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AGS Games => Completed Game Announcements => Topic started by: san.daniele on Mon 01/07/2013 16:50:51

Title: Cross Stitch Casper
Post by: san.daniele on Mon 01/07/2013 16:50:51
Most likely the only cross stitched adventure game in existence.

Cross Stitch Casper is a game that focuses on story and characters.
The homely embroidered graphics are in contrast to the bleak home of main protagonist.

As player you control little Casper. But you're not him. You're just observing the world he's living in and the struggles he has to endure.
How will he manage to get through his daily live's struggles? Will he at all?

The only person sympathizing with him seems to be his grandmother. Then again, how much can an old woman do?

(http://www.whalesplash.com/CrossStitchCasper/Game/overview.png)

AGS Game Page (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1702/)
Game Site (http://www.whalesplash.com/crossstitchcasper)
Title: Re: Cross Stitch Casper
Post by: gspit1124 on Mon 01/07/2013 16:55:43
Congrats on the release! Downloading now :)
Title: Re: Cross Stitch Casper
Post by: Tabata on Mon 01/07/2013 18:28:31
That was a cute little game in a really unique "dress".
Sad story, but with nice effects (especially at the end) (nod)

Well done, good work!  (http://www.smileyvault.com/albums/userpics/12962/applause.gif)
Congratulations for the release!
Title: Re: Cross Stitch Casper
Post by: Problem on Mon 01/07/2013 18:44:51
This is such a sad story...  :(
Fantastic work Daniel, I just love the unique style. The cross stitched animations are simple, but very effective. This must have been a lot of work. The puzzles were too easy for my taste, but the story progresses nicely. This is very impressive for a first game! ;-D
Title: Re: Cross Stitch Casper
Post by: CaptainD on Mon 01/07/2013 18:49:33
Congrats on the release!  Looks really interesting.  :)
Title: Re: Cross Stitch Casper
Post by: Stupot on Thu 04/07/2013 08:51:20
Hooray for release :)
This is a very charming little game and the cross-stitch effect works brilliantly.
Title: Re: Cross Stitch Casper
Post by: Joseph DiPerla on Thu 04/07/2013 17:33:43
Innovative to say the least! Very nice.
Title: Re: Cross Stitch Casper
Post by: Ghost on Fri 05/07/2013 04:27:59
Almost through (I think), but it's already one of the most memorable AGS games in my book. The mood is downright eerie and the "cross-stich" theme is both fitting and well executed. Amazing how the sparse look fires the imagination; together with the explicit hints of Casper's less-than-perfect home I really could see the world. Almost wished I couldn't...

I think my favourite moment was
Spoiler
Casper asking for a minute to stay at his mother's grave. Touching, really.
[close]
Title: Re: Cross Stitch Casper
Post by: san.daniele on Sat 06/07/2013 21:31:21
Thank you for the comments. Especially Ghost's made me a very happy man.

Quote from: Ghost on Fri 05/07/2013 04:27:59
I think my favourite moment was
Spoiler
Casper asking for a minute to stay at his mother's grave. Touching, really.
[close]
Glad to see that someone found this. There's only a tiny window of opportunity to play that scene.
Title: Re: Cross Stitch Casper
Post by: fred on Sun 07/07/2013 16:48:14
Good game, very touching. And the art style just complements the mood of the story very well.
Title: Re: Cross Stitch Casper
Post by: ottkosmoses on Wed 10/07/2013 07:06:57
I once started a fighting game with cross stitching. Based on Desperate Housewives series. Didn't know how to make games at all then and it wen't too slow so left unfinished. My approach was doing it by hand and then scanning the sprite animations. This made it align all wrong.
I have a question about aligment as well, wanted to post it inprogress thread but i was closed already.
Would you mind giving me a solution on this perfect dridbased walking. I have something in works that's based on famicom spritesheets and needs to step over every 8 pixels.

Very nice to see this stitching stuff come alive. Thankyou!
Title: Re: Cross Stitch Casper
Post by: san.daniele on Wed 10/07/2013 09:45:50
Quote from: ottkosmoses on Wed 10/07/2013 07:06:57
[…]fighting game with cross stitching. Based on Desperate Housewives […] doing it by hand and then scanning the sprite animations.

that sounds so crazy I want to see it! :D I doubt we would start a trend, but would be nice to see another cross stitching game out there (maybe there is already).
I thought about doing it by hand as well. But A) I have absolutely no experience in cross stitching (or any other garnment/embroidery related work) and B) it just seemed too difficult to pull of if not done extremely careful/perfect.

Quote
I have a question about aligment as well, wanted to post it inprogress thread but i was closed already.

Not that hard actually. I think the most simple method is to use Modulo (modulo basically divides something and looks if there is any leftover. The value it returns is the leftover. I use this line in repeatedly_execute_always() of my global script

Code (AGS) Select
if (player.x%(8) != 0) player.x -=player.x%(8);
(thanks go to Selmiak for giving me the Modulo-hint)

what it does is: divide player.x by 8. if leftover != 0, move the player by the leftover amount.

I only needed that code for the free walking. Everything else I did manually. i.e. all Waypoints/WalkTo's are a multiple of 8, as is the Character Movement Speed (Movement has to be linked to Animation if you don't use modulo and be careful about the animation delay, I'm not going into it right now, just tell me if you need more input).
Title: Re: Cross Stitch Casper
Post by: ottkosmoses on Wed 10/07/2013 20:38:13
Thanks for the hints on coding.

