-Will a free-thinking clone be able to overthrow the conformist empire that created him?
-Will he be able to track down and join the rebellion through a galaxy as zany as it is dangerous?
-Will you be able to keep your sides from splitting while playing this zany parody of galactic proportions?
If you are curious about finding out the answers I suggest you try:
CHARLIE FOXTROT & THE GALAXY OF TOMORROW (http://www.vanwijst.com/games/Published/droid.gif)
(http://www.vanwijst.com/games/charlie_foxtrot/Saxing.gif) (http://www.vanwijst.com/games/charlie_foxtrot/Foxtrot.gif) (http://www.vanwijst.com/games/charlie_foxtrot/jitter_bug.gif)
The story is about Charlie, a clone's clone that just has to be himself. Help Charlie flee the Empire of Conformity, track down and join the rebellion against it, and fulfill his quite unclonelike destiny! Travel through worlds as zany as they are crazy, defy danger and convention like there's no tomorrow, and throw your funnybone to the solar wind in this wild, epic adventure!
SCREEN SHOTS: First here's a picture of Charlie about to steal the Millenium Bug from a Conformist space station. (http://www.vanwijst.com/games/charlie_foxtrot/millenium_bug.png)
This is Charlie wasting time in the scuzzy Burger Bar on the planet Aridis. (http://www.vanwijst.com/games/charlie_foxtrot/aridis_burger_bar.png)
And now he's talking to Oxar the Grunge on the post-apocolyptic puppet world of Marf. (http://www.vanwijst.com/games/charlie_foxtrot/oxar_the_grunge.png)
DOWNLOAD NOW (http://www.vanwijst.com/games/charlie_foxtrot/foxtrot.zip)GAME NOTES:
-5MB zip file expands to about 49MB size
-1872 sprites
-62 rooms
-hundreds of animations
-thousands of witticisms
-25 original and adapted musical pieces
-built in "Retry" function for players that keep dying
**This is a full length game and will probably take you two hours or more to finish.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EDIT: I thought I'd hype the game a little more with a screen shot montage:
(http://www.vanwijst.com/games/charlie_foxtrot/montage.PNG)
Congratulations.
I've downloaded it and hopefully will find some time at the weekend to play it.
Hell yes!
I was looking forward to this game, and I don't even do that kind of thing.
Downloading now! ;D
NIce work, I am downloading it now.
I am interested in the game now from the questions that you posted.
I will let you know of any bugs that I find.
Damn, sorry to say, caught an early bug. When you finally get away on the ship and head to the planet, the game freezes at the exact moment you should be landing. It shows the background, but not the animation. even the little timer freezes.
Looks great! I'm playing this the minute I finish my essay.
(Oxar looks like a Psychlo. Which is awesome. ;D)
Hey Baron, I found a bug on the planet Aridis.
Spoiler
If you dance with the fly-woman, she will eventually walk away with the fly-man. For some reason after this, only the 'Walk' cursor can be used.
I also had it... :'(
Since I hadn't any save, I found the solution for this case:
Spoiler
After your cursor sticks in the walk modus, go to the left in the desert. Let the desert shark eat you and then press "retry". Now you can use every cursor mode again.
Quote from: Jon on Wed 18/07/2007 11:01:00
Hey Baron, I found a bug on the planet Aridis.
Spoiler
If you dance with the fly-woman, she will eventually walk away with the fly-man. For some reason after this, only the 'Walk' cursor can be used.
It seemed to work fine in the released version (1.1). Maybe since you guys were both beta testers your both looking at the 1.0 version I pre-released two days ago? (Version info is under the question mark in the main GUI).
The space ship freezing bug is more concerning, since it has only happened twice -ever! -and never to me. I'll look into it again, but I'd appreciate more information about what you were doing before the game froze. Has anyone else experienced this problem in the latest version?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Later that day.......
OK, I've uploaded version 1.2. The rare hanging bug was caused by pressing the "launch" button while already in space. If you avoid doing this the old version will work fine, but there are a few other minor glitches and spelling mistakes corrected in the latest version.
Enjoy!
Had a quick punt on it. This looks to be really funny! I am looking foward to playing this properly!
Yay!! another BaRoN game!
I hope this game have the same quality as the other games you work on!, it will be another AGS classic ;D
I'll be out on holydays this week, I'm leaving tomorrow morning, so I'll play it further later, but I love what I see so far! Thanks and congratulations!
