Heartland Deluxe (Ver 1.1 Available Now!)

Started by LimpingFish, Wed 22/11/2006 00:43:01

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LimpingFish

LimpingFish Presents:

HEARTLAND DELUXE

The...deluxe...version of my OROW game Heartland.

"David Lawson, reporter, goes to the apartment of R J Coombs, local nut and all-round weirdo, after Coombs leaves a note for him at the offices of the City Pursuer newspaper. Upon arriving, Lawson finds Coombs is missing and sets about piecing together the clues he finds in the apartment."




Update 24th November 2006

Version 1.1 is now available and includes...

* Added player aid to the lock puzzle.
* Cutscenes can now be skipped (press 'esc' or right mouse button).
* Problems with location of phone fixed.
* Added alternative inventory combinations.
* Added error messages for player.
* Changed GUI (moved Inventory button to centre of screen).

For now it's only available from the download mirror (FileFront) :).

EDIT: Yes, FileFront is a bit of a drag. If you're having any problems with downloading from FileFront, try enabling cookies in your browers and trying again. ;)


Not a problem any more, thanks to Vince Twelve. Use the main Download link now, the mirror is FileFront.




Although greatly improved( :P) over its first incarnation, Heartland Deluxe is still an OROW game at...heart...and as such is still fairly short.

I don't think it contains any bugs, but with my crappy scripting anything is possible.

Unfortunately, it's only available to download from FileFront, which some people have expressed problems downloading from. It seems you might need to have cookies enabled for the download to work. Sorry about that, but I'm trying to find a better host as we speak.

Thanks to Vince Twelve, FileFront is no longer the only option!

You'll find the download link (use the main one, the mirror is FileFront) on the AGS games page here.

Screenies...






Steam: LimpingFish
PSN: LFishRoller
XB: TheActualLimpingFish
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Vince Twelve

#1
Alternate hosting if you need it.  I can leave this up as long as you'd like.

http://games.thexiis.com/files/HD/Heartland_Deluxe.exe

Looks great so far!

LimpingFish

Wow, thanks Vince. :D

I'll make the changes on the games page.
Steam: LimpingFish
PSN: LFishRoller
XB: TheActualLimpingFish
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thewalrus

     Awesome! I'm so excited that the game has been released!!! Cheers to you, my friend!!! Am d/ling now but will play tomorrow (it's really late here)......
Thewalrus

Goo, goo, ga, joob!!!

"Sitting on a cornflake, waiting for the van to come!"

Ubel

Yay, you finished it Fish! :D I've been waiting for this!

I played it a bit and it's soooo much better than the original. It's very interesting so I must play it more. The panorama effect works really well, great job there Steve!

The music and the graphics are top quality. This is definitely one of the graphically best looking AGS games released this year. I also really like how you've made those cutscenes with a little different style than the rest of the game is, using hand drawn images. And the story keeps me interested so this whole game is just wonderful.

Great job Fish! :D

Rui 'Trovatore' Pires

Very good stuff, though finding the phone was a confounded pixel-hunt for me.

Am I right in assuming this is part of a larger story (the "vignette from WOUND" thing)? Tell me I am, please! I'd really like to see more of this story.
Reach for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.

Kneel. Now.

Never throw chicken at a Leprechaun.

Mordalles

really enjoyed the game.  ;) the sketches were really well drawn, and i like that pixelly/noisy effect in the game. and the backgrounds were great, and some nice lighting effects (title screen). thanks.
the screen tends to rotate away when trying to click on the inventory, so moving the button a bit towards the center will help.  ;D

"It's a fairy! She's naked! Curse these low-res graphics!" - Duty and Beyond

Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens

Nice, now finish the story ;).

Afflict

Looks good, I am downloading it now. Will check it out, are the BG's ripped?

EKM

The graphics look awesome. I like the style. I'm gonna download it now.

Erenan

<--- Excited to be about to be downloading.
The Bunker

Ubel

I finished it! Sequel please! I want more! :)

LimpingFish

Thanks everyone. I'm glad people have enjoyed it. :)

I'll try to answer some of your questions...

