Adventure Game Studio

This game was made for MAGS March “Journey� (https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=58905.0).

Note: This is a first person game made in AGS, it plays best in Fullscreen, use ESC in game to reach the menu, there you can look into Controls if you need help figuring the game keyboard+mouse movement scheme.


Attribution:

Sound Effects, Ambience and Music:

• World Map - Scrabbit
• rpg_sound_pack - by artisticdude
• Grass Foot Step Sounds (Yo Frankie!) - by Blender Foundation
• 40+ FREE Footstep SFX - by PremiumBeat.com
• "Windy Ambience" - by MrAuralization
• Radio Static - by digifishmusic
• cave_amb.wav - Zixem
• Cavernous Drone - glueIsobar
• crowd int medium movie theater lobby Paramount2 Montreal, Canada.flac - kyles
• brazilian-beach-party.wav - audiactiva
• The Refrigerator - karinalarasart
• Ambience, Seaside Waves, Close, A.wav - InspectorJ (Jonathan Shaw)
• "Flying above the ocean" - Tad Miller

Graphics:

• Walkie talkie - by Noah
• sunset - Abdullah Ghatasheh
• Balloon - by Michael Stöter

Script Modules:

• Timer - Crimson Wizard
• Tween - Edmundito

Edit: holy crap someone played my game in Japanese! I have no idea if the person liked or not but I was absolutely in love with their work!

Very nice and impressive mags entry.

Thanks arj0n! I just added the GitHub repository in case anyone is curious about the game source code! Hopefully there are useful bits for someone. I plan to eventually document it in a proper readme.

The pictures reminds me Lovecraft's Dagon

Impressive 3D effect. It's blurry but I guess you had to deal with AGS limitations. It's kinda pretty nonetheless.

About the game itself:

Spoiler

I didn't have too much trouble following the instructions. I reached a bad ending and didn't retry because I didn't know if Julia could be saved, since you said that you cut a lot of the game.

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Yeah, best I could do was 1992 3D :/ I had double the resolution for some point but the fps were a bit too low... So I halved - this was a bit early in the process. (I could theoretically code a plugin to keep things prettier, but I set early a decision to not use plugins and work with AGS Script only)

I kept the rest of the game at 640x360 because I find lower resolution text hard to read, and could not pull the walk and read - honestly the best would be to have voice acting, but me not being an English speaker kinda prohibited going this route ...

The game does have two endings! I made some comments under spoiler. They aren't really spoilery for you I think, but they may be for others. The save system should help to find both.

Warning, if you are not Creamy, do not read below unless you played the game.

Spoiler

If you got to beach and managed to go up and down the mountain, then instead of listening to her, the idea is to explore the island.

There are two inventory items in the whole game, one is on the island and the other is in a cave. the game has three caves, and they are all in this last area that has the beach!

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This is really impressive! I haven't finished it yet, but I like exploring the place, it has a mysterious feeling.

I like the graphics, you can understand what's going on, but the lack of details makes your imagination wander. The "watercolour-y" palette works really well.

The biggest problem I have with the game is that sometimes is hard to understand where you can walk and where you can't. Sometimes some slopes seem walkable but they aren't, and vice versa.

Spoiler

In fact, I'm currently stuck on the top of the mountain after seeing the balloon, as I can't get down. (laugh) I'll have to retry later.

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I also had a few crashes. When loading a game after previously loading another in a different location, I got this:

Spoiler

An internal error has occurred. Please note down the following information.
If the problem persists, post the details on the AGS Technical Forum.
(ACI version 3.5.0.30)

Error: Unable to restore the saved game.
Game object initialization failed after save restoration.
Unable to recreate global script: Runtime error: cannot resolve import, key = 16843009

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But I managed to restore the save game later without a problem.

Once, when opening the game, I got this error:

Spoiler

Loading game failed with error:
Script link failed.
Runtime error: cannot resolve import, key = 185466936.

The game files may be incomplete, corrupt or from unsupported version of AGS.
---------------------------
OK   
---------------------------

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But I receive no error when opening again the game and everything seemed fine. Weird!