Spoiler
i teleported somewhere in the copper box but when i walked towards the grass the game has just frooze i can't do anything and the curser is on the circle bit when it's usually loading something?
hmmm such a shame i was enjoying that.
Quote from: MadEvie on Sun 22/07/2007 14:36:28
Spoiler
i teleported somewhere in the copper box but when i walked towards the grass the game has just frooze i can't do anything and the curser is on the circle bit when it's usually loading something?
Same happened to me. As useless as this may sound, When I Ctrl+Xed, it was (and I say from memory, so it's probably totally wrong) room 66 and line of code 225 (or at least 200 something). Some other (minor) bugs and mistakes:
Spoiler
The mirror in the bathroom caused problems. If you click on the flush while in front of the mirror, the character walks blockingly towards it, so the reflection gets stuck there. Next time you go in the bathroom, the reflection is still in that place, before it disappears. I suppose you can fix this by making the walking to the flush a non-blocking walk.
Also, it's chock-full, not chalk full. Unless the garbage dumpster is full of chalk. Some other minor spelling errors I cannot remember now.
I haven't played an AGS game in ages, but this looked like fun so I gave it a whirl.
GREAT fun so far! Reminds me of Space Quest back in the day, with all its funny scifi references. I am stuck, though:
Spoiler
I got the light sword, the mint, the coin, the pill and the wrapper. I assume I have to nab K8 for "PhD Qui" now, but she won't talk to me.
This game is brilliant! A true jewel!
This was tremendous fun with this cool plot and interacting with so many characters from favorite TV shows & movies of mine! Simply awesome. I love the way you mixed all of them together with humor in an interesting plot and well built game. I love the humor in this game and I love how you put a funny remark whenever you click either look, use or talk on EVERYTHING, in the spirit of arguably the best AGS game series ever - the series that gave us this face: :=
This game is instantly one of my favorites!
I could live without the maze in the Tardis but at least it had those icons to help.
One thing to fix is the balance in sound. There are big difference in music volumes, so you need to adjust the volume almost everything you move a room and that's a nuisance. Worst than that, the sound effects' volume is much higher than music volume and sometimes when I had to turn the volume really high to hear music a sound effects would bomb out in much higher volume and almost deaf me.
I really enjoy the game but I found some bugs. I downloaded version 1.2.
Spoiler
Quite at the beginning of the game, i had played the videogame, i guess I hadn't crossed the desert yet, for sure I hadn't developed the photo: I used the phone booth to get to, as I didn't know then, Primordia. When I walked from the platform the booth landed on to the other platform, the game froze and I had to close it the hard way.
Close to the end of the game: I already had the source and had been back to the first Planet to fight the Lord, which didn't work out. I went back to Primordia, thinking I might have missed something, walked around a bit and talked to Big Sister again. When I went back to the security guard and tried to leave the room I couldn't. There was no door anymore, actually it looked as if the door was open, but I couldn't go through it. I had to reload a savegame.
I ran into the same problem as Anyel, which is unfortunate since I'm really enjoying the game so far.
I've been at the Mittens Ontario meet the past week so sorry for not keeping tabs on error reports, etc. I'm glad everyone is enjoying the game despite the occasional bug. I can't possibly bear to look at the code tonight -sooooo tired - but I'll see if I can't hunt down those glitches tomorrow.
Baron
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EDIT JULY 28 2PM EDT - I've uploaded version 1.25 which should fix the disappearing door (& walkable area) bug in the secret base. It also fixes a few other minor glitches and more spelling errors. The one thing I could not do was duplicate was the game crash when
Spoiler
you use the time machine to get to Primordia.
I tried for two hours to get the game to crash but I couldn't. The next time this occurs please abort the game (Alt + X) and see if it gives you a precise room number and code line (I looked in the 200s of room 14, 38 and 66 and couldn't see anything that would cause the game to hang). I will also need to know:
Spoiler
1) have you used the time machine before, and for what.
2) where you have been to with the space ship.
3) how many times you have died, and where (only applicable if you've used the "Retry" function).
Any information you can give as to what you were doing immediately before hand may also be relevant. I'm sorry that this bug has interrupted your gaming experience but it seems to be a rare phenomenon.
