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[end of May]

Awww, no reply here. Anyway, maybe this will interest you!

Demetrios now has cover art!



I wanted something pretty that would convey the tone of the game. What do you think?

So, the release of the game is getting closer.

I'm planning to release Demetrios at the end of May! I'll give a precise release date soon

For more information on the recent game development, check out this Kickstarter update!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/983902887/demetrios/posts/1521827

Hey, everyone!

The development of Demetrios is in the last stages, so I expect to release the game in a few months.

Lake Kubilius, one of the few early testers of the game has finished Demetrios! He really enjoyed the game and wrote a quick review of it!

Having recently finished an alpha build of the game, I can say with confidence that this is something new and wonderful!

Fans of point and click adventures will be delighted to see some fresh blood in the genre, with fantastically risky writing and art choices coming together for fun effect.

The game is driven by a ridiculous sense of humor that defies classification.  Many of the best elements of the "Leisure Suit Larry" games are reborn here, excepting that most of the stuff that put off female gamers has been replaced with stuff that would feel more at home in "South Park."

Amusing mini-games are sprinkled throughout, including an optional hunt for cookies in every scene. Searching for cookies is especially fun, and finding them yields more jokes.  The cookies also serve as the currency exchanged for game hints, which is a wickedly clever design choice.  (If you carefully search every scene for cookies, you should need fewer hints.  If you only need a few hints, and the game gives you those hints in exchange for cookies, no one gets mad and ruins the fun with a walkthrough. )

The story is fun, but almost incidental.  The real treat is wandering around as these ridiculous characters, doing ridiculous things. 

This game was a good time.

The part about it being "something new" really pleases me, because that was my intention - offering the adventure gamers something different, a game like no other that you'll definitely want to try

I've posted an update on Kickstarter with more information on what has been done and what's left, check it here!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/983902887/demetrios/posts/1495679

Among many other things, I've added cutscenes, achievements, cookies and extras

For my first (unreleased) games, I was young so I pretty much created things on the go! I have an idea, I implement it, then to the following etc... I'm not sure this is the right thing to do though, but it can make really creative games!

When I first worked on my remake, I replayed everything, kept what worked and changed what didn't, so it feels more consistent.
If you're interested to know more, I have written articles on the game creation on my Kickstarter updates. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/983902887/demetrios/posts/1376845

Congrats! And thanks again for the Steam keys I've won in the last quizz

Bonne idée!

I'm French and developing an adventure game, but I'm afraid it's not made with AGS :p
Also I've got my own game to translate, otherwise I could have helped with the translations! Good luck though

[Demetrios got greenlit today]

Good news, Demetrios got greenlit today and thus will be available on Steam! (with achievements, cards and probably support for saves into the cloud).



The Steam version will be an option of course, there will also be a DRM Free version available.

There are still 7 days left to support the Kickstarter!

The Spanish translation stretch goal has been reached, the next ones are the German translation (3 500 â,¬) and the PS Vita version (5 000 â,¬) which unexpectedly was the most requested console version!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/983902887/demetrios

I *might* be interested to come (I'd love to show Demetrios there!) but I can't make a promise yet. I have an issue with my ID card which I have to renew (expired but it's "normal", the government increased the date but it's not written on the card...) and I have to evaluate the cost.

THe game looks fun.  Looking forward to the Kickstarter for it. 

Hope you make in onto GOG. 

Just noticed I hadn't replied to this!

Thank you, as for GoG they've become very strict on what's accepted lately. They refuse a LOT of games, and even popular ones. For example great and good looking games like ASA or The Next Penelope (from other french devs) haven't been accepted there.

BUT even if it wasn't, there'll still be a DRM free version distributed on my game site, and on other sites like itch.io!

Other than that, the game is now funded on Kickstarter!

The next stretch goals are for Spanish and German translations!

I've also posted some more articles on the creation of a room in the game, which I invite you to read on the Kickstarter updates!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/983902887/demetrios

90% funded now! Will some of you help Demetrios reach its goal?



I have posted an article on the creation of a room in the game! Read it in the updates :

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/983902887/demetrios/posts/1381518

[61% funded]

Still going great! Kickstarter is now 61% funded!!!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/983902887/demetrios

I've written an article comparing the old version of Demetrios with the remake! I think some of you may be interested


Old Demetrios on the left, New Demetrios on the right

When I've started working on Demetrios in 1999, my only programming knowledge was BASIC (I used it on my old Amstrad CPC computer)
So, when I got my first PC with a copy of Visual BASIC 4.0, this felt natural for me to use it to program the game!