Yes, the game has this savegame error, it's something in the AGS savesystem I think - I am abusing it a bit, but it should work... But I couldn't figure it out - I tried using VS debugger but it got me nowhere. :/ Basically the problem is I need to read all pixels of both the heightmaps and colormaps used, but this is super slow (takes like 20 seconds, this is why there's a text intro!) so what I did is preread all maps to an array during the intro and use this array - a really big array. And reading this array often works but sometimes crashes with the invalid key error :/

Spoiler

on the top, after you have the dialog the game removes the walkable area, and then the balloon appears, which unlocks a new dialog, now theoretically it should call an event that triggers restoring the walkable area after you talk about the balloon. If it didn't, then I need to figure other way to trigger this restore or just let to the player to decide if they want to stay on top or not...  :-\

About figuring out what is and isn't a valid walkable, this is a good criticism, I couldn't really figure na way to communicate this nicely when modeling.

Walking forward with W the character should at least slide when hitting something if possible instead of fullstopping, which should make things a bit less disappointing.

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Quote from: eri0o on Thu 01/04/2021 23:24:37
I kept the rest of the game at 640x360 because I find lower resolution text hard to read, and could not pull the walk and read - honestly the best would be to have voice acting, but me not being an English speaker kinda prohibited going this route ...

Cara, você é brasileiro, né? Você fala inglês super bem! Onde mora e onde aprendeu inglês?

Acabei de jogar e gostei muito.

Every time it crashed, re-opening the game and re-opening the save always worked, so it's not too bad.
What you pulled off is really cool, especially considered that it was done in a month!

Spoiler

I finished the game! I loaded a save before the dialogue about the balloon, so I don't know if the previous time I was stuck because of a problem with the game, or just my inability. ;) This time it worked fine!

I got the bad ending, unfortunately. I'll have to retry! I did find the square object (and plugged it in), and the cave with the hidden message.

[close]

I'm at the same place Lorenzo is, I guess.

Spoiler

I've found all three caves. Took me a while to understand that the object on the beach wasn't a cave! I guess the hidden message is a hint to where I can find an object to help me past the obstacle in the third cave, and I further guess this must be somewhere in the large cave. This game is super hard, but the objectives helped. Not given up finding the second ending yet!

[close]

Amazing!

Spoiler

There's a button you may not be aware on your keyboard, it's mentioned on the Controls in the menu, it does a thing, but only in caves!

[close]

This game reminds me of some DOS-era 1st person survival games :D.

Quote from: lorenzo on Fri 02/04/2021 17:19:27
Error: Unable to restore the saved game.
Game object initialization failed after save restoration.
Unable to recreate global script: Runtime error: cannot resolve import, key = 16843009

Never seen anything like this happening in practice before. Might be interesting to investigate.

Do you still have got a save that causes this?

EDIT: ah, nevermind. I got same error after some testing. Curious thing is that it does not happen every time, same save may load or not.
Actually wonder if this is because engine runs out of memory or something... just a random guess for now.

@Crimson Wizard: It uses a renderer based on a renderer based on the Comanche renderer! It's really simple to implement, here's a quick walkthrough: https://github.com/s-macke/VoxelSpace

I think the out of RAM is a good guess on why it doesn't always happens! But it's still weird - it's not that much RAM in theory.

@Shadow1000
Mal, não vi seu comentário, rs. Eu moro no Rio de Janeiro, eu basicamente aprendi a falar inglês jogando mesmo. E na escola que estudei tinha aulas de inglês também! Basicamente isso mesmo hahaha

@lorenzo sorry I also missed your comment!

Spoiler

Lorenzo, the cave with the hidden message, it uses a keyboard key you probably haven't discovered yet, but if you load the Controls menu, it should be mentioned on bottom left, it's a key that only does something when inside a cave!

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I got the good ending!

Spoiler

Thanks for the tip!
I finally found the hidden button (control). Where is it in the Controls menu, by the way (aside from the menu's name ;))? I couldn't find it. I just spammed every key while inside the cave, until one did something... (roll)
Anyway, I liked the alternative ending. The lovely flying scene at the end was worth the extra effort!

