Chtonic (First demo released!)

[m1k3]

Chtonic

Demo:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1elt-PVod2dqLL6j6ZJQqWzstYwkbgllP/view?usp=sharing

Story:
In the first half of the 19th century, geographical communities are founded all over the world, explorers rushed into uncharted lands, and trade between continents grew. In the depths of the wildlands, an isolated huge partially underwater cave complex was accidentally discovered. The exploration mission begins with great enthusiasm, but eventually faces unexpected challenges and turns into survival. Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft (especially "At the Mountains of Madness").

Features:
- Set in the first half of 19th century, authenic caplock guns, black powder.
- 640 x 360 pixel graphics
- 7 characters to choose from
- RPG elements: health, sanity, stamina, load
- Auto battle with some options

Video:

Expected completion date: 2024

Progress:
- graphics: 80%
- scripting: 80%
- story: 100%
- music/sound: 100%

[js]

Nice gfx.

On the right screen, did you managed to make a scrolling map ? Or is it a room ? (may be a big room with scrolling camera )

[Matti]

This looks interesting, reminds me of Curious Expedition.

Looking forward to it!

[m1k3]

Nice gfx.

On the right screen, did you managed to make a scrolling map ? Or is it a room ? (may be a big room with scrolling camera )

Thanks a lot, trying to improve my gfx skills. Yes, on the right screen it is a large room, they will have different sizes, because caves are often not very spacious)

[m1k3]

This looks interesting, reminds me of Curious Expedition.

Looking forward to it!

Thanks, Curious Expedition is a cute game, which gave some ideas for mine project)

[m1k3]

Hello all! It was decided to add some lighting to the navigation screen using normal maps, this is what came out in the end:

If you want to look under the hood (download demo project where lighting is applied) and go deeper, welcome to this topic:
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=60259.0

[m1k3]

Hi all. This update was long overdue. Due to extraordinary circumstances, the name of which is a military invasion, the game is being developed as much as possible. The blackout was especially hard as a consequence of massive rocket attacks on our home cities in the frontline zone, then the development stopped for months. But life goes on and creation activity helps us get through tough times.

During this long time, the project was rethought, went through optimization and verification of ideas for implementation.
Most notable change is that the character top view screen has disappeared, and all its functionality has been moved
to the cave map screen, most of the graphics have been redrawn. Now the characters explore the game world alone, and the
main game interface looks like this:

(Click on the thumbnails to open a tab with the image in the original size.)

There is still a lot of work to be done, but most of it has already been done. The development completion date is the
current year. In future posts i will brag about our main pride - the screen where the characters are being equipped

[m1k3]

Greetings to all. The time has come to upgrade the topic 

Here we had to try hard to implement our idea of an equipment interface, because the standard AGS tools were not enough for such a "dashboard". Cave interface (the one in the screenshot of the previous post) uses the standard AGS inventory, but here a kind of alternative inventory was created out of buttons and shortcuts. It pays (from the abundance of headings in GlobalScript i have ripples in the eyes  ) but we achieved our goal and dare to think that such a character inventory system would be more convenient and interesting for the player. Here you can still see the "cheat" debug buttons, which won't make it into the final version.

At the top part of the interface players choose a character to equip on a mission. Each of the characters has its own characteristics: parameters, a set of equipment and weapons. In the info window you can read the biography, descriptions and characteristics of items and weapons. Each item has its own weight that must be taken into account not to overload the character. Also, a number of items are not free, they need to spend some progresson points earned during the game. For the same points you can unlock new weapons. Some - pickaxes and shovels - are are equipped in one number, so you have to choose one of the three.

Next we will have a lot of level design work, thanks to everyone who follows!

[Creamy]

Impressive. This looks like a fully-fledged RPG.

[m1k3]

Impressive. This looks like a fully-fledged RPG.

Thank you very much)

[Nahuel]

Amazing    it looks amazing, really good job on that RPG!

[m1k3]

Hi everyone! New update, after a long time unfortunately, but so are insurmountable circumstances. The name of the game has been approved, here are the logo and some screenshots. Preparing the demo version we encountered a number of errors in the combat system, with the dodge and critical attack chances, as well as the initialization of levels, as the game is not strictly linear: characters can be changed, lost during the game, and levels can be visited more than once till the task is not done.

The project is in development for quite a long time, the way the player interacts with the game has changed twice, which affected the overall architecture. Therefore, some elements were rewritten and debugged from the very beginning. Some were transferred with the help of crutches to the new version of the program (for example, battles created at the very beginning and went through several revisions). We had to face difficulties in combining different modules, but by trial and error we are getting closer to the demo version.

Currently, the programmer finds that we should not have used hotspots for events in levels, but instead should have encoded them in arrays. It is questionable whether it is reasonable to use global String variables to pass signals from the room to the global script and back, which was used in the beginning, when it seemed to be the best solution. But as the complexity and the number of different signals grew, it became clear that this method is not the most appropriate.

It is also doubtful moving combat to a separate room, ways of working with long lines, custom interface design that we strived to make convenient and simple, which requires a lot of skill. But experience is gained in the process of work, you learn from mistakes, and this is the most complex project we have ever worked on. Initially not a complicated concept, over time it has grown a significant amount of code.

