Sydney Treads the Catwalk

[iSTVAN]

DOWNLOAD NOW.

Sydney Treads the Catwalk

Sydney, a bum turned star, finds his new career in the media has hit a hiccup when his television show doesn't receive the ratings it expected. Keith Corps (head of Business Corps) warns Syd that if he can't even compete with the fashion channel he'll be forced to axe the show and throw the lovable tramp back on to the streets.

After stumbling onto a string of suspicious accidents within the fashion industry Sydney and his friends uncover a mystery that could cost them their lives or worse- their limbs!


Credits
--------
Ivan Dixon (aka iSTVAN): Story, graphics, coding
Steve Larabie (aka pixelblink): Music






This is the sequel to Sydney Finds Employment.

For more stuff, visit my website.

[LuciferSam86]

downloading now... 


edit: great work.

[thebaddie]

downloading

i'll edit for comments 

EDIT:
really a good work. I love how plot and puzzle run togheter (and is not a easy one)
map music is a little repetly

a tip please

Spoiler

resolved

[close]

[/s]

[Buckethead]

woah it's done! Good job on finishing.  Will check it out now.

[Stupot]

Woohoo.  Congrats, man.
Can't play yet.  My computer's buggered and my mum won't appreciate me downloading games onto her laptop.  It's at the top of my list, though.
I repeat... Woohoo

[Leon]

Congrats on this achievement.
Great work! Playing as I speak...

A few personal things:
The inventory is a bit getting used to though... very little space to open the inventory and when selected stuff from the inventory, you have to press the play...? Ended up with the "Had enough playin' with me" question several times. I always play windowed versions. I'm sure it's different when you play full screen. And when hanging around places too long the music becomes boring. It's almost real life.. ;-)

Great graphics, Jean & Bernie have good humour. WT on it's way..

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Allright, here's my thoughts -

Leon is a bloody walkthrough machine.

Now here's my thoughts that are relevant to this game -

I must say I was a bit disappointed when I noticed some leftovers from previous Sydney, namely - the hard-to-click inventory button Leon alludes to, the lack of keyboard shortcuts for SAVE/LOAD and for opening INV, and the lack of a way to select a different inventory item once within the INV window, other than closing it and re-opening it.

Funny thing, this has what I've come to know as "Robotragedy syndrome", because while it's probably common in many game series (almost all, in fact, arguably dating back to MI1 - but that's another matter) that's the series in which I saw it most specifically - the first game is more about the puzzles, and the second is more about the story. Which is fine by me, I just find it interesting. As a result, the first one got me really stumped several times, and this one was a breeze. In the first one I had to figure a lot of things out, in this second game I was rather led by the nose. Not complaining, because it fit the overall game.

I loved the music, I really like that "old-console" style, but was it just me or was there less music in this game?

The first Sydney grossed me out a bit, because of the situations, music and colour-tones combined (did you do a psychological study in all the ways you could make people's stomach start turning?!), though I still ended up liking the game. I was glad that didn't happen here.

It is overall a good game. The first Sydney was more of a puzzle-game. This second one is more of a story-game. It begs a third installement where both are finely balanced, doesn't it?

[iSTVAN]

The next Sydney game will be the first text based musical.

Actually, I won't get ahead of myself and start planning the next game JUST yet.

@Pires: I think the Inventory button got harder to click because I realised I needed some space up the top for one of the puzzles. I honestly didn't realise the GUI was such an issue until now. I will rectify it in future instalments...or perhaps on an updated Sydney 2.
Yes, the game is more narrative driven, however I tried to include a few things that would stump people.

Spoiler

Not gross enough for you! Licking walls? Eating rats? Writing with snot? Naked, limbless hobos? Sexy runnaway models?...Well, I guess that last one isn't that gross.

[close]

@Leon: I'm sorry that the 'Quit' button confused you. I guess the GUI could use an update. Glad you like the Jean and Bernie humour. Can you guess who they're named after?

