Adventure Game Studio

AGS Games => AGS Games in Production => Topic started by: paolo on Fri 27/03/2009 10:37:23

Title: This City at Night - RELEASED
Post by: paolo on Fri 27/03/2009 10:37:23
RELEASED December 2018.

Game announcement thread: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=56750.msg636599275
Game page: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2313/

===============

Tracey hates her humdrum job at Insurance International, but it turns out there is more going on there than meets the eye. An unknown organisation is plotting a coup that will have catastrophic global consequences, and unless it can be stopped in time, the world will be brought to its knees...

Some screenshots for you (these will look different in the finished game):

(http://i.imgur.com/UtFOBNR.png)

(http://i.imgur.com/bktH2QC.png)

(http://i.imgur.com/2TGkmdw.png)

Ben304 and I started work on this game not long after completing Trance-Pacific, so as you can see, it's been in production for a while. Ben was producing the graphics but unfortunately had to bow out, so the project stalled for a while. James DiGrizz has produced some great backgrounds for me, three of which are shown above.

Latest update (11 April 2016): Demo version released. Play the first few scenes of the game! Some features are not available in the demo and the artwork will be updated in the full version.

Game page: here (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2036/)
Download link: here (http://www.filedropper.com/thiscityatnight)
Title: Re: This City at Night - new game from Ben304 and paolo! (Character artist requi
Post by: ThreeOhFour on Fri 27/03/2009 10:42:27
Those backgrounds look great!

Good luck with getting this finished, Paul :D
Title: Re: This City at Night - new game from Ben304 and paolo! (Character artist required)
Post by: Spike4072 on Sat 28/03/2009 19:00:18
Looks great. Good luck on this can't wait to play it. :)

Sorry can't help you I stink at making characters or I would all ready have my own game out :P
Title: Re: This City at Night - new game from Ben304 and paolo! (Character artist required)
Post by: Alarconte on Sun 29/03/2009 20:09:40
I love it! Luck with the game!

But maybe characters and bgs need more cohesion, not?
Title: Re: This City at Night - new game from Ben304 and paolo! (Character artist required)
Post by: paolo on Mon 30/03/2009 09:43:18
Thanks, everyone, for your encouraging words. Progress is slow but sure.

Alarconte: The characters are temporary (they were drawn by Ben and the backgrounds were drawn by James DiGrizz). I am looking for someone to redraw them in the style that fits more closely with the backgrounds.
Title: Re: This City at Night - new game from Ben304 and paolo! (Character artist required)
Post by: Dualnames on Mon 30/03/2009 09:45:04
Great to see you guys are back on track, I'm still confused on who's doing what, but I guess the credits will settle it. ;)
Title: Re: This City at Night - new game from Ben304 and paolo! (Character artist required)
Post by: paolo on Mon 30/03/2009 09:57:23
Quote from: Dualnames on Mon 30/03/2009 09:45:04
Great to see you guys are back on track, I'm still confused on who's doing what, but I guess the credits will settle it. ;)

Thanks. Yep, it'll all be sorted out by then :) I say that the game is by Ben and me because he came up with the idea and we developed the story together. He also did the artwork for the inventory items and the cursors, and some of the backgrounds that he drew have been reworked by James.
Title: Re: This City at Night - new game from Ben304 and paolo! (Character artist required)
Post by: arrr on Tue 31/03/2009 14:05:56
As it seems, I think I should post something here too.

Well people, I'll let you all in a little secret Paul is keeping from you all. TCAN will have theese features also:

-98057 different rooms, all hand-drawn
-47 different endings
-38 playable characters
-a 3d, online, multiplayer, doom-style, mini-game featuring advanced shading via directX 16 with shaders and realistic looking water.
-a grid based inventory with magic weapons and potions like Diablo
-a random level generator
-physics engine with ragg-doll effects on every hotspot and inventory item
-random taxmen appearing out of thin air
-adventure related permanent death, so when you do something wrong and die, the game will erase your saves, the game itself, windows, and overclock your CPU untill it explodes
-a palette of 143 gazillion colours
-and we are also thinking of porting it to J2me platform so we can play it on your tiny mobile screen

