Adventure Game Studio

The investigation of a wave of kidnappings is going nowhere. One day someone claiming to be an eyewitness to one of the kidnappings approaches the local police department. It's time to find out what he knows...


Download from the Games Database page (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/games.php?category=&action=detail&id=1335) or directly (http://koti.mbnet.fi/dima/ByTheNumbers.rar) or Mediafire.com (http://www.mediafire.com/?gk76rmcat476fyx)


Features:
- Full voice acting with motion-captured performances drawn with beautiful vector graphics!
- That's pretty much it!


Screenshots:

(http://koti.mbnet.fi/dima/ByTheNumbers.png)
(http://koti.mbnet.fi/dima/ByTheNumbers2.png)


Changes from entry version
- Modified Act 2 dialog options to make them clearer and
  also changed the occurrence points of the short exchanges,
  making the last one occur only when all the dialog options
  have been exhausted.
- Added blinking and slight eye movement
- New music, changed song placements slightly
- Credits sequence
- Option to turn off subtitles
- Option to skip act one


Download from the Games Database page (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/games.php?category=&action=detail&id=1335) or directly (http://koti.mbnet.fi/dima/ByTheNumbers.rar) or Mediafire.com (http://www.mediafire.com/?gk76rmcat476fyx)


Making of:
A short making of video for the game can be downloaded here (http://koti.mbnet.fi/dima/btn_making_of.avi) (XviD encoded AVI, 16 min, 35 MB).
MIRROR: Mediafire.com (http://www.mediafire.com/?7g8bsk5tpzdlnai)



Any and all comments are much appreciated! Especially ones such as: "You suck!" :)


-- EDIT --
Due to my website exceeding the monthly transfer limit, I've changed all the links and added some mirrors!

Some fat gene can be spotted in the video.
I still remember how warm your aparment was when we shot that footage. Like millions of degrees.

At least the face paint didn't fail us! We we're afraid it might just melt off our faces with sweat.

Fantastic stuff.  I really appreciate the video.  That is so cool.  You packed a lot of work into those seven days!

Wow that was like super complex stuff. I thought you had just modeled these in 3d and then rendered them or something. I am now even more impressed with this game!

What programs did you use for this?

Quote from: Vince Twelve on Tue 03/08/2010 17:03:49
Fantastic stuff.  I really appreciate the video.  That is so cool.  You packed a lot of work into those seven days!

Thanks! It's always (kind of) fun to take a break from other projects and work on one that you will most likely be done with in seven or so days. That's why OROW is just my kind of a competition, short and sweet. :) Well, at least short and sweaty.

Quote from: Buckethead on Tue 03/08/2010 17:51:23
Wow that was like super complex stuff. I thought you had just modeled these in 3d and then rendered them or something. I am now even more impressed with this game!

I don't even want to think how long it would've taken to animate all that in 3d. :P

QuoteWhat programs did you use for this?

Just Adobe After Effects 7, with a script I wrote that exports the tracking data to a text file, and the python script I wrote that converts that data to the face point data. For prototyping purposes the python script also drew the wireframe images so I had an idea of what the hell I was doing.

At first I though I'd do the data conversion in AGS but since I'd already done the prototype with the python script, I abandoned that idea. It would've been a pain to convert the object-oriented scripts to something that AGS can process. On the other hand, it would've been faster to read the files which, as it is now, creates a somewhat annoying pause before the longer lines. Then again, I also tried to make sure the game wouldn't be too much of a power hog and would run on my crappy 1.6 GHz Celeron laptop without the animation getting out of sync.

Awesome work! Haven't played the game beyond the first dialog, and skimmed through the video, but I'm extremely impressed with the mo-cap. I was actually considering using vector graphics for characters, Cruise for a Corpse style, but still haven't figured out the best way to go around it. So the data stored in the external files, is that purely the point data or the actual coordinates for drawing the triangles?

I knew this was rotoscoping or some other technique, nobody could get the realistic expression like that. :D

Quote from: GarageGothic on Tue 03/08/2010 19:03:01
Awesome work! Haven't played the game beyond the first dialog, and skimmed through the video, but I'm extremely impressed with the mo-cap. I was actually considering using vector graphics for characters, Cruise for a Corpse style, but still haven't figured out the best way to go around it. So the data stored in the external files, is that purely the point data or the actual coordinates for drawing the triangles?

Thanks! The files are just a bunch of coordinates with an empty line marking the end of a single frame.

125,166
140,2
155,-16
238,-5
323,-9
.
.
.

The data is read into an array of frames. In this case a frame is a struct that contains an array of integers for each of the coordinates.

