Forge: Loom sequel (updated Dec 17th, 2013)

Started by Abisso, Fri 17/02/2012 21:48:39

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Abisso

is proud to share the launch of the new Forge fan-game website and domain. Unfortunately "forge.com" wasn't available, but I think "forgegame.com" is simple and clear enough. This choice comes with some changes in the website: don't expect flying swans and interactive distaffs though. There's been a complete revision of the text and some invisible yet useful changes in the code.

For those who aren't familiar with the project, please visit the Story section in our website. There you will find a synopsis of Forge's mother-game, Loom, along with a brief explanation of what our fan-made sequel seeks to accomplish.

But since I've posted here, the least I can do is giving a brief explanation:

Forge is an adventure game in the style of early nineties LucasArts' games. It's a full-length game, which will require some hours to be completed. Following the steps of his predecessor, Forge will be less interactive than most of the adventure of those days, because there will be neither a text-parser nor a verb GUI as the main interface. All basic interactions will be done with a single-click, but a special GUI will be used to "draw schematics". Schematics are some sort of spells that can be cast by the main character thanks to his special gauntlets, allowing him to control reality and achieve wondrous effects.

But I think it's time to give you something to "nibble". Let's start with a couple of backgrounds:


Here you can see GUI and the home of Prof.Penumbra, that will help Rusty in his quest.


This is the Guild of Miners, in all its splendour.


And this one's a charming view of one of the caves.

You can find some more in the Gallery section of our website of course.

Some tech info:

Resolution: 320x200
Colour depth: 16 bit (there are rarely more than 256 colours on screen at the same time, though)
Music&SFX: ogg, 128kbps
Dubbed: complete, only English
Translations: multi-language
Engine: Adventure Game Studio

Current team members:

Abisso: game designer/coder/touch-ups
Selmiak: webmaster

A lot of other people have been outsourced in these years: graphic artists, animators, musicians.

We're in desperate need of:

-Spriters (pixel-art)
-Background artists (pixel-art)
-SFX technicians
-Public relations publicists / journalists

And we gladly accept also:
-English voice-actors
-Translators
-Beta-testers

I strongly encourage you to check our Tech Demo, visit our Forum and drop a message in the Project Assistance Sub-Board. Or just send me a PM or an email if you don't intend to sign in.

The plan is to release a demo this Spring: that will be the last demo before the full-game release and it will look exactly like it, except it will only be playable until the end of Chapter One.

I hope the demo will trigger a cycle of enthusiasm and help us fill the missing positions in our team. Even now any contribution is more than welcome, be that a Donation or an offer to volunteer your skills.

Donors will receive:

  • CREDIT! It goes without saying that you'll receive credit for your generosity on our website / forum / completed game.
  • CUSTOM REQUEST! Want to see something personal in Forge? You'll have the chance to ask our team to include something meaningful to you, be it a bit of dialogue, an item, a special animation, etc. We do have to keep this within reason ( e.g., no chickens with pumpkin heads ;p ), so conditions do apply; but we'll work with you to make it special.
  • BRAG! You have the right to tell people: «Hey, I worked on that game!» wink.
  • PERSONALIZED THANKS! I'm in no way a fan of standardized "thank you" messages written by bots, so you'll receive a heartfelt and personalized one. The answer will be sent to the email address linked to your paypal account. In case you didn't receive any reply, the email probably got lost in the web jungle, so feel free to contact us and claim it!
  • PRIDE! Even without the perks above, you'll know you contributed to a project that means a lot to a group of Loom fanatics out there; and supporting art and creativity is something anyone can feel good about.

To donate, please click on the button below. Thanks for your kindness.



Here is the link to our website (new domain): http://forgegame.com/

Stay tuned for more information, and please visit us often!

*********
February 25th, 2013 - Update:
We're close to the ending of the first beta-testing stage. There will be at least another one, but as soon as all the bugs have been killed, Forge: Chapter One will be released publicly. This is the last demo-step before the release of the complete game, but it's a crucial one, as further development of the game will depend on the success of this demo. Not only we hope to see a huge crowd downloading and enjoying it, but we hope someone in that crowd will decide to join the team or at least allow us to outsource and pay an artist thanks to some donations. With the current money we can afford outsourcing only 4 backgrounds, which is about one fifth of what we need to complete the game; and then there are in-game sprites and animations.
Speaking of money, I'm proud to announce a new section of our Donations page that shows and explains how each cent has been (and will be) used. We also introduced a way to help us even for those who don't feel skilled enough to join the team and can't afford donating some money: since the team relies on Dropbox for backups and project related file-sharing, we offer the chance for you and us to increase our web-storage space by signing in (for free) to the same service.
Check our Donations page to know more about all these news.