Visual BASIC was very simple to use, and suitable to make a first person adventure game (it had windows and buttons, a way to display pictures...)

But it had many limitations : I couldn't use any transparency at all! So doing animations was a struggle, and animating a character on screen would have been impossible. So, no third person adventure!

Now, with Game Maker, I use PNG transparency all the time, and it makes everything so much smoother and easier to program!



Obviously, considering the technologic gap in 15 years, everything has been recreated from scratch.

When I first started this remake, I wondered whether to transform Demetrios into a third person adventure game, or keep it first person.

But after playing it again, I realized it worked great as a first person adventure - and maybe even better this way!

One big advantage of first person is there's no idle time. You don't have to wait for your character to move in order to get a reaction, and moving to another location is instant!

So, even though this game will "only" be 8 to 12 hours long, it would require much more time to complete if this was a third person game, due to these idle times!

Although, when working on Demetrios, I was a bit frustrated by this, because I wanted to do something close to the Broken Sword series I loved so much.

This is pretty clear in the game : even though it's first person, it almost feels like a third person game instead, as the game relies so much on the characters and their expressions!



Visual BASIC also had a big issue : when moving to another screen, it would cut the music. So despite trying many things to find a workaround, there was no way for me to include a background music!

Fortunately, with this remake I've been able to fix that, and this gives a whole new dimension to the game!



The very first (ugly) drawing I've done for Demetrios in 1999!

In 1999, I actually didn't draw (almost) anything! The drawings were made on paper by my brother Alain. While he's no professional artist, he did draw a lot of manga-style comics, and was a huge help by providing pretty much all the drawings!

I scanned them myself with a "hand scanner". This was awful to use and the graphics were often distorted because of that.
I've lost all the original paper drawings, unfortunately. All I have are the badly compressed game files. (So if you think paper is more durable than digital files... think again! :p)

For the new version, I re-drew everything directly on the computer with a graphical tablet!


The Paris map was a real map... I changed it to something prettier and more suitable

I did the coloring in both versions. Yes, really! That seems unbelievable considering the difference, but I swear I'm the same person who did both!

Back in the time, I did the coloring with a mouse, and I had absolutely no notion of coloring, lightning and shading. So the colors were very muddy and grey. It didn't fit the humor style of the game at all.

For the remake, I've taken some time to study how quality 2D traditional art was done from Disney and Studio Ghibli films, and this helped quite a bit!

Also, the program I used in 1999 to do the coloring was Paint Shop Pro, and this was the very first version to include layers! But despite that, I had no idea what those "layers" were, and I didn't use them. A huge mistake!


Dialogs had a black background like Gabriel Knight 1

From the gameplay side, I've improved the interface to make it more ergonomic and modern.

For example, using an item was a chore in the old version. The inventory was one entire screen, and you couldn't know what item you were holding during gameplay.
You couldn't combine items, either!



The old inventory

The interactions were very limited, too. There was only one sentence displayed when clicking on something. It wasn't contextual at all : unless you used the correct item, you wouldn't get another speech or anything.

That's one side of the game that I have totally changed. The new Demetrios is so interactive that it's almost too much!



The old title screen. Yes, I did some CGI too!... And this was WAY out of place.

However, when it comes to the ideas and the events happening, I've kept absolutely everything from the original game.

Even the minor things that could seem silly, like the extra-terrestrial figure when clicking on the mirror in the living room, or the coffin in the bedroom. I hesitated to remove these because they seemed out of place, but decided against it.



I figured that despite being childish, they're the kind of things you don't usually see in adventure games. I want to surprise the player and make a game with personality!

To summarize, I can fairly say that all those mistakes I've done in the original version allowed me to make a high quality new version.

If I had to define the new Demetrios, it would be : a unique combination of professional game making with the ideas of a 15-year-old - and that's something you don't see everyday!

And judging from the feedbacks I've received so far... It works!

Thanks for reading, hope you liked it!

More articles are coming up - Stay tuned!


Oh and if you'd like the game to be available on Steam someday...

Well, the campaign is doing great so far! Already 44% funded in about one day!!!

Thank you, keep the support coming though!

The devs are great, they've even backed and supported my own campaign!

Glad to know it's doing awesome!