The coordinates are already scaled properly by the python script and the triangles are drawn between coordinates at a specific offset in AGS. Since the coordinates are in a specific order, the drawing goes something like this:

drawTriangle( drawingSurface, frameNumber, indexA, indexB, indexC );
where frameNumber indices the array of frames, and A, B & C are the indices to the coordinate array within that frame.

So, for example with the example file (see above) drawTriangle( ds, f, 0, 1, 2 ) would draw a triangle between the points (125 + offsetX, 166 + offsetY), (140 + offsetX, 2 + offsetY) and (155 + offsetX, -16 + offsetY).



I think something like this might work quite well for drawing regular characters with different animations and such. Just keep in mind that it helps a lot if all the animation data can be completely read into memory at the start of the game so there won't be any unnecessary pauses. And the animators' work would also be reduced to just moving some points around. Sounds like something a lazy person like myself would try in the future. :)

I absolutely loved this game. I just got done downloading and playing it again for like the 6th time. It's completely awesome. I'm glad this did end up winning. It had my vote.

What you explained above is infinitely over my head, but all I know is that I would love to see you make a full length game like this. Maybe in the vein of Criminal Minds, Without a Trace, Law & Order or CSI. Definitely dark.

I loved it.

You'd better start talking or you're gonna be in a world of SORRY!1

Really happy to hear that, Snake! ;D

I really wish I had the patience but that 11-12 hours of almost non stop tracking for the animations really took a toll. Maybe one day when I've managed to fool some other people into doing the work. :)

Well, actually... This WAS sort of a test to see what this kind of animation would look like in a game, since I would really kill for some expressive close-up performances for an upcoming, much bigger project. But this is just too much work.

No doubt there's a load of work involved. In any case, the end result is beautiful. I'm sure you are proud of it.

Spoiler

I sure the fuck would be!

[close]

I am. That aspect of the game exceeded all my expectations. Some of the other stuff I'm a bit iffy about.

We need to hire some people to do all the tracking... interns maybe.
You know, when they do tracking for the expressions in games like Force Unleashed etc. I'm pretty sure they have their work cut out too.

- - -

I think the game is actually pretty interesting take on the normal conversation GUI we are used on oldskuul adventure games. It would be really interesting if people could develope tools (open source etc) that could help other ags users to create games that could use different and most of all, more dramatic conversation "views". I like the ye-olde monkey island style conversation method, but then again, I think some progression could be in order since it's not 1991 anymore.

Anywho, it's a really cool game and I really liked to be part of it. (if not a rather small part in the end, but still. Damn I really need to work on my pronunciation)

Thanks for the clarification, AJA.

Perhaps I'll have to resort to a similar approach for performance reasons, but since it's a larger game I'd rather postpone the breakdown into triangles as far into development as possible - In case any art modifications are needed along the way, or I have to adjust timings.

For now I'm trying to treat to handle all movement as simple cutout animation where each polygon is moved, scaled and/or rotated based on the animation data. Similar to SSH's walkdesign module, only with polygons instead of sprite parts. But things start to get messy when it comes to deformations that require manipulating select vertices either individually or in groups. Then you're basically back at storing individual triangles.

If only more (any?) animation tools supported SVG animation I'd just need a plugin to read the resource files and do the drawing. But as of now I'm not familiar with any other standardized vector animation formats.

 :o
Bloody impressive work for a week!
Impressive for any length of time really. But a week? Wow!

I'm amazed that you can so accurately detect the dots on the face - I'll have to listen to the video later. [EDIT] Oh, I see. Hard work!

Thanks for sharing!

Excellent work. I've never once thought of using solid triangles to draw a face before. Excellent idea.
Looks pretty smooth too.

Dear sir, your game is the next level shit. Congrats!

Those faces. Every single time a new emotion or facial expression was shown, my mind was blown. Only thing that could have used some work is the eyes, they don't blink or look around nervously but otherwise it was perfect. I look forward to see more things like that in adventure games, and I look forward to play more of your future games to see their conversations and cutscenes if you use the same vectorized, Out Of This World looking, graphical style and if conversations are rendered just like they were in By The Numbers, with expressions and emotions.

I smell a game that will be discussed for years to come. Once again, congrats!

Impressive effort on this one, AJA.  In strict time constraints there's always got to be some trade-off between technology and depth of gameplay, and in this case the gameplay suffered while the presentation shined.  Hopefully you'll take what you've learned in such a brief time and expand upon it in another game!

