The Vacuum (NOW COMPLETE!)

[Makeout Patrol]

THIS GAME IS FINISHED, SO YOU ARE IN THE WRONG THREAD! FINISHED GAME THREAD IS HERE

In The Vacuum, you play as Leo Wallace, a student at Aberdeen University who is headed back home to Whitefall for summer with his girlfriend, Averie Piper. As a pair of poor, starving college students, they decide to book a cheap room on a cargo ship that has extra room for passengers on this particular trip. It’s a short jaunt - only a day and a half - and it seems as though it should be uneventful. But when a pair of explosions tear through the passenger compartment while the ship is still in the middle of deep space, Leo and Averie must determine exactly what happened, fix the problems, and discover what - or who - caused the explosions in the first place.
   
Leo must search high and low for information, pay attention to the clues that he finds, and carefully weigh every decision he makes. Based on his actions, his relationships will be altered, justice will be realized (or not), and lives will be saved or lost.

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Now, some of you may recall that I posted a thread about a game called "Escape From Aberdeen Station." After making it about a tenth of the way through that game's development, school started, and I came to two realizations:

1) The game just wasn't shaping up all that well.
2) Heading out to the pub with my friends was a lot more fun than making sprites.

Now that the school year is over and all of my friends have moved back to their respective hometowns for the summer, however, I decided to start that game over again from scratch, and ended up discarding almost everything that I'd made for it, including the storyline. This game is what I've come up with.

The gimmick for this game is that it's not just a simple inventory-based FedEx open-the-locked-door adventure game; it's designed so that the player will (hopefully) actually have to investigate the mystery and choose his actions carefully. Thusly, depending on how hard you look for clues, how much you explore, and what decisions you make, the player's relationships with other characters will change, justice will or will not be served, and the non-playable characters will live or die. (There will be no character death in this game, however. Depending on what the player does, his life might end up sucking considerably more than it does at the game's start, but it won't end.) I haven't actually calculated how many unique endings this game has, but there are at least 10 or 20. EDIT: Make that a grand total of 26!

RELEASE DATE: This time I deliberately waited until the game was almost finished to announce it, to prevent letting people down if I didn't end up finishing it. A side benefit of this is that if you want to play the game, you're not going to have to wait for very long! The Vacuum will be released (edit:) SOON!

Progress Meter:
GRAPHICS - 99.9%
STORY - 100%
SCRIPTING - 99%
TESTING - 95%

OTHER FEATURES:
-Simple, one-click interface
-Several enhanced usability features
-29 playable rooms, with 90 distinct areas crammed into them
-Branching storyline with I don't even know how many distinct endings

This is my first finished game, and I'll be frank - I'm pretty excited about it. I think it will be a good time. Enjoy some screenshots, and ask any questions you like!


It's a bedroom - IN SPACE!

You can't have a spaceship without circuit boards!

In the future, VCRs with bunny ears will be left on the floor!

Experience a dystopian future where this stupid poker fad still hasn't ended! (NOTE: THERE IS NO POKER IN THIS GAME, I WOULDN'T DO THAT TO YOU)

Horizontal stripes still haven't gone out of style in THE FUTURE!

This is the corner of a cargo bay, I hope you like it

You can't have a game set on a spaceship if the player character doesn't put on a space suit at some point

NEW SCREENIES! (7/24)

[Matti]

Sounds interesting and looks (simple but ) nice.

Good to hear that it's almost finished too, I wanna give it a try.

[Alarconte]

remember me to much to 6 days a skeptic. I will try id so, is interesting.

[SSH]

Well, having grown up in Aberdeen, I understand why he'd want to leave....

remember me to much to 6 days a skeptic.

Heh, my daughter says "remember me" instead of "reminds me" too!

[DazJ]

Excellent style - it's very remiscent of 6 Days a Sceptic but so what? The graphics are nice and simple. I often find that these are the most enjoyable games.

[Snake]

MP, this game sounds good. I love your graphics! I'll be looking out for this...


--Snake

[m0ds]

Your game looks like fun

[Ubel]

What is this 6 Days a Skeptic people keep talking about?

This game does look excellent. I'm a fool for simple graphics so to me this looks really neat. I also like most sci-fi stuff.

[kaputtnik]

VCRs with bunny heads and Poker? Might as well be mp3 lobsters and Snooker! This will be THE FUTURE? No way, I won't believe that until I have played it. Develop that fast, Makeout Patrol, I think this is going to be quite great!

