Star Trek Newton - Episode Two: Distress

Matt Frith · Thu 28/01/2010 23:13:39

Upper Tier Studios proudly presents:

Star Trek Newton - Episode Two: Distress

"If I have seen farther it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

-Isaac Newton

***PREVIOUS EPISODE SPOILERS AHEAD***

Story:

Crewman John Fischer has gotten the excitement he joined Starfleet for, though now he wants to take his wish back!

A few other Crewmembers were found and helped around the deserted corridors, but the remaining 430 seem to have vanished, including one right before John's eyes. Having returned the Newton to somewhat working order, the remaining crew must work together to get a distress signal out and find out where their missing crewmates went.

New Features in this Episode:

Turbolift navigation system
Animated close-up portraits
Two playable characters
Phaser fights!
Better Music (Thanks ProgZ!)

About:

Star Trek Newton is set in the Original Series era (around the 2260s) and the titular vessel is a sister ship of the Enterprise.

Screenshots:

Intro cutscene, showing off the new dialogue portraits and font.

A leisurly starlit walk on a tritanium hull.

Main Engineering.

Team:

Tier- Story, scripting, and animations
Disco- Animations and additional design
Magintz- GUI

Progress:

We hope to have this game finished before Spring (Northern Hemisphere), but as this episode has double the rooms and more puzzles than the previous one it is hard to say how long beta will last.

Story:      85%
Backgrounds:   60%
Animations:    20%

Series:

Distress is preceded by the Star Trek Newton debut episode "Anomaly" which can be found and enjoyed here.

Follow the game and series progress on our Facebook fan page:

Upper Tier Studios

Dualnames · Fri 29/01/2010 18:36:49

Use black outline!! Other than that, I find the artistic style to have developed even better than the first game. Looking forward to it.

Disco · Fri 29/01/2010 19:23:05

Quote from: Dualnames on Fri 29/01/2010 18:36:49
Use black outline!! Other than that, I find the artistic style to have developed even better than the first game. Looking forward to it.

You must be referring to the third screen with the yellow text? That shows up that way now because the dialogue portrait for the character had not been implemented yet. When it is, the text will show at the top of the screen against the black background the same way it does in the first screenshot.

Thanks for checking and your comments on the artistic style, although that goes to Tier really. He has done very well and produced quite a few interesting screens in record time

As you may tell with the percentages I am having to play catch up with my side of things

Goldfish · Fri 29/01/2010 20:38:59

Did you try using the original series font for the game? If so what was the design reason for not using it, doesn't it look good or is it difficult to read after the conversion process? I find that, with some special fonts.

Lovely game though, has a really nice feel. I am looking forward to seeing the whole ship gradually emerge through play.

Dualnames · Fri 29/01/2010 21:11:36

Quote from: Disco on Fri 29/01/2010 19:23:05
Quote from: Dualnames on Fri 29/01/2010 18:36:49
Use black outline!! Other than that, I find the artistic style to have developed even better than the first game. Looking forward to it.

You must be referring to the third screen with the yellow text? That shows up that way now because the dialogue portrait for the character had not been implemented yet. When it is, the text will show at the top of the screen against the black background the same way it does in the first screenshot.

Thanks for checking and your comments on the artistic style, although that goes to Tier really. He has done very well and produced quite a few interesting screens in record time As you may tell with the percentages I am having to play catch up with my side of things

Well pointed there Disco! Having talked to Matt a lot on IRC, I have faith he won't score nothing less than a cool game! Same goes for you. I'm hooked!

magintz · Sat 30/01/2010 09:10:50

Looking forward to it. Keep us up to date with progress!

Arboris · Sat 30/01/2010 16:50:13

Looking good, a bit more contrast in the backgrounds wouldn't hurt tho.

veryweirdguy · Sat 30/01/2010 19:30:20

Looking very nice! A thousand huzzahs!

Oh and the game doesn't look that bad either.

CaptainD · Sat 30/01/2010 22:06:43

Looking good so far!

Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens · Tue 02/02/2010 04:39:37

The USS Newt-Gingrich gets a sequel! I am looking forward to this so don't let me down, superfriends!

ShadeJackrabbit · Thu 04/02/2010 23:41:11

I really like the graphical style. It's a nice choice to go with the look of the classical series, instead of trying to modernize it. Liked the first one, so I'm looking forward to this next episode!

Disco · Sat 01/05/2010 17:22:38

Hello again everyone. Just a quick note to update on our current progress.

Tier has informed me that all the backgrounds featured in the game are now imported into AGS, so we have achieved 100% in that category now. Some are familiar from "Anomaly", but there are more new rooms in this episode than not.

I have done some neat (I think anyways

) phaser-related animations since the last update, as well as some more dialog portraits. There are still a few big ones pending that involve spacewalks, but after that any outstanding animations will likely be minor puzzle-specific ones.

Scripting is the category I am least able to comment on (it makes my head spin), and is the most complicated thing going on at the moment with all the different interactions needed for a two playable character game. Additionally, there have been some GUI changes that are not reflected in the current screenshots, but once they are finalised we will be updating them. I will leave it to Tier if there is anything else he would like to update on since the scripting department really isn't any of my business

Thanks for checking us out and we hope to be helping satisfy your Star Trek gaming needs again soon!

Pixelton · Sun 02/05/2010 00:23:12

The first game was one of the few AGS games I have played and the character animation and overall look sucked me right in. I'm a sucker for all things space and diving and I'll be honest...I'm loving the space suit - spot on with TOS.

Derrick Freeland · Tue 15/06/2010 01:23:37

YARGH!!!!:o Just finished episode one of this game about 5 minutes ago, and I'm already itching for the sequel. Seriously, this game is wicked tits. I have to agree with earlier comments about keeping the original look, and not trying to update it. It's so cool being able to wander around and interact with that world. Solid writing; funny & dramatic, I'm definitely hooked.

anthonyjmf · Mon 20/09/2010 11:14:37

Any update on this game?

Darth Mandarb · Mon 20/09/2010 13:22:17

anthonyjmf - for the future, please read the forum rules and do not dig up old threads. (also there's no reason to quote the entire post (which I deleted))

tier - if you want to post an update let me know and I'll unlock the thread!