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Good luck to them. It's wonderful to follow your bliss and try and live your dreams. Doesn't always work, but it's better than doing nothing and sitting in the peanut gallery. So more power to them.

And if it's around when next I lob up in Q-land, I will definitely plonk myself down in the place and catch up on news. I will particularly make sure to click on everyone twice to see if the dialogue changes.

I didn't really see the town at all, and it is very indistinct... I would put the roofs clearer, and fade out the lower stuff to the current level.

But then you also said you weren't working on it so now I am asking why critique it then.

Skull Craig is off being tested so I have started another game. This one is called Skull Craig: Hemlock's Diary - scratch that- Hemlock's NOTEBOOK. Diary was a meme that contaminated my project.

It's set in the present day of the same world, 1000 years later than the first game.

This time a scrappy adventurer acquires a bizarre diary, reads it, and decides to visit the alpine region that the diary references, said region being of course... SKULL CRAIG.

This one is third person, ie it has a character twitching across the screen, along with various NPCs in similar mien.

It has both simple and complex quests, simple and complex items, ATM functions using a credit card inventory item, adventurer statistics, day night cycle and ongoing calendar functions, thirst, hunger and cold, interactive and "point and click with items" type puzzles and lots of detailed locations with loads of hotspots. Going for the whole immersive world albeit in third person perspective.

Script 15%
Pictures 10%
Sounds 50% (ambient and effects)
Music 100%


Coming along pretty well, more screens soon.

Why not just use public domain music, or royalty free music? Royalty free can cost as little as a few bucks, even commercial licensing runs to $30 to $40, worst I ever paid was $500- and that was for an "album"- most of which was ultracrap too. But generally royalty free buyout is dirt cheap and there are gajillions of them.

Then there are no dramas at all and everything you do is not only legal, you're also helping other organisms on the Indie planet...

This is listed in completed games on the AGS website?

Is it not complete then?

Wow...top-notch graphics!  Awesome stuff!

I just wanted to ask, does Skull Craig have a special meaning?  My brain's stuck on it, wondering if you meant "Crag" instead.

Craig = Scots English. That's all. As in eg Ailsa Craig.

Thanks! I get hypnotised with the art which is slowing me down. Taking stuff from blender through pshop and then to the screen is fun though. I keep getting tempted to make a 3D shoot em up version but it would be nowhere near the same as having puzzles.

UPDATED 23 January

still being tested, correcting the inevitable little glitches and bugs, nothing horribly wrong so far, some people have solved it quickly and chosen the "run away" option, the testers going for the "escape, the maybe kill the tyrant" type options are still going.

***BACK FROM TESTING***

Doing new art for four rooms, changing sound and music levels in two other rooms and fixing a couple of poorly designed hotspots. When that is done, it will be released.


Room 2, the first actual room of the game.


A Throgg, encountered if Luck is against you.

- graphics 95%
- puzzles 100%
- scripting 100%
- music/sound 100%

BEING TESTED- testing by total newcomers to games of any kind, newcomers to adventure games and adventure game fans

Skull Craig is a puzzle / combat / quest Adventure Game. It is first person, with CGI art and characters.

Synopsis: you begin as a prisoner of Lord Rabtrutch, local despot. You have to escape your cell, and then decide whether to simply flee the whole Skull Craig area or linger in the region to take revenge on the tyrant. Along the way, there are quests and the usual scavenger hunt for items, although there are many different ways to solve problems given, and styles of play are possible- some things require a specific key for a specific lock, as in real life, but other things can be overcome, avoided or ignored.

Inventory features magic scrolls which are one-use magic spells. Also features money and character statistics such as Luck, Instinct and Health. They aren't obtrusive and are mentioned when relevant.

Game also features a day / night cycle, and behind that is a day / week / month / year etc. calendar. Currently somewhat under utilised, but it's all in there.

I have an ecology addon I can put in, but I am debating why to bother. It would allow seasons, monster population fluctuations, NPC events and all that. But since the game is quite narrowly focused, it seems pointless.

GUI is simply save / load / quit with a large inventory sheet alongside it.

Music is royalty free purchased or original composed.

Art same.

Escaping from the prison cell can be achieved in a variety of ways, to begin with some of those ways will almost certainly land you back in the cell but after a few items are collected things get easier quicker, although there is always the chance throughout the game that one of the tyrant's patrols will catch you and back you will go. However, even if this happens late in the game, you will be pretty confident of your ability to get back to where you were before disaster struck.

Death is possible, but far more likely is capture and temporary imprisonment. Death happens only after warning and is rare- doing a few things that are not only counter intuitive but pretty silly will get you killed- which triggers game restart.

There is a video introduction and a video finale. Other than that I haven't bothered with cut scenes although it is tempting to turn the whole game into video clips, I am just concerned at file size if I do that.

Anyway, SKULL CRAIG. There you go.

I will take some more screenshots and post them via an edit to this post.

Looks lovely!

Hey, thanks!
No.  I'm not using the 3d plugin.  I tried it, and I think the models I'm using are a little too complex for it.  Instead, everything is being shot in 3d, transferred in to sprites and played in the 2d fashion.  And the cutscenes will be 3d, but prerendered.

Doing the same here. Our previous AGS project Vanilla Island ended up being ported to Realm Crafter so it is out of my hands but the new one I am doing with AGS 3.0 is doing the same as you described. I am using FRAPS and FPSC to generate the 3D... How about you?

