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Hi everyone,

I'm got a new piece of media (title screen) from my project that I would like to share for comments/criticism.  But rather than just post the picture, I figure I might as well kill two birds with one stone by linking to my website and getting some comments on the website as well.

CMK Studios, Science Fiction game page

In the title screen, I imagine that I'd put the menu items in the open starry area at the top of the picture.

Comments/criticism??

This is a tricky tightrope to walk; while I would like feedback on the story I've come up with for my project, I also don't want to ruin the story for anyone, as its got one or two twists in it along the way.  So, here's my best to keep it vague, yet specific. 

CMK Studios presents SCIENCE FICTION

Setting: The Future, circa 1950.  That is, what people in the 50's may have thought the future would look like in 20 or so years, similar to how a futuristic movie from the 80's (like Total Recall) is almost instantly recognizable as a movie from the 80s.  So, fashion and style are generally 50's, while emphasis is placed on things that the era expected to advance and change: space travel, atomic energy, communism, etc...

Story:

Callahan Hensen, a professor at a university in California, is planning a field trip for some of his students later in the week.  In preperation he, along with an unwilling brilliant student of his, Bernard, who is serving a detention, goes out to the nearby Sierra Nevada mountains to set up a camp site for the trip.

After a few hours setting up equipment, there is a blinding flash in the sky and a crash in the woods nearby.  An eerie glow can be seen on the horizon where the boom came from.  The duo go to investigate, finding a path of downed trees and mysterious men in black standing around, warding off onlookers, playing the situation down as an airplane crash.  Bernard, intrigued by the situation and unconvinced by the mysterious men, slinks past the police line and down to the crash, leaving Hensen watching as the student he is responsible for runs into the distance.  He has to get Bernard back, or its his ass, so to speak.  He manages to find a way down to the crash and is shocked at what he discovers: a UFO, definitely not human made.  Bernard in hand, Hensen attempts to get away before anyone sees, but he is seen and captured, and imprisoned. 

One of the mysterious men in black give him an ultimatum.  After what Hensen has seen, it seems his days are numbered.  His only chance to save himself and his student is to help the government with a space mission to negotiate with the alien beings before they annhilate Earth.  The entire situation seems suspicious and convoluted, especially since they seem completely unqualified for this,  but Hensen and Bernard agree, fearing for their lives. 

They are put onboard a ship with an able crew of 3 (including a pilot/astronaut, maintenance, and a doctor) and they set out on the adventure of their lives.  Along the way, they encounter ominous, empty, "haunted" ships from early US space flights, alien outposts, dangerous robots, ravenous killer beasts, a cold, calculated computer, and unseen treachery as they begin to find that their innocent, revolutionary, heroic trip to galaxies unknown is far more terrifying and sinister than they could have imagined.

The game takes place over the span of 10 acts, with the first three taking place on Earth and the remaining 7 taking elsewhere.

Act names so far...:

ACT I - Prologue to an Adventure
ACT II - A Twinkle in the Sky
ACT III - ??
ACT IV - Far Horizens
ACT V - Orbit II
ACT VI - ??
ACT VII - ??
ACT VIII - Atomic Dust
ACT IX - ??
ACT X - Epilogue

Anyway, any thoughts on the story?  I guess the most important thing at this point is does it peak any sort of interest in you?  Does this story sound interesting?  If not, what do you think could be done to make it better?

Hiya everybody!
(Hiya Dr. Nick)

Anyway, my current compiled folder, which contains about 5 GUIs, a single room about 30 sprites, a custom font, and a music file is about 8.6 MBs. 

My project will entail a great deal of FMV.  I've created a 5 minute WMV file as a test with decent quality at 640x480 and the file size is about 26MB.  Now, most FMV files will be less than a minute, but there will be a fairly large amount of them.

The game is fairly large as well.  Now, I'm shooting for a maximum final size of 800MB, but I'm afraid I may even find myself at the 1GB mark. 

Questions:

What is the maximum file size YOU are willing to download to play a game?

What are the possibilities when it comes to distributing the game, and will the internet be viable?

Does anyone have any tips for reducing overall size, whether it be through video compression or otherwise? (sorry, but I refuse to budge on the resolution  )

I've created a walk area mask.  It is for a 640x480 room, but the file IS 320X240.

The mask consists of the black for transparent parts RGB(0,0,0), and blue for the walk area RGB(0,0,255).  The mask is 16 colours for a high color game.

At first, I imported it as a .PNG file, which had the strange result of making the black area of the mask walkable and the blue section not.  The help file says BMP or PCX, so I tried those.

When I import the .PCX, the editor says the file is corrupt.

When I import the .BMP, it works fine, but it doesn't use the right color; I used blue in the mask, and the editor assigned the walkable area to light red (255,0,0).

I mean, with the BMP file, it still works, but I was wondering if there was something I might have done wrong, or if this is a problem with the editor.

Thanks!

Ok, so I have this video and the volume of the clip is not affected by the in-game volume controls.  Is there any way to fix this?  The game would seem a bit unprofessional to have the volume turned all the way down and a video clip suddenly blares out of nowhere.  I've been fiddling with plugins for awhile, but I really just need to be able to change the volume of a video clip.  I'm at a loss, really. 

If there is no way to do this, is it functionality that can be added?  In my researching this, it looks like DirectShow has a handy function for changing both the volume and the balance of a clip; it seemed pretty simple to implement, but I don't really know much about AGS's coding.

