Prodigal INTERVIEW on reloaded.org! 3/13/06 update!

Trisk · Fri 30/12/2005 05:52:47

strawberrypicker-

Spoiler

I'm sorry to hear you get motion sickness.

I don't know if you've tried some things, but doctors recommend sitting closer or farther from your monitor, having lights on or off, increasing or decreasing monitor brightness...changing things like that. Often, one combination will help the problem.

Ulisigi Ela flickers by displaying light moving across bump mapped textures, which makes the scene seem to shimmer. The effect is cool and spooky, but I can see why it would make your brain go "What the heck are you doing to me???" Wish I could offer more to help, but that is the best advice I can give you, straight from the doctors at Bioware.

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Tzupy-

Ack! Those are both bugs, alright! Crud. I can see why I never got the crash bug...neither I nor my testers prolly ever thought of trying to open the door again after it was already open.

Still, a bug is a bug. Rats.

As for the water sprites in the tower, can you reproduce the bug? If so, can you please give me the steps you went through to get it to happen? I thought I'd fixed all the bugs with that darn pool. Bleh.

Thanks for the reports!

m0ds-

Yay! Glad you are having fun! You're half right and half wrong on your guesses about the FMV. The rendering set ups are much like how you describe, however, you WILL see some character sprites on the FMV frames later in the game! ...but I cheated, adding them into the finished frames using Photoshop, and some of that crazy camera trickery you mentioned.

Still, it works, and that's what's important.

However, when I said "in engine FMV", I meant IN ENGINE FMV!!! There are no .avis or .flcs in this game. I didn't like the flicker and pause they caused when they'd load, not to mention the HUGE file size they were. The FMV is absolutely being done by the AGS engine. I is proud of how I figured it out.

Took lots of work, though. And lots of hours wasted in dead ends that didn't work or didn't look right.

Candle · Fri 30/12/2005 08:37:37

Tzupy · Fri 30/12/2005 22:47:26

Here's how i got the errors :

I saved the game before opening the cell door. When i tried to open it, the game crashed. I restored the saved game (the screen was the close-up of the door) and when I clicked outside to view the character I saw that wave. I hoped that the door would open, but the game crashed again.
The next day I started the game from that sequence and it worked

So, I don't know if it was really a game bug

P.S. Good game, though a little weird in the end

Trisk · Sun 01/01/2006 21:11:51

Hey, thanks GBC! I do appreciate it!

Tzupy- I'm not sure what that would have been...but I don't think it was the game. I don't THINK there is any way for the code to have caused that...I did have alot of problems with the code for the water, though. Is it possible you clicked on the door FROM standing in the pool, or were you out of the pool when you clicked on it? If you clicked on the door from standing IN the pool and that happened, then it was a bug. Otherwise, it was an AGS thing.

Trisk · Mon 02/01/2006 05:39:28

Just a quick note...anybody surfing onto the Prodigal webpage might notice something new available for download...and that is all I have to say about that!

Candle · Mon 02/01/2006 05:47:32

Hey N/P Trisk still waiting on the guy to get finsh. lol

Tzupy · Mon 02/01/2006 11:08:05

I was out of the pool

I think this is an ags "thing" because other game crashed just like this one

or my pc crashes my games because i play a lot and he's sick of me =))

Dan · Thu 05/01/2006 01:02:13

Hey Trisk, just wanted to let ya know that this game rocks!

I loved the atmospheric music and sounds, closeup art scenes, 3D room rendering, and the ending was just superb. Also one of the few games that I just couldn't stop playing until I completed it.

My only (hopefully constructive) criticism of this game would be...

Spoiler

The metal detector. The clues regarding the location of the key didn't really help since those are some big areas to search, I found it got a little tedious after a while. As someone mentioned before, some kind of "warmer, colder" indication would have been great.

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...but I guess thats more of a personal preference thing.

Anyway, keep up the good work. Looking forward to the sequel

Steph · Thu 05/01/2006 07:05:47

Wow. I just played through the entire game and just had to comment. Really fun to play. Played straight through...the puzzles were logical, the graphics were beautifully done, and the story was engrossing.

The ending though...what a disappointment. To go through ALL that work, for basically nothing. Good for the surprise element, not so much for the satisfaction level. It's akin to the kind of feeling you'd get from working on that big term paper, only to have your computer crash on you the day before it's due. I guess I'm just the type of person who likes to get rewarded for my work, but I really wasn't feeling the ending.

Spoiler

An option to refuse Mike's hand would've been nice, IMO.

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Despite the ending, great job on the game itself. Very well done, especially for a non-commercial game. Looking forward to more offerings from you.

Hopefully future games'll have more satisfying endings?Ã,Â

A bug report though:

Spoiler

I went into the tower a number of times, and one of the times I came down, the character didn't show. No way to go back up, no way to go out. All the interactions responded except "walk". I had to quit and restore. I'd already visited the prison, I believe, when this occured, but I hadn't opened it. Not sure if this makes a diff.

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Trisk · Fri 06/01/2006 03:45:18

Steph-

You are revealing end of the game spoilers in normal text and hiding bug reports?!? What is wrong with this picture??? I've already reported to the moderators asking them to hide or delete your post!

Spoiler

The ending is "To be continued," which you should know if you watched it all the way through to completion. Things are in dire straights, but this is part one of a 3 part story!

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As for your comments on the bug, that is an AGS thing. The only thing you can try is to hit CTRL-J to activate no-clipping mode, then try to walk onto a walkable area and turn no-clipping back off. No-clipping mode is NOT supported by me, however, as you can easily break the game with the cheat.