All in all, pretty cool game. The concept could be expanded into something bigger, but it also works as it is!

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Quote from: eri0o on Fri 02/04/2021 21:08:19


@Shadow1000
Mal, não vi seu comentário, rs. Eu moro no Rio de Janeiro, eu basicamente aprendi a falar inglês jogando mesmo. E na escola que estudei tinha aulas de inglês também! Basicamente isso mesmo hahaha

Carioca! Nossa que legal!

Na verdade, sou gringo canadense e estou aprendendo português sozinho pelo aplicativos, YouTube, converso com brasileiros pelo Whats, etc. Então você está de parabéns, porque eu sei que aprender uma língua não é facil, e achei que você fosse falante nativo de inglês!

Mesmo que gostei do jogo, não quero deixar os meus comentarios agora. Quero receber o "good ending" antes :)

"Good" news is, under MSVS debug it crashes with import key error right away at game start, and at the same import index, which gives hope it may be diagnosed easier...

Anyway, I won't clutter this thread with this until actually find something useful.

Quote from: lorenzo on Fri 02/04/2021 21:53:25
I got the good ending!

+1

I am so happy you guys managed to finish it!! Thank you so much for playing hentenjon and lorenzo!!  :)

@lorenzo

Spoiler

Theoretically the game controls are mention in the menu (this menu can be found in game using Esc key too)
(https://i.imgur.com/JSCJgbX.png)

If your game doesn't have the CTRL key mention (aha!), you downloaded too soon, because it's the single thing I added (I mentioned here: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=58905.msg636634449#msg636634449 )

Anyway, doesn't matter, super happy you managed to saw the ending and liked the flying balloon!  :-D Seriously, I am super happy!

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@Shadow1000 Se algum dia quiser conversar por voz sobre qualquer coisa, apenas para praticar, seria divertido! Eu adoro seu país, minha experiência mais divertida foi passear de trailer em Banff, Jasper e arredores, inclusive devo voltar lá quando tiver vacinado... No futuro, um dia.

@Crimson Wizard Thank you so much for investigating it!

I found what's wrong. This is a bug in AGS compiler that you cannot use attributes within same script where you defined them. It does not compile this properly for some reason.
My mistake, actually I've seen this error before, but did not remember how it looks like (also it manifests differently sometimes).

You have at least few cases here:
https://github.com/ericoporto/i_rented_a_boat/blob/main/I_rented_a_boat/math3d.asc#L218 (attribute AsVec3)
https://github.com/ericoporto/i_rented_a_boat/blob/main/I_rented_a_boat/math3d.asc#L260 (Normalize)
https://github.com/ericoporto/i_rented_a_boat/blob/main/I_rented_a_boat/math3d.asc#L472 (Normalize)

After fixing this I was not able to reproduce this error.

There's also another mistake in the engine which is not critical but maybe explains why this was random, but that's less important (I will push a fix into 3.5.1 beta).

PS. I believe this is already fixed in the new script compiler by fernewelten (in ags4 branch).

@Crimson Wizard Thank you so much! I would never suspect of that! I tried a bit to fix math3d but I couldn't quite figure out, I ended up making a very trimmed down version of just Vec3 (https://github.com/ericoporto/i_rented_a_boat/commit/35a9338a07b5eda17bf4fe69274408091deccae7) that simply doesn't have this bug - I will eventually fix Math3D itself once I actually release it as a module, eventually.

Anyway, but the change did made the reset/load save error go away!  :-D

Quote from: eri0o on Fri 02/04/2021 23:09:52
@Shadow1000 Se algum dia quiser conversar por voz sobre qualquer coisa, apenas para praticar, seria divertido!

Topo! Na verdade, o seu inglês e muito melhor do que meu português. Apesar disso, eu concordo e quero praticar.

Quote
Eu adoro seu país, minha experiência mais divertida foi passear de trailer em Banff, Jasper e arredores, inclusive devo voltar lá quando tiver vacinado... No futuro, um dia.

