Topics

BoRK is a puzzle oriented / some fighting game where your character is a teleportee dumped on Altair IV by a "crazy old bastard of a wizard" as the protagonist calls him. The game is the story of what happens from there.

Music: 100%
Ambient Sound: 100%
Art: 10%
Script: 100% (comicbook adaptation)





Website is my blog, under posts with BoRK as a tag.

MonkeyWrench!

Take one Tibetan ape. Add one hot blonde with four generations of hardboiled private eye in her veins. Mix liberally.

"Why don't you pack heat?"

"Carry a gun, you mean, in English?"

"Yeah."

"I don't need a gun. I have a Monkey."







Music: 100% complete.
Sounds: 100% complete.
Sound FX: 100% complete.
Voice Acting: 0% complete. Looking for voice actors- now's your chance. Otherwise it's me, my compadres and the voice modulator software.
Script: 100% complete.
Art: 10% complete.

Game is a magic realism / private eye with a lot of cases, clues and so on.

Features telephone use by using inputbox functions. The game contains the most comprehensive list of 555- numbers I am aware of, including all of them from all known sources plus several dozen more that the supposedly authoritative sources lacked. Plus ones original to this game. Also features easter eggs, hidden rooms etc. in addition to the main narrative flow.

An interactive map updates as cases develop, clues are given and exploration is carried out.

Features masses of references to film noir, ape and girl teamups, other similar tropes, and the ubiquity of the generic in Hollywood and LaLa Land in general, but not at the expense of the main story.

Also monkeys.

Website is twofold, since the comicbook version when it comes out will be part of the Golden Universe, so in addition to that website set it will also be featured on my Inherited Tigers blog:

http://realmonkeywrench.blogspot.com

Ook.

http://dopefish138.deviantart.com/art/Metal-Clash-Ozzy-vs-Dio-147012969

The greatest game that never was... Could it possibly make it as an AGS game??

It's a spoof of course but the graphics made me think AGS, and the choosing a frontman to use as your fighter, plus the addition of unlockable Tenacious D characters gives it just enough scraps of flesh on its bones to makes me wonder...

Do RON games have to be very self-referential? Or can a new bit be added to the town? I don't mean totally random I mean use a little bit not yet used etc.?

With the existing characters, can they just be background characters in most cases, with some new people added?

I am doing a whole series of them for a series of games / minigames etc. so as I finish them I will put them up.

Not all of them are close to the LOST originals for reason due to the games I am doing them for.

J

Hidey hi,

I was wondering if a resources download page would be cool?

I can make one easily enough.

I was thinking maybe add original sprite sheets, art, code snippets in text files, and whatever, but mostly art stuff that is good to go for people so they can start their game straight away without wasting time and enthusiasm on the artwork, if that isn't really their bag.

Anyway just an idea, if people think it's a good one I will do it.

Are Himalaya (Al Emmo) still around? I joined their forums but the crickets are chirping.

Skull Craig is off being tested so I have started another game. This one is called Skull Craig: Hemlock's Diary - scratch that- Hemlock's NOTEBOOK. Diary was a meme that contaminated my project.

It's set in the present day of the same world, 1000 years later than the first game.

This time a scrappy adventurer acquires a bizarre diary, reads it, and decides to visit the alpine region that the diary references, said region being of course... SKULL CRAIG.

This one is third person, ie it has a character twitching across the screen, along with various NPCs in similar mien.

It has both simple and complex quests, simple and complex items, ATM functions using a credit card inventory item, adventurer statistics, day night cycle and ongoing calendar functions, thirst, hunger and cold, interactive and "point and click with items" type puzzles and lots of detailed locations with loads of hotspots. Going for the whole immersive world albeit in third person perspective.

Script 15%
Pictures 10%
Sounds 50% (ambient and effects)
Music 100%


Coming along pretty well, more screens soon.

UPDATED 23 January

still being tested, correcting the inevitable little glitches and bugs, nothing horribly wrong so far, some people have solved it quickly and chosen the "run away" option, the testers going for the "escape, the maybe kill the tyrant" type options are still going.

