Messages

Had a bit of a mad morning, finally here but the venue is at full capacity? I really didn't see that coming...

Is there any space for one more oldie?

*edit: Drama over

Heyy, how late is *too* late to submit trailers? I might knock something together as I've got an evening free on Friday, but most of you will already be drunk in London by then

The colour choices in those sprites compliment the background perfectly, looks like you've taken the angle of the light source into account!? I really dig the 320 sprites, it gives the game it's own style/identity.

Ben304! I'm particularly fond of his expressionist phase.

Just to let you know Jack, it was my boyfriend's horse and the robbery was entirely his idea. We didn't mean to startle you.

Thanks mercenario, StS is a beautiful game, it's one of my many artistic influences

I recorded my background making process recently, this one took me about 12 hours or so. Yikes!



[embed=640,390]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw81opD14rY[/embed]

That hanger(?) background is giving me a real Studio Ghibli vibe, great work Andail.

Dude I saw this on Facebook and it's proper ace! Your art fits the synthwave vibe really well, love all the minimalist close ups and transitions. I was pondering over why you chose AGS instead of AE or similar and thought it would be a neat idea if you released the compiled exe, in spirit of the demoscene visualisations of yesteryear. Seems like it would be a neat extra to compliment those who pay for the album or single.

Congrats man, must've taken some serious work timing everything to the music.

So happy to see that not only is your project now finished, but you've also passed the Greenlight process! A massive congratulations to you both Coming from a similar situation, this is really inspiring stuff. Wishing you the best of luck with your release, can't wait to get my hands on it!

[SilverSpook]

Thanks SilverSpook, selmiak's right it's meant to a deer of sorts.

selmiak: Ahhhh! That's the last thing I want people to think! I draw everything at 320x240, so no upscaling there. I upload the screenshots at 2x the original res using nearest neighbour, but do put a slight blur on the image afterwards to soften the edges slightly. I find pixel art looks a bit sharp when viewed in a small screenshot, personal preference I guess.

Or maybe it's the blur I added to the far background hills? I'm still not sure if I should keep that, I have a version without the blur too.

Thanks anyway, let's discuss this over PM

[AnasAbdin:]

Thank you for your words of encouragement! Since my last post I've finished the artwork for one of the largest locations in the game, which i'm really happy with.

AnasAbdin: Thanks! GnG is pretty rad
Gameboy: Ta dude, in your defence I haven't updated this thread as much as I could have.
Jack: His digging is looping in the gif, missing one of the animations but I think he deserves a break, he is blind in one eye! Haha, thanks though. My coder Andy worked wonders with the speech bubbles.
Danvzare: Hurrah! Discworld is a big influence, there are more than a couple of homages. I've tried to keep Guard Duty's puzzles on the more logical side of things though
Matti: Thanks for the support
dactylopus: Thanks, most of the environment effects are created in Adobe After Effects with the colours limited to keep with the retro aesthetic. I was actually considering adding some more details to the Castle Wall, but worried it might get a bit too busy.
Squall_Leonheart: Thank you, every character in the game will have at least two idle animations, most with many more!

Here's one of the backgrounds I was streaming on Twitch, the entrance to the enchanted woods. It's a fairly basic one but will feature an interesting character for the focal point, which I have yet to draw

I'm currently in the process of writing up a business plan for Guard Duty, so this thread couldn't be more relevant

I often feel that some of the less popular point and click games fall short on player interaction, that is responsive reactions to their inputs. It's fun to have a 1-1 reaction for the player. Interaction in platforming games and FPS (two of the most 'reactive' genres) are prime examples for this, you shoot a barrel and it explodes into bright colours and often physics based animations, you hit jump and the player is launched into the air, able to reach new ares and overcome obstacles. This sort of interaction gives the player a very direct visual response to their input, something that is often missing in traditional adventure games. Adventure games tend to rely heavily on dialogue, which means long pauses with little to no player interaction for the duration of the conversation. In my opinion some of the best modern and retro adventures are packed full of animations/unique interactions and keep dialogue to short, relevant information. Unfortunately the market has changed drastically since the late 80's/early 90's and more and more players have grown up expecting this kind of instant reaction in a game, prohibiting their appreciation of these story driven experiences that we love.