Que legal que você conhece o Canadá! Você tem razão, tem muitos lugares bem lindos aqui. No Brasil também, com certeza...

Por entquanto, quero perdir algumas dicas, tá?

This is an impressive game.  I really like the dreamy look of it and I appreciate the source code even if I don't understand any of it.

Spoiler

Oh, yes, I had the old version of the game, that's why I couldn't find the key. (laugh) But thanks to your tip I found it anyway, so I wasn't stuck for long.

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As I said, I really enjoyed exploring the game world and solving puzzles. It was a very nice experience, I don't know how you managed to make it in a month!

This looks amazing. I will try ASAP after chapter three of the book I'm finally writing is written.

Ok I tried again and got the good ending. I'm not quite sure what happened.

Spoiler

There was a bright-coloured box outside the cave and I must have hit something because I ended up with a key on the top right (Is that inventory?) as well as a cube (I have no idea where I got that from) and the gate disappeared and I ended up in the right place to complete the game.

[close]

Anyway, I really like how this game changes how AGS can be used!

Thank so much for playing @Shadow1000

Spoiler

theoretically the cube can be gathered from the corner of the lighthouse mountain, you should be able to see it on the ground at a distance when walking up. It can then be use to open a cave where you get the key. If you got both at the same time, you may have hit Ctrl+S, which is the Debug key in AGS to get all inventory items and I left all the debug on because I forgot to disable - you can even Ctrl+x to jump between levels and get stuck outside of a walkable area.

[close]

Thanks also @Mandle and @newwaveburritos for the positive comments and @lorenzo for also playing it!

Someone played and recorded the game in Game Jolt too - they got the bad ending though, but it's alright!
https://youtu.be/gJKY2fz7cfQ

Oh, and I also put the game on my Gamejolt and Itch.io pages:

https://eri0o.itch.io/i-rented-a-boat
https://gamejolt.com/games/i_rented_a_boat/603677

Very nice game!
I liked the general ambience of it and was pretty gutted when I got the bad ending; luckily I tried it again and got the good ending, made my day. :-D
Also interesting render technique, quite good you managed to pull that off with just scripts. :)

I do wonder

Spoiler

What is the mysterious cube-shaped device?
And who is B?
Did they lock Julie in there?

[close]

Ah, yes those are kinda of leftovers of what I had in mind for the actual ending

well, after watching a gazillion videos about room and old school first person shooters trying to see if someone had made like a non-shooter on them, or something, at the "research phase" of the game development I had .. eth.. ideas...

Spoiler

what if I make a non-shooter that turns out it's a shooter? So the idea was once you got to where Julie is, you Jim, get shot, player control switches to Julie and turns out balloon dude is her arch enemy and you be able to walk around the mountains shooting him and his transformed vehicle in the middle of the screen.

But in the end I underestimated a lot the work in art this would take, and it was not feasible in time for MAGS even though was feasible in script, by lowering drawing distance and throwing some clouds to hide it, it was possible to get a ton of fps to make it fun. In the end it was not artistically possible so I tried to made the ending balloon trip at least more frantic to show that it was possible. :P

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Quote from: eri0o on Thu 08/04/2021 17:06:39

Spoiler

what if I make a non-shooter that turns out it's a shooter? So the idea was once you got to where Julie is, you Jim, get shot, player control switches to Julie and turns out balloon dude is her arch enemy and you be able to walk around the mountains shooting him and his transformed vehicle in the middle of the screen.

But in the end I underestimated a lot the work in art this would take, and it was not feasible in time for MAGS even though was feasible in script, by lowering drawing distance and throwing some clouds to hide it, it was possible to get a ton of fps to make it fun. In the end it was not artistically possible so I tried to made the ending balloon trip at least more frantic to show that it was possible. :P

[close]

Spoiler

Haha, that explains some of the weird things found in the game! The twist would've been pretty cool to see.
In the end, though, I like the way it came out. I like that it's a simpler, more "normal" story. Getting lost in an unknown place is scary enough, without having to shoot. ;)

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(https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ericoporto/i_rented_a_boat/main/docs/post/00_open.png)

Hi,

I decided to talk a bit about how the maps got made in this game! I did this game during late nights, and my interaction with it was me using headphones and a bright screen.

