Messages

Wow, that really looks like an exciting puzzle!

Just spent some time animating one of the antagonists of the game:

He's currently on a smoke break, but he'll have some pretty tense moments in the game.

It's gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous!

As a Swede myself, I'd say that there are plenty of American culture that me and most people I know don't get. Most people only learn about USA from Hollywood, and I myself was surprised by a number of things when I visited USA, so I wouldn't say American culture is as universal as most people think.

As for East Asian culture, I do not have much experience myself, but I felt I understood at least the majority of the themes presented in the films I've seen. Things such as love, loyalty, pride and jealousy exist in all cultures, and as long as the story and characters are built around real human emotions rather than specific tropes and patterns, I think most of the audience will get the gist of it.

[Best Character:]

Best Character: Mrs Fizzlepink, from The Life and Times of Mrs Fizzlepink, I just felt so sorry for her!
Best Writing: Second story man by Mandle
Best Atmosphere: Rampion by Baron, I liked how it started serious but ended hilarious.
Best Change: Rampion by Baron, it just cracked me up.

I do hope someone more shows up to vote though. Maybe they forgot about the deadline?

A new screenshot, the commissar and one of his comrades exploring an abandoned apartment:

By my estimations, I'd guess this game is about 60% completed, but there's still some puzzles, animations
and the last quarter of the game that needs to be finished, as well as sound and music for several scenes.

The screenshots look great!

I like the graphics and animations, it looks great!

in this game there will be no pointless and voyeuristic dressing up montages.

Now there isn't really any romantic subplots in this game,

No sex? No love story? What a shame, the setting was so romantic...

Spoiler

[close]

Well, the game's not finished yet...

Oooh... I see a tricky situation... and a couple death scenes before getting it right.

Well, just shooting the enemy might be tempting, but chances are it would just attract more of them and this time not as distracted as this guy is.

Oh yes, I'm about to animate quite a few death animations!

On a further note, Happy Valentine's day! Now there isn't really any romantic subplots in this game,
so I'll just post this screenshot instead. (It will make sense in context!)

I like the new tracks!

[mesh transform]

Sorry if this is the wrong place to post, to me this seemed like the most appropriate forum to post in.

I'm not very good at drawing, I'm trying to learn but it'll be years before I'm anywhere good enough to show off. I'm a broke teenager so I can't afford an artist. Do you make art for your game even though you aren't exactly talented?

What is your shortcoming when it comes to drawing? Anatomy? Perspective? color and composition?
There are lot's of techniques you can use as shortcuts when drawing, for example, I drew a background in just a few minutes using the mesh transform tool in firealpaca.
(you can download it for free here: http://firealpaca.com/ )
I started with drawing the simple shape of the room:

and then I pasted in the texture of this wallpaper three times, one for each wall that had a wallpaper pattern on it:

I then used the mesh transform tool to change the size of the wallpaper images so that they lined up with the room:

(I used the same technique with the floor texture)
Then you can just draw doors and furniture on top of the room background.
For outdoor environments, I drew this with my mouse in less than a minute:

I used the cloud filter on the blue background, then I just drew some solid green on a layer on top of the sky and used a leaf-shaped pencil in a darker green from the default pencil selection on top of the green. I used the same pencil to draw some bushes behind the layer of green grass.

It might not be high art, but you can draw a passable background with no effort or much talent if you know how to use a good paint program. I prefer Photoshop, but you can download firealpaca or gimp (https://www.gimp.org/) for free. If you want free textures to use, check out this forum thread: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=54356.0

And remember, you don't have to be Leonardo Da Vinci, most people here make games because it's fun, your first game doesn't need to be perfect.

[Ivan, the firebird and the grey wolf]

Here is my entry, based on the Russian fairy tale Tsarevitch Ivan, the Firebird and the Gray Wolf.
A timeless tale, modernized for a modern audience
Once upon a time, an aspiring young writer had written a script for an animated children's movie and was about to pitch her idea to the executive of an animation studio.  Now, few people get the rare chance to see their dreams turn into reality, but this writer had a mother which had taught her hard work and perseverance from a young age. That her mother was the sister in law to the executive in question also helped. When the time for the appointment came, the young woman walked up to the executive's desk and placed her script there. With a nervous voice she said:

Well, here is my script. It's called Ivan, the firebird and the grey wolf.

But the executive only said, without casting a single glance on the script:
I don't like it.

You don't like it? B-but you haven't even read the script!

No, I don't like the title. Too many words. Look what Disney and Pixar are doing, short simple titles you can smack up in a goofy font. I'd shorten it to one word. Grey? I like Grey, maybe we can suck in some stupid moms too dumb to realize it isn't a 50-shades spinoff into the theaters in addition to the kids.

