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the game wasn't abandoned, i just abandoned this forum

i'm always more than happy to receive, and respond to, valid constructive criticisms, especially from other games writers who understand the problems associated with turning an initial idea into a final game - particularly the compromises that often need to be made

however, i have neither the time, nor the patience, to deal with comments of a... trollish... nature

i started "HooD" with the idea that i'd make it accessible to a wider audience than my normal fare, but it seemed fairly obvious from the word go that it didn't find favour with a number of people here, and some of the comments were simply negative for the sake of being negative - not even based on the demo version of the game, but just on one or two screen shots (and one person even managing to work themselves into a lather of indignation about the borders round the screen shots ffs)

well anyway, it's no big deal. games-writing is just R&R for me. i run my own site, and i'm not beholden to this one. as things turned out, by abandoning my idea of releasing HooD here, it meant that i could rethink the content level, and in fact i've now made the whole thing rather more explicit than i was originally planning. if i was asked to give the genre a name it would probably be something like "soft core snuff p0rn. with puzzles"

the game's now been completed, and anyone interested in playing it (bearing in mind the appellation above) should be able to find it without any trouble on my site (link in sig). the site itself is not a games site, it's a 3d art site, for adults. there are a lot of well-known and respected artists in the field posting there, and some superb artwork; however some of the content will not be to everyone's taste. membership is free, but you have to register. it is NOT suitable for minors, nor is it appropriate for workplace access


p.s. if i get a spare moment i'll pm a link to the game itself to anyone who's expressed an interest in it to date

it's the response of an affirmed nihilist

there's an episode of the simpsons where bart's being pursued by sideshow bob, intent on some gilbert and sullivan backed murder & mayhem

he (bart. not sideshow bob. and not gilbert. nor sullivan) runs to the front of the boat, and sees some killer... for the sake of argument, let's say... alligators

he runs to the back of the boat and seem some killer... for the sake of argument, let's say... electric eels

he runs back to the front of the boat and sees...

and says: "oh yeah"



i'd forgotten, when i started re-posting here, what this place is full of...




i've remembered now...

I'm sorry to be an ass again

it doesn't take much to yank your chain does it? war, famine, drought, pestilence, global warming, corruption in high places.... noooooo, it's none of those, it's the fact that the screen shots have got a frigging border round them


lighten up man. it is NOT IMPORTANT

I do agree about the perspective though.... I love the theme, resident evil references and the graphics here, but you should maybe tweak scaling level here and there. Having said that, on some of the screens the characters and backgrounds are in perfect harmony!

i'm not really sure i quite understand the criticism. i spend quite a bit of time on each screen ensuring that the max and min scaling levels of each room match the character's height to the surrounding environment. that's an inexact science, of course, but those are the only parameters (as far as i'm aware) that i have at my disposal to manipulate the sprite's shape, and looking at the screens i've posted i can't see any obvious discrepancies on that score

to illustrate the point, the other characters on the posted screens are "static" (although they do in fact have a few animation frames each) figures, actually rendered in the environments, and as can be seen, the heroine's height pretty much matches theirs when she's near to them

i'd agree that the perspective of the character doesn't always match up with the camera angles, but as i've said, using this software it's impossible to do that while also using an array of different camera angles. the only way it's possible is if you simply plonk the camera in front of each scene and get a head-on view of it, and my preference is to have the occasional skewed perspective but more interesting camera angles. that will become important when the combat phase starts too. a lot of the success of early resident evil was some of the claustrophobic angles it employed to put the player on edge


anyway, thanks for the comments. it's always useful to get feedback


as to the initial release, it's a day or so off. everything's in working order, but i just keep thinking "well, perhaps i should just add.. .so and so?"

(and to be honest, i HAVE been trying to come up with a way in which i can introduce a whale into the scenario. if you're gonna waste fluffy stuff, may as well think big...)

the alternative is to use boring straight on camera views for every single scene, which would obviously then match up with the straight on sprite views

personally i prefer to use dynamic camera angles, giving a variety of different scene perspectives and scales, and the player just has to suspend disbelief regarding how the animated sprites fit into the scenes


however, if you know a way of dynamically modding the in-game sprites to match background camera angles in AGS, then i'd be fascinated to hear it

i guess mentioning the dead doggy was a mistake, huh? sheesh, good job i never posted the game where you have to kill an elephant in order to advance

and don't even ask about the blue whale...



anyhoo, a few more screenshots



the first level is pretty much written now. it establishes the premise, introduces the heroine and a few other characters. there's a dozen or so screens to explore, one main puzzle to solve, and quite a few things to find. there's music, and sound effects, but no combat as yet. that will be the next major stage of the project

anyway, once i've winkled out the last remaining bug (like THAT ever happens) from this stage of the game i'll pm a link to everyone who's expressed interest so far. well, at least that's not going to take long, is it?