Freeware Game Pick of the Week.
Indie Games Blog: By The Numbers

http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2010/08/freeware_game_pick_by_the_numb.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IndependentGaming+%28Indie+Games%29

Wow, thanks everyone! I guess I'll seriously have to think about how to make this thing feasible for a bigger game. :)

This is pretty outstanding work. It'd be super cool if made a behind-the-scenes video showing the composition of a particular shot from concept, shooting, editing, and then transfer to AGS...

Update: Wait, you did that!  I should read whole posts more often...

Update 2: That video was great! Thanks for making that...

AJA! Thanks for filming a "Making of" video. I just got done watching it - it was a lot of fun and very interesting!

I loved watching the filming of Lieutenant Timothy Orman's lines :D

Thanks, guys! I'm glad you enjoyed it. :)

Also, the game is rated!
I added mine two days ago..and yours is one hour there or so and rated! :D
Thank god, the comment agrees with my Another-World thingie !!

It's a conspiracy! :o

I thought it was a really fancy game, indeed. With all the work that went into the motion capture and the script, I can understand the lackluster gameplay. Still, the behind-the-scenes video was really nice; it was good to see just how you managed to process all that dialog footage.

Heh, leaving everything till the last moment? That's my kind of work ethic.  ;D

Yeah, awesome stuff.
I was hoping that the 'signs' would be something related to the motion capture, like an arched eyebrow, twitch or similar sort of 'tell' whenever he was telling a lie or he was getting impatient.

That said, I did enjoy it. Good stuff.

On the first time people played it did you choose the Lieutenant's home address just because of that last bit of dialogue?
It caught me out... :)

My PC is in pieces right now, but from the videos it looks amazing.

However, now you're bound to make another Another World, AJA. There's no escape.

That was really impressive and enjoyable and not only because of the techonology but of interesting concept too. Though I did enjoy mocking chin motions of lieutenant. All in all, well done, victory well deserved.

But sadly I must admit that I didn't get the logic behind the choice of location.

Thanks! Thanks a lot! You broke my internets, you hooligans... After five years, 20 GB transfer limit suddenly isn't enough. :P

Seriously though, thanks for your interest! 12 GB of game downloads and 8 GB of making of downloads. Makes me feel all special. But that'll probably wear off in a minute or so.

I'll see if I can get the limit increased next week. In the meantime, if somebody is willing to put their websites at risk and host a mirror, I'd be very grateful. I should probably try out some of the free upload services too. In any case, a working download link should appear by tomorrow.

I can offer a temporary mirror for the game. I'll just keep it on my server for as long as you need it there.
By the Numbers - Mirror      Edit: Mirror has been removed.

I'd offer a mirror for the making of video, but I never did actually save it.

The game is really beautiful. even though the writing and plot are not that interesting the animation really makes up for that in a big way.

I'm not going to say I want you to make more per say, but perhaps that the technology sure would be interesting if it was in an actual game as a dialogue mechanic. Although, after watching the making of video... for a larger project there must be a faster pipeline to get the vertex data in there just for your sanity's sake.

great work AJA, everything, the game, video, all good.

Awesome! Really impressive!
I wish I could see the video as well, damn that bandwidth!

Okay, new download links and mirrors are up! Check the first post! Let's hope they last the rest of the month.

Thanks for the mirror, Ryan Timothy! :D

I just got around to playing this game when browsing through the AGS Awards nominees, but man this game is great! I'm so glad to see someone try something new with (facial) animations, and it really paid off, for a game that primarily relies on dialogue the motion capture really took it to the next level. I hope we'll see more use of this technology in the future.

Concerning the gameplay,

Spoiler

I feel more could have been done with figuring out the location of 'number nine'. When the kidnapper dropped hints about the location being around the corner I first suspected it would be near or in the police station, and considering the adresses he already gave you the first thought that popped into my head was 'I gotta find out what the adress of the police station is!' A little map-based puzzle at the end perhaps would have really driven that point home, since you could pretty much rule out the two adresses the kidnapper named himself. But overall very well written! I loved the twist at the end.

[close]

Thanks! And thanks to everyone for nominating By the Numbers for the awards! :D

Sadly, I haven't had time or energy to start a new project featuring this technology but it's just a matter of time. What I'm hoping for is to make it a bit more 3D-ish, allowing the head to turn and so on. Actually, I did some tests shortly after finishing this game and the head movement looks pretty good. I also found out that there's no way I'll be able to reduce the number of facial tracking points without sacrificing the overall realism of the animation. So, no way to reduce the workload. Plus, to make things a bit more complex, I would have to render a 3D face instead of a 2D one in AGS. Such fun.

Well, we'll see what happens once I'm finished with this (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=35027.0).