(https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ericoporto/i_rented_a_boat/main/docs/post/01_theme.png)(https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ericoporto/i_rented_a_boat/main/docs/post/02_first_design.png)

Slasher and Racoon have set a good theme for this MAGS. The Journey game imagery compelled me to experiment with the idea of something on the horizon that you would walk to and a bit with the idea of feeling small.

I pick Firewatch Talkie as a way to avoid having to draw sprites for the characters, that could also not blend well with the world, and that the world had to be on an island to work in time constraint - the island would give me "natural" walls. On the same day, I saw by coincidence a little guide on Voxel Space engine on GitHub, and it felt reasonably simple to put it up together. Finally, one of my favorite games was Proteus, which had simple colors and gameplay, so I thought I could get away if I had to simplify drawing a lot.

I did this design about obelisks at a distance, and you would had this walk talkie which would need you to collect batteries, so I threw up a super tiny prototype of the idea and showed it to a close friend. He told me it was trash, but he had this idea of a radio tower and you finding a signal opposite to it so that you would walk away instead of close to it. In my head, the aesthetic was reverse Dear Esther, and I liked the little idea.

So at this point, I decided I would make a game where you are on this island with a radio that can pick up signals. I think about how I want the game to work:

• you walk in basically 2D space,
• go to a destination you see at a distance,
• find a goal,
• reach a dead-end,
• backtrack,
• and then you go to an open area where the game can happen.

(https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ericoporto/i_rented_a_boat/main/docs/post/03_geomorph.png)(https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ericoporto/i_rented_a_boat/main/docs/post/04_terresculptor.png)

To make this, I need tools, so my first tool is the software geomorph, it's only available for Linux, and it allows drawing a heightmap while seeing a preview of it in 3D at the same time. Other heightmap tools I found worked with automatic generation of environment, and this was the only tool that I found to handmade things. I made all maps in it first.

Next, I used a tool called TerreSculptor, in which I would use two features: generating a colorset bitmap from a heightmap and previewing a heightmap with a colormap in 3D.

The colorset generated bitmaps would be the base environments which I would then use Krita to draw on top to create the textures, like the river, the little tree/bushes, some tracks in the grass, and so on.

(https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ericoporto/i_rented_a_boat/main/docs/post/05_krita_brushes.png)(https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ericoporto/i_rented_a_boat/main/docs/post/07_gmic.png)

Krita was my main tool when sculpting the maps! Using its interesting brushes and layers, I would test where to place each thing, rendering on TerreSculptor, and much more often, on AGS itself, because I had to walk around and feel the level.

These steps were figured out in the first week of development, with AGS Room Editor repurposed so I could iterate and test ideas.

In the first weekend, I managed to send a build to Heltenjon, with only the first area working. It takes forever for GetPixel to happen, so I throw a CYOA intro just so the games load while you play it - I don't remember if this was already in the first build I sent out. Heltenjon returns to me super quickly, and his main criticism (beyond the game still making no sense) is that the render looks too crap. I tune it until it appears a little more normal, sends him a new build (I think Sunday?), and then he answers me back that this render is a bit more alright. Good, I can work on my game to finish now. I also send MorganW a build, and he gives me input on the CYOA bits as the actual game, which I would try to address - originally, all characters had the same font, text position, and the colors were more similar and this was confusing.

After looking a lot at the first Journey image, I want to put the following experience in the game:

• You hear about a thing.
• You see the thing in a distance.
• You walk towards it and get a reward once you reach it.

And the thing is the lighthouse mountain, and the reward is verticality or the view.

(https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ericoporto/i_rented_a_boat/main/docs/post/06_spiral_mountain.png)

Drawing and testing the position of the mountain ate a week of development. It had to feel natural to walk up the mountain. In the end, a spiral shape gave me an experience that felt like flying down the hill in A Short Hike - and also, this gave me the idea of making the sky that changes with height.