In any case, it looks wonderful, Oz is perfect for adventure games as well as a really cool and fun universe with a great depth of stories, characters and incidents. Plus its own weird geography and physics! I hope to see you thrive and make the whole damned series into games... And in the process bring to life so many childhood friends! Especially the tin man and other animates. Faves of mine!

Exactly, Mr. Mod. Exactly.

Anyway...

If anyone wants to do voice acting, always happy to hear from you, you will get a professional credit out of it - just email mathew@piscesallmedia.com

If you are Sydney / Canberra local please send an acting cv too since Mat is happy to see people for acting too for this and future projects.

Australian, some in Sydney some in Canberra (poor dumb bastards).

Coming from you of all people, Dualnames, how could such contributions to this thread discourage us?

Some thoughts:

1. QUALITY CONTROL
I think a commercial release, even a free one, needs to maintain quality control. That is a totally separate issue of professionalism to how much a game costs.  This game seems fine for that.

2. PRICE
I think top of the line computer games are ridiculously priced considering the sort of pretty trash that they are. They are essentially at the level of free to air television, or cable TV. And yet they cost a lot more proportionally. Market forces are not so much regulating that as they are exterminating computer game companies by the week. To me, this is a good thing. Because in the gaps, new niches appear, new companies pop up and the whole shebang keeps marching on in a state of evolutionary flux.

3. HORSES FOR COURSES
Adventure games are different from FPSes. They need to be considered in terms of price point as being equivalent to literature. IF (interactive fiction), such as our site Jack's Sofa, is free online but the books based on it sell for anywhere from US$ 6 to US$ 30. Hence computer games with similar interactivity will have a default price point similar to this depending on length and quality.

4. GREEN-EYED MONSTER
I greatly admire El Ammo and its creators. It takes a sh_tload of work to get anywhere in any field you pick. I think some of the bitterest comments are jealousy pure and simple.

5. LOGIC
I find it baffling that some of the criticism of this game is along the lines of,

EGO: "what do you think of my cake?"

NITWIT: "well, it isn't much of a potted fern is it?"

EGO: "what the?"

NITWIT: "I mean it has almost nothing in common with a potted fern."

EGO: "Yes but it isn't meant to be a potted-"

NITWIT: "No pathetic excuses. You will NEVER make it in the potted fern market with this delicious and nutritious snack. I mean, who wants to put THAT in their garden?"

EGO: "sigh."


There are freeware and cheapware FPS engines available, and you can make pretty good FPSes with them in a day or so. So go do that. AGS provides an incredibly diverse platform for any game that promotes interaction and intellectual play. With a small amount of tweaking it can give you any other genre you like. But at the end of the day, trying to say that because AGS is difficult to use to make a potted fern cake somehow its games are worth less is nonsensical.

Hate to break it to the critics but you are paying way way too much for the short lived popular titles. Even the ones that turned into moronic movies.

it's actually complete other than the filming and voice work. So the only delay will be when that is finished. We want it done this month but it may be slightly delayed. As soon as the film is complete the game will have AVIs added and then it will be a freeware release and get its own website and so on.

Below is a link to the young lady we have cast as the character JANE:
http://www.hottestontv.com.au/index.php?section=celebs&profile=1062&letter=r&sort=firstname&sort_gender=b&anch=36


I have personally started another game now to test some other stuff out so when that is a little further along I will start a new thread for it.

It's beautiful in AGS to see how the simplicity and robustness allows such great ideas to be implemented QUICKLY rather than needing to rewrite source all the time. Really showcases game scripting versatility and power imo.

Hi!

The story is basically that three very different people are on a plane to Fiji... that never arrives.

Each of them regains consciousness after the presumed crash on the same island, and they have to get off the island and back to civilisation. However, there is a little more to it than that of course.

The AGS Vanilla Island game is freeware and a basically nonviolent (very little violence in it) puzzle solving point and click type effort that is hopefully fun but also lets us test what we want to test for next year's online game launch. Long story short- MYST meets LOST.

Mat Freitas is filming the short feature which will be the bookends to the game and it also features more video during the game.

Inventory is multi-use in the sense that for example if you have a tree branch it can be used for the things a tree branch can be used for in real life rather than being more like a "magic key" with a single weird or non-intuitive application.

We have our own forum for the world it is set in as well-

http://www.piscesallmedia.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=150


Which is also where news about the show / book series will be posted.

Hi,

we are looking for some voice actors... if you are interested please email mathew@piscesallmedia.com ASAP.

Game is moving towards completion, filming will wrap by 24 February then the whole package will be assembled and released online via a website.

I don't like the mecha stuff too much so for that apect, no, for the rest- why not.

"Easy" way to add the old skool movie look and feel is to use Windows Movie Maker and load images you want to distress- then just pick old film or sepia etc. as the effect, save to an AVI.

To get still shots you could use AVD Video Processor 7.5.

Despite all the other digital stuff we have for actual film / TV I still definitely play around with consumer and prosumer stuff, since some of it works way better and easier than expensive... crap... Plus it's fun. Like sellotape and scissors editing!

Also Movie Maker may well be sitting on your PC for free, chewing up space and memory like the Microsoft sea anenome software it is.