INTRODUCTION
"The Rogue Prince" is set in a medieval fantasy environment. The player character is a young man named Pol who is considered riffraff and generally shunned by many in the town of Little Hallow. He is an orphan who lives in an abandoned Water Mill on the outskirts of town.
His only two friends are his constant feline companion, Namiir and his best friend Lyrren. Lyrren is the daughter of Lord and Lady Glanowyn and because she is loved by the entire town, Pol is tolerated. How the two met is an adventure in itself. However, they have been best friends since the time they were kids when Lyrren would sneak loaves of Cook's sweet bread to Pol and Namiir so that they wouldn't starve during the cold winters.
Much has changed since then. Both have grown up. Pol works at odd jobs for different ones in the town in exchange for food and supplies. Meanwhile, Lyrren continues her studies of court life to become the next Lady Glanowyn. It is in this setting that the adventure begins.
STORY OVERVIEW
The premise of the story is a common one: the kidnapping of Lyrren. However, it becomes apparent quickly that this story isn't what you think at each plot twist. Lord Glanowyn does not ask Pol (a lowly street rat) to find his daughter. He has many soldiers and advisors that he can ask to do that for him. In fact, at one point, Pol, himself, gets accused of aiding in the kidnapping.
So Pol is thrust into a twisted plot that forces him to leave behind his only home, travel to new lands, to deal with villains and to confront powers that he never imagined and all the while coming to grips with doubts about himself and his station in life. All this for the love of his best friend.
PROJECT HISTORY
I'm aiming for a casual commercial game. This game started as an RPG Maker XP game and then migrated to Sphere. Both of these engines have had their issues and I was forced to abandon them in favour of a more suitable solution. I'm hoping that AGS is the answer. Considering what I have done in only two days, I have high hopes. :)
PROGRESS (Apr 19/09)
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DEVELOPER LOG
For those that are interested I'm just going to list my some updates of my progress:
May
Made some alteration to SSH's Hypertext Module to allow for Bubbles above and below the character to prevent obscuring other characters in the conversation. I'm going to work on a dialog system next.
April
It has been just over a month since I made my first post here. Since then I have replaced all of the default graphics and behavior of the normal AGS template. Converted the interface to a two button style interaction as discussed later in this thread. Created an ingame menu, a main menu, a simple intro sequence and created new rooms. Created a Book Shelf GUI. Remade all of my character graphics to reduce the number of sprites (from 15 frames to 7 + 1 standing frame per loop) and created a talking animation for each character. Start some inventory interactions to test some of the interface behavior. Got some help from AGS community to pick a decent font for the game. Converted several fonts to SCI before settling on the one I'm using. Started using SSH's HyperText Module for Speech Bubbles. Made some minor modifications to the module to suit my game. I may make some more. Did some organization documentation to help me keep coordinates saved as I play test various rooms.
Implemented a large cutscene (~5 min) that is the turning point in the beginning of the game and YouTubed it. I'm going to replace it now that I have speech bubbles working. The text may appear much clearer once compressed.
Finished implementing the last of the regular dialog boxes.
March
This was the month that I started using AGS. I started on the 18th and spent the rest of this month watching the YouTube videos and experimenting with coding within AGS. I made a small cutscene and then moved on to tackle the inventory GUI.
SCREEN SHOTS
This is a work in progress and is constantly changing. These are screen shots of what I have done so far with AGS. Please forgive any spelling errors. Nothing has been proof read yet.
(http://dungeon.genesismuds.com/gfx/screenshots/EllasTavern.jpg)
(http://dungeon.genesismuds.com/gfx/screenshots/OlundsBridge.jpg)
(http://dungeon.genesismuds.com/gfx/screenshots/FontFinal2.jpg)
It looks great...
Looks very nice indeed. I'm assuming the cursor and GUI will change... :)
Thank you!
Yes, all of the GUI/Cursors will be ripped out. ;) I have a very nice looking GUI designed but I haven't figured out how to change GUIs yet. (I've only been using AGS for two days ;) ) The Inventory HUD at the bottom was my first attempt at anything GUI and that was very simple to make. Once I figure out how to place items in it, I'll be all set there too. :)
Thanks again.
looks promising, waiting for update!
