Dick LaRenzo: DEMO AVAILABLE (UPDATED 09-10-05)

[Kal-El]

UPDATED: 9th OCTOBER 2005!!!

Just thought I'd let you all know, the game is back in production.

You'll have to COPY the shortcut into the browser window:

DEMO is available again - http://larenzo.web1000.com/setup.exe
SPEECH pack is available here too - http://larenzo.web1000.com/speech.zip










FEBRUARY 2004

Hi guys, I have been visiting this board for over a year now and have decided to join considering I have been working on a game for the last 7 months, lol.

The game, titled 'Dick LaRenzo: Secret Agent!' is my first attempt at a game and is a comedy adventure based around the title character.

LaRenzo is a failed Detective, probably due to his lack of forgetting-to-think-before-he-opens-his-mouth tactics. This leads to him retiring.

However, when he receives a strange telephone call from out of the blue he is thrown into a world of murder, betrayal, love and international film stars. Dick finally has a case...

The game is about 80% complete.

Any feedback would be much appreciated.

P.S. I think this board is great!

[Darth Mandarb]

Either my 'net connection is running slow, or you win the award for slowest server of all time!  

But the screens look good!  I really like the menu screen!

*eagerly awaiting a playable demo*

dm

[Kal-El]

Thankyou Darth!

Yeah I think the server is a tad slow, sorry about that but thankyou for the kind compliments!

Your pal, Daz.

[danny*]

works fine for me!
Love the screens!!
looking good!

[Timosity]

looks excellent

welcome aboard

[remixor]

Your art is great!  Make sure to keep us updated with your progress  

[Kal-El]

Cheers Danny, Timosity, remixor.

I will keep you updated as often as I possible can  

I hope the majority of you have a broadband connection as the .exe file alone is currently 35.5MB. Also with the optional VOX pack coming in at a hefty 49.8MB this is clearly quite a big game, in terms of both gameplay and filesize.

The game is loaded with FLI cutaway scenes and interactive characters.

However, as I said, I will surely let you all know when a possible demo download is online! Thanks once again for your kind compliments!

Take care, your pal, Daz.

[wOoDz]

the game looks great, some nice touches 8)
and aint broadband great too, downloading is no problem,,,, it'll be finding somewhere to put game lol

looks great can't wait to see the game
tc woodz

[Eero]

Yeah, it's great!

[Kal-El]

Ok, I'm gonna announce a release date for 'Dick LaRenzo: Secret Agent!'. I know this is usually a silly thing to do because you can guarantee as soon as I do the damn game will encounter around 50 bugs all at once, lol.

But I'm currently designing the final stage of the game and with the way I've been progressing, I'd say it'll be ready for around June time.

Cheerz once again guys!

Your pal, Daz.

[Nacho]

I am not happy with you attitude Darren! One year in AGS and first post today?  

I'd like to encourage all the people to join the forum, your game looks supperb. I'll download asap. Good luck in your race to AGS awards.

[Kal-El]

Farlander, I agree, my attitude is totally screwed-up, lol.

Funny thing is, now I HAVE joined the forums, for some strange reason it seems to make me more confident. God knows why, lol.

It's probably me just talking rubbish again, lol.

Your pal, Daz.

[Kal-El]

Just to keep you updated:

I'm not going to release a demo now considering the game will be completed in the next month or thereabouts. It's currently in the final stages. There's just a few more characters to have a voice added to them and a few more rooms and it'll be done.

I'll be sure to post a link when it's complete.

Your pal, Daz.

[Hobbes]

WOW.

This game looks fabulous!

Best of luck with it.

[Kal-El]

Thanks for the kind words Hobbes!

Your pal, Daz.

[Kal-El]

Hi guys!

Thought I'd better give you all an update with the 'Dick LaRenzo: Secret Agent!' situation!

The game is STILL going ahead. I know I said it would be completed by June time or thereabouts but it's taking a little longer than I imagined.

Since I upgraded to the latest version of AdventureGame Studio it compiles the game but insists that my graphics card is incapable of dealing with the resolutions it's set at. Strange considering it worked before so I'm waiting for an update to see if that sorts it.

In the meantime though I've been designing some more artwork and getting the voices out of the way so it hasn't been a complete waste of time really.

I've also uploaded the screenshots to a different server:

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/shrine/larenzo.htm

I promise to still keep you all informed.

Take care, your pal, Daz.

[Kal-El]

Ok, I've finished an extremely lengthy fully-playable demo for you all.

However, I need atleast 70MB of webspace to host it. Does anyone know where I can get this amount of free webspace from?

Your pal, Daz.

[evilspacefart]

whoah! that's a huge download man! why so big filesize? is it avi's?
are you using 16bit (hi color) palette?

if your using 16bit (hi-color) try this:

right click and save the picture below as a bitmap BMP.


palette.gif

load your game in ags.
go to palette screen and set game to 256 color.
select a range of slots (select the first open color slot and hold down shift to choose the last slot)
uncheck this color is room dependant.
select import slots from file. select the palette BMP. (you should now have colors in some slots. leave the remaining slots as room dependant.)

the hard part - you might have to re-import your graphics in sprite manager. you might also have to decrease their color depth to 256 color (8-bit) first.

this will, however, reduce that 70mb filesize to a more manageable amount.

just a suggestion.   hope it helps, i know i hated palettes before i used this wierd procedure.

[Kal-El]

Hi Evilspacefart,

The game is 256 colours. The reason it's so big is because compiled into the main executable is a lot of WAV files.

I know the filesize is big but it's the way the game had to be to achieve the level of professionalism I wanted.

Fair enough, it's not really good for narrow-band users but for broadband it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

By the way, that palette tip you just gave is a great little idea! I'll make note of that! Thanks!

Your pal, Daz.

[Timosity]

Is it a problem to convert the wavs, to mp3 or ogg files to reduce the size. That won't make any noticable difference in the sound.

I've got broadband but still have a download limit per month so 100MB per day is about all I can download, to ration my bandwidth to last out a month.

lots of people round here have broadband, but most probably have dial-ups, so it will limit the audience.

EDIT: Also, are the wav files for sound effects, music and voice or something, if so, Have the music.vox and speech.vox as separate downloads, that will decrease the download size considerably, so people can at least play the game.

Human ears can't really tell the difference between a WAV and a 192kbit MP3, especially on the sound systems most people have on their machines, even something less than 128kbit is hard to tell on most peoples machines.