Adventure Game Studio

Time to make this thing more public. Introducing my tentatively titled title:

A Science Fiction Saga

(name subject to change)

The Story

What if a regular guy suddenly finds himself millenia in the future, in a world--or universe--that he doesn't understand, and which surely doesn't understand him?

This is the situation that Anderson Kane finds himself in when an incident at work turns his life upside down, inside out--as well as a few multidimensional variations--as he is forced to quickly adapt to a way of living the rest of mankind has evolved into for thousands of years.

Walk, stumble, fall, teleport, hyperspace, and wormhole your way in Anderson's white sneakers through various solar systems, interstellar spaceships, colonies, and alien outposts; uncovering an unsettling truth about the human race that will put you, and newfound friends/enemies, in a not entirely welcome spotlight.

Sometimes you just want to know what your place in the universe is.

Some features and "features"

• A story that will (hopefully) make your moral compass spin a bit.
  
• Characters that bring the universe to life.
  
• Dialog- and event-based puzzles.
  
• Not many puzzle-puzzles.
  
• Interaction interface reminiscent of Full Throttle's (and more recently Gemini Rue's).
  
• Uncomplicated action sequences to break up the pacing of the game.
  
• A buttload of different areas to explore.
  
• More ways to die than is the norm in today's point and click adventure games.
  
• A change of outfits regularly so you never get tired of looking at Anderson.
  
• Not really recommended to a younger audience.
  

Updates?
I will post updates here from time to time, but there will be more regular information being posted on my twitter account (@eastman) (https://twitter.com/#!/eastman). Feel free to follow me (https://twitter.com/#!/eastman) there if you want some more behind-the-scenes stuff :)

Early Screenshots
(some of these are early workflow tests)

This
Is
AWESOME!

period

Looks very promising.

These screenies are looking awesome    :o
(third reminds me of Beneath A Steel Sky)

Interesting characters â€" cool drawings â€" thrilling storyline ... I'll watch out for this one ;)

(http://www.smileyvault.com/albums/userpics/12962/good_luck.gif) with your project

Wow! Superb graphic, can't wait for this one

Looks great! What's the ETA?

Good to see we're still driving cars in the future.

Oh I'm soooo sold, it's the second enhanced graphic GiP that I say that!
Now :

Spoiler

I will appreciate a bigger font, but that's just my humble opinion

[close]

Keep on the good work!

this looks amazing :D
I'm really interested in this neon cigarette shop and hope to see more of these outdoors with lots of strings everywhere scenes.
And I prefer my cursor to have no blocking pixel exactly where I click but besides this... please finish it.

Very pretty game!

Hope the story and dialogue will love up to it - right now the plot sounds a little Futurama-y, so I look forward to hearing more details.

AnasAbdin, »Arj0n«, sthomannch, Tabata: Thanks :)

cosmicr: Thank you! ETA-wise.. right now I'd have to say "2012", broadly. I have a schedule that I've worked out based on how long things have taken so far and it puts a release in late Q2, earliest; but I have some story elements that are a bit like voluntary "sub quests" that mostly serve as learning more about the universe and the main character. I can rip a few of these out to cut down on development time if I start to lose interest and risk not releasing.

Hehe, the old car is Mr. Car that Anderson drives today :) The odd slightly more futuristic cars are in a colony city whose technology is more present day-based due to limited resources / being far from rest of civilisation. There's also a city where flying vehicles are the norm, and upper class citizen have personal teleportation pads :)

LUniqueDan, selmiak: Thanks. A general response is that I'll try to get some alpha and/or beta testers that wouldn't mind giving the game a try early on and spoiling the story until everything is finalised, hopefully this will lead to things like that being addressed and solved.

One of the things that I'd like to do, that I didn't put into the features as I'm not sure I'll be able to do it, is give the user the option to choose font sizes (normal/large), and pick between a handful of cursors as well as pick a more simplified user interface than the verbcoin (with hand, eye, mouth, foot). Just having an interact/examine interface would make it more fun for certain players.

With less interactivity there'd be less death for the player. For instance, there's one segment where kicking a suspicious looking box will kill you, while carefully moving it by hand ensures that you live. In comparison there's also a segment where you might want to kick something away quickly, instead of taking the time to reach down, pick something up, and throw it away by hand.

FrancoFranchi: Thanks, I hope so, too! Some aspects are actually quite a bit like Futurama. I think I might be misrepresenting the game a smidge by using too much tongue-in-cheek language describing it. In fact it should be quite a dark game at times, but I try not to be tasteless and gross just for the sake of it.

