Dustbowl - A Post Apocalyptic Adventure

Started by pixelincognito, Wed 17/09/2014 11:10:22

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pixelincognito

Hell folks, I hope everyone had a really fun Christmas and New Year and have fully recovered!

It's been a very long time since our last update but what with the aftermath of Christmas and the New Year I needed to give my eyeballs a rest from Dustbowl, just for a wee while.

I've been working really hard on concepting a couple of new ideas for Dustbowl and finalizing the world map, which I may add, is incredibly large! Over the past 8 days I've been working solidly on this element as it's such an important/fun part of the game and I don't think anyone will be dissatisfied with it's scale and the number of areas to enter and loot. The map itself weighs in at 4248x4960 which might not sound like a lot but in regards to pixel art...it's a large area to cover.

All the key areas are now in with a swath of random locations to explore and loot but I'll probably be going back to add in more farms and factories. So by no means an I done with the map but it's looking good :)

Another thing I've been exploring is character portraits. We all love character portraits and for Dustbowl I think it would make a huge difference to the experience. Dustbowl characters are VERY low res and the detail in them is quite simple, BUT with character portraits suddenly this blob of pixels now has a detailed face, a smile, an expression...a real character. So I'll be looking at getting them into the game :)

So now I'm happy with the map what else? Well before Christmas I just finished a new area "The Junction" which is another section of subway that the player must deal with (and a boss fight!). But I'll be looking at making the new areas and getting them into the game (now that they finally exist in the world!).

But that's a lot of reading so it's time to show off some art I guess :)





Well there we have it for now, progress admittedly has slowed a little but we're back on it and we hope to get more updates to you soon! We appreciate like what you all your support on the project and if you see please head over to our Steam Greenlight Page and give us a thumbs up :) STEAM GREENLIGHT

CaptainD

If your screen resolution is 320x200 (I'm presuming it is?) that map size works out as the equivalent of a whopping 329 screens!  Which is, by any definition, pretty darn big. :grin:

I'll do an update post on indiegamenews.com - a lot of people are interested in your game!  16th on IndieDB is some going, congrats.
 

pixelincognito

yeah it is 320x200, the map has taken bloody ages! haha

Thanks for your support!


pixelincognito

Hey everyone!

It's been a really long time since I posted here...it hasn't been due to inactivity but because we've been so busy working on the game that we just haven't had the time to really sit down and collect everything to put in a news post. So what has been going on exactly? Well a lot.

I've been working on hard on getting everything in for the main quest line (so we can actually complete the game). That's all the large unique areas, NPCs and their animations, items and of course...dialogue.

In total the NPC dialogue for the main quest line is over 40 pages (or so Google Docs tells me) and that's pretty whopping. As only one of us can work in the actual project at once I set out writing the dialogue in such a way that it can just be copied and pasted in. So that is a massive load off our shoulders now - and I know how the game ends!! That's good news for everyone.

I kept promising our dialogue system was going to change and it has dramatically (I think I mentioned it in another post but here I go again). We have animated character sprites, unique portraits for every NPC in the game and it just looks so much cooler, with your chat options positioned in a nice place and not covering the centre of the screen.

Shops are also a new feature, with a Medical, Weaponry and general supply stores where you can vender off junk items and keep stocked up.

We're hoping to get the game into a testing phase in March and a big push from us both in getting in the last side quests and random houses to loot. But there is still a lot to do, more random events, enemies and items.

Again, I'd like to plug our twitter page that we update regularly with art, our rather neglected facebook page...and of course our Greenlight page, your support here really does make a difference.





Cheers, and I hope everyone is doing very well!
M

selmiak

this is looking better all the time. Painting cool characters with such a limited palette and small resolution is a mean task and master it!


Hobo

This just keeps getting better and better with each update and the pace of your development process is astounding. This is definitely in my must play list of 2015.

ChestPecRespect

Good to hearing from you guys again!
I was actually able to start and finish Wasteland 2 since your last update. :smiley:
Looking forward to this as I still have that post-apocalyptic fix hehe

pixelincognito

#69
Good day everyone! As always we've been very busy working on Dustbowl and the finishing line is just in sight! We're real excited, the game will be going into a big testing phase very soon and we'll be looking for people to help us test and get Dustbowl up to scratch! We're at the end of cramming in the last bits of art and features with a solid week of quest writing and coding a few weeks ago. The game can now be complete with 3 endings for the player to choose! In the main story there's about 20 quests in that chain which have the player wandering the highlands and lowlands of the wastes. We also have a number of really cool side quest ad large mutant encounters!

