Doc Apocalypse

[Midian Design]

Out in January 2012 (italian/english)



Game & Story: Midian Design (Danilo Cagliari)
Music: D.C. Digital Orchestra
Game Translation [english]: Paul Giaccone
Beta Test & Help: Paul Giaccone, Arj0n, Pan, Flavio Soldani.

- Story 100%
- Graphics 100%
- Scripting 100%
- Music/sound 100%


STORY

Apocalypse, Aliens, New World Order, Illuminati...

Is it possible to control the weather? Is it possible to make it rain on demand or to chase the clouds from the sky? Controlling such things would mean saving the planet from drought, living in a world without hurricanes and storms, always having abundant crops and keeping the glaciers safe.
According to Lewis P. Higgins, this was not fantasy, but reality. He was aware of the fact that the technology he was in the process of completing would, in the wrong hands, be a weapon for the destruction of the human race, but, idealist that he was, he felt he was working for a good cause.
Lewis was a strange character with a troubled life but also many successes and achievements: an eight-year-old son of whom he was proud; a nearly completed device that would be able to stop earthquakes; a time machine that allowed one to travel into the future for twenty seconds; many objects of varying type and importance; and the Cloud Buster, which was practically complete.



Whom to present his inventions to, how to present them, how to be sure that no one would put these resources to terrible use? Those things mattered little right now. Before overcoming the moral difficulties, he had to deal with the practical ones, namely testing and improving, making reliable machines that were not dangerous to operate. It had been with one such prototype of a machine to control earthquakes that he had seen his wife die. During the testing process, Jenny, a scientist like him, had lost her life in an explosion. Lewis had not been able to come to terms with the event, and the pain grew when he saw in his son's eyes the look of his mother.
As a result of this tragic experience, during tests on the Cloud Buster, he decided to be alone in his bunker and to leave his son in the laboratory in Montauk (a small nearby town) with his new partner, who was also a scientist. Elzebeth Tesla was not happy having to give up attending the experiments, but she loved the little boy (Tobias Higgins on his birth certificate, but known to everyone as Tachy, a shortened form of "tachyon") very much and respected his father's wishes. Nevertheless, she was able to be attend the events via monitor. Nothing could happen to them ten metres underground in a bunker that was identical in every way to the one where the experiment would take place and that had every comfort; as well as the time machine, there was ample food, a CD player, all kinds of video games for Tachy...



In 1953? Yes, the time machine provided a few "out-of-place" possessions, but Lewis did not take things too far and went out of his way not to incur paradoxes, at least, not dangerous ones... some clothes from 1985 for Elzebeth, a few DVDs for Tachy and some electronic components with which to complete his machines. The important thing was to appear in the right place at the right time (who said "thief"?). Completing the time-travel project would not be easy. Unfortunately, the time jump worked one time in a thousand. Sometimes he was able to see his entire invention in the future, in 1974, to be precise. Once he even spoke to himself in 1976, but in twenty seconds it was difficult to have a very productive conversation.
Everything was ready for testing in the laboratory of Doc Apocalypse, as his college friends had renamed him (his ideas were often the grounds for scorn or great terror). He pressed the start button and the enormous propeller, set on top of the nearby mountain, hidden from view by ancient trees, was set in motion, projecting an energy flow towards the menacing clouds covering Serenity. After twenty minutes, a widening path was dissolving the impending storm and the camera pointed at the sky clearly demonstrated that the experiment had been a success.



Unfortunately, something went wrong.
Bolts of energy ripped through the sky and accumulated in the area torn apart by the rays from the propellor. The last thing Doc Apocalypse was able to observe before the monitor signal was lost was gigantic shadows and indistinct swarms.
Immediately he warned Elzebeth and Tachy to remain in their bunker until he arrived. Collecting the car keys, he suddenly halted. The speakers in the laboratory filled the room with the screams of terror of the inhabitants of Serenity. Horrendous roars alternated with screams of terror: ten metres above his head, something terrible was exterminating the populace.  He urged his family once more to remain where they were and ran to the control panel, rapidly pressing buttons and gathering reams of data understandable only to him.
After twenty hellish minutes, the speakers relayed what he feared: horrifying explosions silenced everything. The gauges in the laboratory indicated high levels of radioactivity, but from the speakers there was only silence. The experiment had gone decidedly wrong. Something awful had crossed over through a portal that had appeared with no logical explanation, and the army had responded with the only resource deemed appropriate, a hail of nuclear bombs. From the extent of the explosions, he realised that this was not a new Hiroshima but an onslaught of multiple bombs of smaller size than the one used in the 1945 event.



How widespread was the disaster? How many creatures had emerged from the portal and how far had the bombing extended? He had no way of knowing.
The auxiliary power system switched itself on, and he was still able to communicate with Elzebeth despite there being no electricity (or anything else) coming from outside. He could not leave or he would die. He could only wait, watching the radioactivity gauge. According to his calculations, he could not open that damned door for eight months, at which point he would suffer only minor damage (more or less). He explained the situation briefly to his beloved and they said goodbye to each other for the last time thirty days after the bombardment. After that, there was only an anxious silence, with none of his apparatus working and four blue light bulbs powered by small solar panels placed outside, which had fortunately remained intact.
Eight months passed.



