Hello, I completed the big 3d adventure for WinVista, WinXP, Win2000, Win98
www.quitesoulless.com
I sent a review copy to Randy Sluganski (from Just Adventure+ ) and I am currently looking for game journalists to send them the review copies, so they might publish review.
I don't believe my game is AAA+, it's indie quest, I would say.
Any piece of advise? ???
P.S.: I see, the town of Hollywood is almost closed today for public to give away Oscars - SWAT and fire department cars and police are everywhere, and the whole set looks like inside the Gabriel Knight 3 from Sierra (1996) - mountains/hills...
This is commercial (demo is available, 250MB @ 5k, at least for me) and wasn't created using AGS.
Bully for you, but what on earth does it have to do with AGS? Care to post some screenshots? Care to warn people it's commercial?
The website is kinda hard to use/see. The info area is impossible to make heads or tails of.
I dunno..
-Bill
The trailer reminded me of Alone in the Dark. The first one, you know. I liked where the woman puked. And the insect with the gun. And, I dunno. Something.
The web design is an incredible turnoff. Ugly colors, graphics, and design.
Also, I'm not gonna look at a bunch of pictures to see a synopsis of the story.
~Trent
Thank you very much for replies.
O-kay -
Cat-Trap> Care to post some screenshots? Care to warn people it's commercial?
Screenshots are here http://www.quitesoulless.com/scr.htm
Well, as for business,,, You know, I am absolutely new to business, I was producing this game for 6 years, spent 15,000$, and I thought there might be some money in the end. Does anybody know how to make some money (I see I can't most likely sell adventure game and nobody is happy that I thought of money)?
I am asking as well because I installed and like AGS very much and I believe I have an idea FOR THIS ENGINE. How (is it possible) to get some money out of adventure these days if I seriously spent an year or 2 for another this time AGS adventure?
If you make something that people really enjoy, you can get some money.
Don't expect more than, perhaps, enough to cover your server costs for the first month.
Most people from the forums who went commercial had the benefit that they already had released some games that were popular- Apprentice and Bestowers of Eternity come to mind, and Diamonds In The Rough too. I'd be far more willing to shell out some money when I can expect the game to be good, and knowing that said creator already made good games helps a lot.
So grab AGS or your homebrew engine, make up a game or two, release them for free, get feedback, get a reputation, and then go commercial if you must- though I daresay that making big money with indie adventure games isn't as likely as, I don't know, making the next Match 3/Hidden Objects/Time management game.
If I had charged a dollar for OUAC I'd have about 4000 dollars now, almost two years after its release- so says math. But I think I'd just have had far less downloads.
Don't forget AGDI Ghost!
~Trent
I downloaded the demo and gave it a try. I did not like having to use the keyboard, I would rather have point and click.
Plus, The installation of the Demo was kind of odd.
After trying the first room and the camera moving me to different areas, I was getting kind of frustrated with it. Don't get me wrong, the graphics look good, but maybe I am just use to the way most AGS games are now.
I am sorry to say I had to delete the game. But I do wish you luck on any other projects you are working on.
Just my 2 cents worth.
That is very sad, there is no room for commercial sense anymore in adventures... :P
However I really want to create the AGS game and I believe in my new idea.
I thought may be to create and adventure to polish some of my ideas in literacy, when to transfer adventure to literacy (in a form - book + pictures) when try to locate a BOOK PUBLISHER?
Is it... A TOTAL ABSURD, or why not to try this?
It's not that there isn't any room for commercial adventures. Even Indie-made adventures can make money, but they have to meet a level of polish, and also appeal to the niche gamer who might buy such a game. As far as the polish level goes, your game, I'm sorry to say, lacks it all around.
I downloaded the demo, and I actually kind of like the graphics, as weird as they are. The world seems really big with lots of animation and some interesting choices for design and camera angles. I don't like the main character's graphics at all, but at least the world around him is somewhat neat looking, in a kind of mix-n-match, scattershot, clashing, kind of way.
But the game itself is buggy, impossible to control, and confusing. The demo starts with my character in a room facing the door. Walking out the door triggers a long cutscene that doesn't make any kind of sense to me, and the game crashes once it's done. SO I started again and tried looking around the building at things. Looking at the firehose crashed the game again. The third time, I was able to look around several rooms and get out onto the street behind the starting building. None of the characters would talk to me ("There were no more themes to talk about," is a really strange way of putting it.) to let me know what the plot was about, and trying to go in one direction told me that I shouldn't return to the scene of the crime. I wasn't aware there was a crime. Perhaps you started the demo in a weird place. I then went back into the building and it crashed again. I never found anything that I could interact with in a meaningful way and had only managed to spend ten minutes struggling to make the character walk in the direction I wanted him to walk.
The controls are really weird. The main character controls worse than a tank. He turns extremely slowly, and only in 60 degree increments, and can't turn and walk at the same time. The camera frequently changing positions makes it even more confusing (and the split second of blackness between switches makes it worse). Having to open up the inventory to choose "talk" is a really weird choice, and needing to switch your hands away from the arrow keys to press i and enter is exceedingly awkward. The text on the bottom of the screen is also extremely hard to read.
If you expect to sell a game, the players need to know that it reaches a certain level of quality, and no offense, but I don't see it here. I probably wouldn't play the game if it was freeware. Your demo would probably convince more people not to buy the game than it would otherwise, and I actually like your website (except for having to click on images to see the story, and the trailer's music).
My advice would be to have some friends or other people play the game with you watching and tell you what they like and don't like. This game really doesn't feel like it's been played by anyone other than the creator (for play testing or bug testing purposes). I think that anyone playing the game would tell you that the character control alone makes it unfit for distribution. Several other things need to be tweaked and polished, but you might as well make the game easy to play for starters.