Quote from: Rui "Trovatore" Pires on Wed 22/11/2006 10:57:36
Very good stuff, though finding the phone was a confounded pixel-hunt for me.

Am I right in assuming this is part of a larger story (the "vignette from WOUND" thing)? Tell me I am, please! I'd really like to see more of this story.

The room was rendered before I actually put in the gui, and it was only then that I noticed that the phone was partially obscured. I plan to rectifiy this in an updated version soon. As for the story, Heartland is just a small part of the backstory from "Wound", a much larger game which starts pretty much where Heartland ends, so hopefully the weirdness in Heartland will make sense once the whole story is told. :)

Quote from: Afflict on Wed 22/11/2006 16:39:33
Looks good, I am downloading it now. Will check it out, are the BG's ripped?

Nope, all my own work. :)
The current room is a expansion of the background that I made for the original OROW version, and really came about as a demo background for Steve McCrea's fantastic Panorama module. I liked the results so much, that I decided to base HD's gameplay around it.

Thanks again for the comments, everyone.  :)

Steam: LimpingFish
PSN: LFishRoller
XB: TheActualLimpingFish
Spotify: LimpingFish

jetxl

You could change the volume of the sound when the player spins around, so you can hear where the phone is.

Talking about unclear puzzles: The lock puzzle, wtf.

Rui 'Trovatore' Pires

I completely agree with Jet on both points. I forgot about the lock puzzle because I happened to stumble onto the solution quite soon... but ayuh, wtf indeed.
Reach for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.

Kneel. Now.

Never throw chicken at a Leprechaun.

LimpingFish

#15
Lock puzzle solution...
Spoiler
.|.|..|
[close]
[/s]

Sorry, wrong thread :P

But yeah, I hold my hand up for making the lock puzzle too obtuse. :(

It's being fixed as we type :D
Steam: LimpingFish
PSN: LFishRoller
XB: TheActualLimpingFish
Spotify: LimpingFish

thewalrus

     So another words, there is a lot more to come???
Thewalrus

Goo, goo, ga, joob!!!

"Sitting on a cornflake, waiting for the van to come!"

Mel_O_Die

very great job!

i ordinary prefer 3rd person games but this one (and it's fantastic mccrea's module) is really great

i loved the athmosphere, the room design and music :)

it's reminds me a little the room in silent hill 4 in 1st person view

i finished this sort game in two time, the first one i try i was locked on the wardrobe's locker :D but the second time i found the tip to unlock it with the use of binary counting:
Spoiler
starting with 000001 and 000010, 000011,0000100 etc. until the unlock sound :)
[close]

congratulations!
----( )----
Click to see "In Production" Topic!
[/color][/b][/url]

Vince Twelve

#18
Oops, LimpingFish (and everyone else looking to download), I moved the file to http://games.thexiis.com/files/HD/Heartland_Deluxe.exe because the server that I put it on was already close to the bandwidth limit.  This server is the one that I should have put it on in the first place.  Could you update the link on the game's page?

LimpingFish

Steam: LimpingFish
PSN: LFishRoller
XB: TheActualLimpingFish
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Nikolas

Yes.

It's time I tell you that it's a great little game. The lock is now fixed (although found it by trial and error), and it was a pity every post ocntaining remarks on the lock puzzle. Not anymore though :D Probably because the game was of such high quality that the lock puzzle was dissapointing.

The game rocks!

The story is great and I'm looking forward for the next episode, or full story, or whatever.

The graphics were great (well well done), and the same goes for the music, which you wrote as I saw in the credits! The song, ok, but the other small tracks were really great, and for once I saw a game that didn't have background music again and again... I mean you're in a room. Where does the music come from? Or even worst you're in a forest or a catacomb, or in space. And yet you get music. :D I'm burrying me out a little here, still...

A great game, very well thought out and excellent executed!


LimpingFish

Thanks for the kind words, Nikolas. I'm glad you enjoyed it. :)
Steam: LimpingFish
PSN: LFishRoller
XB: TheActualLimpingFish
Spotify: LimpingFish

Vince Twelve

Ok, I updated the file on my server, the new file is located at

http://games.thexiis.com/files/HD/Heartland_Deluxe.exe

You can update the games page... again.

