The Knobbly Crook

Started by Bavolis, Thu 21/06/2007 05:55:35

Previous topic - Next topic

EchosofNezhyt

Yeah, I'm still blown away. Original style, Original Story. So awesome.

CosmoQueen

O________O Are you freaking kidding me? Dude HOW? How in the heck did you do this??!!! No normal human being can draw something like THIS on a computer omg you must've used witchcraft or something!
KPop and AGS....................that is my life.

Bavolis

I don't know about witchcraft, but many cans of coke are sacrificed each night to fuel this machine. :)

Bavolis

#83
Third time's a charm? Mods, feel free to shut this down if I'm doing some sort of illegal fossil digging here, but I just wanted to let people know the game is in progress again full-speed. Basically, I got side-tracked working on another small game called Watch_Dogs :P

Now that things are calm again and I'm between major dev cycles, I can focus on my hobby and I'm convinced I have the time to actually make this happen for real, even though I may very well be the slowest dev in the history of devs. The demo has been updated significantly (linked on the first post).

Edit: I started this thread 7 years ago?! Man, where did all that time go? I need to make sure that doesn't happen again or I'll be an old man. Back to drawing.

Fitz

Yeah, I was wondering where you'd gone. Good to hear you're back to work, because man, these screenshots are mindblowing.

Bavolis

I added a screenshot of the opening cinematic in the first post. I should have the intro cin finished today and added to a new version of the demo by tomorrow.

monkey424

Well, I've said it before and I'll say it again. It's fucking brilliant!!!
    

Bavolis

#87
Thanks, guys! Thought I'd do another one of those in-progress comparisons. This is for the title screen, which has an up-scaled prisoner O'Sirus portrait.





mkennedy

The artwork kind of reminds me of "Where the Wild Things Are". Is the face on O'Sirus' vest able to talk?

Bavolis

That's a cool reference and definitely a childhood favorite. That story actually would make a pretty unique Point and Click game.

As for the vest talking, yes - it's actually part of the lore. There was a great wizard playing around with animation magic when something went wrong (we'll discover what) and caused a huge explosion. Everything in the Crook is a mix of objects found around the Wizard's mansion blended with animated inanimates - so O'Sirus is a mix of a chair, the wizard's spittoon (helmet), and the wizard's face, which will start talking to him once he meets other parts of the wizard.

SilverSpook

Super excellent!  Something about the look of this game feels very surreal-New Orleans for some reason.  Really looking forward to it!

Bavolis

Thanks! I think it's probably the bright colors/parade float puffiness. I do love Nawlens.

Bavolis

Little update (well, a big update considering the work involved) - The demo now features the animated Gnarled Scar logo, the intro cutscene, the animated title screen, the credits screen, the first room, the second cinematic, and a very WIP hub room with nooks as well as a few crannies. All in all, it's a great little snapshot of where I expect the full game to be quality-wise. The demo can be found here:

http://knobblycrook.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/KnobblyCrook.zip   (around 80 megs).

Here's a shot from one of the cutscenes:


Bavolis

#93
I've added a quick demo playthrough (not exploring everything that's there so far) on Youtube. My formatting is a bit off, but it works if you fullscreen the video.

http://youtu.be/aWMcz8qQnKQ

Kasander

This is going to be a long post, and one can only blame Bavolis for this.

I second every single word of praise that has been written above. Can't believe how I could overlook The Knobbly Crook and lived in ignorance for so long :) I second what Cosmo Queen said. I know cursing doesn't suit AGS forum so to all the mods and sensible people here: please pretend you've overlooked... But this game looks and feels FAR TOO FUCKING BRILLIANT TO BE FREE. Honestly. I'm a financially-challenged person, but I'd consider robbing old ladies if that meant this game would be made.***

I sincerely hope you guys will get this thing completed. 7 years in the making is a bit long (now, that's the positive thing for me not knowing about the game earlier â€" the release date must be sooner rather than later). You should at least do yourself a favor and steal some Wacom from your Ubisoft co-workers. Gamers, unlike mouse-painted grass, won't stay green forever, you know? ;)

I rarely play games anymore, but I know I need to have and play this one. A lot of other people need to know they need this game. Obviously Kickstarter needs it, too. So why not scratch the itch? There's so many poor-looking, and not-particularly-original games begging for one's buck, that it suddenly sounds refreshingly rightful if a great-looking unique game like this needs one, for a change.

You've certainly set yourself a crazy high bar with the art direction, Bavolis. I'd like to encourage you and your cooperators to do your absolute best trying to match the visual brilliance with dialogues (staying clear of cliches, whenever possible).

I agree with what one fellow AGSer said about the protagonist's voice â€" it doesn't suit him, but I understand it's only temporary solution until you'll do a proper voice over. IMO, you could voice a decent Simon the Sorceor or Guybrush-style character with your voice but if this little guy O'Sirius is (even if partially) made of metal, then maybe he should sound metallic? (whatever that means). I have some (a bit similarly, magically created) steel humanoids in my (WIP) comic book and I've always imagined them speaking with ‘metallic' voices. Not Transformers or Dalek-like but more human yet still somehow... metallic ;) I'm sure you'll know better.

