House of Whispers: Prologue Now Released

[hieronymous]

Thanks for the feedback

The secrets to find in the game are as follows:

Spoiler

> use keys on car
> use lighter at dark corner of diner
> open the hatch
> when lights are back on in the diner walk past the ring on the table, all the way towards the camera

[close]

The intention is that these secrets will simply reward the player with a different cut-scene on discovery, but occasionally they may reveal extra information about the game

As to some of the other comments:

Frodo - good find on the dead dog talking bug. If there's a v1.1 I'll certainly be fixing that. (And Aphrodite certainly isn't as innocent as she seems) (but just how uninnocent, only time will tell)

Regarding the size of the dog, I think it's actually quite small compared to the Largest Dog in the World. By the way if anyone's offended by the idea of casually offing a large virtual pooch in order to progress in the game, then they probably shouldn't be playing this particular game at all. There's likely to be a LOT worse to come

On the issue of sprite scaling, I could have rendered Jenni a lot larger. She's 200px high, which seemed a reasonable compromise regarding resolution v filesize (which I always try and keep to the minimum). I'll probably stick with what I've got, as I'm planning on introducing all the main characters as walking sprites as the game progresses, and they only really break up when the sizing's 150% or more

On the gameplay/interface issues, most points taken. If there's a v1.1 then I'll certainly make the characters move towards points that are currently too far away. I may try and give the player more pointers on where exits are, without putting big "GO THIS WAY" signs up everywhere. I may remove the talking portraits, I was umming and ahhing about whether they were really necessary on the exposition screens anyway. I may also review how the "look" interface works, and maybe add an "Are you sure you want to Quit" message? (although my own response is always "Yes, of course I'm sure, otherwise I wouldn't have DONE IT!")

[nihilyst]

and maybe add an "Are you sure you want to Quit" message? (although my own response is always "Yes, of course I'm sure, otherwise I wouldn't have DONE IT!")

Imagine you wanted to press F1 to view the help and just miss the key. Boom! Progress lost. I agree with you, if it was a combination of keys to press, e.g. alt-x or something. You do that on purpose. But keys you might hit accidently should always bring up some confirmation dialog. My opinion.

[hieronymous]

yeah you're right of course

[Rd27]

I liked what I have seen so far!
The graphics look good and the sounds are creepy and atmosphering.
The walking animation of Jenni looks somehow weird to me. Maybe you should think of improving that (?).

You should really get rid of "I'm not close enough" thing. It is annoying.

The character scaling didn't really bug me, but I think LimpingFish has a good suggestion about how you could handle that...

Spoiler

As a huge friend of all kinds of animals, I really didn't like it how the player handles the guard dog . I can live with that, but this kind of things always makes me think, how does the author think of animals? I would just made the player to drug the dog.
But like I said, I can live with it...

[close]

Overall, I am looking forward to this. This could be something special, good luck!

[LimpingFish]

In my case, the dog thing isn't specifically about bad taste or moral outrage, but rather the casual, offhand manner that it's done. All the dog does, as far as I can see, is bark at Jenni. He doesn't savage her, or instantly go for her jugular, yet Jenni apparently decides that killing the dog is the easiest option, and the player has no other option. Even if you ignore the drug option, then...

Spoiler

...maybe the secret vent Jenni discovers could be used to bypass the dog, which would give the player an alternate solution. Jenni remarking the vent is too dark to enter, yet she doesn't balk at killing the dog, just doesn't seem consistent to me.

[close]

It just seems a rather flimsy premise to kill a dog. If it's meant to tell the player that Jenni is a shit-kicking kind of girl, well, fair enough. I wouldn't choose to do so in that particular way, but it's not my game.

Like I said, this isn't about me being squeamish; it's a bunch of pixels, after all. Tits, lesbians, decapitations, "injury-to-eye" shots, BDSM, etc... You are artistically free to make the game you want to make. And rightly so.

Anyway, looking forward to seeing more.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Hmmm, a finished game in Games in Production where so many people won't see it?

You might want to consider a thread in Completed Games for your porlogue.

[hieronymous]

don't want to get sued for misrepresentation

it's only a finished part of a game, not a finished full game

[Emerald]

My lawyer says I'm not allowed to approach him with potential lawsuits any more... I think you'll be fine.

[dirk delshire]

You said you were thinking of added combat to it well then you might like to look at Eternal Darkness: Sanities Requiem on Gamecube, it's a great survival horror adventure game. 

[maximillian_91977]

  I have played this prologue. Found it to be very interesting. Still awaiting the completed version. That shoul be fun.
As for the violence and sexual images portions. Who's afraid of the human body? And try a few of the PS3 games for the graphic violence part.
Or the coming computer game Fallout 3 for graphic death.
You did a great job hieronymous, keep up the awesome work. Max

[robvalue]

I have downloaded the prologue file and that all went well, but for some reason my
computer cannot run the 'full screen mode' of games, it says signal out of range... so I always set these games to run in window instead. For this one however, I couldn't find the usual winsetup file to do this with.

Can anyone offer any help please? Could a winsetup be included?

Thanks

[robvalue]

I've tried fiddling about with the acsetup.cfg in notepad, but I can't figure out what I need to add/change to make it run in window, don't have the technical knowledge. Anyone know please?