Edge of Reality (Greatest RON game ever)

[Afflict]

Yeah and hes long and (I said stop it! - Ed)

[Matt Damon]

So, as a famous actor, I get a lot of emails from crazed fans with guns, and every once in a while a  crazed gun with a fan.  Usually electric.

In my latest email, I was asked by bspeers, a man I have no affinity for to post some more info about Edge of Reality.

Basically, he said he's finally pushing it to the end-point because he's tired of it weighing on his soul as an unfinished baby, like a man waiting to release his (right, that's it, I'm off -- ed).  There are many features that will be incomplete, but none are even  remotely important to the game, they're just extras that turned out to be wayy too much of a hassle.  Like the helicopter dogfight we originally had in Good Will Hunting--just not worth it.

There are 2 endings, however, and within the second ending, there will soon be another few sub-endings.  Like when you agree to join the Dragonlord in Dragon Warrior, only more metafictional.  There will also be a few slight graphics tweaks, but only a few, and most will take place after the demo most people saw.  Or Saw II, which I wasn't in.  Actually, ignore that, as there will be so few it barely merits mentioning.

Most bugs are being stamped out, but there are a few due to the fact that the game cannot be upgraded (especially once the graphical scripts were removed) to different AGS versions (some bugs actually come in when the game is upgraded, ones he can't fix).  So most of the bugs are specific to AGS at the time.  For example, sometimes the game crashes on NewRoom--he's trying to hunt down why, but suspects it might just be a problem related to memory issues from the old version.  It might also have to do with how he stores ints as well.  Also, sometimes the colours cycle oddly, but the problem disappears when you save, quit and load the game again--it's not permenant.

All these are fairly minor, but are being worked on.  In the mean time, the crashes that used to plague the game are now stamped out, as new content creates new ones (yay!).

Right now, the stats are as so: 

5907 lines in Global script
2707 lines in one currently unfinished mini-game
152 items - the maximum I think is 99, but he used scripting to get around this.  Admittedly, 15 of them or so are cheeses.
1712 Sprites - A piddly number considering.  Shows the depth of animation
177 Views - There will only be about 180 so it's coming along.
Around 52 characters or so.  50 or 49 is the max, but there are a number of simple scripting tricks to make more characters, about two repeats to simplify things (like a character that appears in two places at different resolutions for room navigation reasons), and a few dummies for various reasons.
55 dialogue topics each with numerous options-- I know this doesn't sound like a lot, but the editor crashes (violently) every time he adds even one more line in the dialog section, so he must have reached an internal limit of topics or lines or something.  To compensate, a lot of lines have been scripted in, but in some cases, this was not possible, or just too time consuming.
204 Room files - This was one area he originally overestimated.  Of these, only about 130 or so will be playable, not 150 as was originally claimed.  By the end, there should be about 230 rooms, but some towards the end won't be very active.  That leaves about 100 rooms for cutscenes, close-ups, menu screens, and technical purposes, including credits.

So, overall, from this earlier version of AGS he breaks 3 or 4 limits.

Is the game good?  After all, a long game is nothing without quality content.

My sources say no.  Not really.

-Matt Damon

[Mr Flibble]

Maaaaaaaaatt Daaaaaaaamon 

[sergiocornaga]

Egad! What's the file size looking like at the moment?

[Dave Gilbert]

Yay!  Edge of Reality.  How awesome that this is back in the works.  I beta tested the full version back in 2002 and I remember it being wicked awesome.   

I'm willing to continue testing where I left off, bspeers.  I think I even have our original email dialogs about the bugs.

[Czar]

About the trailer, it sucks....


I hope i have your attention now. It doesn't really suck, actually it is awesome, but i forgot, from where is that orch. theme. Final fantasy? I just can't remember.


Peace.