Since the last update on these boards, the team has lost one of its members, Valecene, our proofreader. We're looking for a possible replacement but there already is a candidate. Though it's not official we can also announce that Jamison Alderson, the musician that has composed about 85% of the original soundtrack, expressed his interest in continuing to donate his skills to the project for the next Chapters. A good thing, since he's a great guy to work with and, most importantly, a really talented composer.

This is more or less everything. Stay tuned for more, but please don't forget to check our website at forgegame.com for frequent updates.

See you there,
-Gabriele "Abisso" Nannetti

*********
October 3rd, 2013 - Update:

Some good news: a talented artist has completely reworked one of the backgrounds for Chapter One, which only served the purpose of a short cutscene before. I had to paint it by myself previously, and the result was only decent. Now it's gorgeous, and the new design called for some extra features. Now there are really interesting elements of gameplay and some cool features which make that room different from the rest of the game and yet coherent with it.

Of course, all of this required time: not just for the extra design, coding and sfx creation, but also because when you start working with someone on such an important part of the game, you need to instruct him about the game's back story, the atmosphere, and the technicalities.
In the end it was worth it, I believe, especially if the guy will be available to work on Chapter 3-5 backgrounds. I'm still unsure if this is the case.

Another potentially interesting news is I'm working with a lively amateur film director, who's also interested in doing some PR work for the game. A position far more crucial than it might seem, as spreading the word seems to be our best chance to find more and more people to help us developing Forge. Art is still a huge issue, and what slows up development the most.
Still on the topic of news, I've been recently interviewed about Forge, but I'll tell you more about that in the next update.


Some bad news about voice-acting: several unexpected issues and some of the suggestions of the beta-testers required some dialogues to be added, and some to be reworked from scratch. Some people didn't do what they were supposed to, and so I had to do some scouting for new voices. That meant a lot of selective work, with extra bad surprises from some of the contacted people. Not many choices are left now, but some good ones with professional equipment, and the lines that have to be recorded are not that many, so I think everything will work out fine, in the end.
I still haven't contacted the new guys because I have to be totally sure there won't be extra lines to be recorded.


Bugs: I think I've fixed all the ones spotted during the 2nd beta-stage, but I definitely need another beta-stage because of all the extras and to check the fixes. I'm totally positive that this is going to be faster and smoother than the previous tests, to the point that I'm finally going to make the long awaited announcement:

Forge's release date has been set to the first half of December!

And I'm talking about 2013, so this should be great news for all of you weavers. Or so I hope.


I'm not sure I'll manage this beta-stage as the previous ones, with open subscriptions. Somehow that didn't turn out that well, so I'll probably come up with a different approach. I'll let you know in the next few days, and anyway I intend to begin the testing in the third week of October.

Stay tuned and please visit our official boards for further info and updates.

May the Forge be with you,
-Gabriele "Abisso" Nannetti

*********
December 16th, 2013 - Update:

Chapter One has finally been released! Download it NOW before it's too late!

CLICK HERE FOR THE DOWNLOAD PAGE

Dec 17th, 2013 quick edit: in case you have trouble with the installer version, I've added a simple archive just below the standard download.

*********



P.S. The previous thread has been abandoned because the first post wasn't mine and so I couldn't change the topic's title. The old messages are still there though, but the topic is locked: link to the old AGS topic about the game
Welcome back to the age of the great guilds.

fózi


Kaelem Gaen

Nice! I was almost worried it disappeared into a puff of smoke.

Glad to see it's still being Worked on, any plans to also do a Little Radio Play to fill in Gaps?  (There was a Loom audio drama apparently with only a few of the collectors versions of the game.)

Maybe extra background prior to the start of the game?
~ Chaos, panic, disorder...  My work is done here. ~

Abisso

Quote from: fózi on Sat 18/02/2012 00:04:52
Fantastic job! Looking forward to it.

Thanks fózi!

Quote from: Kaelem Gaen on Sat 18/02/2012 02:47:31
Nice! I was almost worried it disappeared into a puff of smoke.