About the stitching: in my case it wouldhave been (also was, because i finished kind of half the characters) reasonable amount of work doing them in matter because limited spriteset (had in mind grabbing a sewing machine for backgrounds maybe). In Your case it'd been a freakjob. But one could argue that a rewarding one: these kinds on artefacts that remain are a touchable proofs of Your hard virtual work and may, for example, finance your work in kickstarter scenario. Share the hardborn (bleeding fingers) sprites for gold supporters as attachable emblems or whatelse. All kinds of scraps, sideproducts of development could become sweet reminders of a wellspent gametime when outside a virtuality. Im fond of anime and inlove with concept art books and other memorabilia. And in favour of all kind of recycling in general. As seen in the following poster - custom made could use some help of readymade if one is in a hurry.

Im not updated with the latest western franchises, Despareate HW may be out of fashion in 2013. Have to be two steps ahead always (devTime).

(http://biwand.kelder.ee/desperate2013.jpg)
Title: Re: Cross Stitch Casper
Post by: san.daniele on Thu 11/07/2013 10:50:56
Haha. That looks ridiculously awesome! Or was it awesomely ridiculous? Either way, I hope to see this turning into something. I don't know much about desperate housewives, but the concept of combining it with cross stitching and a fighting game seems to fit perfect.
Title: Re: Cross Stitch Casper
Post by: selmiak on Mon 15/07/2013 18:46:48
finally gotten around to play and complete it, I like those kind of stories and the visuals are also cool and unique, a really nice but short game!
Title: Re: Cross Stitch Casper
Post by: ZapZap on Fri 02/08/2013 17:28:26
I liked it a lot. 
Spoiler
What a sad ending though, too much for me  :undecided:
[close]
Title: Re: Cross Stitch Casper
Post by: Crimson Wizard on Sat 03/08/2013 15:59:00
Daniel, you have a serious problem in your game when it is run with Direct3d renderer. Many objects are not visible.
This is how the first scene looks like:
Spoiler
(http://imageshack.us/a/img7/6501/ybz3.jpg)
[close]

I do not know what techniques do you use in game, but I suppose one of the possible reasons may be the DrawingSurface problem, as described here:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=48709.0
Title: Re: Cross Stitch Casper
Post by: san.daniele on Sat 03/08/2013 23:22:23
thanks again everyone for your feedback.

@Cleanic: while I like to hear that people feel uncomfortable after playing through the game, your comment made me think about that opinion. So thank you for that (I'm still processing my thoughts around it).

@Crimson: oh wow! I remember it worked at some point during the creation of the game (confirmed by checking a random backup of the game file). It's not just 'many objects'. The only thing you can see is the background and GUIs. No objects, no chars.
I'm fairly sure that all my programming/techniques can be considered 'very basic'. One thing I can rule out is DrawingSurface. Never touched that topic. I'm actually quite sure that this is not related to any scripting. Going to hunt it down right now (my first random thought was blaming it on the 'FadingThingsNotBlocking' module. Well, I was wrong there :) ).
Any other ideas are more than welcome, I'm not really sure what I'm looking for.
Title: Re: Cross Stitch Casper
Post by: Crimson Wizard on Sun 04/08/2013 11:29:45
What does this "FadingThingsNotBlocking" modules does? Err, I assume I can find it on forums? I am going to look at that too.
Do you use any other modules?
Title: Re: Cross Stitch Casper
Post by: cat on Sun 04/08/2013 16:01:19
I found an error too:
Spoiler
in the end, when there are those guys standing in front of the saloon, when I open the menu and close it, the granny is suddenly small size. This also persists when I entered the house.
[close]

That aside, great game!  :)
Title: Re: Cross Stitch Casper
Post by: san.daniele on Tue 06/08/2013 21:11:20
@cat:
thanks a lot for reporting this! (and the compliment ;) )

@CW:
found it! took some time, as this was literally one of the last things I looked at.
seems kinda ridiculous: the way I see it, it looks like Direct3D and DirectDraw handle object baselines in a different way (don't beat me if I'm saying stupid things here).
let me elaborate: at some point during developement I tried to reduce game size by playing around with backgrounds (here's a thread I did about it (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=48342.msg636456275)). I ended up not using backgrounds at all. What you see in the game are screen-sized objects. Using Direct3D renderer those objects seem to be drawn on top of everything else. when moving one of those background objects half way out of the screen area, it looks like you would expect it if what I wrote above is true. Room objects and character are visible on the empty side of the screen.
(background-objects have baseline 1, other objects numbers above 10).

I'm not sure what to do with this information. It might be more interesting for you than it is for me :)
Title: Re: Cross Stitch Casper
Post by: selmiak on Fri 30/03/2018 19:01:34
Thanks AnasAbdin for reminding me of this great gem. I couldn't resist longplaying it and you should play it too!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_1w4XTXBCA
Title: Re: Cross Stitch Casper
Post by: san.daniele on Sat 31/03/2018 16:48:10
I'm honoured.
it's been a couple of years since I even looked at the game. enjoyed watching your video (and I have to admit there were feelings of pride ;) ).

… and yes, I created the 4-pixel-high-font just for this game.
Title: Re: Cross Stitch Casper
Post by: selmiak on Sat 31/03/2018 21:06:54
hey daniele. I'm glad you like my video. Sadly there were some recording issues with the end credits, as in OBS just didn't record the visible but the music, but the game is so sad I just couldn't play it again to record the ending. So you did everything right with this one :P :-D
Title: Re: Cross Stitch Casper
Post by: Jojo_the_monkey on Sun 20/05/2018 01:13:30
Late to the party, but I really enjoyed played this unique game. Fantastic aesthetic and very well paced!! My only complaint is:
Spoiler
I would prefer the same aesthetic in the fire at the finale, just as the rest of the game. Maybe a change on the color like red/orange would do the trick.
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