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Yep 
Qui-Gon is going to make an appearance. That's one of the elements we're incorporating into Shadows' storyline thanks to the Prequels.

We're very proud of your response. No: we're happy. Really really happy.
Now... spread the voice! 

ladies and gentlemen...

STAR WARS Shadows of the Empire: Graphic Adventure
TECH DEMO 1.0 final

you can download it here:
http://dsgames.guerrestellari.net/sotedownload.php

I want to express all my gratitude for such a quick and effective help.
I think that's the proof I was right when I chose AGS to develop SOTE, and asked Dusk to learn its language: not only it's the best engine, but you can get help from a vast community and from the author himself!
If you have a problem, this problem will certainly become a solution for you and for others; and everyone will take advantage of the new improvements.
Isn't it fantastic?
thanks again, CJ, you're our hero 

TECH DEMO released for selected playtesters! See the updated top post. English version coming very soon.

-------------------------
CONTENT ADVISORY
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This Tech Demo contains an insane amount of gags. Take it carefully. And
it's packed with an even more insane amount of quotes from classic
adventures and movies. When you don't laugh, it's not our fault: it's
yours.Ã,  :
The final game will feature a more subtle humour.

Thanks.
Anyway... yes, I admit it's definitely not so important.

I'll explain the problem briefly. For Shadows of the Empire I've recreated precisely the classic LucasArts speech font, which was meant for low res. But our game runs at 640.
If we don't scale up fonts, we get it very small and detailed, but losing its original funny look (nostalgia? maybe, yes).
If we scale them, it becomes big. But also other bitmap fonts, used for labels and menu options, become big, too big, while they must remain small.

I've also tried to recreate a similar speech font doublesized in the SCI font editor, in order to keep it not scaled and still make it appear big: it's big while other fonts remain small. Perfect? No, there's one terrible problem: the outline is a single pixel, and the final result look ugly.
If I only could activate a double-pixel-outline on that font only!

Using a second font for the outline? I've tried, but it's not the same thing as having a precise automatic outline, which preserves letter spacing.

I need a speech font scaled up at 640, but another one should not be scaled, resulting small, hi-res.
Given the fact that I've left unchecked the "Don't scale up..." option, is there a way to tell only a specific font not to scale up, resulting small? Or vice versa: if I check "Don't scale up...", can I tell the other font to scale up, resulting big?
thanks

Hey Epic, not to go off subject, but are you a Zak McKracken fan?

We all are.
Zak is the first graphic adventure I played, it's the game I had in mind -in terms of gameplay- when I envisioned the structure of Shadows of the Empire.
It's very long, maybe the longest of all.
It's quite hard.
You can swap up to four characters.
You travel a lot from one corner of the world to the other.
You get more jokes you can possibly ask for.

Those are features SOTE will definitely have. 300 estimated rooms, 50 already created, at least 40 main characters (circa 200 estimated), a very long plotline (70% preexistent, 30% original but already written), 4 swapable characters (Luke, Leia, Dash Rendar, Lando, plus their sidekicks following them with A.I. routines by Dusk) sometimes playing and solving puzzles in team mode, travels throughout the galaxy, more jokes than you would expect from a "serious" game.

But SOTE has many things Zak hadn't (thanks God), as dialogues. Dialogues, written by Epic, have a crucial role in solving many puzzles. And a modern GUI we're quite proud of.

As you can see, it's not something we can accomplish in a couple of months. We're already happy with the work so far, but there's a lot of it still to do, especially in the sprites department, since I'm alone working on them and on the backgrounds.

[SOTE Tech Demo]

Just a little update to show you some of our work in preparation for the SOTE Tech Demo we're gonna release soon. We plan to complete the demo for Halloween for a group of playtesters: if you want to help us testing it please write to dsgames@guerrestellari.net. One week later the demo will be publicly released.

This is an animation of Luke Skywalker -in his Shadows of the Empire outfit- walking in side view.

I was just reloading the page to see the different Random screenshots, and they look great!!! I cant wait for the Demo.

Happy you like them, but you're not gonna see *that much* in the upcoming tech demo; there will not be so many locations. By its own nature, it's only an early technical demonstration set up to show the engine, with three or four rooms, a few dedicated puzzles and a funny tutorial for the interface.
It definitely contains a massive dose of pure nonsense, far more than the real finished game, which still will be filled with humour (ranging from the tone of Beneath a Steel Sky, serious and funny at the same time, to some "Monkey" moments).

STAR WARS Shadows of the Empire: Graphic Adventure

playable tech demo: Halloween 2004
full lenght demo: Christmas 2004
tentative release of the first two Parts: spring 2005
tentative release of the completed game: spring 2006
type: totally freeware (due to Star Wars copyrights)

Still working on it? You can count on it, Dark Lord
We're not gonna give up. The Force is definitely with us; it's the Force of the love for Star Wars and for classic graphic adventures. Seeing the two thing merge together is a dream we want to realize. LucasArts never did it; we must assume they weren't interested in doing it since adventures cease to be a commercially profitable game genre. Well, let's do it by ourselves, as a no-profit unofficial fangame.

Although only 40 backgrounds have been completed and the work on the sprites is at an early phase, we go on tirelessly.

Usually, updates are posted on our website. But sometimes we're gonna share parts of our work with you here to get instant feedback and criticisms (hey, seriously: aren't you gonna criticize our sprites? I mean, they're soooo cute  ).

As stated on the webpage, any semiprofessional pixel artist with a good knowledge of Star Wars who's interested in helping with sprite animation can be considered to join our team. This adventure MUST come through, I promised myself some years ago.
It was first envisioned in 1989 after playing Indy Last Crusade and later took the form of Shadows of the Empire, as an unofficial (but absolutley faithful) adaptation of that adventurous and amusing story. Now, after 15 years, and thanks to Chris Jones's magic tool, the dream can come true. A motivated team has been formed and we're determined to face the hard work.
Now if you'll excuse me, there are a couple of backgrounds I must finish...

Hi

I'm a newbie. After an overview of the awesome AGS (the first tool to give me the feeling I'm really gonna realize my project) this is my question:
if I make a game of 250 rooms at 320*240 16 bit will I have an executable of circa 50+ Mb or it will be splitted in many files?

thanks