The StoryCast into a foreign land ruled by strange creatures, our nameless hero needs to unravel the mysteries that led to a kingdom's downfall in order to return home.
His complete amnesia will certainly be detrimental to his plans, so he needs all the help he can get. But can the dysfunctional rulers of this world be trusted?
One thing soon becomes certain though: It will be impossible to leave these hostile lands with clean hands.
BackgroundA challenge to make my first AGS project all by myself, Sibun is a short and probably much too easy point and click adventure with under ten rooms.
It has taken me about a year so far and forced me to tackle fields usually way out of my comfort zone (mainly graphics and animation).
This means that everything is taking really long, but I am learning a lot, which is great.
Screenshots(http://pancakeelement.de/AGS/Sibun/title.png)
(http://pancakeelement.de/AGS/Sibun/grd.png)
(http://pancakeelement.de/AGS/Sibun/prd.png)
(http://pancakeelement.de/AGS/Sibun/lst.png)
MusicIntro: https://soundcloud.com/cerno_b/sibun-shadow-of-the-septemplicon-intro
Animation(http://pancakeelement.de/AGS/Sibun/hero_walk.gif) (http://pancakeelement.de/AGS/Sibun/spider_walk.gif)
ProgressStory: 95%
Scripting: 90%
Graphics: 75%
Animation: 55%
Sound/Music: 20%
Estimated Release dateI was aiming for an end of 2015 release, but work and different side projects have pretty much sabotaged that goal.
For now I am holding on to that release date, but expect a new estimate around New Year's.As expected, I wasn't able to hold my initial estimate, some things just take too much time. I will try to get the release ready by
April 2016.
Dev DiaryOctober 7th, 2015
- Many parts are work in progress, but I finished my second background so I decided to make the announcement on AGS.
- Save for the ending, the game is completely playable from start to finish, albeit with a lot of placeholders.
October 18th, 2015
- Finalized one character out of ten.
- Did some detail work on the last room that wasn't planned out yet.
- All rooms are now completed as outlines and only need textures to be filled in
November 22nd, 2015
- Spent the whole weekend drawing. Very slow progress.
- Finished a room that has given me a lot of headaches. Screenshot above.
- Added 6 inventory item images, 8 to go.
- Changed my mind about writing a soundtrack for each room after reading an article provided by cat. Will have to reconsider the whole music concept of the game. Fortunately I haven't done too much work on that front yet.
November 28th, 2015
- Worked on some music. Completed the intro tune.
January 9th, 2016Made good progress over the holidays:
- Finished texturing another room (still one to go).
- Finished animating the main character's standard movements (walk, talk, interact)
- Finished all inventory item graphics
- Finished two cutscenes, in one of which a character meets a grisly end.
- Added graphics and animation for a spider that causes the unfortunate demise of another character.
- Frustrated that the numbers don't go up. Starting to doubt my spreadsheet/planning skills. Still in good spirits. Everything is going better than expected, only much slower.
Congrats on the production :)
This looks like a game with a psychological background. I'm in! Your graphics are amazing so take your time if the result is this good ;-D
This looks soooo coool...And a short game done well and with great care is much better than a long game slapped together. I'm sure most AGSers can relate to a ten room game taking over a year to develop...
Well:
Spoiler
Maybe not slasher...
Your game has a clean and amiable graphics style.
Interesting, I really like the design of the main character, as well as the overall art-style choice. Best of luck with finishing it soon!
I 2nd Mandle's post. This game both sounds and looks very promising.
Keep it up and take your time!
Wow, this looks cool and promising, please finish this. What confuses me a little is
Quote from: Cerno on Wed 07/10/2015 01:38:08
Graphics: 65%
[...] I finished my second background so I decided to make the announcement on AGS.
will there only be 3 rooms?
Wow, thanks everyone.