Just finished this game. Hecka fun! One of the few games to get comedy right. It's very easy to slack off doing a comedy game (the attitude of "it's just a joke game anyway" is often prevelant), but your attention to detail with even the smallest animations is nothing short of impressive. The pixellated close-up of foxtrot's face in the cockpit is a bit slackerish, but I'll forgive you that one slip. :)
One thing I never did while playing:
Spoiler
I never used the tardis to get to primordia. Does it change anything if you do?
I thought the big pixels looked right, like a close up of small pixels... ;D. But you're right, the close up of Ace had slightly better resolution (although he wasn't as close as Charlie), so I wasn't
really being consistent. I've been playing around with Flash as a drawing program so these scaling issues shouldn't be apparent in my next game.
Spoiler
As for the time machine, it really isn't integral to the plot. If you win the video game you'll be given secret co-ordinates for Primordia, but you can't really do anything there without visiting Marf first so it's really just a bonus. It can be used to find another, more amusing bonus screen, but I'm not inclined to divulge any specifics at this time.
Glad you enjoyed the spirit of the game!
hey I just played the game. a great game. I love the writing and (mostly) original jokes. A good game obviously inspired by space quest(even the name itself is a take on Roger Wilco), but no doubt you are a fan of sci-fi and parodies. Although the (somewhat) original music was good, I found it to be a bit annoying and simple at times, as opposed to being catchy and getting stuck in your head.
With such excellent writing and programming skill, and obviously the motivation to get games complete, have you considered getting a more experienced artist on board for your next project. I'd love to see what sort of game you could make if you could just step up the quality a couple of notches.
once again, well done!
i had a blast playing the game. ;D and i really loved the manual as well! and a special mention goes to the jumping yoda animation, i loved it!
thanks.
Ace rocks!
Possible bug
Spoiler
I knocked down the satellite dish, but when I go to open the door to the lab with the card it says the door is already open but it's not.
Very nice game. Enjoyed it and liked your use of all those known characters.
my congralutions to you. I just finished the game and I can only say awesome job!!! loved it.
Baron!
I only played for a few minutes last night - got to the old guy in the cell - and I love it so far. I had a feeling this would be one of my new favorites!
When I play some more I'll give you more congrats! ;D
I can't wait to get a chance to play through the whole thing!
--Snake
I only played it for a short time, but this game is great fun!!
Hey,
I played a bit more and just keep on loving it! This is a great game, Baron, I hope you come out with more like it :)
I loved the scene with Ace and the arcade game slaps the cats ass! May I ask how the hell you made that game? I kept looking at it going, how in the the hell did he make the asteroids come AT the spaceship and the player able to dodge? It must have been a module or a plug-in, right? You've done a great job, man :)
This is definately one of my favorites,
--Snake
SNAKE: Thanks for the complements! I'm very proud to say that I programmed the arcade game from scratch, but I borrowed the idea from a Flash game that I got addicted to last summer.... :-\ . It's mostly a short Repeatedly Execute code. The gist of it is updating the co-ordinates of the asteroids every game cycle so that they all get one or two pixels closer, and then I have another function that shifts every asteroid one pixel to the left every game cycle if your mouse is far enough right (with faster movement the more extreme the mouse position), and vice-versa. This gives the illusion that they're coming at you and that you are dodging them. I'd be happy to share the source code for it if you think you'd learn something from it.
BUGS: I'm getting closer to finding the cause of those obscure bugs. A recent error report by Eva was most helpful -I think I know what's going wrong, but I need the time to check the code over and I have next to no spare time these days. I expect to have a revised and hopefully bug-free version up by next Monday.
EDIT NEXT MONDAY: Got 'em! Solved the mysterious game freeze on the grass bug, and the isolated invisible door bug, both on planet Primordia. I have not seen any reports of unresolved bugs, so hopefully version 1.3 is completely bug free!
EDIT OCT 14 2007: A few minor niggles and glitches have been resolved in the current version 1.41. Enjoy!
This game was very funny! I found no bugs. Thanks for a great game!
Congratulations on the mention over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/?p=1732). The reviewer calls it "The best adventure game I’ve played in a long time" and the puzzles "far better put together than anything in the last two series of Sam & Max".
And big thanks for bumping this thread - I've just dl'ed it and it's a great game so far. Very, very fun. I'd never heard of it until I saw this post..
Quote from: Jared on Mon 12/05/2008 08:20:26
And big thanks for bumping this thread - I've just dl'ed it and it's a great game so far. Very, very fun. I'd never heard of it until I saw this post..
You should check out the pick of the month, then :P ;)
Baron!