Those truly are some very nice graphics. Would you mind telling us what exactly the reasons were for you to trade RPG Maker and Sphere for AGS?
Lovely looking game. I'm eagerly waiting to see screenshots with custom GUI/Cursors/Font (I hope you will change this too). I really dig your art.
Very nice indeed!
What did you use to make the scenery? It looks like some kind of 3D creation software. If those are hand-drawn, I am going to be picking my jaw up off the floor.
-Bill
Thank you.
@Groogokk
The reasons that I switched engines were both related to the product itself and my project. Despite what it looks like "The Rogue Prince" is not really heavy on the RPG-side. It is mostly story driven puzzle solving. However, it has quests and perhaps there might be combat but mostly that will happen to further the story.
I liked RMXP for it's ease of use and being able to quickly knock out a prototype for cutscenes. But it had several strikes against it at the time.
1) It had only a native max resolution of 640x480 and I was going for 800x600 at the time. I have since then switched down to 640x480.
2) To change the scripts to become more of an adventure game in look and feel meant rewriting a lot of code in Ruby (a language I don't know very well).
3) The engine performance was not as good as I wanted.
4) No real support for a video codec that doesn't have licensing issues.
5) To get all of the features I'd wanted, meant either writing a lot of code or piecing together code from other people with their permission.
I went to Sphere because it supported a higher resolution, supported multiple platforms and scripted in a language that I knew enough about (Javascript). However, after developing in that for a few months, I found out:
1) It wasn't sufficiently stable.
2) The tool set was not full featured and I found myself writing my own tools to import graphics.
3) No basic engine like RMXP's RGSS so I was stuck doing a lot of coding.
4) Again no video codec support (Theora is listed to come eventually)
5) I got a distinct feeling of a negative attitude toward commercial projects. May be it was my imagination. ;)
The reasons why I chose AGS was:
1) Strong tool set. It covers just about everything I want.
2) Better fit with an adventure game.
3) Support for Ogg Theora video codec.
4) Multiple Platform support.
5) Reduced the amount of scripting I will have to do. I only need to script the story elements and some minor features. As opposed to a complete game engine.
6) Great community and tutorial support (I watched all of those YouTube videos yesterday. Awesome!)
7) Best of all, the AGS website was not afraid to mention that commercial games are ok. Even included a section about how to track down credits and obey all of the copyright. That I appreciated!
Of course, I'm still evaluating but the only weakness that I see AGS has, is that I don't know it well enough yet. :)
@Pablo
Thank you. I'm going to replace everything for the GUI, Cursors and Fonts. Here is a snapshot of the main menu:
(http://dungeon.genesismuds.com/gfx/screenshots/MainMenu.jpg)
@Bill
Thank you. You are correct. :) The scenery is all 3D rendered. I used Poser 7 Pro for everything in the game. The only thing that is hand painted is the GUI -- including the Gryphon.
That gui painting is wonderful!
This looks amazing, and I can't wait to play!
(But, er..."sweet" bread...not "sweat" bread. ;D)
Quote from: redspark on Fri 20/03/2009 20:02:26
The reasons that I switched engines ...
Thanks for that information. I just returned to AGS because the dialogues I want can be easily implemented with it.
Quote from: Strange Visitor on Sat 21/03/2009 04:35:41
This looks amazing, and I can't wait to play!
(But, er..."sweet" bread...not "sweat" bread. ;D)
LOL! Ooops... that'll teach me to use spell checker as a proof reader. ;) Thanks for letting me know. :)
do you need any help with the music on this game?
Thanks for asking. I have a contract with a composer already. We are doing a royalty cut of the revenue once the game is complete.
I was thinking of adding a Diary to the main post but I don't know how detailed it should be. How often do you guys like to see stuff like that updated Daily, Weekly, Monthly? Thanks.