***BACK FROM TESTING***

Doing new art for four rooms, changing sound and music levels in two other rooms and fixing a couple of poorly designed hotspots. When that is done, it will be released.


Room 2, the first actual room of the game.


A Throgg, encountered if Luck is against you.

- graphics 95%
- puzzles 100%
- scripting 100%
- music/sound 100%

BEING TESTED- testing by total newcomers to games of any kind, newcomers to adventure games and adventure game fans

Skull Craig is a puzzle / combat / quest Adventure Game. It is first person, with CGI art and characters.

Synopsis: you begin as a prisoner of Lord Rabtrutch, local despot. You have to escape your cell, and then decide whether to simply flee the whole Skull Craig area or linger in the region to take revenge on the tyrant. Along the way, there are quests and the usual scavenger hunt for items, although there are many different ways to solve problems given, and styles of play are possible- some things require a specific key for a specific lock, as in real life, but other things can be overcome, avoided or ignored.

Inventory features magic scrolls which are one-use magic spells. Also features money and character statistics such as Luck, Instinct and Health. They aren't obtrusive and are mentioned when relevant.

Game also features a day / night cycle, and behind that is a day / week / month / year etc. calendar. Currently somewhat under utilised, but it's all in there.

I have an ecology addon I can put in, but I am debating why to bother. It would allow seasons, monster population fluctuations, NPC events and all that. But since the game is quite narrowly focused, it seems pointless.

GUI is simply save / load / quit with a large inventory sheet alongside it.

Music is royalty free purchased or original composed.

Art same.

Escaping from the prison cell can be achieved in a variety of ways, to begin with some of those ways will almost certainly land you back in the cell but after a few items are collected things get easier quicker, although there is always the chance throughout the game that one of the tyrant's patrols will catch you and back you will go. However, even if this happens late in the game, you will be pretty confident of your ability to get back to where you were before disaster struck.

Death is possible, but far more likely is capture and temporary imprisonment. Death happens only after warning and is rare- doing a few things that are not only counter intuitive but pretty silly will get you killed- which triggers game restart.

There is a video introduction and a video finale. Other than that I haven't bothered with cut scenes although it is tempting to turn the whole game into video clips, I am just concerned at file size if I do that.

Anyway, SKULL CRAIG. There you go.

I will take some more screenshots and post them via an edit to this post.

VANILLA ISLAND

First person perspective adventure game. Uses full screen pictures to interact with. Photography used is from two sources: stills from contributors and stills from movie of the game.

Game, like the movie it is based on, is a mystery / suspense plot. Problem solving and exploration rather than violence is the basic type of gaming.

10% of the rooms are coded although all are scripted.
100% of the art is ready to go and all the sprites have been loaded.

Animations of various sorts are taking time to get as good as possible and the use of 3D has been tested and abandoned.

Since this is a proof of concept for an online 3D game using a radically different engine we want to see the photo backgrounds working using the AGS powers and then we will worry about the rest of it.





***
ADDED 28 January 2007:

Mathew Freitas who worked with me as 1AD on a couple of things is preparing the short film scripts. We are shooting the film in February and are trying to get an airport to agree to let us film a few things there, if not there are government offices we can use to double for an airport.

ADR will be used to add dialogue to the game along with stills to use as interleaved screens.

The shark has been added, picture of that and a few other things below.





***
ADDED 29 January 2007:

75% of the rooms are coded and 100% of the updated art. Adding different objects and cleaning up some of the events. Also the NPCs are being made more dynamic.

Hi to all members and guests!

First post.

We're making a game called VANILLA ISLAND, which is sort of L O S T meets MYST... LYST? M O S T?

Anyway we are actually building a MMORPG but AGS is the weapon of choice to make a proof of concept version of the final online game.

Vanilla Island as an AGS project will be a point and click adventure game in the same "universe" as the MMORPG, but is a way to keep everyone enthused along the way to finishing the bigger project which is going to take a long time to get through, sensibly.

We could already put some screen shots etc. up but I think personally we're better off waiting to see what the end of the week brings then doing a bit more by way of showing proof of concept and proof of life.

-Jonathan Nolan