Minimum system requirements are just:
  -34.5 octo-core processor
  -4 TB ram
  -six fingers on each hand as the game is playable wit two mouses/mices? in each hand simultaniuosly
  -580X speed Blu-ray drive
  -new nVidia GeForce 300098 ST turbo-diesel mega power unreal graphic card
  -a new title: Angel Sword of Mysterious Cavern Mega-robot X devotion and apathy

All this will be implemented until tomorrow morning and we will still have enough time left to make ourselves a warm cup of tea.

Beat that other AGS game developers!

And yes, I'm not kidding =D, Honestly! Cross my french potatoes and hope to fry.
Title: Re: This City at Night - new game from Ben304 and paolo! (Character artist required)
Post by: paolo on Wed 01/04/2009 12:34:19
Quote from: James DiGrizz on Tue 31/03/2009 14:05:56
As it seems, I think I should post something here too.

Well people, I'll let you all in a little secret Paul is keeping from you all. TCAN will have theese features also:

98057 different rooms, all hand-drawn
[etc]

You'd better a get a move on then... I haven't even had the first 1000 rooms from you yet. (Maybe you should have waited until this morning before posting! :P)
Title: Re: This City at Night - new game from Ben304 and paolo! (Character artist required)
Post by: dirk delshire on Mon 06/04/2009 22:20:22
I love the style of this game right down to the text everything has a unique feel about it.
I always love hand drawn sprites too, they remind me of Ben Jordan.
Title: Re: This City at Night - new game from Ben304 and paolo! (Character artist required)
Post by: paolo on Wed 08/04/2009 08:13:15
Quote from: dirk delshire on Mon 06/04/2009 22:20:22
I love the style of this game right down to the text everything has a unique feel about it.
I always love hand drawn sprites too, they remind me of Ben Jordan.

Thank you, it's nice to hear that. Wow, a comparison to Ben Jordan... I don't know if I can live up to that!

The game is coming along slowly. Half of the music has now been done and nearly two-thirds of the backgrounds. There is still loads of scripting to do (even though I say 91% is done, each 1% involves a lot of work...) but it's all coming together.

UPDATE: The backgrounds and music are coming along very well, but I am still looking for someone to do the character art if anyone is interested.
Title: Re: This City at Night - new game from Ben304 and paolo! (Character artist required)
Post by: paolo on Sun 03/05/2009 13:33:08
Forgive the double post and the bump, but I thought I'd tease you all with another screenshot :)

(http://img73.imageshack.us/img73/246/apartment.png)

By the way, I'm still looking for someone to draw the characters in a style that fits well with the backgrounds (the characters you see in these screenshots are temporary), so if anyone wants to take it on, please PM me.
Title: Re: This City at Night - new game from Ben304 and paolo! (Character artist needed)
Post by: paolo on Fri 22/05/2009 18:42:17
Update... the music is now all finished and it is awesome (thanks, Jordi)!

The backgrounds are coming along very nicely (thanks, James), and I'm gradually getting through the huge pile of scripting and testing there is to be done.
Title: Re: This City at Night - new game from Ben304 and paolo!
Post by: paolo on Fri 14/08/2009 11:29:31
Update...

I've decided to do the character art myself. It's not that difficult, just laborious and slow-going, but it's coming along slowly.

The game uses portraits for speech and these are now complete for a few of the characters. Here's a sneak peek of Tracey's main portrait...

(http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/157/neutral.png)

The portraits for each of the main characters will have various expressions.
Title: Re: This City at Night - new game from Ben304 and paolo!
Post by: sthomannch on Fri 14/08/2009 19:58:28
Superb graphics! I'm looking forward to this one
Title: Re: This City at Night - new game from Ben304 and paolo!
Post by: paolo on Sat 15/08/2009 17:11:29
Quote from: sthomannch on Fri 14/08/2009 19:58:28
Superb graphics! I'm looking forward to this one

Thank you!