This doesn't have to be a problem though, there is definitely a market out there for quality games that feature elements of the traditional adventure gameplay, the likes of Wadget Eye, Daedalic Entertainment and TellTale (as well as many others) have proven this. I believe the challenge lies mostly in making sure your game is able to compete with titles already available to those players who are a fan of the genre. Players need a reason to choose your game over any existing titles that they are interested in playing. This challenge promotes developer innovation and ultimately makes for more refined and higher quality titles being released, therefore raising the bar even further!

Your backgrounds are definitely too dark, seems your monitor needs calibrating. I've noticed this issue with a few of your wip backgrounds.

So cool! I love the range of colour in the backgrounds. The name is really cool too. Are you doing the backgrounds Grundislav?

Update!



We have rebranded! The pseudo-studio I released my games under 'Clicknpoint' is no more, we decided a more funky name was in order and I wanted to keep the chicken theme so I present:



The further we get into development the more serious this feels (this project has completely taken over my life), so a decent web presence was in order. I'm planning on starting a Greenlight page somewhere around Christmas and will be putting some form of trailer/gameplay video out around the same time. I'm pretty rubbish at this whole social networking jazz but if anyone fancies following us on any of our social links at the bottom of the website, or sharing the website with friends that would be damn swell!

So, progress update.

I was way too ambitious with my initial predictions for how long this beast would take to make. It's a long way off being finished but i'm chuffed to bits with what we have achieved over the past two years.

We've been working hard behind the scenes, we've reworked our gameplan, we removed some sections of the game that were unnecessarily drawn out, reworking puzzles to allow for more player satisfaction and less backtracking. We have lots of things implemented that i'm really proud of and we've (fingers crossed) managed to keep a consistent quality throughout every location. We're at the point where i'm finally happy to call it the second 'act', that is, the player can progress through the entirety of the first act, with *almost* all of the assets in place and all of the core puzzles.

I've finished the majority of the background assets for the second act and am now starting to put the locations together in AGS with placeholder characters and objects. Thankfully I've already created the big cutscenes for the final act and some other bits and pieces.

Anyway, here are some new screenshots from the first act, please note the font is due to change and a couple of the animations need cleaning up.


Princess Theramin has a run in with a mysterious stranger...


Tondbert enjoys a little tipple on his Birthday shift.


Tondbert's face is horrifically mutilated after a run in with a beehive.

That's all for now, thanks for all of your support so far!

[really]

Hey BlondBraid, as I've said before I really like the way you paint these backgrounds, personally I think you should stop adding such drastic things after painting (filters or cell outlines) and work on tweaking what you already have, they look really good as they are!

Part of the problem you're having with fitting the characters in could be due to the lack of contrast, a lot of your image sits in the middle of the greyscale, which makes it feel a little more washed out and less 'contrast-y'. The characters however have 100% black for the outlines and fill colours that are very close to white, you want to try and create this contrast in your backgrounds too.

In the edit below I've tried to keep the main focus point in the vertical centre of the image as this will be where the character can walk. Your characters both have dark outlines and sharp pixels, so they feel like they are 'in focus' if looking through a camera, try to match this with the walkable areas and it will help the character blend in. Your background was mostly in focus, so it was easy for me to create depth super quick by making the foreground sacks blurry and darkening them, as if they were further away from the door/window's light source. I also tried to soften the contrast of the back wall a little and add some contrast to the tops of the middleground sacks. I dropped the focus of them slightly too (added blur) so they appear to sit behind the character better.

I might have gone overkill but it was a pleasure to play around with your awesome background

Me too Retro Wolf! What year did you go? I've been a fair few times so we may have already clashed beards in the mosh pit I saw Slayer in 07.

I checked out the anime on youtube and it reminded me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVz_uZljJsg

I'd definitely go with the first one, you've spent a lot of time painting in that soft shading and it's such a shame to lose it.

Personally I quite like the character style matched with the first background, it reminds me of the classic Disney animations:

http://www.animationsensations.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/s/w/sw_prince_icon.jpg

Best of luck for your next project CW, I second all that has been said, you've given a great deal to the community and should be proud of what you have accomplished.

If you decide to give AGS as a whole a bit of a break that's perfectly understandable, but please do pop into the forums from time to time and say hi

How AdventureXcellent!

I've pledged and it looks like lots of other people have already too!

Although development on GuardDuty has slowed to a halt again, I hope to bring along something to show

Also Mark best be attending, even if he's not organising this year