Warning: if you were one of those delicate souls who didn't like having to kill the doggy in the last adventure I released here, then don't even THINK about playing this one. Other criticisms of that game I've taken to heart though - so in this game I've rendered the character sprites a lot larger, so that they don't pixellate so much in close-up; actions are deferred until the character arrives at a target area rather than giving an irritating "it's too far away" kind of message; and it's possible to "eyeball" the surrounding area to find potential exits, rather than having to blunder around until you stumble over them

Early days yet, but this will be a "Resident Evil" style game, mixing both action and puzzles. Violence, adult themes, some gore, a great deal of cussing

The game engine is pretty much written now. Everything is controlled from the core script, and there's no code attached anywhere else. That was an intellectual challenge as much as anything else, but I've found that at the end of the day it makes the development process a lot easier to control

Anyhoo, "Hood" is the working title, but that may well change as it develops

thanks for the reply

i rather thought that might be the case

i could use a static size array, but there are usually occasions when you want to loop through all the elements in the array, to get, or to set, the data in that array, so using an arbitrary value as the limiter can cause more problems than it solves

looks like i'll have to just bang on with my current manual solution

it's possible to obtain most game maxima (e.g. game.CharacterCount etc) at runtime, but there doesn't seem to be anything that tells you how many rooms are being used in the game

in most of my games i create arrays storing information about each room, and manually set something called "GiMaxRooms" to define the array limit. but of course i have to remember to update it every time i add a new room, and being the lazy boy that i am i'd really prefer it if i could write some code to do that for me

so the question really is: is there any way to get hold of what would effectively be "game.RoomCount"?

i've seen the module where you can set the maximum number of rooms used per game, but this is obviously a slightly different requirement

any suggestions gratefully received

don't want to get sued for misrepresentation

it's only a finished part of a game, not a finished full game

yeah you're right of course

man, i wish this had been available when i started out trying to learn the scripting language. at the time the demo was unavailable so i had to teach myself

i used to do commercial programming in a past life, but i still found a lot of it (particularly the import/export stuff) totally confusing and frustrating without any examples to look at. like most things in life it's easy when you know how, and impenetrable when you don't

this piece of work will almost certainly be a great deal of use to a lot of newcomers though. kudos

Thanks for the feedback

The secrets to find in the game are as follows:

Spoiler

> use keys on car
> use lighter at dark corner of diner
> open the hatch
> when lights are back on in the diner walk past the ring on the table, all the way towards the camera

[close]

The intention is that these secrets will simply reward the player with a different cut-scene on discovery, but occasionally they may reveal extra information about the game

As to some of the other comments:

Frodo - good find on the dead dog talking bug. If there's a v1.1 I'll certainly be fixing that. (And Aphrodite certainly isn't as innocent as she seems) (but just how uninnocent, only time will tell)

Regarding the size of the dog, I think it's actually quite small compared to the Largest Dog in the World. By the way if anyone's offended by the idea of casually offing a large virtual pooch in order to progress in the game, then they probably shouldn't be playing this particular game at all. There's likely to be a LOT worse to come

On the issue of sprite scaling, I could have rendered Jenni a lot larger. She's 200px high, which seemed a reasonable compromise regarding resolution v filesize (which I always try and keep to the minimum). I'll probably stick with what I've got, as I'm planning on introducing all the main characters as walking sprites as the game progresses, and they only really break up when the sizing's 150% or more

On the gameplay/interface issues, most points taken. If there's a v1.1 then I'll certainly make the characters move towards points that are currently too far away. I may try and give the player more pointers on where exits are, without putting big "GO THIS WAY" signs up everywhere. I may remove the talking portraits, I was umming and ahhing about whether they were really necessary on the exposition screens anyway. I may also review how the "look" interface works, and maybe add an "Are you sure you want to Quit" message? (although my own response is always "Yes, of course I'm sure, otherwise I wouldn't have DONE IT!")

OK, soooooo, deep breath, and...

Version 1.0 of House of Whispers: Prologue can now be downloaded. It's approximately 25MB. As discussed above this may, or may not, be available on a time-expired basis

Right click the above link and SaveTargetAs, then unzip to any suitable location on your hard drive. The files included in the zip are:

> Acsetup.cfg - game configuration file
> Act00.exe - the House of Whispers prologue. This is the file to run
> Act01.exe - this simply loads up a screen saying "Act I - coming soon". It's triggered on reaching the end of the prologue, and will be replaced in the next release of the House of Whispers game
> CutScene01.xxx and CutScene02.xxx - two animation files
> Music.vox
> ReadMe.txt

Genre: Horror
Puzzle difficulty factor: Easy
Play time: Around 20 minutes (but remember, this is just the prologue)

Warnings:
This segment contains adult situations, strong profanity, and some mild violence. No gore or explicit sexual content, however. (Later episodes will almost certainly contain stronger material)

Scenario:
This is the prologue to the main House of Whispers story. It opens in Celeste's diner, where Jenni's friend Aphrodite has asked the two of them to meet up to discuss Aphrodite's concerns over her uncle, the (mad, of course) scientist Dr Ignatius Grimes

Gameplay:
Standard point-and-click adventure, with some minor quirks. Pressing F1 will give a list of control keys that can be used in the game. Note that you can only ever create a single save file, and that the save, load and quit functions all run without prompting