[Demetrios just went LIVE on Kickstarter and Steam Greenlight!]

Here you go!

Demetrios just went LIVE on Kickstarter and Steam Greenlight!

And here's the first game trailer!



==> Support on Kickstarter : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/983902887/demetrios

==> Vote on Steam Greenlight : http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=502785332


With your help, I can make Demetrios bigger and better!

If you're interested in the game but hesitate to help or you're broke (that happens!), please consider at least voting for the game on Steam Greenlight and/or giving 1€ to the Kickstarter!
You'll get your name in the credits, wallpapers, and you'll follow the project with updates

[HTML5 version of the demo available!]

Time flies by so quickly!

The Kickstarter and Steam Greenlight launches that I've planned for months, will finally happen in a few days!
Both pages will be online simultaneously next tuesday!

For that occasion, I've been preparing an updated demo of the game (v1.3). This takes account of all the feedback I've had so far!

-----------------------------
CHANGES SINCE 1.2 :
-----------------------------
- HTML5 version of the demo available!

You can now run the demo directly in your browser! See here on the site : http://www.demetriosgame.com/en/demo/

- New Bjorn and Sandra expressions!

Despite my game being a Point & Click, the Ace Attorney series had quite a big influence on it!
And this is why pretty much every character in the game will have several animated expressions!

For example, here are the current Bjorn expressions :



- Cookies are bigger and easier to find!

Most people found that cookies were a very interesting concept. They're hidden on screens and you need to find them to get in-game hints. So it's kinda like an optional game in the game!

However, they were a bit TOO well hidden. So I have resized each of them about 1.5 to 2 times.



Also, there's a new cookie counter, which gives you how many cookies are left to find in each room! This should make the search more attractive

- English and French texts have been proofread

English isn't my native language, and Draclvr from the GameBoomers forum has been kind enough to proofread the game text. There should be way less mistakes now

Another adventure game fan also did the French text proofreading - even though I'm French, I still make some spelling mistakes :p

- Corrected windows interfaces to make them prettier

Some of them had been very quickly done for the first prototype, and I never changed them. Now it looks better and more professional!



- Corrected fonts for french and spanish characters

Accented language-specific characters would not display. I had to modify the TTF font manually to make them appear!
Finding good-looking copyleft fonts is very difficult, and fonts with support for every language is next to impossible!
I didn't want to revert back to basic fonts like Arial or Verdana, so this was pretty much the only solution.

- Improved game performance

I've added a cache for dialogs and translations texts when changing room, so they're not loaded at every room switch. This makes for a much smoother experience! Now changing room is near-instant on modern computers!

- Improved hotspots view (prettier and texts don't overlap anymore) :



- Automatic framerate detection

The game will run at 60FPS or 30FPS according to your computer abilities! This is detected during the game startup.
Frameskip is managed manually in the game engine (all the variables related to speeds like timers are doubled at each step)

If you'd like to try the new demo, it's available on my site : http://www.demetriosgame.com/en/demo/

[Kickstarter AND Steam Greenlight on October 6th]

I can officially announce that Demetrios will be launched on both Kickstarter AND Steam Greenlight on October 6th (next month!)



If you'd like to support it already, I have created a ThunderClap for that!
https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/31397-demetrios-on-kickstarter

If you don't know what ThunderClap is, it allows to gather support from people in order to post an automatic message at a specific date on their Facebook/Twitter (for example when my Kickstarter will be live!)

[HTML5 version of the demo]

Lately I've been working on an HTML5 version of the demo. That way, people can try the game without having to download it! (which is tedious for many people who just won't bother)

I am using Game Maker Studio to make this game. If some of you are interested, check this †ª†Ždevblog†¬ entry on my site for more details!

http://www.demetriosgame.com/en/news/HTML5_version/23.html

[the preview demo has been fully translated to French]

The Demetrios game project has progressed quite a lot lately, so it's time for a quick update status!



First, the preview demo has been fully translated to French. It's working great and it didn't take a long time to implement, so this definitely opens the possibility to new languages translations for the release
The language (English or French) is automatically detected on startup, according to your operating system language. (NB : It can also be changed manually in the options)

Also, Mac and Linux exports have been officially added!

I've corrected a few things, especially some performance issues : the game would slow down more and more as you'd play it, and this also made the Mac version crash often (memory leaks and such) Now it's fixed!