This is really very interesting? Wow! What is the progress of the game?

can i ask what you used to draw the backgrounds, or is that just too stupid of a question? its clearly some 3d software, but i'm not sure. it looks awesome. i really like the overall look of the 3 screenshots you put up and im looking forward to seeing it progress.

Graphics look awesome.  :o It remembers me Beneath A Steel Sky & Blade Runner.

When the game will be finish and if you want a french translation, I am your man.

*swoon*

Love it, David.  Absolutely love it.

This is looking very, very good...  8)

DaveGil, CaptainD: Thanks, guys :)

Pikmeir: It's not at all a stupid question :) I've spent a lot of time working on my graphics workflow, and while this isn't the place to go through it in detail, you can just use any 3D package, such as Blender for instance, and render out basic geometry with some basic material (various reflectivity, textures, etc) and do post work in pretty much any 2D editor. There's no secrets or anything, just basic 3D and 2D retouching. As I work on this I keep saving material for a "making of" since I always get a kick out of other people doing that, so hopefully the game will contain a "making of" section. If there's time I plan on having a "developer's mode" with commentary, as is common (thanks, Dave, for making this a standard :P), and hopefully I'll be able to show things visually. E.g. how some of the backgrounds were constructed.

But that is heavily dependant on time... Right now the biggest time sink is me having to go back and redo backgrounds as I've gotten better at certain things, which results in a variation in style that looks a bit jarring. Even now there's an apparent difference in style between e.g. the yellow tinted world, and the rainy streets, that I want to avoid if possible.

Iliya, Pikmeir: Thanks :) Earliest middle of 2012. Translations? Right now I'm not really planning on having it translated, but thanks for the offer nonetheless :)

This is awesome, and very professional, too.
BTW: This game will be a commercial game?

merlin86, thanks, and yeah this will be a commercial release :) Don't worry, though, I won't charge more for it than I'd be willing to pay for it, myself, and I'm a bit of a cheapskate...

Haven't got much new to show yet, most of the stuff I'm working on now would spoil the story too much, but here's a walkcycle of a privateer/scavenger/pirate vessel captain. The speed in the GIF isn't quite right, though:

(http://i.imgur.com/lnoV5.gif)

While the plot summary in itself seems kind of unoriginal, I really dig the design and I'm looking forward to a trailer or something.

anian, you're absolutely right, the story isn't the most original one. After all, it's basically Futurama, with a twist of Farscape. To be honest, I tried to be more original in the earlier iterations of the game, but I tried too hard and ended up with a story that was contrived, and convoluted. In the end I stuck with something easier, that I enjoyed working with and building characters around :)

Quote from: David Ostman on Mon 19/12/2011 09:43:44
With less interactivity there'd be less death for the player. For instance, there's one segment where kicking a suspicious looking box will kill you, while carefully moving it by hand ensures that you live. In comparison there's also a segment where you might want to kick something away quickly, instead of taking the time to reach down, pick something up, and throw it away by hand

I like and especially look forward to this  :D

Quote from: David Ostman on Tue 27/12/2011 17:46:14
anian, you're absolutely right, the story isn't the most original one. After all, it's basically Futurama, with a twist of Farscape. To be honest, I tried to be more original in the earlier iterations of the game, but I tried too hard and ended up with a story that was contrived, and convoluted. In the end I stuck with something easier, that I enjoyed working with and building characters around :)

I think that's a really good way of looking at things. Starting off with a really complicated backstory and setting only serves to throw a spanner in the works from the outset. Having a 'basic' framework in place allows you to introduce more complex plot points at your own pace.

There is this tendency with games to try and emulate films-but films dedicate at least half of the first act to setting up the story. In a 8 hour game, that would be a 1,5 hour long intro. Characters in games need goals from the outset...the first minutes. Setting up goals that make sense in a complex world without understanding what is going on is extremely difficult!

Quick update, as I'm still getting inquiries.

For the past couple of months I've been doing, and still doing, freelance work to fill the war chest with gold to keep working on this thing. It's by no means abandoned, quite the opposite, but for the moment it's slow progress as spare time is rare. My goal is to get back on this full time as soon as financially possible!

Having slowed the pace down has given me a new perspective, and I'll be doing some changes for the good of the game. Mainly I'll be looking for some feedback, so main focus will be to get a build of a 30 minute slice ready, polish that up to release quality, hopefully with voice work, and release to the community primarily for opinions on how the graphics, animations, UI, gameplay, etc, holds up.

Screenshots are all well and nice, but assuming people have time, I'd like to put something playable into their hands. I'll give more info later, so no need to commit to anything just yet :)