Apart from having to solve a number of puzzles in order to progress to the end of the segment, there are also a number of secrets to discover in the game. These are not necessary for completing the game, but will reward the player with different cut-scenes. The number of secrets to discover is revealed at the end of the segment, together with the number that were actually found during gameplay


===


All comments and critiques would be most welcome. Also, please let me know if you find any bugs or speling mitsakes

Finally, although this segment sketches out a situation, none of what is to follow has yet been fully defined, so if you'd like to make suggestions for storylines etc, then these may get incorporated into future acts

Would you allow a member of this forum to provide a mirror, in case someone offers to do so? Just asking, as I'm getting the vibe that you might plan to use the game as an advertisement of your forums. Nothing wrong with that of course, you're free to do as you please.

although it might seem as if i'm touting for business that really isn't the case

AoD is a free forum which i've set up and which i finance. it's specifically targetted at 3d artists, and those who enjoy their work. there are also musicians and writers active there, and although i myself mainly do 3d artwork i've also used it for releasing some of my older games

i'm not trying to boost the membership figures, they're fine as it is. i'm also not using this as some kind of "come-on" to lure people there and then hit them with membership fees or whatever. by "free" i mean "free"

what i am trying to do is find a way of releasing this game in a way that makes it easily and reliably accessible, but without having to take an unacceptable bandwidth hit. well, perhaps only three people will ever download the game. the trouble is, although i've got a good handle on what goes on at my own site, i've no idea of the levels of activity here, so i'm simply a little concerned. perhaps i'm worrying unnecessarily?

anyway... the prologue is now finished. as a final finishing touch i added some secret rooms/cut scenes for the player to find, and i'm planning on releasing it later today. i've playtested it until i'm sick of the sight of the stoopid thing, but i'm sure it's still not perfect. nothing ever is

p.s. i'd be more than happy to take up anyone's offers to provide a mirror from where the game could be downloaded

Speaking of which, I don't think you ever told us your website...

i've given it to anyone who's pm'd me about it expressing interest in the earlier games, however as it's possible that i'll only be releasing house of whispers there, it's: the Art of Darkness

you have to be 18 or over in order to join up, as it's an adult art site that allows extreme content. the two earlier games are only available to members of the games group. however, house of whispers will be available to all members

in any case i may simply decide to post time-expired links to each of the house of whispers segments here

the graphics look very good. i think photo-realism's a tricky one to pull off, almost impossible in fact, because although the graphics may be substantially based on photos they rarely end up looking truly photo-realistic due to the "mix and match" nature of their creation. however, the important thing is always that the player eventually gets immersed in the world, and kind of suspends their disbelief

anyway, good luck with the project. looking forward to seeing how it progresses

Progress Report:

The prologue's now pretty much in a releasable state. The main game music is written, and sound effects have been added. The interface is pretty much complete. There are around 10 different locations, a couple of mini-movies, and some dialogue cut-scenes where the overall situation is explained (without going into too much wordy detail)

However, although it all looks good (not perfect, but good), it needs an extra puzzle element in order to at least supply some small amount of challenge. At present this segment would take any competent games player maybe 10 minutes to complete, at most, so I'd like to beef it up a bit before releasing it

Adding puzzles is a fine art in itself, of course. I hate illogical "tacked on" puzzles - they need to flow from the situations, and the solutions should never involve randomly trying out all the items in your inventory until you finally strike lucky. You may eventually resort to doing that, but when you finally get the answer it should provoke a "well, duh, of COURSE that was the solution" response, rather than a "WTF?"

Anyway, enough blather. I know the puzzle I want to add, but it involves a large dog and some... well, suffice it to say that it involves adding another location or two, some further objects and... a large dog. A large animated dog. A large vicious drooling barking animated dog. With fangs. And a bad attitude...

So, yeah, a few more days of rendering, animating, coding, and play-testing, and then I'll release it

As to hosting, I'll probably host it myself. Most of the free solutions a) aren't free, b) aren't reliable, c) have sucky pop-ups and other crud, d) don't allow adult content, e) don't allow exes or zips, f) are only available if you live in uzbekistahn or amerika g) all of the above

That may mean that you'll have to register at my site in order to access it. I may however just host it there and post a link here, and then monitor bandwidth usage to check that I'm not taking an unacceptable hit

Looking forward to this. I like the incremental development plan, 'cos it means I get to play the game sooner!

it also has the advantage that i don't get bored writing it - always a problem with a vast monolithic undertaking

after i've released the prologue i'm kinda hoping that future episodes may contain a degree of user-suggested plots and diversions 

Wait... the hot, blonde, big-boobed girl in pink is called Aphrodite?
Unless she's some sorta stripper, and that's her stage name, I find that hard to believe

ya never heard of anyone calling their brat "chanel" or "britney" or the like?

Also, Jenni herself looks kinda awkward. Like she's intentionally running chest-first into these creepy dark rooms...

those are her own personal BFGs. they'll almost certainly come in very handy during the "gratuitous lingerie" interlude