LimpingFish

Vince, you are truly a king among men. :)
Steam: LimpingFish
PSN: LFishRoller
XB: TheActualLimpingFish
Spotify: LimpingFish

CosmoQueen

Wow I LOVED this game!!! Please tell me there's more to come!!
KPop and AGS....................that is my life.

Candle

Really nice game LimpingFish, thanks for the help playing it too.

LimpingFish

Thanks everybody. :)

Expect some more of the story...sometime.

Soon, hopefully. :P
Steam: LimpingFish
PSN: LFishRoller
XB: TheActualLimpingFish
Spotify: LimpingFish

ManicMatt

Whoops I didn't know there was an updated version and played the previous one!

So the lock puzzle, I was stuck at, which you've fixed apparently, although I just figured there isn't that many combinations and fluked it without too much hassle. And the phone, you've also fixed haha.

Graphics, neat and pleasing to the eye! Real eye candy my friend! Music works better
than last version by a mile!

The.. surprise stuff in the game is really cool as well!

Spoiler
I was teased at the end, when I was thinking we got to play in the next location!
[close]

LimpingFish

Quote from: ManicMatt on Mon 27/11/2006 00:31:54
Spoiler
I was teased at the end, when I was thinking we got to play in the next location!
[close]

The next chapter starts right there, so you will! I'm looking into making it panoramic too. ;D

Thanks for playing ^_^
Steam: LimpingFish
PSN: LFishRoller
XB: TheActualLimpingFish
Spotify: LimpingFish

Iv4n

Woah! Amazingly addictive game! Ahh too short :(. Got any plans for adding voices? Can't wait for the next episode!

LimpingFish

Yeah, I considered adding voices and it's still a strong possibility. It would definitely improve the tape interactions if the player could actually hear them, rather than having to read them. :P

It would also double the download size, and for such a short game I don't know if people would be pleased with that.

Still...something to think about. ;)
Steam: LimpingFish
PSN: LFishRoller
XB: TheActualLimpingFish
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The Ivy

Very nice game, and impressive graphics to boot. :) The puzzles were quite difficult, but the neat visual effects more than made up for it. I'm really curious where you're taking this story, good luck with continuing it.

Kweepa

Quote from: LimpingFish on Sun 03/12/2006 20:58:38
It would also double the download size, and for such a short game I don't know if people would be pleased with that.
mp3/ogg is about 1Mb/min.
There's no more than 5-10 minutes, so that's much less than double the 25Mb download.

Fun game, and with some voice acting it could be even more atmospheric.
Still waiting for Purity of the Surf II

LimpingFish

Well, I guess I'll have to seriously look into getting some voices done then. Actually, while I was making it I was thinking which AGSers could play each character, so I already have some names in mind. I'll have to PM some people and see. :P

Thanks again for the kind words, everyone. ^_^
Steam: LimpingFish
PSN: LFishRoller
XB: TheActualLimpingFish
Spotify: LimpingFish

Nikolas

I agree that voice acting can add to a game.

The problem lies, some times, with the quality. In this case, everything works brilliantly, but for voice acting you need, at least good mics, and not some crappy 5 quid/$ mics for the computer, which will produce way too much hiss...

Anyhow... getting the voice acting done correctly is kidna tricky, in my opinion. Just a word of caution I guess from a fan!

(and anyway, start o nthe next game! Don't waste time on this! ;D)

Rui 'Trovatore' Pires

I'm gonna be very honest now... the game has been around since that OROW. The people who didn't play it then have played it now thanks to this great revamp. You COULD go on and upgrading it, making it a truly glamurous one-room game and thus raising the bar for the sequels and/or other games in the hinted series and risking these future releases become few and far between because of the time involved in such grandiose projects...

...or you can, now that you've ironed out the bugs and have come up with a Heartland you're proud of, get working on more games. :) I knows which I prefer! :D
Reach for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.

Kneel. Now.

