The Journey Down: Over the Edge

theo · Sun 22/08/2010 08:58:41

Thanks ZayanM and Jimbob!

TheJBurger: Thanks for the kind words, bug report and tip. I'll try your cutscene idea and see how it feels.

I will most likely be accumulating bugs and fixing them this coming week, will try to have a new patched up version online by next weekend.

CaptainD · Sun 22/08/2010 19:10:10

Quote from: theo on Sun 22/08/2010 08:58:41
Thanks ZayanM and Jimbob!

TheJBurger: Thanks for the kind words, bug report and tip. I'll try your cutscene idea and see how it feels.

I will most likely be accumulating bugs and fixing them this coming week, will try to have a new patched up version online by next weekend.

Can you add the ability to run it in 640x480 resolution? I know the graphics won't actually be a higher resolution but the only way I can run the game in Vista right now is to have it in a tiny window that I can hardly see!

arj0n · Sun 22/08/2010 19:28:35

Quote from: CaptainD on Sun 22/08/2010 19:10:10
Can you add the ability to run it in 640x480 resolution? I know the graphics won't actually be a higher resolution but the only way I can run the game in Vista right now is to have it in a tiny window that I can hardly see!

You can't just choose "run windowed", 2x nearest-neighbour filter?

CaptainD · Sun 22/08/2010 19:30:21

Quote from: Arj0n on Sun 22/08/2010 19:28:35
Quote from: CaptainD on Sun 22/08/2010 19:10:10
Can you add the ability to run it in 640x480 resolution? I know the graphics won't actually be a higher resolution but the only way I can run the game in Vista right now is to have it in a tiny window that I can hardly see!
You can't just choose "run windowed", 2x nearest-neighbour filter?

4X and I have full-screen. Duh. Sorry, forgot about that feature. :

markbilly · Mon 23/08/2010 14:20:10

What an excellent game! Just finished it and that final cutscene was amazing!

With a little bit of attention to detail - new font, and... oh, just a new font - the next three chapters could be even more excellent!

CaptainD · Mon 23/08/2010 20:56:30

Cool game so far, I'm really enjoying it.

I think high res graphics would have looked great too, but the game has an irresistable retro charm with the high-quality, low-res graphics. (Great music too!

)

Haven't completed it yet but everything seems good so far.

Alun · Tue 24/08/2010 00:35:35

Just finally got around to playing this. Very nice! I think the strongest thing this game has going for it is the fact that it has a totally unique look and style, especially the character designs... completely unlike any other adventure game I'm aware of. Of course, by saying this is the strongest thing about the game, I by no means mean to imply it's weak in other aspects. Pretty much everything about it was very well done -- the puzzles, the music, the story... the biggest quibble I'd have was that I was bothered a little by the pixelation of the scaled characters inside the airplane, but that's already been brought up. Great game! Looking forward to Part 2!

blueskirt · Tue 24/08/2010 11:48:04

I second everything that was said regarding switching to high res. You're doing your graphics a disservice by shrinking them to 320x240 and anti-aliasing them like there is no tomorrow when they seems to have been drawn and designed for 640x480 or higher, at least from what I can judge from your sketch thread. Remaking the first game, with its crazy finale cutscene would probably be too much work, but I sincerely hope the future episodes will be in higher resolution. Or a whole lot less anti-aliased at least.

Other than that the game is great, the sounds and musics are fantastic, and, excluding the anti-alias and low resolution problems, the graphics's coloring and design are excellent. I especially love that view of the city from the charter. And that final cutscene was bloody amazing! :o I can't wait to play the sequel!

Edit: Complete rewriting.

ddq · Tue 24/08/2010 15:02:22

No, in my opinion, you should stick with low res. First, because I think it looks awesome and second, because if you switch to high res, it'll take longer for ~~part 3~~ to come out!
EDIT: Part 2. I mean part 2. I guess episode 3 would take longer by proxy? Or something?

Creamy · Tue 24/08/2010 22:08:50

This game ROCKS

The level of difficulty is just fine for me, as I get easily frustrated.
The graphics are amazing. It reminds me of MI2, full Throttle and Runaway (for the beginning). Why don't we see the eyes of the characters? Are they some kind of voodoo puppets?

"higher res pretty please" +1

"can't wait for a sequel" +1

theo · Thu 26/08/2010 08:48:43

This never-ending hires vs lores discussion never seases to entertain me.

It seems some of us have a built in anomaly in our reptile brains that make games with big chunky pixels make us feel right at home, while some of us, through cold reasoning state that higher resolution gives a better canvas to portray beaitiful imagery upon. For some reason I have a bit of a split personality /schizo thing going on there where I love 'em both.

The way I see it the most important thing is that its easy to work with, so it gets done. The lores alternative therefore wins by a mere few points since lower res means less time spent on drawing details.