I've been working on my game so much lately I haven't yet finished this!
I would just like to say again that it is a brilliant game - very funny and keeps you wanting more.
I hope to see another adventure starring Charlie :) It's a great little world he's in and would like to see more of it.
--Snake
Yes, all the recent exposure is very heartening! I guess it just took a while for the game to percolate through the internet and into people's hearts. I thought the review was pretty fair, even bordering on generous with regards to the compliments on the writing. Still, it's very good for downloads, so I won't be complaining.
My ambition to create a Foxtrot sequel pretty much died when I ran out of time due to two jobs, recent fatherhood, house renovations and a correspondence course. It was hard to stay focussed on a full-length project for so long even without these distractions -my games hence forth will almost certainly revert to the "medium length" category. Will Charlie Foxtrot ride again? Perhaps. But not for so long, and certainly not any time soon.
I always thought it'd be kind of fun (not to mention a tremendous compliment to me!) for people to make their own Foxtrot clone games, kind of as a cloning spoof on a cloning spoof. Game makers would be encouraged to push the parody envelope without actually compromising their artistic integrity, just as I've tried to do. Maybe I should release some clone walk cycles for just such a purpose....
Baron
This is really a great game! I like it! What do you plan now? :)
Quote from: BaRoN on Tue 17/07/2007 19:48:41
-Will a free-thinking clone be able to overthrow the conformist empire that created him?
-Will he be able to track down and join the rebellion through a galaxy as zany as it is dangerous?
-Will you be able to keep your sides from splitting while playing this zany parody of galactic proportions?
If you are curious about finding out the answers I suggest you try:
CHARLIE FOXTROT
& THE GALAXY OF TOMORROW
(http://www.vanwijst.com/games/Published/droid.gif)
(http://www.vanwijst.com/games/charlie_foxtrot/Saxing.gif) (http://www.vanwijst.com/games/charlie_foxtrot/Foxtrot.gif) (http://www.vanwijst.com/games/charlie_foxtrot/jitter_bug.gif)
The story is about Charlie, a clone's clone that just has to be himself. Help Charlie flee the Empire of Conformity, track down and join the rebellion against it, and fulfill his quite unclonelike destiny! Travel through worlds as zany as they are crazy, defy danger and convention like there's no tomorrow, and throw your funnybone to the solar wind in this wild, epic adventure!
SCREEN SHOTS: First here's a picture of Charlie about to steal the Millenium Bug from a Conformist space station. (http://www.vanwijst.com/games/charlie_foxtrot/millenium_bug.png)
This is Charlie wasting time in the scuzzy Burger Bar on the planet Aridis. (http://www.vanwijst.com/games/charlie_foxtrot/aridis_burger_bar.png)
And now he's talking to Oxar the Grunge on the post-apocolyptic puppet world of Marf. (http://www.vanwijst.com/games/charlie_foxtrot/oxar_the_grunge.png)
DOWNLOAD NOW (http://www.vanwijst.com/games/charlie_foxtrot/foxtrot.zip)
GAME NOTES:
-5MB zip file expands to about 49MB size
-1872 sprites
-62 rooms
-hundreds of animations
-thousands of witticisms
-25 original and adapted musical pieces
-built in "Retry" function for players that keep dying
**This is a full length game and will probably take you two hours or more to finish.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EDIT: I thought I'd hype the game a little more with a screen shot montage:
(http://www.vanwijst.com/games/charlie_foxtrot/montage.PNG)
Sorry I thought the music background was terrible.
other than that I got stuck with trying to get past the 2 clones.
I liked some sierra games but each time you needed to buy the hint books from them .
I prefer games with multiple solutions to one puzzle.
I have to agree the music isn't top notch, but really Baron has designed so many rooms you just can't hit it to him that the music isn't top notch. an excellent game overall. Has many movie easter eggs and candies..
Yes, I would be the first to concede that the music is not top notch. But if you knew how unmusical I am, you'd be pretty darn impressed that it kind of sounds like music at all. As nobody stepped forward with a compatible vision for the project when I was looking for a musician, in the interests of publishing the game I decided to step up myself (with some help from Yarooze on the longer tracks). I wouldn't call the music terrible though. Simplistic, yes. Repetitive, yes. Maybe even annoying if you're not into the whole midi scene. But terrible? I wouldn't go that far, but maybe this is a case of "the face only a mother could love."