I'm not sure what you're asking in your last post, but if you're looking for a book publisher to publish a game, it's hard enough to get a book publisher to publish a book from an unpublished author. I don't think many of them are looking to get into the super indie niche-game publishing business.
What was the computer configuration? Would it meet the requirements published at
http://stores.lulu.com/spacespy2
I am sorry to see your negative expirience...
Say, did you print the solutions/walkthrough, I provided?
I myself tested each and every step with GeForce 4 Ti AMD 2500 Mhz, WinXP
GeForce 6500, AMD 3800 Mhz, WinXP
GeForce 6100 internal, AMD 3000 Mhz, WinXP
GeForce 7800, AMD Sempron 3400 Mhz, WinXP
Compaq Presario CQ60-220US Notebook PC, Vista Premium,
however there were others, who had the positive expirience, and you are the only person with negative expirience for now (I mean, you could not play, because the game crashes, I know that I need to look for another engine, rather than this written on my own with Microsoft Visual Studio, because my gameplay turns out to be not ideal).
The bad news is I am not far from to be bankrupt, and I would possibly face homelessness soon (I have the legal troubles in the previous country of residence, and I am now in Hollywood, California, looking for asylum without a work permit, so I will face homelessness soon, and I am not able to polish anymore - I don't have a room, now I am in Starbucks, I have for now the place to sleep in the night (for a couple of hundreds per month, I am not supposed to be in the premises during the daytime, however, soon I would be totally on the street).
Anyway I would collect the information and would try to solve the issues. By your request I would upload my game myself to check out (may be some files were corrupted while I was uploading them last time to the bluehost server)
Thanks for reply
For a near-homeless person you seem to have a rather extensive collection of PCs.
I had 180K$, everything is suspended now by prosecution, I have only this last laptop Compaq Presario, everything else is lost.
I remember seeing the trailer sometime late '08 and most responses were like "wtf". This is quite a sad story. Didn't you do any marketing research before you spend so much many money on it? A story like this could get some publicity, which might get you a few more sales, but if you'd really end up better out of it...
Quote from: km10 on Sun 08/03/2009 20:57:44
I had 180K$, everything is suspended now by prosecution...
Listen, this sounds serious, so don't take offense: If you hope "Quite Soulless" can safe you from bankrupcy, don't rely on it! Try to get some job to help you through the hard time now, but don't rely that your game, even with some spit and polish added, will make you a wealthy man any time soon! Stick to game design by all means, you seem to have the heart for it, but treat it as a hobby.
Luck on yer.
Aha, as for Quite Soulless it is financially very unsuccessfull project :-X, I've made several mistakes in the several fields, each of them was critical, so I would rather forget (for now) about the project, or may transport Quite Soulless to a form of literacy / some Stephen King styled book (with probably pictures) to check, if the BOOK publishers are existant (MY GUESS, they are not).
Posted by: Gamer_V > Marketing research - yes, I am not business educated, don't know how to do that, so please advise,
because the main question is not Quite Soulless anymore.
I would get soon some illegal cleaning job probably in the russian neghbourhoods of Fairfax&Santa Monica (Western Hollywood). So I might still have time for hobby.
What should I do next? Another quest game with AGS, later on unsuccess turn it to literacy/book? Buy Torque engine to do 3d action/FPS? Flash object/time management with screenplay and story? I have my screenplay (sci fi / future ) on the hands, so I would turn it to any of those 3 forms, but I don't know yet, WHAT TO CHOOSE... :o What?
That would be great if one day waitressing and cleaning would be not my major income, however I understand that art usually does not pay off, while we are choosing, I wanted to consider the best (it is miserable, I understand) probability to be commercially successfull after the further YEARS of development.
Quote from: km10 on Tue 10/03/2009 20:14:57
I wanted to consider the best (it is miserable, I understand) probability to be commercially successfull after the further YEARS of development.
But that's simply not how it works! You can't assume that a game will be successful if it had a long developing time... you need to get an idea about your target group, their expectations, the trends maybe. If you got the time, stick with a free toolkit and do not buy anything expensive. Decide on a type of game you'd like to make. Play other games of that genre/type/setting. Figure out what standards there are, and try to meet some of them.
If you're really determined to get some cash out of your games, I suggest you try out some popular casual games and write such a one. They are relatively simple to make and will often find followers. AGS may not be the engine for you then, though.
Even the worst mistakes we make teach us something about life and about how to do things the right way. Chalk this up to experience (even though it was a bad experience) and apply the things you learned to future efforts.
Ha, ha, independent game festival board sent me the feedback on my game, which reads 'The art is so amazingly complex and interesting that it's almost 'folk art'...', I put it on my front page ( www.quitesoulless.com ) in my usual weird manner, check it out...
I am happy, why nobody here told me something like that : ) : ) : ) :o
There were a few that said your graphics were pretty good, it was the gameplay that was another story. I even mentioned that I liked the graphics.
You have some talent, so keep working at it, and also once again, I wish you the best of luck on any future games you are working on.
Hello, dear all!
Thank you for your support.
I decided (for now) to choose Unity (because I liked a lot of platforms they support) for my 2nd game and to do the game just like Aftershock: Global Conflict (basically 2D-oriented with 2D gameplay, however I can still a little bit use 3d characters/objects to turn them to 2D, it would be time/object management game with huge storyline and my own screenplay / literacy behind the game, so I would like it to be considered adventure as well).
Please tell me if you feel that my choice is wrong
Vasily Zotov - www.quitesoulless.com
http://n4g.com/dev/News-291169.aspx
km10, what is this about? Well at least this thread got mentioned in that article.