It will be quite a while yet, I'm afraid. So far I have done the portraits for about a third of the characters... the one you see above is one of the most expressive with six different facial expressions. I have two-thirds of the walkcycle done for this character too. Lots more to do, but it is coming along, little by little.
Title: Re: This City at Night - new game from Ben304 and paolo!
Post by: J_Aguila on Sat 15/08/2009 21:25:42
I really like the sample portrait, good work Paul. Can't wait to see the game finished :)
Title: Re: This City at Night - new game from Ben304 and paolo!
Post by: EdLoen on Mon 24/08/2009 22:41:13
Everything looks to be awesome.... but those Neon eyes are freaking me out....
Title: Re: This City at Night - new game from Ben304 and paolo!
Post by: paolo on Fri 28/08/2009 18:52:37
Thanks for the comments.

The portraits are about half done now. I hope to get more done over the weekend.
Title: Re: This City at Night - new game from Ben304 and paolo!
Post by: Atelier on Fri 28/08/2009 19:13:21
I never knew that Yoshi was the interior designer for Insurance International... :)

That brief description has me hooked!
Title: Re: This City at Night - new game from Ben304 and paolo!
Post by: CosmoQueen on Sun 30/08/2009 20:17:29
Wow these graphics are excellent! I can't wait to see the finished product!
Title: Re: This City at Night - new game from Ben304 and paolo!
Post by: paolo on Sat 26/09/2009 15:09:48
A further update... progress is slow because I can only work on the game from time to time, but a fair number of the animations have now been done.
Title: Re: This City at Night - new game from Ben304 and paolo!
Post by: PuNKKoMmANDO77 on Wed 21/10/2009 18:42:48
good job Paolo and Ben
you two make only fantastic game !! ;D

Title: Re: This City at Night - new game from Ben304 and paolo!
Post by: paolo on Thu 22/10/2009 12:53:50
@PuNKKoMmANDO77: Thank you for the nice comment!

I got a good chunk of work done over the weekend but there's still a lot to do. Realistically, I don't this game will be seeing the light of day until 2010.
Title: Re: This City at Night - new game from Ben304 and paolo!
Post by: paolo on Sat 16/01/2010 15:35:06
Quote from: paolo on Thu 22/10/2009 12:53:50
Realistically, I don't this game will be seeing the light of day until 2010.

And indeed that has been the case. As things go, I think a more realistic release date is going to be something like summer 2010, but please don't hold me to that :)

I am still slowly working through what needs to be done on this game. The bottleneck is the drawing, but I downloaded Sketchup just before Christmas and this is great for drawing rooms and objects (not so great for drawing walk cycles, though, but I have other sources of help for these).

I'm going to update the progress in the original posting now.
Title: Re: This City at Night - new game from Ben304 and paolo!
Post by: Timo. on Sun 17/01/2010 06:55:41
Excellent graphics and the gameplay, storyline and character development sounds good.

Looking forward to the game.
Title: Re: This City at Night - game by Ben304 and paolo
Post by: Peter Bear on Sat 20/03/2010 08:23:36
WOOOOOOOOOO !

Courage my friend !
Title: Re: This City at Night - game by Ben304 and paolo
Post by: paolo on Tue 01/06/2010 13:18:32
Quote from: Pierceval on Sat 20/03/2010 08:23:36
WOOOOOOOOOO !

Courage my friend !

Thank you :)

I got a big chunk of work done last week:

* Another character's walk cycle done
* Two rooms drawn and added
* Added a new batch of sound effects
* Scripted most of the boss battle!

There's still tons to do (mainly those pesky laborious walk cycles [sigh]), but there are only two more rooms to draw now. Watch out for further updates!
Title: Re: This City at Night - game by Ben304 and paolo
Post by: paolo on Fri 19/11/2010 07:52:24
Although I haven't updated this thread for some time, I'm still making good progress on this game.

Here are the latest versions of the screenshots from the original posting.