He took the atomiser, the heart of the time machine (he had not been confident leaving the mechanism active while Tachy had been around), opened the door and took a deep breath. The air-regenerators of own his invention, which had been active in the bunker, had done their work, but breathing real air, albeit still contaminated, was satisfying in an entirely different way.



He had to find his family, force his way through the rubble and survive in the face of anything he might meet out there. Activating the time machine (fortunately it did not require electricity, only the atomiser) would have been easy, however it was a much more complex matter to program it for a jump into the past. He was not yet capable of doing that, although the idea of being able to save his wife, before he had met Elzebeth, would spur him to overcome the problem.



His mission was a simple concept, but confoundedly difficult to realise: to go and warn himself, eight months earlier, to prevent the Apocalypse.

In memory of P. Ighina, N. Tesla and W. Reich.



FEATURES

- In-game visual noise
- Many items to collect, not all of which can be used
- Dark humour in a story unsuitable for younger players
- Food for thought on delicate issues of counterculture and exopolitics
- Inspired by classics such as "The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)", "The War of the Worlds (1952)" and "The Thing from Another World (1951)" and by the inventions of great scientists that were misunderstood by governments, such as Ighina, Tesla and Reich, and researchers such as Hopkins, Malanga, Sitchin, Icke.
- The best story of 1953 in Midian-color!
- Help button in every screen (directions, interactions, ...)



TRAILER

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kHSlkT-ifY8

TEASER & MAKING OF

http://www.youtube.com/user/mdmidiandesign



More at: http://www.midiandesign.com

[arj0n]

You are becoming a gamecreatemachine, MD 

[Iliya]

Man, you are crazy! Do you sleep at all?

[Rocco]

Great Screens  :o
Looks like rendering, how you achieve this backgroundgraphicstyle?

[Midian Design]

Thank You 
I use Cinema4D, Photoshop and a graphic tablet (wacom). I sleep 7 hours per day. 

[Rocco]

are the characters handdrawn with shadows?

[Midian Design]

Oh no, I use photoshop to correct some 3d "problems" or add some details (not so much atm here in Doc, a lot in Odissea  )

[Rocco]

so you model the characters also in cinema4D?

[Midian Design]

Cinema 4D only for BG (or some strange chars, not human). I start working characters with poser, but I admit I really suck with this, so I work hard after on photoshop (the tablet only with bgs). Every char had 15 frames (only for walkcycles) for 8 directions, so a lot of work  :'(

P.S.: I see in your sign that you need to be corrected in english, and your name is rocco, if you are italian we can speak in PM 

[Rocco]

thx for the infos, well i'm austrian with an italian sounding nick, so i guess we should stay in english.   

the afterwork pays off, makes the screens and chars look very unique and stylish.
poser is annoying for me too, for my last mags game i spent over a hour to alter every inch for a cool gangsterboss face,
then nearly finished i hit some wrong button and it was gone. 
after that i hit a few times the random button and take the next best.

[Grim]

Lots of Tesla fans here, on these forums, so I think you might hit the spot with this one:)

I also use Cinema 4D and find it a great piece of software. And I agree that without photoshop editing rendered characters just don't look quite right.... But you seem to have got it right. I like the style of this game- probably most of all of your games so far, especially backgrounds with their post-apocalyptic feel. 

One advice though- the description of the storyline seems to go on forever. Make it short and snappy, so it grabs readers' attention right from the start and doesn't put them off with all historical info. It's probably fine for a WIP thread, but just keep in  mind that for when it's released it will need some editing first. At least, that's my view on this...

 

[Midian Design]

Updates:

- New (and persistent) GUI ( @Ascovel's Crew    )
- Bigger fonts ( @Dave Gilbert  8) )
- BIGGER names on the world map ( @Arj0n  :o  )
- New screenshots
- New video http://www.youtube.com/user/mdmidiandesign

[arj0n]

Going strong there MD 

[Midian Design]

(First post updated)

- Now available a Help button in every screen (directions, interactions, ...)

[mkennedy]

Even if an Item has no use for solving any puzzles it would be nice if there were still responses for when you tried to use it by itself or on something else. Leisure Suit Larry 5 did it this way as I recall and it was interesting to see what all the various responses would be for all the wacky things you tried to do.

[Midian Design]

- 2 New screenshots

[Midian Design]

New screenshot: Beth, Tachy, Wernher Von Braun and the Time Machine (Inside Area 51, you can use both of them)



New video: Doc Apocalypse - MAKING OF -> http://www.youtube.com/user/mdmidiandesign

[Gepard]

Looks like a lot of work went to this. Me like!

[arj0n]

TEASER & MAKING OF
http://www.youtube.com/user/mdmidiandesign

Nice 'Behind The Scenes' vid MD!

[Midian Design]

First post updated (last update before the release)