Never throw chicken at a Leprechaun.

m0ds

I've had a little go and must say I'm impressed! Nice work :D I will play some more later. I have a question, something that isn't a problem I'm just curious to know if it would work. When you use panoramic scenes like that, could you still have speech appear within the graphic window, instead of on a bar below? Obviously it looks better below, but is it still possible? For example if you had another character in the graphic window and they spoke, could you still have text appear above their heads? And then if you turned slightly would the text still appear in the right place/same place above their heads?

Anyway, nice work Chris. Great atmosphere in this one :)

LimpingFish

Thanks, Mark  :)

With version 1.1 of the panorama module Steve added the ability to have objects and characters  coordinates automatically updated in relation to the position of the background, a feature I didn't have an opportunity to use in Heartland.

As such, I believe displaying text above a characters head wouldn't be a problem in as far as retaining its position on screen. The module pauses when text or speech is displayed, as far as I know, so I can't see any major problems arising.

Of course, Steve will be able to explain the ins and outs of the module better than me. ;)
Steam: LimpingFish
PSN: LFishRoller
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LimpingFish

#38
http://plnehry.idnes.cz/adventure/heartland-deluxe.html

Anybody know Czech? ;D

Oh, and for anybody stuck (!) there is a walkthrough available below...

http://www.gameboomers.com/wtcheats/pcHh/heartlanddeluxe.htm
Steam: LimpingFish
PSN: LFishRoller
XB: TheActualLimpingFish
Spotify: LimpingFish

LimpingFish

Heartland Deluxe appears on the cover DVD of this month's Level, a Czech gaming magazine.

If anyone has access to a copy, could they see if anything about it appears in the actual magazine, and maybe supply a scan if something does?

I would be eternally grateful. :)
Steam: LimpingFish
PSN: LFishRoller
XB: TheActualLimpingFish
Spotify: LimpingFish

TheCheese33

I really like the game. Nice work!

And by the way, if you're looking for voice acting, why not buzz the people of Valve? They have always supported the freeware community, so (though it sounds crazy) maybe a few of them would like to help. I know from their games that the voices are always top-notch, so I think it would be really cool to do so.

Also, what I think you should do is form one huge game, and maybe sell it. Put it on a CD (or DVD if nessacary). That way, you could make the backrounds at a higher resolution, add more music, more special effects, and more things to do in the game, without people ignoring the game because it's too big of a download. Although, you could make a CD AND downloadable version, for people who don't mind downloading the massive file size and for people with dial-up, so they don't have to deal with the massive file size. Also, I may be able to try and record voices. I don't have any experience in the field, but I could invest some of my money into a high-quality mic and give it a go. I've always felt like a freeloader in the community, taking games and not giving any in return. And, since I'm not a very good artist, coder, or script writer, I need to think of something to do, don't I? I could send you a sample that I record and you could decide for yourself. For pricing, I'd say $10-15 would be good. Especially for how scary and immersive your game is. I've seen blockbuster titles with worse quality!

Before I say anything else, I would just like to assure you that I am not being sarcastic. If I remember correctly, there was a little misunderstanding last time we met. ;D

Also, I would like to add that you could also go the way that the people at TellTale Games have, releasing episodic content for a low price. Or, maybe not for this kind of game, since continuing it for 100 episodes would be a stretch of content, wouldn't it? This game freaks me out, too. And honestly, besides the Yahtzee series, a game has never made me turn on all the lights in the house, blasting The Beatles through my small speakers, looking around anxiously to make sure no invisi-person comes to get me. I'm starting to sound like that insane guy now, aren't I? ;D

I actually wrote this much? Incredible! I hope I didn't break a forum rule I forgot, for fear of Darth Mandarb.  ;D

I should probably finish this one up, so thanks for making such a high-quality short game, and I hope to see any future work you pump out!
-TheCheese33
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
need...More...WOUND!

LimpingFish

Thanks for your enthusiasm, TheCheese33, I'm glad you liked my game. :)

When adding voices was first brought up I was pretty into the idea but, as both Nikolas and Rui said, maybe I should focus more on what I was going to follow up HD with (I'm working on it right now! :D) rather than devote more time to a "finished" game.