By now, I start to work with sound. I make so that waves sound closer to water are louder and that going upwards on the mountain makes the world quieter - so you wait in silence for the balloon. And I use math from Zelda Wind Waker water to use in the game water. By now, it's half of the MAGS, and I have different interesting experiences but need to make a game.

(https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ericoporto/i_rented_a_boat/main/docs/post/08_aseprite.png)(https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ericoporto/i_rented_a_boat/main/docs/post/09_ags.png)

So I alternate between polishing the colors and colormap in Krita and placing the final puzzle elements using Aseprite. I also used Aseprite to do detailed corrections in the heightmap.

During the third week, I want to project sprites, have ideas with FPS mechanics, and frantically watch Duke Nuken and Doom Engine videos, but I go nowhere. I make the game menus and the title screen to pass the time. The sprite projection code ends up being a concise ten-line code, and I can't find a good way to deal with z-ordering without butchering frames.

Last week now, I added the final puzzle elements on the island, have both ends, and send a build to Heltenjon. He asks me about adding an objectives interface and can't finish the gameâ€"too little time to work on geometries now. I finish up the writing on the story, wrap up tweaking the ending scene, and finish the game. It was a weird pace of development, but it was done and felt like a game.

Time to work on a new game!

Very impressive glance behind the wizard's curtains. It's fun and interesting both to see how it's done and how the testers' input fits into it.

That's a very interesting look into how you did things. Thanks for sharing.

Hi! When the 3d enviroment start, the camera is constantly rotating to the left, is this normal? I can walk and look here and there, but always the camera is rotanting to the left against my mouse's movement.

Hey @javixblack, that's not normal, no. Can you give me some information about how are you playing the game? Maybe I could try to reproduce and figure out why it happens for you.

The experience should be moving the mouse moves the camera and not moving the mouse doesn't move the camera.

Amazing work! Also thanks for the insight on the production process.

I need a hint for the good ending, though:

Spoiler

I opened the cave with the message, but I can't find a key for the door. I searched the caves with or without light, accidentally running into the balloon area :-\

[close]

Quote from: cat on Fri 11/03/2022 21:18:19
I need a hint for the good ending, though:

Spoiler

I opened the cave with the message, but I can't find a key for the door. I searched the caves with or without light, accidentally running into the balloon area :-\

[close]

I'm not sure if I remember this correctly now months later, but

Spoiler

how does the message look like without light?

[close]

Quote from: cat on Fri 11/03/2022 21:18:19
Amazing work! Also thanks for the insight on the production process.

I need a hint for the good ending, though:

Spoiler

I opened the cave with the message, but I can't find a key for the door. I searched the caves with or without light, accidentally running into the balloon area :-\

[close]

I am really happy you played! :D Not sure I am good in the business of hints, let's see if this works...

Spoiler

the cave with the message holds the key, but you need to look around.

[close]

I completed it, thanks! Nice ending animation  :)

A few comments about the game:

Spoiler

I'm not used to this genre so it took me a bit to get customized to walking around, orientation and what to do. I think it's a nice idea to start in a somewhat restricted "tutorial" area, the radio calls helped to understand what to do next.
I also took a bit until I figured out that the radio had to get 3 bars and that dot for being able to transmit. I thought I might need more bars.

I loved the visual direction of the player, the radio tower, the parted looking mountains you had to go through to reach the first cave. The mechanics to reveal the other branch of the cave was genius. It also helped that green was where I could walk and the other colours meant it was too steep.

The lighthouse mountain looks gorgeous in your map rendering in this thread, but it looked a bit weird when approaching it. I easily found the spiral to the top. When walking, I was afraid to fall down  :-D (I only read afterwards that there is a walkable area along the path). Walking down was very difficult for me, because I couldn't look down as much as I wanted. I had to walk in circles several rounds before I found the entry to the path down.