It's based off a Russian fairy tale… If only you'd read the script…

Look missy, you'd think I'd get to be an executive by reading? I don't do reading, you tell me the story, in a short summary of course. I've got to be at the yacht club by 2PM.

All-right, it's an old fairy tale which my mother used to read me as a child, and it'd mean a lot to me to see this timeless story brought to the screen for a new generation of children to enjoy-

Get on with the story, missy!

It begins with a Tsar whom has a garden where golden apples grow, but every night, to the tsar's great dismay, somebody steals apples from the garden.

A thief? Is he clumsy? Great, we can have some good slapstick right there, people falling on their butts and stuff, kid's love it!

No, it's a golden bird stealing the apples. The three sons of the Tsar all try to stay up during the night, hoping to catch the thieving bird in the act, but the two older sons both fall asleep and only Ivan, the youngest son manages to stay awake. He sees the bird, but only manages to catch one of the golden feathers before it flies away.

Ok, and this Ivan is he a prince? Like a Disney prince or something?

Um, yes, he is the Tsar's son and the hero of the story…

Princes are so last century. If he's the main guy, we got to make sure he has attitude, and be cool in a way appealing to kids. Like, when he sees that bird thing, he should flip his hat backwards and go all "Wooah! Radical!", kids love that sort of thing.

*sigh* Well, he is a young man eager for adventure… Anyway, all three sons ride out in search for the bird, but the two older brothers are soon distracted and led astray, they give up their search and-

Then they go to Rio! We get a cutaway gag to the two brothers in Hawaii shirts and dancing around with bikini babes before cutting back to the story. That's great, people liked that other animated bird movie set there, so if we put that in the trailer, stupid moms will think it's a sequel to that and buy tickets to our movie! Anyway, what happened to that Igor dude, have he met any comedy relief animals yet?

He will meet a special animal, I'm getting to that part. Prince Ivan continued his search and eventually found a rock, where the carvings on it said that if he rode left, he would die but his horse would live, if he rode forward, he would die from hunger and thirst, and if he took the right path, his horse would die but he would live. Ivan decided to take the right path, so that his horse would die but he would live to continue his quest.

Wait a second, a horse dies? We gotta cut that out, this is a kid's movie! Name any kid's flick with dead animals in it!

You mean like Bambi, The Lion king, The Land before time, Finding Nemo-

Look, it was a rhetorical question, we're cutting the dead horse out.

But it's kind of a big part of the story, you see, the horse is killed by the wolf from the title, but in exchange for having eaten the horse, the wolf then offers to follow Ivan and aid him in his quest, it's the wolf's motivation for helping him…

Wait, there's a talking wolf? Finally! Is he like a silly comedy relief animal?

Not really, the wolf is more like a wise and powerful mentor character who provides Ivan with important knowledge.

Great, so he's a wise character, like the genie in Aladdin? That's great, then we can have the wolf come with a bunch of pop-cultural references whenever things get too slow!

Well, the wolf tells Ivan that the bird lives in a golden cage in the palace of another Tsar, and he tells Ivan how to steal the bird, but warns him not to steal the cage as well.

Sounds good, does Ivan lower himself down into the palace with a rope, just like Mission Impossible? That's an awesome movie, we should copy that scene when Ivan sneaks into the palace!

Err… Ok, Ivan sneaks into the palace, Mission Impossible style, and then he reaches the golden cage with the bird. He steals the bird without problem, but then he is too tempted to also steal the gold cage, but as soon as he touches it, bells are ringing, alerting the guards and he is caught.

We should have a scene where all the guards are dog piling him, and there's this cartoon squish effect, that'd be great!

He is caught, and brought before the Tsar who owns the bird. This Tsar is angry, but he offers Ivan his freedom and the bird if he will steal a horse with golden mane from a third Tsar and give it to him.

A horse with golden mane? After the golden bird? That's boring, change it up! I know, let's give the horse black mane, with red emo streaks in it,  just like Shadow the Hedgehog, kids will love that!

So the wolf gives Ivan new advice how to steal the horse with gold- black mane, he has to sneak into the stable where the horse is kept and steal it, but he cannot touch the golden saddle belonging to the horse. But once again Ivan falls for the temptation and touches the saddle, and once again he's caught and brought before another Tsar.

This is good, we can re-use the animations for the previous scene!

This Tsar tells Ivan that if he wants the horse, he must bring the princess Helen the beautiful for the tsar to marry. This time, the wolf takes it upon himself to fetch the princess. He jumps into her garden, flings her across his back and runs back to Ivan. As soon as Ivan and Helen sees each other, they both fall in love.

Wait, so this princess just exist to look pretty and fall head over heels for the hero? That's such a shallow and outdated character archetype and not a very inspiring character for young girls to identify with. This sort of character has no place in a modern story.

