Calm Waters - Demo Now Available

Started by DazJ, Wed 09/05/2012 11:17:04

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DazJ

UPDATE:

Added an Exclusive Gameplay Preview Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecmY789sNbk

Enjoy :)

Chicky

Hi Daz, i'm not normally a fan of pre-rendered adventures but that preview was very well put together. Absolutely screaming with atmosphere thanks to the sound design and the parallax effect works really well. Keep it up!

DazJ

#42
Thanks, Chicky.

Yes, the atmosphere plays a huge part in the game so I'm glad that it's translated across successfully :)

UPDATE:

Updated design:


shaun9991

this looks amazing. i love the atmosphere in the video sneak peak
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DazJ

Thank you :) It's really really taking shape now.

LTGiants2000

I think I saw something about a demo on the Facebook page. Are you going to be releasing a demo?

DazJ

Yes, after the advert reaches 50 likes on the page :)

Stupot

Quote from: DazJ on Fri 30/08/2013 18:26:04
Yes, after the advert reaches 50 likes on the page :)
Come on then, everyone... Clicky here
16 more likes to go.

DazJ

Cheers Stu :)

We've now got a mention over on adventuregamers.com - http://www.adventuregamers.com/news/view/25232

It's now officially set for a Summer 2014 release.

DazJ


m0ds

Thanks for the heads up, downloaded and going to play a bit later if I feel well enough. No calm waters in my stomach today...not after last night ;) But well done Daz looking forward to it!

Khris

Looking good so far, although I'm no fan of this graphics style at all. I love the videos though, and the voice acting is pretty good so far. Great Job!

A few things I noticed:
Spoiler
-the walk speed, while being too slow in general, is really off in some screens. Particularly while walking horizontally outside the hotel and walking down in the corridor, the animation is much faster than the movement.

-the game doesn't always properly hide the interface. At the title screen, you can't click anything while the title fades in, but the buttons are already there from the start. And during blocking scenes, the mouse cursor remains the usual crosshairs, but the game naturally doesn't react to clicks.

-is there a reason why you can't skip speech with a mouse click? I was eating something while playing the demo and had to move my hand between the keyboard and mouse constantly.

-I also got this when I left the restaurant screen via the right exit, but only after having been to the beach:
in "room10.asc", line 45
Error: Error running function 'room_Load':
Error: Null pointer referenced
[close]

DazJ

Hi Khris

Thanks for the notes. I actually fixed the error bug with a new upload so I'm presuming you downloaded the first one.

The walking/animation has been the biggest problem. I'm thinking of cancelling diagonal view altogether as this is where most of the issues come from.

You can't skip with the mouse because it's easy to accidently skip things. That's why it's keyboard only, like Monkey Island does.

kaput

I downloaded and tried out the demo. It really does show potential. I look forward to the full game, nice one.

m0ds

#54
Hi Daz, that error is occurring for me too, so I re-downloaded and was able to exit the bar area, but this time, after visiting beach, exiting bar and then trying to reach the crying woman, game crashed with "room 14, line 43, null pointer referenced."

This *may* have happened because I loaded my previous save game and just tried walking around to make sure I could reach everywhere without a crash.

It'd be great to be able to skip speech. More often than not I've read it long before the actor has spoken. I don't think I can handle sitting through it all again for a third time :P Also something was apparent during the intro - deaf/hard of hearing people are going to struggle as there's no text there, but it's certainly some nice narration.

Other than that I've enjoyed it all so far, good atmosphere, and the "past tense" approach is pretty cool, I'm enjoying that. I'm half and half on the walk speed, I don't mind it. But because of the errors and having to replay, I'm now finding the speed frustrating. I think if it was still my first play through though I'd be fine with it, but maybe there is room for a quickened pace/run on double click?

Beside that, good job! I'm enjoying it :) Oh, and isn't it "Michal Michalski"? He's credited as Michael in the intro. But it's good to hear some of his new work :)

PS. I like the diagonal view myself, I don't see the need to remove it..?

DazJ

Hey Mods

Thanks for reporting those issues. I've gone ahead and recoded how the music is executed - the problem was using Channels for the different audio elements. It worked fine on the systems I tested it on but obviously isn't on everyone else's.

I've gone ahead and re-uploaded the download file anyhow from the same link.

Regarding speech, it CAN be skipped be simply pressing any key on the keyboard. Monkey Island used this exact same style.

About the double-speed - I'd already toyed with is before but it just looks comical and that'll take away from the atmosphere - that's the last thing I want to do. The option to increase game speed is in the Settings though so that's an option I suppose.

Stupot

I'me just playing the demo now.  The presentation is really top notch.  Nicely done. The voice acting is pretty good too. Although, what the actors say doesn't always match the text at the top of the screen, which bugs me probably more than it should.

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