Hi everyone,

While experimenting with video files in AGS, I've come to find it very restricting.  My biggest beef is that the video volume is not affected by the game volume, but I would also like a way to put optional subtitles over video, and just have a bit more control.

Now, I'm dipping into an area which I know absolutely nothing about: DLL programming, video codecs, and video files.  So forgive me if what I suggest below is complete rubbish and not even slightly plausible.  Just let me know, though, so I don't waste my time. 

So, I've downloaded the DLL template file and have it compiling and running a blue line across my screen.  That much I've figured out.  What I was thinking of doing is plugging a free, open source codec into the DLL so that I can (and correct me if I'm wrong) coordinate the game and video volume, and maybe even set up a system that allows the play of subtitles based on a movie files position.

Being completely DLL and plugin illiterate (though somewhat trained in programming), I can only guess at the audacity and ignorance of this post.  I guess I just want someone with some experience to let me know if this would be at all possible. 

Hiya.

The game I'm working on will be making heavy use of FMV, so I kind of need to know some specifics about the engine and video.  I know I could just experiment with a video file, but I wanted to ask first.

1) When a video file starts playing, is there a moment pause (the screen freezes; the screen goes black for a moment), or is it immediate?

2) Do the AGS volume controls have any effect on sound volume, or is it defaulted to the movie volume?  If the volume can't be controlled through AGS, is there any possible work around?

3) What is the best type of video file to use for lose-less quality, and small file size?

Any help would be appreciated.

I've found a font that I rather like for my project, but it only looks particularly nice if it is anti-aliased.  In the help file, it says that anti-alias is slower than regular fonts...

My question is, how prominant is the slow-down?  Is it safe to say, in today's world, that 99% of computers will not experience slow-down, because I love this font, but I'll find something else if its going to be too slow for a lot of people...

Hi,

You've probably played games where, when adjusting a volume slider, it plays a sound to let you sample the volume it is at.  That's what I'd like to do.  So far, I've got it changing the sound volume and playing a looping sound as it does.  This works fine.  However, when the user stops adjusting the sound, I'd like the sound sample to fade out.  The only problem is, I can't find any script item that would let me now when the slider is not being changed or active.

Any ideas for doing this?

(Srry about the double post; my internet was lagging)

Hi.

I'm curious if there would be a way to have a grain filter overlay the gameplay, like in old movies.  It would be simple enough for cutscenes, but I'm curious whether AGS has anything to do it over the normal gameplay, or if not, if it is even possible.


- Clark

Hi everyone!

Myself, with the help of 6-7 other individuals are currently in the early stages of a game called "Science Fiction" (creatively enough), which is a spoof of 40's-50's early sci-fi and 50's media in general, though the game is not necessarily supposed to be a comedy.

Anyway, part of the style I was going for was ALL grayscale (with the exception, you'll note, of the lights on the GUI).  I understand the risks of doing this; because of the small palatte, colors could blend, be hard to see, etc...

I would like your comments and criticism on this piece:



It was created and rendered in Blender, while the character was created by taking video of a person walking and treating the necessary frames.  The character seems a bit small for his position on screen, but that's not an art-related problem.  The GUI is not completely finished, but it gives a pretty good idea of the direction.

So...

What do you think?

CMK Studios is proud to announce...
And by proud, I mean unsure and slightly embarrassed...

SCIENCE FICTION!

I mean Science Fiction, not as the genre, but as a way of describing the word Fiction, with Fiction being a noun, and Science being an adjective, sort of like NON-fiction or PULP fiction.  I guess what I'm trying to say, is that by Science Fiction, I actually DO mean the genre.

That's really all I have, but let me fullfill the 1st posting rule by being interesting, helpful, or funny...

So, this game is going to be FMV, full motion video.  I've got five or six people commited to this project, and we plan to finish it by September 1st.  The script and puzzles are in rapid development...with an especial stress on making the puzzles at least marginally good, so not to worry, our standards ARE higher than my usual expectations.

Now, you might be wondering about that "FMV" part...well, I learned the hard way that neither myself, nor anyone I know, can make art.  So, using real-life photos and actual footage seems like the obvious way out.  Technically speaking, the character sprites are going to be comprised from video animation, disassembled frame by frame, and fed into AGS.  All animation and movie scenes are being done in front of a make-shift blue screen.

Besides being expert actors, just about everyone working on this is an expert writer, so you can expect the same level of quality as you have seen from our previous productions.  If you have not seen our previous productions, that is your own fault.

I'm sorry if you're not interested, but you understand that I just had to tell SOMEONE about this.  I'm sure I'll discover countless pitfalls while attempting to create an FMV masterpiece with AGS, and I'm glad to know that I can come to this board and spit every problem I have right back at all of you, and expect everyone else to solve it.  Glad to meet you all.

But in all seriousness: FMV, Sci-Fi, Comedy, Black and White, 50's, hopefully we'll finish it.

SCIENCE FICTION: Coming Soon from CMK Studios

My last few journeys into art have not been too great, but I went slowly and took my time to try and get something that looks decent .  Without further ado:



It looks a little blurry, but that is because it is blown up from its original 320X200 form for better viewing.  Its suppose to be sort of like a post-apocolyptic sort of thing.

Comments, Critisisim?