(http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/8218/postcardfrombahamas.png)

(http://a.yfrog.com/img251/6793/infrontofstatue.png)

This is very probably how they will appear in the game. I've upped the resolution of the player character (Tracey) to match the background resolution, and as you can see from the first pic, the other characters in the game are now fully-fledged. (The other two characters no longer in the image are in the back office having a conference.)

There's lots more still to do, so I hereby cautiously announce the game's release in autumn/winter 2011.
Title: Re: This City at Night - game by Ben304 and paolo
Post by: theo on Fri 19/11/2010 08:24:27
Looks great! I realize this is no the critics lounge but I find it hard to keep my mouth shut. The 1 px black edges you have around/inside all your objects in the backdrop are not helping you. Why not do the same with them as the outlines on your character? Simply have a darker tone of the current color, that is. It works magic on her and I can see no reason not to do the same on the backdrops.

It will look less "habbo", I promise.

Keep up the good work, looking forward to this!
Title: Re: This City at Night - game by Ben304 and paolo
Post by: Peter Bear on Fri 19/11/2010 09:52:09
this is so good to hear news from your game project !

Indeed, what lays forever is not dead :p

How long do you think it will take to be released ? I am desperate about releasing mine one day :'(

Nice graphics, I like the outilined objets myself, more contrast ... but this is just my sole opinion.
Title: Re: This City at Night - game by Ben304 and paolo
Post by: paolo on Fri 19/11/2010 20:35:17
Quote from: theo on Fri 19/11/2010 08:24:27
Looks great! I realize this is no the critics lounge but I find it hard to keep my mouth shut. The 1 px black edges you have around/inside all your objects in the backdrop are not helping you. Why not do the same with them as the outlines on your character? Simply have a darker tone of the current color, that is. It works magic on her and I can see no reason not to do the same on the backdrops.

It will look less "habbo", I promise.

Keep up the good work, looking forward to this!

Thanks. Interesting suggestion. The backgrounds are for the most part the work of someone else and they are all done except one. Changing them now would be a lot of extra work for me (foreground objects would need to be changed too) at this stage. If that weren't the case then I might have tried that out.

@Piotr - at my current rate of progress, I think there is about another year's work to go, so look out for this in autumn or winter next year.

Thanks guys for your feedback and the encouragement!
Title: Re: This City at Night - game by Ben304 and paolo
Post by: markbilly on Fri 19/11/2010 21:22:55
Black out lines being almost impossible to go back and change was one of the reasons for the big Longevity Gene re-start (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=35801.0).

I think it can work for you, though. Especially if the backgrounds are nearly all done. I started again because it was taking ages to draw anything and I stopped liking ho it all looked.

You should add an outline to the main character, though, so it all looks consistent.
Title: Re: This City at Night - game by Ben304 and paolo
Post by: paolo on Sat 12/03/2011 09:01:12
A further update for those following this thread...

I've nearly finished one of the most involved scenes in the game. The next thing will be to add another character's walk cycle so I can develop a couple more scenes. There's still a lot to do though.
Title: Re: This City at Night - DEMO RELEASED
Post by: paolo on Mon 11/04/2016 21:06:03
Here it is... the teaser demo for This City at Night!

Play the first few scenes pretty much as they'll be in the final game, apart from some updates to the backgrounds and few other tweaks and extra features.

THIS CITY AT NIGHT - TEASER DEMO (http://www.filedropper.com/thiscityatnight) by paolo, ThreeOhFour and others. (Follow the link and click on the "Download This File" button.)