HOWEVER - I am considering a completely different technique when drawing characters for chapter 2 that might turn the whole thing on its flipside. The hard edges on the characters have given me a lot of headache and extra cleanup work when drawing them. I might consider switching to proper alpha transparency so I can make them smoother. That should ease my workflow a whole lot. My theory though is that this may result in a smudgier look, and for the game not to end up blurry, I might have to up the resolution on the whole thing. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

I'm seeing other problems with higher res as well though. Chapter two will have loads of animated backdrops. Since I'm having a hard time finding a good way of compressing animation so it works properly on all computers, I simply use raw, uncompressed images in a sequence. This means big filesize, and in the case of upping the resolution, it means huge filesize. Won't people whine and gripe about the game being a 900 mb large download?

Also I'd like to change resolution since nowadays most people use wide screens of one sort or another. 320x240 is nice, but it gets squished heavily on most monitors. I am considering going to 640x400. What are your thoughts on this?

Please, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

markbilly · Thu 26/08/2010 09:47:36

By animated backdrops, do you mean you plan to have say, 5 backgrounds for a room and cycle them? I'm not sure if I'm right but to solve the performance thing, just turn the animated parts of the backgrounds into animating objects...

Anyway, really looking forward to the next part!

david · Thu 26/08/2010 09:50:22

the middle way is a great choice... 640x400 perfectly fits this as far as I am considered

BTW I love your game, I can only repeat what was said already
my opinion is do your game that kind you like it and you want it to look like it
take care and please carry on

arj0n · Thu 26/08/2010 09:58:33

Quote from: david on Thu 26/08/2010 09:50:22
the middle way is a great choice... 640x400 perfectly fits this as far as I am considered

seconded.

theo · Thu 26/08/2010 10:17:19

Thanks david!

Markbilly: No, I will most likely have a 3-4 second long animation at 24 fps, thus ending up at roughly 90 frames.
This definitely won't go for all my backdrops, but several of them will be heavily animated. It will add up to quite the large pile of assets.

Best would certainly be if someone explained to me how to compress these things as an animation, ogg for an instance, and have them run at the right speed, with the right size, and most important of all, without crashing the game since people don't have the required codec.

F1ak3r · Thu 26/08/2010 12:25:26

Wow, that was fantastic! It felt like a cross between Grim Fandango and Flight Of The Amazon Queen (with a far less annoying control scheme than either of them). I loved the story and the puzzles, it goes without saying that I loved the graphics and animation, and the music was great too.

There were a few missing capital letters and apostrophes here and there, but nothing else was wrong with the game. Great work with this - I'm excited for the next chapter!

AndyfromVA · Fri 27/08/2010 04:44:03

Excellent, Mon, truly excellent.

blueskirt · Fri 27/08/2010 05:04:21

*Sigh* How to write this post so I can get my point across, so I don't sound like an insulting moron and so it doesn't take me two hours to type... it seems like I'm cursed to pick only two.

I can fully understand why people like low res, I got one of those lizard brains that love low res and pixel art myself, it has its charm, it has the nostalgia factor that high res lacks, and it leaves more room to the imagination as you're often only given a guideline and you must let your imagination fill the rest, just like when you read a book. But if I had to choose between blurry low res graphics and sharp high res ones, I'd choose the latter one.

Let's take a look at this screenshot.

This screen was painted by hand, then scanned and resized to 320x200. But after the resizing, an artist came and tidied up the background, to make objects sharper, outlines cleaner and add little details that got lost in the transition to low res.

Disclaimer: I am absolutely not insinuating that you've sit on your laurels when you were done with the resizing. I have no idea how you work, and I'm fairly sure you spend a whole lot of time tidying it up after the resizing.

All I am asking for is for the graphics to be sharper. Pick the graphical style you prefer. Like I said in my last post, either make it high res (which means 640x480 and above, in my book), either stay in low res but take it easy on the anti-alias. I don't care which one you choose, if it is sharper than the first episode, I'll be happy.

That is all I had to say.

Khris · Fri 27/08/2010 07:35:28

Day-hamn!

I just finished this amazing game and it seems really petty now to complain about the font.

When I got stuck the first time I had totally missed the dock location, other than that the puzzles were just right. The polish on this game is really impressive, the final cutscene is the bomb, especially given how hard it usually is to combine 3D and low-res art and keep up graphical consistency.

Don't know what else to say, I loved every bit of it!

Charity · Fri 27/08/2010 08:14:12

This plug-in might be relevant to you, though it looks like the author hasn't been around for a while, so if it doesn't work "as is," you might be out of luck.

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=34910.0

Anyway, I said earlier that I supported a move to high res. However, I do not have a strong opinion, either way. I love good low-res artwork, and this episode is absolutely lovely. I think your art style would work splendidly at a higher resolution, but it has certainly proven itself in this resolution, too.

Bottom line: You are a good artist. If you are happy with your artwork for the next episode, chances are the rest of us will be, too, whatever route you take. Do what works.