Was it really that bad? Lay it on me straight -DON'T sugar coat it. But remember that Yarooze helped on some of the (better) tracks, so extremely negative feedback might make him cry -best to PM those opinions to me directly.
For the most part I thought the music suited the scene, and I was thinking today about how firmly the Marf music got lodged in my head. Seeing as that guy hasn't got past the very start of the game, though, he's only talking about the Clonestation music... which I have to say was a bit irritating.
The thing is, it's quite a good bit of chase/showdown sort of music, so it works really well at the end of the game (btw, brilliant ending, man. Reminds me of the classic Monkey Island endings) but at the start you're just exploring and finding your feet (even though Charlie himself is trying to escape) so it feels intrusive. A sort of typical sci-fi drone probably would have been better for the early scenes.
I'm impressed you did the music yourself, though. what program did you use?
Anvil Studio (http://www.anvilstudio.com/), the king of free midi creating programs.
Hi Baron,
Just want to say that I've been playing Foxtrot and I find it really amusing and entertaining.
I download every game made here and yours is one of my favourites in a long time.
When I finish it I'll add a nice comment/critic on the Game Page.
Great stuff! :)
I thought the music was great Baron!
fun game, even though it has some bugs (foremost bug i've encountered are the doors in the lab which sometimes open/close but you can still walk into them and then you get stuck)..
I did have to use some hints sadly :( but I hope you will do another one.. good luck and thanx for the great game.. ;)
YOUR MUSIC SUCKS, BARON! ABSOLUTELY SUCKS BALLS!!1 GO GET A LIFE, YOU WASTE!@!32
AND I HATE GAMES ABOUT CLONES!!
I did like some sierra games, though.
All stupidness aside, why post when you don't have anything good to say - and to make it worse, quote the entire first post in the thread!?
Baron, I've said it more than once, and I'll say it again - this game rocks and just like most people have stated (including myself), I'd love to see another chapter :)
--Snake
Baron, I keep meaning to write a response to my moment of Foxtrotting.
It's been a few months now since I've played this, but from memory, you did a very good job.
There are many moments I found myself laughing, especially with the ladybug space cruiser, yoda, and the close up of the war vet and how you 'captured' the lighting to add an effect to his reoccurring memories.
Perhaps I didn't give the game lots of time, but I found myself resorting to a walk-through for the majority of the game. Puzzles were a little beyond me, perhaps. I'm just a simple minded one.. :(
Either way, it was an excellent little game. :)
Oh and I really enjoyed playing the arcade game too.
Also...
Spoiler
One thing I noticed... when you talk to the information lady outside of the bar, once you entered the town, you can ask her where a dark room is even before you have film in your possession.
Or at least I remember so...
I just want to say that it's an antrocity that this game hasn't been nominated for any AGS award. Certainly have been one of the top 3 games I most enjoyed in 2008.
Quote from: Nostradamus on Tue 03/02/2009 16:50:25
I just want to say that it's an antrocity that this game hasn't been nominated for any AGS award. Certainly have been one of the top 3 games I most enjoyed in 2008.
Quite. It obviously should have been nominated for 4 AGS Awards (http://www.americangirlscouts.org/w/index.php?title=AGS_Awards_2007). ::)
So, Baron, you're probably about half done with the next chapter by now, right?
Quote from: Snake on Tue 03/02/2009 22:10:38
So, Baron, you're probably about half done with the next chapter by now, right?
Yeah, that'd be about the pace I work at. But no, I haven't any sequel in the works. Those pixel animations are just way too time consuming for a new parent like myself.... Plus my co-programmer got run over a couple of months back, and it just wouldn't be the same doing CF without him.
Quote from: Nostradamus on Tue 03/02/2009 16:50:25
I just want to say that it's an antrocity that this game hasn't been nominated for any AGS award. Certainly have been one of the top 3 games I most enjoyed in 2008.
Thanks for the nominations! We'll get 'em next year.....
Baron
Quote from: SSH on Tue 03/02/2009 17:01:20
Quote from: Nostradamus on Tue 03/02/2009 16:50:25
I just want to say that it's an antrocity that this game hasn't been nominated for any AGS award. Certainly have been one of the top 3 games I most enjoyed in 2008.
Quite. It obviously should have been nominated for 4 AGS Awards (http://www.americangirlscouts.org/w/index.php?title=AGS_Awards_2007). ::)
DOH !!
it was in 2007 ????
damn how time flies...
I thought it was 2008...