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Thanks, Daniel!

Does it contain spoilers?

Only very minor ones, like puzzle structures for different acts with the puzzle titles blurred out. And the layout of the ship and its rooms. There might be some bigger ones in our brainstorming stuff if you know Finnish. We tried to avoid spoilers so there should be no major ones, not in the first one at least. Can't remember what exactly we talked about in the next two.

Thanks! Always happy to know people are enjoying the game! (And the podcast.)

[(Buy it now as part of the Summerbatch!)]

Hello, people of Earth!





We have just released the first episode of our three episode Barely Floating Podcast series in which we talk about the making of our game, Barely Floating! (Buy it now as part of the Summerbatch!) If you can't understand a word we're saying because of our lacking ability to speak English, you can at least still watch the pretty pictures go by: photos of the production, early screenshots, designs, etc.


Episode 1 - Preproduction & Design

In the first episode, we talk about the beginning of the project, including the game design, assembling the team, project management and so on.

[embed=640,360]<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/_1uMQRDr7fQ?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>[/embed]


Episode 2 - Production

In the second episode, we speak about some technical mumbo jumbo, including the Lua scripting language and the custom resolution version of AGS. And what would it all be without all the behind the scenes drama of the darkest days of the production! Plus some stuff about character art and animation.

[embed=640,360]<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/0lWVQjH4Sj8?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>[/embed]


Episode 3 - Graphics & Music

In the third and final episode, we take a closer look at the background art and turn our floppy ears towards the music, the game's fabulous soundtrack by Sine Cadenza.

Slight spoiler warning: There are some things in this episode that I'd rather have you experience in the game first. Probably not a big deal for anybody else but at least I've mentioned it now.

[embed=640,360]<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/eCj0vh6K8m4?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>[/embed]



Enjoy! And if you have any comments, please let us know, so we can improve for our upcoming podcasts and whatnots.

And if you haven't done so yet, go check out the Summerbatch bundle!
Also, visit our website for more information and some free games: www.stemshock.com!

Got mine aswell, awesome! First boxed AGS game I've ever owned!

Finally got round to publishing my modifications of this branch. Note, they're all just hacks to get the game Barely Floating running properly. I've disabled stuff I didn't need and changed some bits, like the default sprite cache size. So, I don't recommend using any of these modifications. Plus, they're all just one commit and there's no record of what's been changed other than the changes themselves. Like I said, it's all done just to get that one game running.

Anyway, here's the git patch:
http://www.stemshock.com/public/files/0001-Modifications-hacks-for-Barely-Floating.patch

I too am not able to play Barely Floating. I do have DirectX9, so that's not the issue; the problem seems to be that my convertible laptop/tablet - a Compaq tc4400 - does not support 1280x720. I tried changing the info via the .cfg file, but that also didn't help so I guess I'm just out of luck. And that was the game I most wanted to play.   

That's a shame. Yes, 1280x720 is required and the game won't run in any other resolution. Sorry.

Sorry to hear that, David.

I tested the game on one computer that had an S3 graphics card and it was the only computer I've tested that couldn't run the game. I hope you'll have a chance to play the game on some other computer with proper DirectX support!

Nice! Good to see a fellow Finn leading the contributor list.

I've added Barely Floating to the games database: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/Games.aspx/Detail/1597

Hopefully, our website will be up and running later today, or tomorrow at the latest.

-edit-
And it's up: www.stemshock.com!

Piss is always intriguing.

Great to see this finally released! Maybe there should be links to the games' GiP threads for additional information? And maybe the BF trailer right here?

Nope, there shouldn't be any dynamic sprites or surfaces since all I use them for is rendering dialog text, and they're all deleted before you can save. (Unless they're in a coroutine but that's a rare case.)

Plus you can't call modules or plugins from Lua.

Glad to see someone else finally seeing the light, Calin.

Btw, I'm not sure whether it's AGS or this plugin but it takes quite a while to save a game in Barely Floating (see GiP thread for game info). If AGS saves a screenshot regardless of whatever the game settings are, then it might be AGS. But just as a heads up, if the plugin saving is in any way a slow operation, you might want to add some AGS system polling calls in there because the sound stutters whenever I save a game.

And what exactly is the problem with fields? Can't you just write wrapper functions to access them? Or is there no way to access them through the plugin API? Why do I feel like I've asked this question before...

[Game design:]

The last batch of minor bugs was fixed yesterday, so the game's essentially finished! Now all we've got to do is wait for the release of the Summerbatch, yay!

This game took approximately 1050 man-hours to make, including the (reported) work of all the team members. If I'd worked on this full-time, all by myself, 8 hours a day, five days a week, that'd be 131 days, or approximately 5.5 months. In reality we worked on this for about five months, although we started quite slow in the beginning and ended up doing overtime for many days in the end.

• Game design: 82 h
• Writing: 75.5 h
• Scripting: 300.5 h
• Testing: 55.5h
• Graphics: 310 h
• Music & sound: 135.5 h
• Project management & meetings: 79.5 h
• Generic thought processes: 11.5 h

And finally, here, have an appropriately crappy trailer!

[embed=640,360]<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/gRl089VN_lM?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>[/embed]

Yay, looking very interesting! Can't wait to see the game in action. And scratch my head thinking how many hoops you've had to jump through to get something like this made in AGS.

Good luck, I hope you'll make the deadline!

Finished it! Very enjoyable, very awesome, probably my favorite AGS game so far. So happy to see all the attention and great reviews you're getting!

Spoiler

Come on, guys. You're spoiling the twist by letting people know there's a twist. Gotta say it was a very nice twist. Twist twist twist.

[close]

Yay, looking sweet, Ben! Can't wait to play the finished product! Or, you know, the full beta.

Thanks guys!

The blocky font's a temp font that was used in my previous game, Barrier. The one in the third screenshot is the final one. If the criticism was directed at this font, then there's no explanation I can provide to make it better.

-edit
Sigh, and I wrote the wrong Sini's last name in the credits. I've fixed the first post. Sorry.

Update bump! That's the best kind of bump!

It's been about a month of struggling to get the game finished and we're almost there! A couple of minor tweaks left and we're ready for proper testing. What a relief to get this finally finished, phew.

Also, check the new screenshot in the first post!

Yes, questions for the podcast are very welcome.

Holy crap it's a lot of work adding the finishing touches to interaction scripts (walk-tos, playing animations, changing facial expressions)! Eight hours and I only managed to get four rooms and their characters done. And that didn't even include the missing secondary interactions! My schedule is way too optimistic.

I just hope I'm not adding any more bugs at this point.

Sounds awesome! Will it feature any kung fu masters?

Sadly not this time.

Looks good AJA! I was thinking the old man's pick up animation was too slow, before reminding myself that he's an old man!

Interesting perspective you've chosen in that second screenshot.

Those animations are not necessarily the same speed as in the game, especially the walking's way slower in the gif.

And regarding perspective, I decided to go all the way orthogonal, or whatever it's called. No need to scale characters. Though, in the end, we had to scale in a couple of rooms in order to fit enough stuff on the screen. And of course, since it's a ship, things tend to slide around, and that's easier to do when you don't have to worry about depth scaling. Other than that, it's all designed around gameplay requirements.

Thanks for the enthusiasm!

It'd be nice to see you mention Screen 7's involvement somewhere in your initial post?

Good point. It's in the special thanks for now. Can't put it up top until it's official that we'll be included in the batch.