perhaps the silliest thing a developer can do. I might write a mini-update about it sometime.

One Room Two Weeks

I don't know if any of you have experienced this, but I got bogged down on one room. Specifically, I got bogged down on a single puzzle. To my credit though, there were other rooms involved.

The puzzle occurs about a third of the way through the game. Girl A spent the prior day with the handsome (secret vampire) antagonist. In the morning, she wakes Girl B and informs her that she's going out on another date, lumping Girl B with a bunch of errands to do. One of those errands is to pick up a book from the excessively quaint bookshop cum coffee shop on campus. For testing, I'm using Kate, but it could be either girl in either role.



The book shop is run by Yuri (behind the counter):


And additionally staffed by Fernando:


In addition, there are three background characters. I like this style for representing them. They're people you don't care about or interact with and I wanted something that would indicate this clearly while remaining fairly dull.

I'm going with what I think is an adventure game classic, an out-of-order coffee machine. In this case, it's a bit contrived. Yuri insists on giving you a free coffee with the textbook, and while it's out of order, that's just not possible. He wants to wait for the maintenance man to come by and fix it.

Yuri's the villain of this section. He bullies Fernando and Fernando just puts up with it.

There are two ways to solve the puzzle. Method 1 involves you going outside to the maintenance man to borrow his screwdriver:



You then use the screwdriver to tighten the release valve on the coffee machine. Fernando goes to make another coffee, but the coffee machine blows up. Yuri, of course, blames this on Fernando (it was his idea), and Fernando leaves in a huff. With the coffee machine destroyed, Yuri's happy to concede that it's impossible to serve you a coffee, so you get the textbook.

Method 2 involves a trip to the library to look up academic records:



You see, Yuri explains that he and Fernando are both immigrants, and what distinguishes Yuri is his education. This is why, as Yuri reasons it, he is there to give orders and Fernando is there to take them. If you present Fernando with a true picture of Yuri's accomplishments, you can humiliate Yuri in front of Fernando, at which point, he storms out. Fernando is then free to run the shop and happy to give you the textbook.



The big question then, why did this take so long?

The time consuming part was figuring out how to structure the puzzles. In the end, it's just a couple of simple fetch quests, but it's about telling a greater story (I hope). In this case, I wanted a workplace where bullying occurred, and I wanted two distinct ways of dealing with it: the path of self-interest and the path of dealing with said bullying problem.

I had (and still have) some issues with the mechanism that holds up progress. The idea that you're required to take a coffee with your book order is a little soft a blockade for my liking. I'm planning to explain that away with Yuri's sense of order and propriety.

That's another thing, I haven't really completely fleshed out all of the dialogue and all of the interactions yet. To get to this point, I focussed on just the dialogue involved in the puzzles. Yuri and Fernando, and to some extent, the maintenance man, are a bit like character sketches right now. I have to go back and flesh them out at some point, probably later as I want to give this a rest for a while.

The second thing that made this time consuming is, as I've hopefully demonstrated, it wasn't ONE room. I had to create a little routine that the maintenance man follows, and script all of his interactions. I had to script the computer interactions too.

The third thing is that I'm still running interference with artists. I need to hold impromptu meetings with them to establish what I want. Often I get interrupted just to OK work on assets.


Anyway, I'm pretty happy with the progress that I've made. This is a big chunk of the middle part of the story. There are two other, smaller errands -- signing up at the library and signing up for tutes. These are pretty much just "find the location and talk to the person", so the major work in the university quad is done.

I think the next thing I'll tackle is the radio room. It's in the same section of the game, but it's completely optional and involves a timed puzzle, but not in the way you think. Until next time, thanks for reading my updates!

[lorenzo]

Thanks for writing these updates detailing your design process. They're very interesting and inspiring.
The game looks great, I love the pastel colours of some of the backgrounds, and both the sprites and portraits have so much personality. I can't wait to play it!