Wow this looks really really awesome...great graphics. ;D
Thank you! I replaced all of the old cursors graphics and I'm working on the GUI now. I'll post an update when I get a chance to show something. :)
Quote from: redspark on Wed 25/03/2009 19:30:02
Thank you! I replaced all of the old cursors graphics and I'm working on the GUI now. I'll post an update when I get a chance to show something. :)
Dare I say this reminds me of the old snes RPG's like Chrono Trigger was...bah..the memories!!Thanks for reminding me. Hope the game pawns.
I wish this game was allready finished and playable, looks great!
Hope you deliver a playable demo in time, even a short one will do ;)
LOL! You and me both. Everything is designed for the demo but the graphics take a long time to generate. The demo will take the player from the start of the game up until Pol & Namiir leave their home town. It will contain roughly 12 NPCs, 13 scrolling rooms, several cutscenes and a handful of simple quests. It is mostly designed to setup the atmosphere of the story and get the player used to game play. However, I'd also like to release it to the community for feedback as this is the first game I've ever made and I'm sure it will need some pointers. ;)
Until then, I'll be chained to my computer rendering rooms and characters. ;) I'll see if I can post a YouTube video of one of the cutscenes before too long. :)
Looks good! So how much will it cost?
I haven't really thought about price just yet. If I can get Big Fish Games interested in distributing it, it will sell for what they normally price games which can be as low as 6.99. If I have to sell it myself, I will still make it reasonable but it would be a little higher. Less than $20 for sure. Probably closer to $10-15 range. But this all depends on the final product. I want the price to be reasonable but recoupe some of my costs, if possible. This has been an expensive project for me.
Okie doke, fair. I was looking forward to playing it, but $$$ means I sadly never will.
None the less, good luck!
I understand. If you're interested, the demo will be free. It should give you an hour or so of play time. So you can at least play that. ;) And if you are around when I put a call out for beta testers and you are able to test, you'd get the final version of the game for free and your name in the credits. ;)
Sorry for the double post. I'm just making some design decisions and wanted to update this thread to let you know and anyone can tell me that I'm crazy, if they like. ;)
BASIC INTERFACE DESIGN
After reading Vince Twelve's game design articles on "Your Game is Broken" and having always felt this way myself, I have decided to solidify the game interface into a simplified approach. There are two rules that I'd like to have for the game: 1) Keep the interaction simple to prevent calling attention to the game interface and thus breaking the atmosphere of the game; and 2) Allowing the player to use the keyboard for as much of the game play as possible. In keeping with this, I have decided to blend Vince's suggestions from his article with a RPG Maker XP style interface for the keyboard and some of my own little tweaks.
First, let's talk about the keyboard interface. The RPG Maker games can and do use different keys sometimes to interact with the game but they often use very few of them. I will need to add a few extras simply because of the inventory being a HUD. Here is what I see being used for mine:
Arrow keys - Move the character or move the selection of the focussed item within the inventory
Enter - Interacts with whatever is "in front of" the player or the focussed inventory item.
Space- Looks at whatever is "in front of" the player. (In some cases, this wont be sufficient because whatever the player may want to look at may not be directly in front of him. So the player may have to resort to using the mouse.)
Tab - Toggles focus to and from the Inventory. Arrow keys again to navigate the inventory and it's pages. Certain visual cues will indicate where focus is.
Other Shortcuts for normal game play like saving, etc..
ESC - brings up game menu and cancels currently focused GUI.
Second, the mouse interface will be a simple two button approach:
Left - Walk / Interact
Right - Look
However, to give some extra visual cues for the player for the interactive action, the cursor graphic will change for the type of object it is over. So for characters, it will change to the Talk cursor, Hotspots and objects would be Interact and everything else is Walk. This will help speed up interaction and eliminate some of the aggravation that icon based interfaces have.
The inventory will occupy the bottom part of the screen constantly so that it will be always available and minimize the use of dialog boxes. I find dialog boxes break the atmosphere of the game unless they are really well designed to be natural elements of the game itself.
So that's my approach. I know it is not exactly traditional but hopefully it is fairly logical.