The good ending was interesting with the interactions, but it would have been better to include a few of those element in the regular game play. I was not too fond of the box to open stuff and the flying key, it felt out of place since the rest of the story was realistic (and still creepy enough).

I found a bug: sometimes ESC wouldn't work. Not sure why, a bit later the menu would suddenly appear on/off/on/off quickly and afterwards it worked again to bring it up

A great game, fantastic what you managed to do in AGS.

[close]

Thank you so much for playing cat!! I am happy you got through! I agree with a lot of topics of what you said! I have just one comment to add.

Spoiler

The controls mostly sucks, outside of other reasons, because you can't look up and down, only to the sides. Why is that? I could not figure out the math for looking up and down! Going down the mountain was supposed to be more cathartic but that just got annoying because the controls sucked...

I tried a bunch of ideas, but it never worked. There's even a comment in the code (https://github.com/ericoporto/i_rented_a_boat/blob/main/I_rented_a_boat/PlayerBehavior.asc#L150), basically the sprites like the balloon, the radio tower, the key or the door, all went berserk when I tried to make them move up and down with the head and I ended up giving up - so I comment the code out and went on. :P

[close]

QuoteThe controls mostly sucks, outside of other reasons, because you can't look up and down, only to the sides.

The controls are not so bad. You couldn't do that either in the original Wofenstein or Doom games and nobody complained :P   

Well this was something different. I needed some moments to get into the concept. After that I have to say it's impressive to make something like this in AGS. I wouldn't know where to start to try and understand how you made this.
So yeah, graphics are complicated: they don't look the same from far and then up close and it's even more complicated when moving while everything is like being calculating and somehow glitchy; you explained it's a resolution thing so I get it and it's still impressive.

I am completely stunned by how you managed to create this little game in AGS.
So many questions and no words. Well, stunned like for three rounds. (laugh)
So, just wait, they're coming :P

Also, based on what I read on this topic about the game experience with all the puzzles,  I feel like i had an unexpected way out (I know there are multiple endings - perhaps I found the easy one :P )

Spoiler

I went through the cave to the lake (I contacted her twice) , then back to the valley and right down the river, climbed the mountain and then I saw the balloon so i went back to the valley and then voilà. I got out. So no puzzle solving, nothing but just running to places. I'm telling you because don't know if this one is one of the supposed possible endings  :P

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Thanks Rik_Varguard! The game source code (on GitHub) is linked in the first post if you are interested. :)

Spoiler

about the ending, the game has an additional one. It also has three caves and two usable inventory items. So if you found and used all that, you will get the additional one!

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Quote from: eri0o on Mon 14/03/2022 17:31:33
Thanks Rik_Varguard! The game source code (on GitHub) is linked in the first post if you are interested. :)

Spoiler

about the ending, the game has an additional one. It also has three caves and two usable inventory items. So if you found and used all that, you will get the additional one!

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Yeah and it was, as expected, way above my understanding. (laugh)

Buuut (!!!) There was that one line that I understood and that made me discover that you can activate and deactivate hotspots (and so I tried regions) and it all works.
Just for that, it's a win, a new "tool" that I can use to spice things up.

So just for that one: Thanks a lot for sharing the source code! (nod)

Wow, playing your game was amazing experience! So far, I got only the first ending, but I've stumbled upon some weird stuff as well, so I think I have an idea where to start for the next playthrough.  :)

Things that made it harder for me:

• The flickering of the scene while moving: I get that it's probably unavoidable, but it still made my head hurt a bit.
• The unability of looking up or down: it made the descent from the hill a bit harder, and it could make exploring feel more natural.

The stuff I love about the game:

• The 3D environment together with the color choice: it made the whole experience feel like being in a dream.
• The sound: sometimes it tends to be overlooked (often by me when I'm working on something  :-D ), but it's such a cruical part of the atmosphere! Even the fact that you don't hear any voice, just the different sounds of footsteps, adds to the dreamy atmosphere. Also the attention to detail - I've only realized the change of the sound on top of the hill after reading about it here, it just felt so natural.
• The sea is beautiful. And the combination of the sound of the waves together with the animation!