Bus Stop (working title)

[Tamanegi]

I actually began this in 2007, worked on it for about one week, and dropped it because more important things came up. Now I've been working on it again for about a week and hope I will stick to it this time. The new AGS makes things easier than three years ago, at least.

The room backgrounds for screenshots 1 and 2 are actually ones from back then, only the background from screenshot 3 is new. These rooms are almost complete with objects, hotspots and their interactions. I will probably still make minor changes to anything shown until it's all done (I actually already did), and not everything that will be there in the end is shown yet.

Because I'm not that great with graphics, I decided to make it 320x240 8bit-color.

Story:
On your way back from a weekend trip to some friends in Michigan, you are trapped in an hours long bus ride with some strangers. When the driver decides to stop for someone standing in the middle of the street, these strangers become each other's only hope for survival as things go terribly wrong in a way that should never have happened...

Genre: Adventure/Survival Horror
Estimated progress:
Story: 50%
Character Graphics: 15%
Rooms: 20%
Scripting: 5%
Sound: 1%
Interface: 60%

Currently working on: Bus driver animations


Feeling lost...


A stop in the middle of nowhere.


The officer might be able to help you...

[Chicky]

Lovely looking game! I really like the fog, that and the protagonist remind me of Silent Hill 

Best of luck, hope you stick with it!

[CaptainD]

Looking good so far! 

[Igor Hardy]

Looks very nice, though from just the screenshots I wouldn't mind if rather than a horror story this was a slice of life kind of tale focused around riding a bus.

[Dualnames]

It gives me a silent hill 2 kind of vibe, so that's good. 
Best of luck with it.

[Tamanegi]

Thanks everybody, such positive feedback keeps me working for a while I guess 

The fog moves in paralaxed layers, btw.

@Ascovel: Hm, I like the idea... I will keep that thought for a possible "what if it actually had NOT gone wrong" version/sequel

Minor updates in the main post, including "currently working on".

[Igor Hardy]

@Ascovel: Hm, I like the idea... I will keep that thought for a possible "what if it actually had NOT gone wrong" version/sequel

Surely, you might be serious! I love "What IFs"!

I'd definitely be most interested in playing two very different versions of events in this very striking setting you created there.

[Tamanegi]

Result of today's effort:


Finished room background.

It will get fog layers too, and I edited the fog script so that it can be implemented into new rooms more easily, and turned off by the user. I've been contemplating for a long time whether I should use the fog or not, and I think I should let the player decide. I can imagine some people don't like the idea of white pixels blocking part of their view, and it's for atmospheric purposes only anyway.

[MrCheminee]

Why don't you make it transparent then?

[ddq]

Transparency would improve it, I think. As it stands, I thought it looked like an old VHS tape.

[Tamanegi]

Because I'm doing this in 8 bit 256 colors, no transparency there. I tried to switch to 24 bit true color, but the game crashed when I ran it after that. Perhaps it's just that I need to reimport the graphics, but I didn't try that yet. I'm really tempted to do it though, transparency allows nice overlay effects and lighting. But, keeping the colors to a minimum creates some sense of consistency, and I'm afraid I will go nuts with colors when I no longer have a palette...

I hope when you see the fog gently moving and the characters walking through it, it will look like fog and not like white noise on VHS