We hope to release the demo soon, during september or october. Thanks to everyone who follows 

(Click on the thumbnails to open a tab with the image in the original size.)

[m1k3]

Amazing    it looks amazing, really good job on that RPG!

To be honest, we have a difficulty in defining the genre. Most likely it is a small adventure game with elements of rpg, board game and some more. But simply put it's an indie game 

[SirLean]

Looks amazing!

[m1k3]

Hi, everybody, better late than never! We have finally finished the first demo version of the Chtonic game, after going through an awful lot of life hardships that severely delayed us, and we are happy to introduce it to the AGS community. This is not first attempt to create our own game, but the first one that will be finished one way or another in the near future. Any feedback is welcome.

[Perpetuall]

Wow, this is so cool! I love the idea of a Lovecraftian AGS game, and it's so awesome that you made an RPG with AGS, as that's what I've been trying to do. Really good job! Love the feel.

A few suggestions:
Maybe it's just me, but I found it a little bit confusing in some places.
1. When you are choosing your character and you are picking supplies, it would be good to know roughly how much of each item you should aim for, and knowing when you'll be given a chance to get more items and how you can acquire more points would be handy.
2. Once I used up all my points and I was .5 points over the limit, it no longer told me how much each item cost by hovering over it, it just said 0 points, which made it difficult to figure out which item I should put back.
3. I couldn't figure out how the battle worked? Also, saying "press the LMB" took me a second to realize you meant left mouse button. And even though I pressed it, it didn't do anything-then I realized, second time around, that I needed to buy ammo, which was a little unclear the first time. Maybe I'm just unfamiliar with these kinds of games. But perhaps you should give a confirmation message before the game starts if the player didn't buy all the equipment they will likely need, like, "You didn't pack enough ammo/ropes/etc. Are you sure you want to continue?" I see the warning message at the top, but it's easy to overlook the details if you -think- you got everything.
4. Both times around (though I was on limited time and sort of rushed through playing) I didn't figure out how to buy rope?
5. A couple times, I reached an obstacle (landslide or abyss) and said "go back", but I got across anyway. The first time my character was able to just get around it by walking on the wall surrounding the tile, and the second time I pushed go back, my character automatically crossed instead.

Overall though, really amazing work! I'll play a little more once I have some spare time. Looking forward to seeing the end result. 

[m1k3]

Thank you very much for the feedback and helpful tips, some changes have already been made.

1. When you are choosing your character and you are picking supplies, it would be good to know roughly how much of each item you should aim for, and knowing when you'll be given a chance to get more items and how you can acquire more points would be handy.

The original idea does not assume that the player knows what awaits him, and there is an opportunity to go for exploration, then change the character and complete the level by choosing equipment perfectly. Of course in the game there are no such levels where the player needs 5 ropes, 10 explosive charges, etc., obstacles are not dublicated many times on the same level. Character`s load capacity is limited and there's no equipment inside the caves, the whole concept is about survival with what you brought with you beforehand. And you can also always go around any of the obstacles, but you have to fight if do so.

We will add information on how to earn more progression points, missed this moment, thanks for the advice! Actually they are not earned directly, player should try to save sanity points instead, this determines how many progress points the player will get.

2. Once I used up all my points and I was .5 points over the limit, it no longer told me how much each item cost by hovering over it, it just said 0 points, which made it difficult to figure out which item I should put back.

Not sure we understand you correctly. Some items in the game have no price, and paid items are marked with a red frame. Do you mean you were .5 points over the character weight limit?

3. I couldn't figure out how the battle worked? Also, saying "press the LMB" took me a second to realize you meant left mouse button. And even though I pressed it, it didn't do anything-then I realized, second time around, that I needed to buy ammo, which was a little unclear the first time. Maybe I'm just unfamiliar with these kinds of games. But perhaps you should give a confirmation message before the game starts if the player didn't buy all the equipment they will likely need, like, "You didn't pack enough ammo/ropes/etc. Are you sure you want to continue?" I see the warning message at the top, but it's easy to overlook the details if you -think- you got everything.

That`s a good point! Unfortunately, there were problems with the implementation of the сonfirmation message, but we will solve this problem in a different way, and also add an image of a mouse buttons 

4. Both times around (though I was on limited time and sort of rushed through playing) I didn't figure out how to buy rope?

The rope can only be picked up on the equipment screen by clicking on its image. Please let me know if there is a problem with this, we have checked everything and couldn't figure out what the problem could be.

5. A couple times, I reached an obstacle (landslide or abyss) and said "go back", but I got across anyway. The first time my character was able to just get around it by walking on the wall surrounding the tile, and the second time I pushed go back, my character automatically crossed instead.

Perhaps you used the keyboard arrows to move? We had to disable them, unfortunately forgot about it. The game's controls are tied to the mouse.

Do you happen to remember what obstacle it was and at what level? A screenshot would be perfect, we couldn't reproduce the situation to make the character cross the obstacle when pressing "go back".

[Perpetuall]

Ok, let me try playing again later today and I'll try to clarify some points.