Messages

When I started making the seamless FMVs for Eric the Anteater, I would render them as a series of frames and import them into the sprite editor, one by one, manually. It was tedious and took a lot of time. I then later realized that with the "quick import sprites" option one can simply select a block of images to import and there you have it. I must have wasted several hours over the last few months. Boy do I feel like an idiot.

Assuming there are no 'walking dad man' scenarios in an adventure game, how important is it to have multiple save slots in a game?

Create a dummy character to use as your main (and probably only) character. Then, in every room, make sure that the "show player character" variable is set to false. Then, instead of using leaveLeft/right functions, make all interaction and movement hotspot-based. You can then place hotspots on the sides of the screen for movement, as well as hotspots over areas of interest in each room.

You can't shoot diagonally, but it's still very intuitive. Also, a number of weapons you get make up for this.

Has anyone here played Mega Man 9? It was released about ten days ago and all I have to say is that it's one of the best games I've played in a while. Classic NES fun never gets old; this is proof. It's also one of the first truly challenging, but not unfair, games I've played in a long, long time.

An interesting theory, paolo. Although you are missing something obvious:

Spoiler

PVR stands for Power Rangers' Vengeance, duh! 

[close]

One small bug: Whenever someone is following you around, if you go to the map screen, you'll see their hotspot marker pop up when you mouse over where they were in the last screen.

Sweet!

Klik and Play was my first game creation program. Never made anything good with it, though.

"It's the wrong trousers, Gromit. And they've gone haywire! Aagh!"
I love Wallace and Gromit, and can't wait for this.

Well, it seems I should update the story section of my post then.  Thank you for the very detailed response, olafmoriarty.

I mean I appreciate this game is not trying to be a masterpiece of modern gaming literature but please pull a better one than that. Guy meets random person who mysteriously disappears with no foul play apparent yet HE MUST SAVE HER NO MATTER WHAT THE COST.

The story is quite a bit more complicated then that; that's just the introduction to the story and a way to motivate Eric to actually do something besides eat pizza and play Double Dragon at the local arcade. I don't want to give away the main plot line.

Great game. I liked all of the subtle references to pop icons, as well as the great humor. Looking forward to a sequel.

Thank you for the positive feedback!

You say it get more than 100 rooms but... how progress you done?

I'm about 40% through the rooms' scripting. I've done 57 rooms so far, but several rooms will need to be expanded due to the story's progression.

[Introduction:]

Introduction:
Eric the Anteater is a point and click adventure game (who would have guessed?) set in a surreal fantasy/sci-fi world. It will feature over 100 rooms and lots of puzzles.

Screen shots:








Story:
Eric is just a typical punk rocker/surfer dude/hippie who happens to have an alien spacecraft crash land right in front of him. What starts off as a close encounter becomes a lot more as Eric must transcend time and space,  attempt to rescue not one but two damsels in distress, and contend with an evil insect as he fights to save the universe...

Features:

• Tons of areas to explore, over 100 screens
• 800x600x32 graphics
• Seamless FMV
• BASS-style interface
• First- and third-person segments

Distribution:
Eric the Anteater will be shareware, but don't worry, the only thing the unregistered version will have is nag screens and such. The game will be fully playable; practically donationware.
The price to register the game will be $5.00 USD, probably through Paypal.

Release date:
February 10, 2009. I originally wanted it to be done by this month, but I was unable to.

One last thing:
I'm using lots of public-domain textures in my renderings. So, if you notice that some of the textures seem familiar, understand that I attained them legally and I did not plagiarize them.

All of the above is subject to last-minute change, but now that I'm almost done I'm pretty sure I've got everything straight.

As for showing what a character is thinking, I always liked the way it was handled in Final Fantasy VIII. Regular text would be shown in a grey box; thoughts would be shown in a clear one.

This is hilarious. Evidently, even the concept art from ten years ago was stolen. The image for Grunger was a traced off of a D&D expansion, and another sketch is a rip off of a character from Legend, an obscure (but very good) fantasy/adventure movie from the 80's. This just keeps getting better and better!

Have any of you heard the Shaving Cream Song (I don't remember the actual title for sure)? It's pretty old, and it's really funny.

I actually like it. But, from the  looks of it, you're going to have a nasty white halo around the sprite when it's used in-game.

Oh, OK, thank you.