The world that you guys created sounds and looks so unique and original. Obviously people are seeing some references to this or that, but regarding the genre of adventure games, I've never seen anything like The Knobbly Crook and that is certainly a good thing. Lucasarts/Sierra-like games come and go, but this here has a chance to be one of a kind, just like Amanita Design games. Anyway, even if the writing is going to have 1/3 of the quality the graphics have, I think we've got an instant classic here.

One only wonders, how many more gems of game-creativity like you remain hidden out there among the pebbles of big studios, busy cutting out the Assassin's Craps of this world, instead of bringing forward works of art like this. *Sigh*

PS: As for the New Orlean association SilverSpook was writing about, I think it's because of the hat.

PS2: Fuck Ubi$oft and make it happen mate. I know it sounds easy especially when you have kids and I don't, but look at the guys here for inspiration: VinceTwelve, Dave Gilbert, Andail... they all have 'made it', so you can too.

I must admit some time ago I contemplated buying Watch Dogs or AC to choke my old PS3 with, like any regular console veggie devoid of raw point-and-click meat would... Please extirpate my (and possibly other people's) unhealthy tendencies by making me buy & play The Knobbly Crook instead! ASAP.

***I never thought that one day I'd volunteer to rob old ladies so I could pay to be allowed to hang out in Horse's Ass ;)

Bavolis

Thank you for the huge compliments! Keep in mind the 7 years thing was only because I got distracted - it hasn't been *in dev* that long. I have been working on it nonstop for the past couple of weeks and the Horse's Ass bar is nearing completion (have a couple of little barflies left to draw/animate). Currently, it's just me working on the game, though I have one or two old sketches from Julien I'll use for inspiration later. As far as the WACOM tablet - believe it or not, I can't draw with a pen. My drawings on paper look horrible. The Crook's style is pretty much due to my poor drawing skills and my practiced mouse-sculpting burn/dodge abomination style. If I changed things up now, the quality would change. 

On the financial side - I'm currently one of those paycheck-to-paycheck types who doesn't really have the option to just drop things and take a risk - I wish I did. If Kickstarter allowed a "pay my salary for a year" option to get 'er done, I'd jump on that. However, Kickstarter is more of a "give me money to pay for __" type of deal. I did set up a Patreon, which is similar to a salary, bit I don't expect it to take off until I have at least the whole Drafthorse boat demo done. I plan to add 1-2 more rooms to it, finish the puzzles, and then polish. It's not a scary goal for me right now. Once I have a nice demo going too, I think it will be easy to find real voice acting. I do have some connections there. What I'll probably do soon is remove all the voices that are in and just leave the whole thing text until I have it more final.

I think once you meet the various people inside the Horse's Ass (ew), you'll realize this thing is going to be anything but cliche - my goal is to make each character someone you want to speak with because each one represents some universe lore. I know where things are going with the story, too - and they're going BIG.

I do have to say I enjoy working at Ubi and I think we put out some of the more artistic AAA games on the market, I just prefer the creative control of doing something on your own. Especially when you're a total weirdo.

Anyway, thanks for the ego boost - I hope I can find more people with your enthusiasm as this thing comes together! :)

Kasander

#96
No problem, I'm just extremely happy to discover a game like TKC is in production. And being a creative person myself (well, like pretty much everyone here on AGS forum!;)) I know how important a word of appreciation can be.

Yeah, I know it's in the Crook's interest to stay mouse painted, I know it has to be consistent and better not to change things after all this time, but man... I'm a graphic artist too and just reading about you doing all these blades of grass with mouse made my right wrist feel the pain! I knew a guy once who was doing realistic fantasy-style illustrations with mouse but those were only b/w and it was in the previous millennium!
Sure, lots of people still do low-res pixel art with mouse, but the thing that you do is quite different cup of tea... I mean, how much more hardcore can one get? ;) Kudos! 8-) And when you finally decide to Kickstart this, please do some video showing you at work with your trusty computer rodent. It would certainly make my day :D

As for the weirdos making/playing weird games, I'd say there are probably more of them than you think. Surely there should be enough of them on Kickstarter to fund TKC and spread the word. I'm not a PR expert, but I think people will know unique game when they see one, you just need to show them what you've got (and show them that sprained wrist, too!). There are few people here to turn to for a bit of advice regarding Kickstarter (you probably know a bit about it too, having the Ubi-connections and all).

You certainly have people here that believe in what you do and I'm pretty sure that once TKC gets spurred by Kickstarter the apologists of your work will grow in numbers. Well, I guess I better stop writing before I drown you in this sweet sea of TKC fanboyism :) Please, get back to work on your game and keep us posted.

Cheers mate and good luck... Can't wait to visit Horse's Ass!

Bavolis

Got a preview of some barflies in the Horse's Ass:


Bavolis

And, to go along with the shot above - video of O'Sirus talking to the bar's patrons!

http://youtu.be/jQQpUAB8PjU

Bavolis

New room under construction - it's a nice shot that demonstrates how I lay everything into the scene. I'm off to Disney for two weeks, but I'm hoping to do some artwork on the drive there when it's not my turn behind the wheel.


SMF spam blocked by CleanTalk