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Licking walls got me grossed, ayuh. The rest I took in my stride.

Spoiler

Oh, about the snot, that reminds me - I kept trying to use the matches as pencils and the burn card as charcoal, never thinking about needing the snot to form a cohese mixture. Maybe some subtle nudging? You see, I was thinking along the right lines, I just didn't know something else was missing and why.

[close]

SPOLIERIZING EDIT - Oh silly me, and I often think the same when others do this. Sorry, done.

[iSTVAN]

@Rui: Might I request that you place the previous post in a hidden message? Don't want to give too much of the puzzles away to those who don't want to know. Cheers.

[Play_Pretend]

Oh, bless whatever dark gods sent me this sore throat and cough that I might stay home from work tonight and find that this game is out!  I've been eagerly waiting for it for so long...

EDIT:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Cure for the Common Cold reference!!!!!!!!!

At last, Team Strange Potato has arrived.

Seriously though, I just finished it, terrific game!  I want to grow up to be homeless someday, just like my hero Sydney.   There was just one puzzle that drove me nerts because of a semi-pixel hunt item that it took a loooong time to realize was there, but otherwise I very much enjoyed it.  Excelsior!

[Play_Pretend]

Whoops...I believe I found a bug right off the bat...on the very first screen for the New/Load/etc, with the big Sydney head on it?  I guess you made the head a view of Sydney's, because you can treat it like a player character...the head will walk around the screen, and if you look, talk or touch it, it'll transform into Sydney's normal sized speech view, give the response, then transform back into the head.

Oh, and, er...on the big map, the alley is spelled "ally".

[iSTVAN]

Wow, strange visitor, that is a mother of a bug! I will see to it that it is fixed (along with a couple of other minor problems). Hope it doesn't ruin the rest of the game for you...

You guys are great beta testers!

[thebaddie]

just a little graphic bug

[olafmoriarty]

Found a bug. I enjoyed the fashion police conversations, so I tried entering that room several times in a row, and at one point, I'm guessing because they'd run out of conversation, the game ended and I got the error message

in Room 4 script (line 184)

Error: EndCutscene: not in a cutscene

[GarageGothic]

Congratulations on finishing your game. I never played the first Sydney game, so I didn't really know what to expect. But overall it was a pleasant surprise. A bit of criticism though, and a bug report:

* The puzzles mostly made sense, although most of then consisted of running back and forth talking to people.

* As others have said, the inventory icon is a bit fiddly. I'd also like another way of closing the inventory window (eg. clicking outside it, or pressing ESC), since the placement of the SAVE, LOAD, PLAY, EXIT icons makes it easy to click EXIT instead of PLAY.

* Since you're not using an icon bar, the only way to change cursors is to right click. One way to make it more user friendly would be to add shortcut keys, or better yet, make the mouse wheel fully functional, so you can scroll to the previous as well as the next cursor (with current implementation mouse wheel up/down both work as right-click).

Spoiler

*Reading the card from Peta before showing it to Terrence makes the cursor disappear.

* The rope hotspot in the restaurant is hard to locate. I actually had to look in the code of the game to figure out how to get the lifesaver.

[close]

[Leon]

I actually had to look in the code of the game to figure out how to get the lifesaver

Just for the ones who want to leave the source code alone, check the hints & tips or this walkthrough.

[twin-moon]

Hm, sound like a good game with an interesting story, nice looking graphics too. Congrats on completing it.

[iSTVAN]

All bugs reported so far should be fixed if you re-download the game.

This includes:
-Floating head bug.
-misspelling of 'alley.'
-Wrong description of rope.
-Error when re-entering fashion show entrance.

Other personal preference problems with the GUI, mouse and what not must be bared for now, I'm afraid. I will take head of these suggestions in future releases.

Nice work on the walk through, Leon. Here's a sketch, just for you:

[Leon]

Thanks! But it's (all of) you I should thank. I do the easy work (playing, writing & searching).