You can now download the preview version directly on the site (no email required anymore!) Also the Windows version now comes with an installer, and includes DirectX installation (some people had trouble with that)

-----------------------------

DOWNLOAD THE DEMO :



The demo is available for Windows, Mac and Linux, right here : http://www.demetriosgame.com/en/demo/

-----------------------------

I've got a whole lot more to talk about, as I've been having great progress lately - but I'll save that for later. Stay tuned!

qptain Nemo => Thank you! For now the demo is only available on Windows, but I could export it to Linux too, if you'd like to try it! (I had successfuly made the prototype version run on Ubuntu, so it should work)


And, there you go! A new demo version 1.1 is now available!

The previous demo version (1.0) was met with very positive feedbacks so far (thanks everyone!)

Some of you have suggested a few things to improve, and have encountered some minor bugs.

So, I've made some changes :

- Added hotspots view! Just press the SPACE bar, or click the button in the top interface, to see all the things on screen.

Normal room view :


Hotspots view :


- Added "look" icon, to separate hotspots we can act on (often the most important ones), and hotspots we can look. (This might make the game a bit easier, but less daunting)



- Inventory and menu bars now open when clicking on a button (instead of hovering at the bottom / top), and stay open until we click again or leave the room



Other changes :

- Fixed the sound volume interface
- Faster text writing
- The royalty free music is now without watermark (licence bought)
- Removed Tom's accent, which most people found awkward
- Removed some useless / confusing interactions here and there
- Fixed a bug with parts of the interface staying on screen on monitors without a 16/9 aspect ratio
- Corrected some music bugs (in some cases, the music wouldn't play or loop)

To download the new demo version, go to the official game site and enter your email address just below the banner.




(NB : Entering your email will only get you a private download link, you won't receive the newsletter or anything else)

For the people who already download the previous version, this has the exact same content, which is the whole Chapter 1 (between one and two hours of gameplay)

Thank you for the positive replies Be sure to try the demo if you're interested! It's quite long (more than an hour)

I chose Game Maker Studio because I had some past experience with it, and it allows to make very varied types of games with its programming language.
My game has multiple mini-games in it, and didn't encounter any problem programming them so far.
Also, I have the impression that AGS is limited to low resolution games (which may or may not be true, I don't know but all recent games made with it like Wadjet Eye's games are low res)
I've also had problems running them on recent computers (I've had big trouble with Gemini Rue, for example)
And GMS allows to export to multiple machines/environments with the exact same code.

We're discussing the game on this AdventureGamers topic, too : http://www.adventuregamers.com/forums/viewthread/5556/

[cynical humor]

Game available NOW!

Steam : http://store.steampowered.com/app/451570http://store.steampowered.com/app/451570

Kickstarter : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/983902887/demetrios

Release date : May 31st, 2016

-----------------------------

DOWNLOAD THE DEMO :



The demo is available for Windows, Mac and Linux, right here : http://www.demetriosgame.com/en/demo/

-----------------------------

Hello everyone!

I'm french and a huge fan of adventure games ever since the days of Broken Sword and Discworld on the PS1! (yup… I didn't have a PC at the time)

And… I've been developing an adventure game for almost a year now. (Not using AGS, but Game Maker Studioà  I've made it public recently.

I would be very interesting in getting some opinions from adventure gamers

So here's the game info :

â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"-

Demetrios is a fresh take on the classic “Point & Click” adventure games, adding a touch of cynical humor to the characters motivations.

The game puts you in the shoes of Bjorn Thonen, an antique seller being robbed one night after coming back home drunk. Doing his own investigation with the help of Sandra, his next-door neighbor, he ends up involved in a mysterious and murky affair. But these two unlikely heroes may be able to surpass themselves and discover ancient secrets!

Featuring Full HD, hand crafted backgrounds and animated characters in first person view, similar to visual novels, the game offers varied situations and puzzles, for beginners and experts alike, with a highly contextual level of interactivity.
Try different items combinations, the results might surprise you!

Planned release : Early 2016

Platforms : PC/Mac/Linux

Distribution :
Digital : DRM-Free on this site, Desura, GOG, Steam (if accepted)
Physical : A limited box DVD version is planned, sold directly on the site

Supported languages : English, French (possibly Spanish and German at the time of release)






NB : These are thumbnails, for large versions see them on my site :
http://www.demetriosgame.com/en/screenshots/

Also, a demo version is available! Go there, and check the message under the banner : http://www.demetriosgame.com