Glad to see it's still being Worked on, any plans to also do a Little Radio Play to fill in Gaps?  (There was a Loom audio drama apparently with only a few of the collectors versions of the game.)

Maybe extra background prior to the start of the game?

Actually there is more than a plan to do an entire Forge Audio Drama: it's currently being written and I'm already in contact with a possible voice actor as well.

Moreover, some Loom gaps (especially those involving Rusty) will be filled in Forge and some of them will be fully playable (not simple cutscenes).
Welcome back to the age of the great guilds.

DCS78

I am a voice actor (and learning AGS coding). If you need help I'd be glad to lend my voice.

Abisso

Thanks for the kind offer. You've got a private message.
Welcome back to the age of the great guilds.

fózi

Hey! I checked your demo, brilliant work! I sincerely hope you can get this done in full quality.

For good pixel artists I suggest you look in www.pixeljoint.com

And for SFX/music needs I suggest www.modarchive.org

Regards


Abisso

#8
Thanks to all of you. I wish I could work on it more and have a stable team, but sadly it's not like that. Progress is slow but constant and that's the only thing I can guarantee.

February 25, 2013 Update: check the first post of this thread to know more about it.
Welcome back to the age of the great guilds.

Tramponline

Good to hear you guys are still keeping busy in the background.
Was almost convinced the project was in hiatus since there were no new posts.

Sounds like I was wrong (fortunately!) and you guys made some massive progress in the meanwhile.
Best of luck!



Abisso

Hello Tramponline, and thanks for your interest.

I owe a lot to AGS and this board, so I apologize for not keeping it updated. Sadly the little free time I have must be directed fully towards coding (bug-fixing at the moment) and minor pixel jobs. I have lots of threads spread throughout the Web, but truth is I never update any of them. On the other hand I try to post monthly updates on forgegame.com, so I encourage anyone who's interested to check it out often. You don't even have to sign in if you're not interested in being part of the community, as you can read the summaries on our homepage.

As someone might have noticed, anyway, I'm now looking for a public relations publicist / journalist for the exact purpose of keeping contact with fans and updating thread on all the boards and blogs. I understand the importance of spreading the word and keeping the interest high, but I'm hardly the best person to do such a thing, as I'm a very reserved guy in real life as well.
I think as Forge is my beloved child though, and I intend to do all it takes to keep it healthy and thriving. So, yes, I'm taking care of it, don't worry.

Hope to see you and the other fellow weavers on our boards.

Sincerely,
-Gabriele "Abisso"
Welcome back to the age of the great guilds.

DazJ

This is looking absolutely great guys! Really captures the feel of the original :)


Abisso

If both Dick Larenzo and a Northlands' Heroine show interest in Forge, all I can say is I'm flattered!

Seriously guys, thanks.

@DazJ: though I'm still waiting for a complete Dick Larenzo's game (demo was really funny), I wish you the best with Calm Waters DazJ.
@Corby: good luck with Heroine's Quest, and thanks for your help with Forge.
Welcome back to the age of the great guilds.

Autocyclist

I'm hoping this is still in development. If so, I'd be happy to donate to the cause.
One thing I'd like to mention, based on the demo: Show, don't tell. I know it's easier said than done, but reading screeds of text in one scene isn't the most fun.

Darth Mandarb

#15
Autocyclist - Would you also be happy to read the forum rules before posting??

Abisso - let me know if you need/want to post an update and I'll unlock it!

Abisso

Hello weavers!

There is an important update about the game: release date for the demo (which includes the complete Chapter One) has been set to the first half of December.

Check the first post in this topic for details.

Thanks to everyone for the patience and support.
-Gabriele "Abisso" Nannetti
Welcome back to the age of the great guilds.

KodiakBehr


Abisso

Quote from: KodiakBehr on Fri 04/10/2013 01:48:28
Wow.  This looks fantastic!

Thanks Kodiak, and good luck with Conspirocracy. It's a shame you haven't managed to fund it fully, but I'm glad the game will see the light of day all the same.


And now, fellow weavers, I'm proud to invite you to our betatesting. CLICK HERE to know more!
Welcome back to the age of the great guilds.

selmiak

Since Abisso is probably sleeping or preparing a nice post to put in here or to update the first post I just want to post this in the meantime...

http://forgegame.com/?p=downloads


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