This is both very reassuring and scary at the same time (no pressure, right?) (laugh)
I'll give it my best, whatever that means. ;)
CrashPL:
Thanks a lot! I like your wording, as if I had any artistic range to choose from :-[
In reality I am just pushing pixels around until the result does not suck too badly (which takes quite a long time because my initial output usually does).
selmiak:
Ah, so you noticed. I am using a total unnecessarily contrived progress document to keep me entertained ;)
It measures not only finished assets, but also work in progress (sketches, untextured graphics, etc.)
So I am planning to have about 8 rooms in total, give or take (the ending is not complete yet).
[off topic]
The main character reminds me of this : http://i.ytimg.com/vi/XIRudGiDEvk/maxresdefault.jpg
[on topic]
I like the graphics and overall tone. I hope you'll finish it. :)
.
Quote from: MandleThis looks soooo coool...And a short game done well and with great care is much better than a long game slapped together. I'm sure most AGSers can relate to a ten room game taking over a year to develop
Some even to the six years of production. :)
The family is out of the house for a day, so I got me some time to work on the game.
The first character is now complete, graphics and animation.
The gentleman in question is quite a nasty fellow, of which we only see a veiny, sickly colored arm. He is after a certain lady, who is almost complete as well.
Still working on the guy's room, which gave me quite a headache, but I'm slowly getting there.
This update gave a nice boost to the graphics and animation progress meter. Spreadsheets FTW! ;D
Spoiler
On a completely unrelated note: Junji Ito is a sick man. I love it! But seriously, it's disturbing stuff. You have been warned (wtf)
Spent the whole weekend pushing pixels and was able to finish another room.
I feel like I am getting better at drawing, but everything takes soooo muuuch tiiime.
(http://pancakeelement.de/AGS/Sibun/lst.png)
This is the second room the player sees and is supposed to give a quick preview of the locations available in the game.
This will be the last room I will be showing before the release, otherwise there won't be any surprises left ;)
After reconsidering the approach to music in the game, I spent half a day writing up a main theme.
https://soundcloud.com/cerno_b/sibun-shadow-of-the-septemplicon-intro
Always funny how plans change while working on something.
It was planned as a haunting, eerie piano piece but turned out to become something entirely different.
Quote from: Cerno on Sat 28/11/2015 23:16:36
Always funny how plans change while working on something.
It was planned as a haunting, eerie piano piece but turned out to become something entirely different.
I'd say the music gives off more of a "yay let's go on a fantasy quest" vibe, but it's awesome all the same and judging from what I've seen from this game so far it seems to fit like a glove. (nod)
Yeah, it I guess it wouldn't feel out of place in an RPG. I had to remove the drumrolls, otherwise it would have sounded more like a military tune.
It's funny how little things can completely alter the atmosphere of a song.
Glad you like it though ;)
I made some progress over the holidays and got some important points off my list. Milestones include completion of the inventory items, completion of another room and some nasty cutscene animation work including some perspective stuff that was testing my limits and may require some further fiddling until I am content with it.
In this update I would like to share two bits of animation that mark the completion of two characters' basic animations (Yes, I know that only four of the spider's legs are visible. I tried adding more, but it didn't look right. The character only has very limited screen time anyway.)
(http://pancakeelement.de/AGS/Sibun/hero_walk.gif) (http://pancakeelement.de/AGS/Sibun/spider_walk.gif)
Despite my progress I didn't even get close to releasing in 2015. However, I set a new goal to complete the game by April 2016, since I would like to take part in this year's Ludum Dare. I hope this motivates me enough to spend less time derping on the internet.
On the tooling front, I switched from Photoshop to Aseprite for drawing and didn't look back for a second. Boy do I love this tool! Perfect for pixel art in general and animation in particular. The paid version has some really awesome new functions unavailable in the free version. It even produces proper gifs which was always a struggle with any other tool I used before.
Content-wise I think the game turns out to become rather grim and dark in some respects, and one of the new cutscenes probably turned out more graphically violent than I had originally envisioned.