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I got the 5-frame background animation to work pretty well with the water motion. It looks like the boat is moving ridiculously fast, which wasn't my intent, but I kind of like it!

Edit: Made it much more convincing as water behavior:

Draft Horse Take 2

WOW - that IS impressive! 

Can't wait to watch this being animated!   

Also looking forward to more "inbetweens" - always very interesting to study!

Thanks! I'll be sure to keep them coming, though I'm not sure if anybody would ever want to try my art method - it takes 10x as long and absolutely destroys your hands

This is yet another lovely image. I'd love to see more of your rendering process, the in-between of the two images you posted above.

I'll try to post some more inbetweens on the next big room.

Nice shot! Reminds me of the floating boat in Goblins 3 somehow 

That's fantastic if it's channelling an old style people enjoyed, that means I'm on track - I haven't played Goblins 3 yet (only the first one, if I remember right), but you definitely have me curious now

I've now got the Draft Horse itself pretty much finished and I'm trying to work out how to animate the sucker. I suppose I can have it rock using background animation and use moving characters for clouds/waves, but I haven't tried anything like that in the engine so far. It'll be fun to experiment at least. I dropped the "baboon butt" concept in the back to better show off the lore of this universe. Scissors trump paper, so they've created a Knobbcrookian engine using their physics - a sail made out of various samples of wallpaper. I'm going to add in an animating pair of snipping scissors on the back - which "scares" the paper and propels the boat forward. Fortunately, my wife is a graphic artist, so she's got a huge supply of wallpaper for my needs



If I'm violating any rules with the size of these images, please let me know. I'm trying to show the color/detail as it is in-game.

A little bit of an art update to demonstrate the process from cool sketch to really ugly modified version of cool sketch to something more complete looking. I'll have a couple more steps to add in as I go along.

This is the Draft Horse. The thing to keep in mind is that the Knobbly Crook (and surrounding areas) was created by a giant explosion of animate magik, creating a chaotic wave of life that reconfigured (or brought to life) all the junk and wildlife in the area. This boat is technically alive, though it's not very "horse" any more. Once aboard, you can venture into the head of the thing, talk to the ladderman at the side, or head back into the Horse's Ass bar at the rear.The first series of puzzles revolve around getting this thing to stop and let you off.

The original concept for the Draft Horse came from Julien Fullum, who is helping me build up the world. It looked like:




I had some technical concerns with it. First, the zoom out was a little too far. I wanted to use this as a bit of an overhead "map" for this area, so I zoomed it in. I also started thinking about how to get you to understand where to go, so I dropped a couple of little blue men in there as placeholders. I definitely wanted one in the horse's eye and one to be a bit of a gatekeeper to get off the ship. The bar in the back - I planned an elaborate fan thing that would feel a bit like looking at the back end of a baboon. It's not there yet in this version:



Now it's starting to look more like the rest of the game so far. I tried to use the angle of Julien's horse head, but it kept looking more like a wolf to me and didn't have the creepy horse face I wanted, so I turned it. The perspective went down the toilet at that point, but that's OK. I've gone into this understanding that I'm not a trained artist and that my style relies on being weird and I think it benefits from being *wrong,* so you'll find my perspective is often mind-boggling and my light sources come from 2000 directions. You can see a bit of the baboon ass here, though it's still a placeholder sketch remnant. I modified the ladderman on the side (he'll be an animated character) to fit the theme of the Knobbly Crook - the Knobcrookians are all gobliny things mixed with junk objects. This guy is half ladder. Another major problem with realizing Julien's vision is that the sketch implies movement down the stream. I intend to keep that movement, but I think I'll have to greatly simplify what you can see to create the illusion. This isn't a cinematic ship on a set path, it's looping as long as the player stays there.



I've also been playing around with the team logo, which is based on the old song "The Devil Went Down to Georgia." I mixed it with the old Gnarled Scar logo to see how well they mesh, but obviously I need to change the color schemes to match. I'm considering attaching the small logo to a blimp or something and having it sail by and I'll likely do some simple animations on the Devil part. I'm also working on an idea to make it more "logo-y" and less like a full screen painting that touches every edge



I try to keep the version of the game (.zip file) updated on the server, so if you ever want to check in on the progress, you're welcome to go grab it. The extremely WiP Draft Horse is in there now and functional, but I warn you - there's some *hideous* placeholder art if you venture into any rooms.

I'll likely be throwing it up onto Kickstarter soon to get some funding for proper voice acting

Please retain the services of your daughter. Even with your note, her voice still took me delightfully by surprise in the demo.

Looking forward to poking around the update, probably later tomorrow!

Hah. I'll probably end up trying to get a better take out of her and may even leave it in there for the shock value. I do plan to put both of my shrimps in there as tiny Knobcrookians with bigger (and less disgusting!) roles. 

I updated the first post with a new first room view, this new walk cycle:



And I've also uploaded an update for the .zip file with a more high res interface and some tweaks. The second room, however, is very much a placeholder with notes on it. It's going to be a wire-boat called the Draft Horse, complete with a bar in the back called the Horse's Ass. I've got the whole game now charted out on note cards on my office wall (expecting a lot to change of course).