Well, I do agree that her character could be expanded upon…

We should have her be all sassy and fighty and "I don't need no man" at first when she's introduced, and then have her do a 180,  fall head over heels for the hero and turn into a damsel!

*sigh*Or we could do that I guess… Anyway, Ivan has promised Helen to the Tsar, but the wolf comes up with a plan. It looks like Ivan excanges the princess for the horse and rides off on it, but when the Tsar lifts the princess's veil it's the wolf in disguise.

Isn't the wolf a dude? Does that mean we have a male in drag tricking a dude into kissing him, and then the other dude is like "Eeeeew! I kissed a guy!"?

Err… I guess it was part of the story, but I didn't think of it that way…

That's hilarious, we definitely need to put it in the movie! Plus we can use Furry memes in our marketing!

Ehem, they then use a similar trick on the next Tsar, where he thinks Ivan gives him the horse in exchange for the bird, but when he tries to ride it, it's actually the wolf while Ivan and Helen rides of on the real horse with the bird. When they reach the place where Ivan and the wolf first met, the wolf says goodbye to Ivan as he's about to go back to his homeland. But unfortunately, Ivan's two older brothers have heard of his exploits and are waiting in ambush for him.

Hey, wouldn't it be funny if they were still wearing the Hawaii shirts? You know, from that joke I mentioned a while ago?

But the scene isn't supposed to be funny, they strike Ivan down, take the bird and horse and kidnap Helen, and the older brother tries to force her to marry him! It would clash with the entire tone of their actions!

Look lady, it's a dumb kid's movie, they're supposed to be funny! There is no such thing as an inappropriate joke for a kid movie.

But it's the darkest point of the story, and then when all hope seems lost and crows are circling over Ivan's lifeless body, the wolf returns. He captures two crows and makes them fetch some water to revive Ivan.

Water? You can't just splash some water on someone to heal their wounds. Besides, we haven't had any contemporary references for a while.

No, because it's set in medieval Russia.

Well yeah, kid's don't care about history, we should throw in something new and cool. Can't the wolf revive Ivan with, like, a fidget spinner or something?

A fidget spinner? Allright, I give up, the wolf revives Ivan with a fidget spinner pulled from his ass.

The wolf's ass or Ivan's ass?

Nevermind, Ivan rides on the wolf to his father's kingdom, stops the wedding, marries Helen, the evil brothers are put in chains, they all live happily ever after and the wolf sits down to write down their story as a last favor for Ivan, the end.

When you said the brothers were put in chains, could we have a joke where they are tossed in a jail cell and there's a big muscly guy making sexy eyes at them while the two brothers cling to each other and scream like sissy little girls? That'd liven up our kiddie flick, there's not enough jokes in it, and we haven't even gotten to the fart jokes yet!

And one last thing! The executive said, not noticing that the writer had already left the room,
Reading is boring, what if, instead of the wolf writing down a book, we could have him dance Gangnam Style as the credits roll?

The End

Lovely BG! I like the textures on the buildings.

Yes, I think we all agree that war is brutal and not for kids... yet... kids do tend to find them self's in the middle of wars that they neither have started, asked for it or even understand... unfortunately.

True words, and I do hope my game will adequately convey this message.

Currently, I'm working on a set piece based on sneaking around whilst also keeping a keen eye on the area. Since the protagonist is unarmed for this section,
just shooting the enemies is not an option, however, it might soon change...

I love the steampunk details on the lockers, a really cool touch!

I'm working on an idea, a story about how a classic Russian fairytale is re-imagined for a more modern audience.

I myself was surprised by a few things when I traveled to USA on a vacation a year ago, such as all the paperwork you had to do in order to visit the country. My mother used to ravel a lot in Eastern Europe when she was younger, and she said that she found it harder to visit USA today than the eastern bloc during the 70's when looking at all the forms that had to be filled in.

Another thing that greatly surprised me was all the cowboy mustaches and goatees on the american men, it's pretty rare to see such things in Sweden.

I know it's a cliche, but it was a surprise to see how big everything was, and how large distances there was between things. I guess it gave me a different understanding of why I'd heard about so many Americans complain about gas prices that would be low by Swedish standards and so forth, because there were such large distances between everything that you pretty much had to travel by car to get there, and there were hardly any public transportation outside the cities.

I agree with Cassiebsg that the figures on the cover just makes it too busy, and they don't see very related to each other or the background image with the piano.
It looks like someone stuck a bunch of cartoon clip art to a photo of a piano.

Sorry for taking this long, here is a new image of another peril for the titular commissar to avoid, and to drive the point home that while this game may have cartoon aethetics, it's probably not something I'd recommend playing with your kids:

There is still some work to be done on this set-piece, plus I've spent a lot of time animating a different character since I have several potential death scenes and expressive conversations in mind for the game.