[Makeout Patrol]

7 Days a Skeptic certainly is somewhat of an influence, but I'm hoping this game will be sufficiently distinct. I really love simple graphic styles, because they remind me of the first adventure games I ever played (Space Quest III and Quest for Glory - both of which I still really love), but aside from the look of the game, the fact that it takes place on a space ship, and a couple of similarities in the storyline (spacewalk sequence, murders, etc.), I'm hoping that my game will be able to stand out somewhat.

Well, having grown up in Aberdeen, I understand why he'd want to leave....

Hahaha, it turns out that not only is Aberdeen an actual place, it's also already been used as a name for a planet in Firefly (as has the other planet name in this game, "Whitefall"). I like the names, though, so I guess they're staying.


Development update:
Development is progressing well, and all of the programming right up to three of the end points is finished, but work on the game will slow down considerably over the next week as I write a 3000 words about whether or not the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms hates democracy. (Summer classes are pretty much the worst.) My August 1 date isn't in any way threatened by this. Also, thanks to AGS forums user "dunnoson," who has volunteered to help with beta testing and proofreading.

[CosmoQueen]

Well I do see a bit of 6 Days a Skeptic in this but it reminds me a bit more of Reactor 09 seeing as every decision you make can change the relationship you have with another character. Based on that, will there be possibilities for alternate endings?

[Matti]

I haven't actually calculated how many unique endings this game has, but there are at least 10 or 20.

[CosmoQueen]

Wow that's a lot of possibilities!!

[GarageGothic]

This had better be good, or I foresee review headlines reading "The Vacuum sucks" 
(sorry, horrible joke, I know)

It does look a bit like 6 Days a Skeptic, but in a good way. It's a very simple, to-the-point style. Thumbs up.
The concept sounds really cool, and had you announced the game early on I would probably have considered it overly ambitions. But I'm thrilled to see how close this is to being finished. Kudos. I look very much forward to see how it plays. Best of luck with the project!

[Essex]

Looks funny...

[Makeout Patrol]

Wow that's a lot of possibilities!!

Actually, I now have an exact number for you: this game has 26 possible endings. I have to admit that this statistic is a little misleading, as this reflects one binary possibility that comes along at the very end of the game, but even if you discount this possibility there are 13 endings, which I hope will lend the game some sort of replay value.

This had better be good, or I foresee review headlines reading "The Vacuum sucks" 

I think we may have found a tagline

Looks funny...

I should actually point out that the original post doesn't really reflect the seriousness/humor ratio of the game; it's a mixture along the lines of Beneath a Steel Sky. It's a mostly serious game, but I've tried to toss some humor into the dialogue and descriptions and such.

Even so, some of the endings are pretty dark. I didn't realize how dark one of them in particular was until I started programming it.



Anyhow, it's time for a DEVELOPMENT UPDATE!!

My essay was extended, so naturally I have decided to leave it until the last minute again and work on my game. As a result, I now have finished programming ALL of the interactive parts of the game; all that's left is the final two cutscenes, a couple of animations, a couple of other small changes and additions, and the horrific task that is beta testing.

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO BETA-TEST THIS GAME, PLEASE SAY SO HERE OR PM ME!

Development is pretty much wrapping up, and the game should be released in a week or so.

[neon]

SO HERE OR PM ME!


Just kiddin ;-)

But without joking, I would.

[DazJ]

Sent you a PM

[Makeout Patrol]

Less than 24 hours after the last one, there is enough happening that I feel good about posting another DEVELOPMENT UPDATE!

-We now have a grand total of 7 beta testers! Thank you to dunnoson, kaputtnik, DazJ, neon, CosmoQueen aka Yoli, and Jon!
-EXTRA SPECIAL THANKS to kaputtnik, who sent me some music from a game that stalled in development, which just so happens to fit this game perfectly.
-I have ironed the hell out of the first beta and released a second one, which all of the testers should now have. Graphics are now 99% done (all that's left is fixing the colours on a couple of sprites, which were loused up by a bug in Pixen, the worst spriting tool in the world), there are a couple of changes to be made to sound and music, and I still need to script the very last cutscene, but overall this game is inches away from completion.

Thanks again to everyone who's helping out! If anyone else wants to lend a hand in the testing arena, again, post here or PM me and I will send you a copy as soon as I can.

[ambientcoffeecup]

Hey this is looking to shape up pretty sweet. I'd be interested to play it when it's finished.