Is the bookshop background you posted final? To me, the non-essential characters look a bit out of place. I don't know if it's the outline or the colours used, but they appear to stand out more than the other â€" more important â€" characters. Perhaps they would gel better with the background using a more muted colour, instead of white?

Anyway, that's just my personal opinion, feel free to ignore it!

Best of luck with the project!

[Cassiebsg]

Interesting, and nice read on the puzzle mechanics.
I also think the coffee excuse is a bit thin, I don't even drink coffee!? I have an idea, but I'll PM it, so you can whatever you like with it.

Keep up the good work!

[eri0o]

Gurok, this is a lovely writing. By being bogged down you mean all your development stalled once you got to that single room? I reach similar stalling points in my game but I have just been developing the game out of order which helps me a little.

About the thing we here are mostly developers you are right, I think. At the same time I always feel I have some big picture in the game, and sharing one stuff I feel afraid people won't like that single thing and dismiss my whole game, when that single thing is just a detail in the whole game. This is scary - at least for me.

About the Yuri and Fernando scene, I like it, this relation reminds me of Mr. Collignon and Lucien in Amélie Poulain movie. When you talk about the puzzle, you mention that there are two ways to solve the puzzle, and you can do with either of the girls. And you also tell that you think the mechanics are simple but you wanted to tell a greater story. The greater story of your game is the story of Kate and Shelly, so if you are allowing these combinations to occur, you could use they to enhance the story of the girls - maybe for Shelly the path of self-interest is clearer in the puzzle, and dealing with the bullying problem is harder (less hints on how to do this) and for Kate the reverse.

I agree with lorenzo that the non-essential characters are way too attention holding. Couldn't they be just normal and less saturated?

Also the old dude in the screenshot, his portrait photo, I think some of his facial lines could use shadow skin color instead of black.

Dude I can't wait to play your game because you have a great amount of care for it.

[CatPunter]

Yay, it's coming together

It's really strange to see all the art assets I've done (or "art directed" others to make) finally compiled together as something playable. It's been a difficult road for the art team (aka me) so thank god we finally hired another guy and are passing off the last of the work to him. It's kinda scary to think that every single art asset might be finished and ready to go by Christmas and all that's left is the programming now. Damn.

It feels like it's getting to that point where someones going to have to start thinking about marketing or something

[Creamy]

it could be either girl in either role.

There are two ways to solve the puzzle.

Wow, 4 possibilities! You're going to a lot of trouble.

A loafer like me would have gone with one way per girl, hinting that one of them cares more for Fernando than the other - or maybe each girl matching a level of difficulty. As eri0o remarked, this could also help to give them personality.

[[delete}]

So much awaited! The early gameplay tests on Gurok's YT already were so funny to look at.

And a two-protagonists-setup can add so much personality and wit. Like in both my favorite games, with Sophia and Indy, and Nico and George.

[CatPunter]

Not much longer now!

[Darth Mandarb]

CatPunter - it's been over 8 months since this thread was posted to. Please review the forum rules before digging up any more threads! Thanks.

Gurok - are you interested in posting an update? Let me know!

[Crimson Wizard]

@Darth, CatPunter's signature sais "Art Director and Lead Artist for "Kate and Shelly Stick Together"

[Cassiebsg]

Wee ooow... an update!
Looking forward to this, and that pooch looks great!

[Mandle]

Yay!!! Here it comes!!!

[CatPunter]

Got some news that's both good and slightly sad...

My contract with Gurok is done!(laugh) The project from this point forward will be him and whoever else he contracts from this point forward.

So stay tuned, the wait will be over soon! Thanks for the support everyone, I really enjoyed being apart of this project and sharing it with you through the last few years.

[Rain]

That one looks so nice

[Snarky]

Vaguely apropos...

I recently tried the podcast Teen Creeps, which covers 90s YA pulp fiction (focusing primarily on horror, like R.L. Stine, but also including stuff like Sweet Valley High). It's good fun, and made me look forward to this game even more!

(Also, once the game is done you should try to get them to promote it on the podcast/twitter feed.)