Game page (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2036/)
Title: Re: This City at Night - DEMO RELEASED
Post by: Peter Bear on Mon 11/04/2016 21:12:20
Whooooo ! Hey Paul ;)
Title: Re: This City at Night - DEMO RELEASED
Post by: paolo on Mon 11/04/2016 21:29:33
Quote from: Piotr OBKINSKI on Mon 11/04/2016 21:12:20
Whooooo ! Hey Paul ;)

Yay, Piotr! I'm excited too! Hope you enjoy the demo.
Title: Re: This City at Night - DEMO RELEASED
Post by: paolo on Sun 17/04/2016 19:51:50
A quick update: at the moment I'm "dehabboing" the backgrounds as per Theo's suggestion. They are looking much cleaner and fit in better with the characters.
Title: Re: This City at Night - DEMO RELEASED
Post by: paolo on Thu 22/12/2016 16:19:05
And here we are:

Before:
(http://i.imgur.com/UtFOBNR.png)

After:
(http://i.imgur.com/qJ3zlmI.png)

Before: 
(http://i.imgur.com/bktH2QC.png)

After: 
(http://i.imgur.com/tJG4rj5.png)

Before: 
(http://i.imgur.com/2TGkmdw.png)

After: 
(http://i.imgur.com/pP1UbqN.png)

The link to the demo has been fixed.
Title: Re: This City at Night - DEMO RELEASED
Post by: NickyNyce on Thu 22/12/2016 16:45:42
Looks fun paolo. I like the changes.
Title: Re: This City at Night - DEMO RELEASED
Post by: Gurok on Fri 23/12/2016 01:30:26
Wow, Paolo, it's looking great! I'm getting a great vibe from these pics.
Title: Re: This City at Night - DEMO RELEASED
Post by: Mandle on Fri 23/12/2016 01:53:25
The old pics look nice in a charming amateur kinda way.

The new pics look slick and professional.

Huge change for the better!
Title: Re: This City at Night - DEMO RELEASED
Post by: paolo on Fri 23/12/2016 09:05:19
Thank you for the kind comments, everyone. The updated graphics will appear in the completed game and aren't the in the demo.
Title: Re: This City at Night - DEMO RELEASED
Post by: Danvzare on Fri 23/12/2016 10:47:55
Ah, changing the outlines from a hard black, to much softer colours. Great idea, and it improved all of the backgrounds tremendously. (nod)
Title: Re: This City at Night - DEMO RELEASED
Post by: sawyer on Sun 25/06/2017 23:32:13
Download link dead!
Title: Re: This City at Night - DEMO RELEASED
Post by: Darth Mandarb on Mon 26/06/2017 01:56:03
Sawyer, please read the forum rules before further posting.

Paolo, let me know (via PM) if/when you want to post an update and I'll unlock this!
Title: Re: This City at Night - DEMO RELEASED
Post by: paolo on Sat 07/07/2018 08:40:24
A long-overdue update...

Not too long to go now. I still have several animations to do (which are what takes me longest), some bugs to fix and a few other bits and pieces. Soon I will be recruiting a proofreader and in a few months, I hope, some play-testers. Watch this space!
Title: Re: This City at Night - COMING SOON(ish)
Post by: paolo on Sun 05/08/2018 08:39:38
The Italian translation is complete, and I'm advertising in Recruitment for volunteers to proof-read the English text and the translation.

Here's a sneak peek of another scene:

Outside house (https://imgur.com/a/IalWbhT)

Still a few more animations to do, bugs to fix and things to clean up. Getting there!
Title: Re: This City at Night - NOW IN BETA
Post by: paolo on Mon 15/10/2018 18:57:47
The game is now being beta-tested. I anticipate it will be released in November.
Title: Re: This City at Night - NOW IN BETA
Post by: ManicMatt on Sat 17/11/2018 09:00:22
Crikey, it's been nearly ten years in the making! That must feel like a huge weight off your shoulders!
Title: Re: This City at Night - NOW IN BETA
Post by: paolo on Sat 17/11/2018 13:39:13
Quote from: ManicMatt on Sat 17/11/2018 09:00:22
Crikey, it's been nearly ten years in the making! That must feel like a huge weight off your shoulders!

I think it's already over 11. It will be, believe me. I've almost forgotten what the outside world looks like :)
Title: Re: This City at Night - NOW IN BETA
Post by: paolo on Sat 08/12/2018 15:25:20
Final touches are now being made - the last step is the editing of the Italian translation, and that is almost complete.

I'm aiming now to get this into the games database before the end of the year!