I'm not sure if I mentioned it in the first post, but I intend this game to be 100% free. I'll likely be throwing it up onto Kickstarter soon to get some funding for proper voice acting and perhaps a stylish intro.

Anyway, it's hard to tell progress has been made, but I've got a LOT in the works. I also have an old design buddy from Strategy First and Ubisoft named Julien Fullum who is pumping out some great concepts (the early sketch of the Draft Horse is his) and coming up with weird gameplay ideas.

Thanks for the quick reply - It looks like they were all set to have infinite channels, which was probably a very bad thing. I also tweaked the priorities and it all seems to be working fine now. You saved me from a nasty headache, thanks again

I've searched for the answer to this one and checked the tutorial, but somehow I've managed to completely overlook it somewhere... How do I prevent the music (ogg) from pausing when I play a speech file (also ogg)? I've seen the setting to reduce music volume when a sound plays, but it doesn't seem to have any effect because the music is turning off briefly. Any help would be greatly appreciated - thanks!

Thanks for the motivational words. I've updated the zip file linked at the beginning of this thread to show off the new version of the game. Any feedback you guys have would be fantastic because I'm very rusty at AGS. A few disclaimers:

1. It's a 35ish meg download.
2. The audio is placeholder, so expect levels to be off and voice acting to be grating in places. I'm doing my best to give a mood preview with the files that are in there.
3. The cinematics are gone - that's because I'm reworking them and they didn't match the quality of the new look. I'll be updating this thing again a few times in the near future.
4. The UI and inventory system haven't been touched since the old version. They're functional, but not polished.
5. The second room is a stretched out, terrible, unplayable thing. Close the window fast when you see it, lest your eyes come away scathed.
6. The colon extractor's voice is my 5 year old daughter. She really wanted to hear herself in the game, so I put her in there for fun and forgot to rerecord it. Now that I hear it again, my god it's disturbing.

I'll certainly post here first when I have something ready for abuse

I'm making a note of the voice acting offer - it'll be a while, but I will definitely need some help on that end!

Holy necro again. So The Knobbly Crook is back in full production with actual *team members* now so I'm not doing it all alone. We've got our design doc started, a plan for the full first "episode," a facelift into higher resolution, and a redesigned O'Sirus the Snip avatar. I was a bit busy working on slightly bigger projects in the past few years (i.e. Assassin's Creed), but I'm doing a big push now to make this thing happen. I find I enjoy the small indie project vibe to the 200+ team vibe (although I am still writing at Ubisoft - I've realized doing this at home is a great stress reliever!). Anyway, here's a preview of the new look. More soon, I promise. 

http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/081/9/e/paincutioner__s_court_take_three_by_ringmasterbent-dycn76.png

Yay for pong! I'll have to keep this in mind for a quick project-between-projects thing. Thanks

how do you create your grass?

do you draw them blade by blade in photoshop or something.. or rubber stamp / clone them from a pic of just grass?

Each blade is an individual mouse click and slash. I do a layer of dark lines, a layer of lighter lines, a layer of dodge, a layer of burn, and then I add color here and there. I do NOT recommend this method as my hand will probably be destroyed before the end of this project. People keep telling me to use a wacom tablet and pen, but my art is actually better with a mouse. I've just been using them for too long to change. Hopefully people will feel my pain in every background (especially those with grass). I'm thinking the Knobbly Crook needs more lawnmowers...

I love the porn pong games and the emulators (these are history...) by Bloodlust software, so I'm more than happy to hear that this is still in progress.

I actually have all the art assets for a re-made low res version of the first pong game but never found a programmer. Has anyone tried pong with AGS yet?

Thanks! Hopefully I'll have more to show soon.

Thanks! I love the Bloodlust stuff for nostalgia too, but it was intentionally offensive and gory. This one should be much more subtle about it. I'm still a hardcore fan of everything horror related, so that will definitely play into it - but I'm aiming more for a slightly darker take on the fantasy universes we grew up with (Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal, Legend). I have to remember to work a Crookianized Brian Froud into the game somewhere as thanks for the inspiration.

Ah, I know thread necromancy is against forum rules, but seeing as I'm still working on this project and it's my thread, I hope it's ok! I've updated the first post with some new artwork and even updated the demo with some slight changes.

What happened to the game and why is it over a year later? An infant daughter and a wife who works graveyard shift turned me into Mr. Mom for a year, but now I'm back to normal and working hard on the game. I've got all of the important parts of the story mapped out as well as several of the puzzles. I know which rooms I want to include and which NPCs, and now the big hurdle is the artwork. Every blade of grass in there was drawn by mouse, so you can imagine the time it takes to do one.

So... the Knobbly Crook hobbles it's way towards completion and don't be surprised when I start begging for help when I run into any coding hurdles

I'd say if you plan to use the weird angled windows and doors like that, don't be afraid to skew the room itself too.

Nope - the glitch is more that the room is there at all. O'Sirus won't be bound to his prisoner transport pole when he's in that area either, so he'll have a regular walking animation.

How am I ever going to bury that monstrosity if people keep confessing their love for it?

I guess once you get past the hideous music, art, sound effects, cinematics, AI, and gameplay, it's not so bad! It holds a special, cancerous place in my heart too.

Back on topic, I should have some shots from the Knobbly Crook intro soon (after we move this weekend and get set up again).