City of Fortune - the 2nd attempt

[fovmester]

Those new characters were really good! They fit into the backgrounds much better than your original ones. Keep on going!

[yaron]

first of all great work so far, i really like your grafics and the new gui looks really good.
but wasn't there a sneck/normal button before?
you said that guards react to noise so how do you switch between normal/sneaking in the current gui?

[Bernie]

Thanks for the comments!
yaron - The reason for this is that I'm thinking of making a special action GUI. I still need to see how I'm going to implement this, that's why there's no button present at the moment.
For testing purposes, space switches modes for now. In any case, it will definately be switchable through a GUI of some sorts in the future.

[Vinnicius]

Parabéns pelos cenários, estão muito bons.

[Mephistophilis]

This is an English speaking forum, so if you can provide a translation to cure some of us of our ignorance?

[Gfunkera]

Parabéns pelos cenários, estão muito bons.

Congratulations for the scenes, they are very good

Portuguese

[Bernie]

Hi! No update in a while, but I'm still working on this game.

I recently moved into a new house and didn't have any time left for computer stuff, but now I'm all set up again!

Here's some artwork and a bunch of sprites. So far, all those characters have at least walking and talking animations.



I'm redoing a lot of the story, but more on that some other time.

[Mr Flibble]

WOAH!!!

I absolutely love those! Exceedingly good work, the best I have seen on these forums- EVER!

[Bernie]

Glad you like them!
By the way, the characters were drawn for 320x200 res, so they may look a little squashified.

[Cyberion]

ya man, your graphics looks awesome, the drawing skills that's what i'm lacking the most... i would give everything to have you at my side.. lol...

anyway, i have to agree those images just look great, i really hope you may crat the well interesting plot, otherwise the graphical beauty won't make you well known... i wish you the best in story writing and scripting the game...

If you need any help in, do not hesitate to ask me.

Best regards,
Cyberion

[Bernie]

Thank you!
I already have most of the story done, but still, thanks for the offer.

As it is now, the game will have several chapters staring 3 different characters with special abilities (sneaking and cooking spells would be the more notable ones), who'll end up having to work together in the end.

As for the scripting part... the engine is complete, I just need to make the actual game now. Since a lot of the old backgrounds won't fit anymore, I'll have to redo a lot of them. But the game won't be super huge anyway, so that's not too bad (seems to be at about 30-40 playable rooms at the moment).
When everything is set (when story & puzzles are done), I can make up to 4 backgrounds per day, which, I think, isn't so shabby.

Also, a picture:

[Bernie]

A colored sketch:



A tax collector:



By the way, I was wondering if a post still counts as a double post when you post it below one of your posts after 6 days of no posts?

[Scummbuddy]

Some shading on his coat, and that tax collector would be finished.

A double post around here is generally defined as either if a post is not about to fall off the first page of a subforum, or if a poster reposts within a day.

[prowler]

the back view of the tax collector looks as if he's pulling his arms back or something..he also looks a little flat..no other criticisms tho  8)

[Bernie]

Thanks for the feedback!

I can't change the tax collector anymore because he's already animated. I'd have to change a lot of frames, and my time budget is very limited at the moment.

A quick progress report: The puzzles are 40% complete, and the story is finished.
I also drew some backgrounds. Here's one:

[Cluey]

Dude, you fricken' rock!!
Im no gonna judge a book by its cover though (even when it looks this good) and hope the quality of game matches the awesome visual realisations.

I love the fantasy setting, its so unique yet it doesn't seem wierd (FFX anyone?).
Great work!

[Bernie]

Thanks!
Quality of game, you say? Hmm, depends on what you mean by that... I doubt I ever could reach the overall quality of, say, Apprentice 2.

Maybe you're talking about technical factors, like the controls and gameplay mechanics? The GUI should be easy and fast enough to handle, it's pretty much like, say, DOTT or Monkey Island 2, with right-clicks for standard commands and cancelable actions.
The character needs 3 seconds to go from one side of the screen to the other. That's a bit slower than DOTT, but a lot faster than Simon the Sorcerer.
The first part of the game is split into chapters which you can play in pretty much any order you want, and later on, the main characters form a team. I think the technical side of games is what I can handle best.

Or maybe you mean the story. While it can't be too super big for a ~40 room game, it should be interesting enough. Then again, I'm not really much of a writer, so I can't promise you'll like it.

Or maybe it's the puzzles? This is probably the most important and also hardest part to do for me. I'm having a hard time to judge if they're hard or easy, especially since they're still on paper. I guess I gotta make some of my friends beta-test once I've implemented a few puzzles.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Solid work as usual, Bernie.Ã,  I presume some of those images (like the collector) are a bit squashed since he looks rather wide on the front and back views?

[Bernie]

Thanks for your reply. The game runs in 320x200, that's why my art looks squashed to you. I'm making most sprites and backgrounds in a resolution with a similar ratio so they'll look okay in that resolution. If I drew the sprites under a resoultion with a normal ratio, they'd look kind of stretchy ingame.

[Bernie]

Oh hey, buncha updatings!

Special features in the final version:

-Got rid of some not-so-adventury things, only sneaking left, which is non-adventury enough anyway
-Notebook with addable entries and pages
-Cooking spells (not sure if this is a special feature, as it is used in a lot of games)
-Switchable characters & team-ups for different answers/replies in dialogues and other things

Those features are coded in already, and I'm making the actual game now. It's about friggin' time, eh?

Story: 95% complete, minor details left
Puzzles: 60% complete
Graphics: 10% complete

Town map:


Annoying tax collector:


Smelly zombie:


Okay, I'm done.