I would certainly like to progress to a commercial game, episodic or otherwise, and I've a few ideas in the pipeline that might make the jump.

Thanks too for your offer to record a voice. I'll keep you in mind if the next game requires speech. :)
Steam: LimpingFish
PSN: LFishRoller
XB: TheActualLimpingFish
Spotify: LimpingFish

Kweepa

You may not have noticed that Heartland Deluxe is on mobygames:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/heartland-deluxe
Along with a bunch of other AGS games:
http://www.mobygames.com/game-group/adventure-game-studio-games
Time to get that company incorporated!
Still waiting for Purity of the Surf II

LimpingFish

I did indeed notice Steve, but I forgot to bring it to the attention of the community. Thanks for reminding (and for doing it for) me. :)
Steam: LimpingFish
PSN: LFishRoller
XB: TheActualLimpingFish
Spotify: LimpingFish

prelubodey


Maverick

I hope there's some more!
The graphics are awsome!
Great work all round.


Candle

Hope you like it. was bored so made this for your game.


LimpingFish

Steam: LimpingFish
PSN: LFishRoller
XB: TheActualLimpingFish
Spotify: LimpingFish

Candle


Fleshstalker

#50
Heh wrong post on wrong topic.

I should point out however that I downloaded the original version and the deluxe and that panoramic view is awesome.

Ali

This was a tiny burst of concentrated fun. I really enjoyed it, and eagerly anticipate the rest of the story.

I've played the Deluxe Version, does that version have an improved lock puzzle? I ask because I liked the lock puzzle a lot, but I wasn't sure if I played the controversial version.

LimpingFish

Thanks, Ali. :)

The lock puzzle was initially fairly random in version 1.0 of Hearland Deluxe.

People complained a bit, so I added the aural clue of the differing sounds representing "locked" and "unlocked" in the 1.1 version. Seemed to work a whole lot better. ;)

Thanks again.
Steam: LimpingFish
PSN: LFishRoller
XB: TheActualLimpingFish
Spotify: LimpingFish

proximity

#53
Congratulations LimpingFish.It's ver nice. I have couple of questions ?

- Did you use 3d Studio Max for background graphics ? If not, which 3d program did you use ? If you used 3d max, is it possible you used V ray for rendering ?
- Which light did you use in rooms ? I guess it's sun light but i'm not sure.

  Congratulations again. I like the game.

PS: I looked carefully, it's not sunlight sorry :) But it's photometric light for sure
Proximity Entertainment

LimpingFish

Thanks, Proximity.

To answer your questions:

I use Cinema 4D XL, which uses it's own proprietary render engine. You can learn more about it here.

The lighting is actually faked. I positioned one omni light directly in the middle of the scene, and adjusted it's fall-off until the light was distributed evenly to the entire room.

I then used a number of small keylights to simulate light bounce and such.
It's a very loose way to light a scene, but much quicker than using global illumination.

Plus I could adjust the various elements as much or as little as I needed, without the need to recalculate the lighting for the entire scene.

All the lights use soft shadows, to give a diffused quailty to the lighting and allow the light and shadow to blend nicely.

Hope this helps.

Thanks again.  :)
Steam: LimpingFish
PSN: LFishRoller
XB: TheActualLimpingFish
Spotify: LimpingFish

proximity

I understand. I don't know Cinema 4d's working order, in 3d Studio Max, you can simulate photon bounces with mental ray global illumination. So, you don't need to put small lights around the room. May be Cinema 4d has also plugin like that
Proximity Entertainment

LimpingFish

Yes, later versions of Cinema 4D offer such effects as standard, but I am limited to using an older version (6 XL).

The current version is R10. Expensive, though. ;)
Steam: LimpingFish
PSN: LFishRoller
XB: TheActualLimpingFish
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proximity

  Yeah very expensive :) I hope you can make some money from this game and upgrade your Cinema 4d to  latest version :)  By the way, my demo (Would you be my Lover ?) was published in Level Turkey and Electronic Gaming Monthly Turkey. Just like you :) Little advertisement :) You can also make your own in my topic :P
Proximity Entertainment

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