Dan-

Thanks for the kind words! I'm glad you had fun, and it makes all the hard work worthwhile!

You aren't the first person to have that opinion about that puzzle. Some people seemed to get it right away, and some people were really confused by it. I tried to make it as thoroughly clear as I could in the game text where you should look, and the positive search area is actually huge all around the torch...I'm not sure what else I could've done. Perhaps like you said, a warmer colder system...but in my (extremely) limited understanding of metal detectors, they just beep when they're over metal...

Actually, this is sort of another relic from a cut puzzle system. You were originally going to use the metal detector to find bullets all over the place in every room, to prepare for the shooter section of the game. (see the shooter I uploaded to my website, prodigal.lilgryphmaster.com, for more information about this.) When this shooter section got cut, I nearly cut the metal detector too, but decided it would make an interesting puzzle on its own...

Tzupy-

I'm 99% sure that is an AGS bug. Especially when it magically clears itself up, that tells you as much.

skyfire2 · Fri 06/01/2006 16:40:38

i played this game to the end and it's really fun. the beautiful renders and the story and everything else makes the game incredibly immersive. some puzzles were a little too hard but there's a walkthrough if you can't figure them out. over all, prodigal is a very well made game and it is definatly worth playing.

Steph · Fri 06/01/2006 19:36:02

Quote from: Trisk on Fri 06/01/2006 03:45:18
Steph-

You are revealing end of the game spoilers in normal text and hiding bug reports?!? What is wrong with this picture??? I've already reported to the moderators asking them to hide or delete your post!

I didn't figure it gave away too much. Just that I found it dissappointing. No specifics and all.

Spoiler

Unless you mean the hand thing. But the hand thing isn't really anything you can control anyway, being a cutscene and all. The prison is sort of a game thing that you have to find, so w/ that I felt compelled to hide it. But I guess I'll err on the side of caution in future.

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I didn't know it was 3 part. Looking forward to the rest of it.

T_ed89 · Sat 07/01/2006 21:28:38

WHAT a good game. Everything was really amazing, but the best was the story, probably one of the best endings I've ever experiend.
I also really admires the one who did the close-up character art.

The only thing I can find to complain on is that it was quite many bugs, but it's understandable in a such large game as this is.

Do really hope that you produces some more games...

Trisk · Sun 15/01/2006 05:25:34

T_ed89- Hopefully you were playing version 1.1? If so, and you were still having bug problems, please let me know. I might try to port it up again to the latest AGS, as those bugs are NOT from me, they are AGS bugs.

Glad you enjoyed it though! Spread the word! It's awards season! And I wanna make a sequel!!!

Please, if anyone else is having bugs happen in version 1.1, let me know. I need to know if I should make yet another port up to a newer AGS.

Talk laters,
Trisk

SSH · Tue 17/01/2006 13:57:43

Great game, Trisk, now taht I'm finally playing it. I hope you haven't heard anyone complaining about the save/load now with v1.1. Anyway, I'm having great fun with this, but the only thing I'd say is that some rooms it isn't obvious where the exits are: e.g. the bedroom in the cottage: it took me ages to work I needed to go to the far left of the room. Maybe the IF-style room description could give some hints on this?

Trisk · Tue 17/01/2006 23:32:27

SSH- Yeah, I'm sorry about that. People have noted it to me before, and they and you are right. My excuse/reason is thus:

1) This is my first game, so I was bound to make at least ONE freshman mistake...
2) Because this game is rendered in 3D, the door in the 3D space that I had modeled was over on the left. So to me it seemed obvious, simply because I'd spent all that time rendering it and I knew the rooms like the back of my hand. It never occured to me that what was a given to me because I knew the room, would NOT be a given to anyone else...

...does that make sense?

I *think* (knock on wood) that that is the only room that does that to you...the rest of the game SHOULD be smooth sailing (knock on wood.)

Anyway, I'm glad you are enjoying it, though! Please let me know if you find any other rooms that are hard to understand like that! I might release a version 1.2...

Trisk · Thu 26/01/2006 18:10:21

Reloaded just reviewed Prodigal! Heres a bit of what they had to say!

"With Prodigal it is very clear how much effort and time went into developing this very excellent adventure game, in such things as the different graphic styles seen in the game."

"The story itself really drew me into the game and really made me want to keep playing."

They finish off the review saying: "If you are looking for a lengthy adventure title, that really has had a lot of effort put into development, look no farther than Prodigal, a worthy adventure game that you should definitely check out."

Sounds great! You can check out the full review at http://www.reloaded.org/download/Prodigal/142/

For those of you who don't know, www.reloaded.org is a website devoted to various freeware games made and distributed over the Internet. They post reviews and make download links available for people. It is a great site to find free games, and get a guage of their quality before downloading!

Gord10 · Thu 26/01/2006 18:28:40

Congrats, Trisk

I know Reloaded.org well, they had reviewed my game, too.
Edit: Edited "Trisky" to "Trisk". I thought it was your nick.

Trisk · Fri 27/01/2006 18:34:46

Just a quick note:

LGM said Prodigal was killing his bandwidth, so we made a slight change to the websight address, and the Prodigal files are now up for download on Filefront.

Please! If anyone was linking to the Prodigal files from their webpage, update your links to the filefront links! The old links will stop working soon, if they haven't already!

New website address:
http://www.lilgryphmaster.com/prodigal/index.htm

New download address:
http://files.filefront.com/Prodigal_11/;4673456;;/fileinfo.html

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Seleceus · Mon 30/01/2006 23:50:06

To the entire Prodigal crew:

I've just finished the game today and must say; "You've done a fantastic job!" Thank you all for another great AGS game.