Diamonds in the Rough by Atropos Studios (ALMOST THERE NOW!)

[CosmoQueen]

WOW :o This game is going to be FANTASTIC!!!

[Clustered]

Hi,Alkis really looking forward to your new game,i know it's a lot of work, but of all the games i have played otherworlds stands out and i , was completely immersed in the storyline .diamonds looks great graphically and your work is inspiring me to create a game of my own thanks for your help when i got in a corner with otherworlds it was appreciated ,and when i work on myÃ,  new game would you mind if i came to youÃ,  if i need advice thanks

[alkis21]

You can come to me for advice anytime! Although many members know a lot more about AGS than I do, I can give you my opinion on pretty much everything else (story, characters, puzzles etc.). Not that I am the ultimate expert in those, of course.

[accolyte]

Wow, this looks amazing, much better graphics than in "Other Worlds". (I have to admit i didn,t finish it because of that typing-quiz, ahem .) This seems like a really ambitious project which I think quite a many people would pay money for (me included.) Good luck on the project.  

[Ariadne]

Alkis, Nikolas,
any game made with you guys working together is definitely going to be great!
The graphics in the new posts are excellent, much better than the first ones (I agreed with etchersketcher 100%) and the story looks very intriguing!
And I also love the name of your company - Atropos***! Very very good! And I loved the "Nothing adventured Nothing gained" on your website! It's not an easy decision to make your own company, so all I can say is
Καλή επιτυχία!

P.S. Πολύ θα το ήθελα να είχες και πάλι κάποιον Έλληνα «πρωταγωνιστή». Η Ναταλία και ο Άλκης έκαναν να νιώσω το Other Worlds «δικό μου»!




*** For those who aren't familiar with Greek Mythology, Atropos was one of the three Fates.

[alkis21]

One more interview for anyone who wants to read a bit more guys, it's in the Mystery Manor forum.

The interview features two new, exclusive screenshots, and the site is offering two free copies of DITR to their members.

EDIT To accolyte:

I can help you with that typing quiz if you're still interested, send me a PM.

[alkis21]

Dear friends,

Two samples of the game's music are now available in the web page of Atropos Studios.

Visit this page to listen to them. Your feedback will be appreciated.

I would also like you to know that the official demo of the game will be available on July 1st.

[Vince Twelve]

Some more excellent stuff from Nik!  Looking forward to the demo.

[SinSin]

That is some of the most impressive music I have heard, Alkis loads of luck with the game it looks immense. Although I don't like 3D generally this looks set to change my mind, lets hope so

Keep on trucking

Sin

[coldwater]

Looks really great!!! Like nothing I've ever seen on AGS. Can't wait.

Oh yeah, is this game going to be freeware, or are you charging money for it?

[alkis21]

Dear friends,

I'm glad to announce that a fully playable demo of Diamonds in the Rough is available at Atropos Studios.

Enjoy!

[GarageGothic]

I don't have time to play the demo through now, but here are some first impressions:

The intro narrative - great. You have my attention from the very first line. It does get a bit talky towards the end, but it's one of the most exciting setups for a game I've seen in a long time.

The interface - I don't really like it. The letter icons are not quite as intuitive as graphical icons, one way of improving this would be to have the "hotspot identifier" part of the icon bar tell you what they mean, as you move the mouse over the icons. Also, PLEASE implement mousewheel support to scroll through the mouse cursors. It's always a pain to click one time too much and have to start all over. With the mousewheel, you could just scroll back one. A very nice surprise was the highlighting of exits when you press TAB. I have a similar feature in my game though it also shows hotspots.

Edit: I just found out about the hotkeys for selecting cursors - nice touch.

The thought interface - I find it slightly tedious to use for conversation, something that was also the case with the notebook in Dagger of Amon Ra. But I'm sure that it will work great for gameplay - The Shivah and Blackwell Legacy proved that to me, even though I was rather annoyed with the implementation in Discworld Noir. A small point, which can be argued since there's also the inventory to get the current thought from, is that it would be nice if the cursor changed to the current thought after selecting one and exiting the thoughts screen. I think it currently defaults to the hand icon.

The graphics - Animation is a bit stiff as can be expected from Poser characters, but overall the look is very professional. There's something off about the perspective in the street screen (not the building exterior), but I can't really put a finger on it.

Voice acting - Very nice. I've only seen the intro and had a short dialog with Sydelle, but all voices were appropriate to their characters (the main character also sounds more like a teenager than he looks it - I would never had guessed from the graphics that he was only 20).

Great work. I look forward to having some time to actually play the demo.

EDIT: Ah, so I played the demo through, and as it turns out there wasn't much more to it than I'd already seen. I can't say that the single puzzle changed my first impressions much. To be honest it doesn't make much sense that...

Spoiler

... a person tells you straight out about a problem they're having, yet you have to combine two thoughts for this topic to appear. I'm also wondering - is the nightmare about the demons just an in-joke, or does the story have actual connections to Other Worlds?

[close]

[dunnoson]

I would like to offer my services if you need any help

I would also like to beta-test if possible

[alkis21]

Site is down at the moment as I exceeded my bandwidth!  :o Apparently too many people were interested in download it.. I'm trying to fix this, I'll let you know when I do.

EDIT: The site is back up and the file was moved to a different server so everything should be OK now!

[nemis]

OK you used POser for Character but
What do you use to make background graphics?

[Darth Mandarb]

nemis - please do not make a habit of digging up threads.  This doesn't break the rules, but please read them before you dig up anymore threads.

[alkis21]

I'm happy to announce that our game is almost complete. It is currently in the last testing stages, and it is expected to be released in March.

In the meantime, Atropos Studios in association with the popular web site of your beloved genre, Just Adventure, is offering three complimentary copies of the game. More information can be found in this web page.

[Nikolas]

Hello all!

Just wanted to resurface this little thread back on top.

I don't how to go about speaking about a game I work on, so I'll try to keep it short and stick to the facts (as much as possible).

All the team, graphic artists, musicians, the coder's wife , beta-testers of course, were unaware of the ending of the game. This is due to the way that Alkis works. So, finally, last week we all got our hands on the full game! It is 99.9% (would never say 100%, unless it was already released) and well, I was shocked and amazed, as I believe all beta-testers were as well, from the story!

I don't know about release dates, or anything towards that, I'm not responsible to any of these things, but since Alkis, mentioned March, and since the game *IS* 99.9% complete, I'd say that March is spot on. For further details you will need to ask him.

I'm quite proud to be a part of the dev team and I'll leave it to this, I think.

[CosmoQueen]

Awesome! I can't wait!

[Rd27]

I just played the demo through and here are my thoughts:

- The graphics looks great, but I don't really like the characters. Jason's walking animation looks pretty bad, I hope this will be better in the final release.

- Also there could be more animation from the characters. Idle animations and when they talk I didn't see any animation from them, expect that the mouths were moving .

- The toughts thing is very nice. It did take a little time to me to understand it, but it is nice feature.

- I like the story, it really makes me wanting to play this game.

I remember from previous posts that you and your team are doing hard work to get the characters and animations better so i'm sure the final release is going to be much better (?).

Looking forward to this anyway!! Good luck!