More weapons have been going into the game for the player to use, AK47, M16, M60, Flame Thrower all with unique sounds and effects.

One feature that wasn't in our paper-thin demo was a storage locker for items...well good news! We have them now, a storage locker shared between the populated areas of the game.

Another new feature that's been added is a simple crafting system that can be accessed via workbenches which can be found in various locations. This isn't minecraft, you simply convert groups of junk into usable items. Currently you can build: Bandages, Medkits, Med Hypos, Armour Repair Kits and Multi-tools (our version of the lockpick). A simple cooking system has also been added and you can cook raw meat for food. More random encounters have been added to the wastes...from travelling traders to abandoned vehicles and the legendary Hotdog Man!

The random areas of the map which can be explored are all complete, the map is a huge, vast area and there are now 51 locations that can be explored! Among other things we've been fixing a lot of issues here and there, sorting out tooltips, putting in the last of the NPC portraits, adding a cool portrait selection to the player screen and getting the permadeath option in!

We are at a critical time in our Greenlight process so we humbly implore anyone to head over to our greenlight page and give us a vote. We really appreciate all the support and it means a lot to me and Tom. We've been working very hard at keeping the progress high and the quality up. I also wish I could give everyone a big hug who's already voted! (there's not enough hugs in the world).
OUR GREENLIGHT PAGE!

So lots and lots of things! But time for some art?







Again, we appreciate all your support, I hope everyone had an amazing Easter and are now full up on chocolate bunnies!
Mark.

Monsieur OUXX

#70
It's still all supercool. I love the sort-of 16/64-colors Amiga-like low-saturation color palette.
 

pixelincognito

Hi everyone! I want to thank everyone for their votes, we have finally been GREENLIT! it really means a lot and we need more AGS games on STEAM! News travels in the radioactive winds! Dustbowl is now entering it's final testing phase!

We managed to get the last features in and cleaned up a lot of old placeholder art so everything is looking much nicer. That's not to say we're done, there's always more polish, animation effects, more weapons but these things aren't game breakers and can be added at my leisure.

The features we have in Dustbowl is:

1) New Dialogue system with full character portraits.
2) Crafting benches to make a number of cool items.
3) Different grenades that add more tactics to combat.
4) Simple cooking system to sizzle up raw meat.
5) Use multitools on locked objects to get their goodies.
6) Full custom quests system with 4 tasks per quest.
7) Day/Night system, get tired, sleep, camp the night in the wastes.
8) Explore a huge map with over 50 locations.

As you can see it's a lot to test and we expect a lot of typos due to the sheer amount of dialogue but we'll get there and we're on target for our rough release date (touch wood).







I want to really thank everyone again for making two small developer's dreams come true.

Mark.

Cuiki

And I was worried I wouldn't know what to play after I finish Fallout. :shocked: :shocked:

Spoiler
..oh look an empty syringe... now where can I find some xander root??
[close]

This looks (and sounds) amazing. Kudos for undertaking such a huge project and good luck with whatever's left to do.
Can't wait! :-D
Hmm..it's kinda steep. But with a sled I can slide down the slope.

Atavismus

Dustbowl is finally out on Steam! :)

http://steamcommunity.com/app/367110
(Trailer inside: not sure how to embed a youtube video here)

Thx you all for your support since the early days.
Thx also to monkey_05_06 for his killer Steam plugin.

We'll post soon the game in "Completed Game Announcements" and add a link to a new demo.



StillInThe90s

Congrats fellas!
Will there be a non steam version as well?

Atavismus

Thx StillInThe90s* :)
Yes, there will be a non steam version soon.

(*love your pseudo btw ;))

Ibispi

Congrats guys! Wow. I remember when this thread was first created and there were no replies yet, and I thought, what a nice game idea. After a blink of an eye, you have already finished the game and it is already on Steam! Awesome!

Atavismus

Quote from: Ibispi on Tue 19/05/2015 18:34:15
Congrats guys! Wow. I remember when this thread was first created and there were no replies yet, and I thought, what a nice game idea. After a blink of an eye, you have already finished the game and it is already on Steam! Awesome!
Thx! :)
Yeah, "after a blink of an eye" (9 months, but indeed we didn't see them), we can propose you all to discuss about our baby on the "Completed Game Announcements" thread:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=52215.0
See you there!

Darth Mandarb

Congrats on the release!

You might want to update the first post with a link to the completed thread (just a suggestion).

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