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["Nathan wakes from a coma, three weeks after a car accident that nearly killed him. Soon, he fully recovers. With new-gained perspective on life he decides to spend some time with his father, on an island he chose as his home. It's been 20 years since Nathan talked to him. This might be the last chance for them to make peace with each other. But all that time someone's been waiting for him. Someone with a job to finish... Someone... ...something."]

So, - I hate when people start sentences with "so", but anyway- it's  been a while since I posted in this thread and I'm always trying to be supportive of horror games... SO I thought I'd have a little suggestion. I just read the synopsis on the first page of the thread and.. I don't think it gives your game justice, really. There's something there, but obviously english is not your first language and until it gets released with more professional translation, it's a bit all over the place.

I tried to make it better. If  you don't like it: throw it away ( more than 3 steps, far far away). You like it- use it.

This is old synopsis:

"Our hero Nathan has a serious accident with his car.H e is getting better after 3 weeks in coma and he decide to get some vacations on  an island. He's father island after 20 years. ...someone has a job to finish...they was waiting for him a lot ..."

This one's mine:

"Nathan wakes from a coma, three weeks after a car accident that nearly killed him.

      Soon, he fully recovers. With new-gained perspective on life he decides to spend some time with his father, on an island he chose as his home. It's been 20 years since Nathan talked to him. This might be the last chance for them to make peace with each other.
     But all that time someone's been waiting for him. Someone with a job to finish... Someone...
                                                                                                                                               ...something."

Lots of Tesla fans here, on these forums, so I think you might hit the spot with this one:)

I also use Cinema 4D and find it a great piece of software. And I agree that without photoshop editing rendered characters just don't look quite right.... But you seem to have got it right. I like the style of this game- probably most of all of your games so far, especially backgrounds with their post-apocalyptic feel. 

One advice though- the description of the storyline seems to go on forever. Make it short and snappy, so it grabs readers' attention right from the start and doesn't put them off with all historical info. It's probably fine for a WIP thread, but just keep in  mind that for when it's released it will need some editing first. At least, that's my view on this...

 

Every ones thought count

Look, I'm really sorry, but I thought I'd share my thoughts if you don't mind (if they count too). Since every time I see your game mentioned I only have this one thought, really... I decided it would be best to express it by this picture:



I don't mean it in a nasty way.Actually, I like it how through perserverance you turned from hated by all troll into some sort of forum pet...

[2. Post in a mature manner. Remember, the minimum age here is 16 !]

there must be something that  you lose when you die...

Your virginity?

You've only got one thing on your mind, matey!!!
Can I remind you:

2. Post in a mature manner. Remember, the minimum age here is 16 !

  This is something that has always puzzled me too... A monster you can see is not scary anymore, but if you can't see the monster, how do you even know there is one?...

   I played this game called Amnesia:Dark Descent a while ago, and I must honestly say this was the first time since Silent Hill 2 that I got really scared (by a game). It would be worth taking pointers from Amnesia, I think. It features some of the best chase sequences in horror ever. And the best thing about them- you can't even see who it is that chases you... It's weird, I played this game for several weeks, on and off, and I could swear something had been following me, but not even once I had seen it. The cues ( as mentioned in above posts, such as lights flickering, footsteps, heavy breathing, heartbeat etc) made me crouch in a corner of a room, staring into darkness, waiting for that "thing" to walk away...

   So, to sum it up, sound effects can do a good job of alerting you of an enemy presence or danger. Maybe it would be a good idea to play with random animal sounds using some decent sound/music editor and see what you can get when you modify them? Think about seagulls... - add few special effects and you can get a real eerie sound....

   If you decide to show a  monster after all, make sure the penalty for dying is brutal... I mean, games have become too forgiving these days- you die, and it's like: no big deal, I'll just start from the checkpoint and try again. That can never be scary! Not in a million years. There must be something that  you lose when you die...

[...] thought to myself, "wait a minute, this isn't real!".
I figured, ok, interesting, let's test this by doing something illogical. [...]Now I was sure this is a dream, and I had complete control, and thought "ok, let's do some crazy shit..."
Unfortunately, that was when I was kicked out of the dream. It's like the guy in my mind that invented the dream said, "oh no, he found out, everybody retreat", and I was transferred into that state between dream and awakeness.
I tried to go back to the dream, but at this point I was already feeling the pillow on my head and realized that I'm awake.

That's exactly what me experiences wiith lucid dreams are like! With the only exception that sometimes when I try to use my newly discovered dream freedom to do something I wouldn't ever do in real life, I find I can at first but instead of waking up soon after that, I tend to slowly lose control... I become a viewer again, like it's not really me doing things but I'm just there for a ride, watching, engaged in some ridiculous dream-story playing out if front of me.

  Sometimes I force myself to remember that I was supposed to do really exciting things and that the time is running out, but my attempts fail quickly as 'something' -or 'someone' in real charge of my dream tries so hard to divert my attention by throwing tons of random stuff at me that it's impossible to stay in control. So I become part of the dream again...

  I didn't realize you can actually LEARN how to induce lucid dreams! I must read that thingie GarageGothic has pointed to. This is something I find  really interesting... Maybe with more experience, I could remain in control for longer? I'd sure love that.

Excellent! I'm a big fan!

Is that the famous Games magazine which Grim mentioned? The score is fine, but the text itself is surprisingly lousy.

Yep. One and the same.

Yeah... I don't know why I bother with it... I guess it's a gaming equivalent of women's magazines like Cosmopolitan. Pretty stuff with little substance. Still, it's good to be in it!!!

Oh no, not John Harris!!! It's the name of my landlord... I hate that guy! Can't you just change it to Harrison Ford? I think that's probably what you meant anyway...

Man, you've got your game reviewed by Games magazine in UK!... It's probably next to Edge, the most serious gaming magazine available here. I've been buying it regularly for over 4 years now. I never got featured there myself ( bastards!:)), but the only other AGS games that have are Emerald City ( or was it not an AGS game?... well, it's Dave's anyway) and Time Gentlemen, Please.

  So, well done. Great success and just think how many more people will hear about Gemini Rue...

  Oh, yeah, of course, the most important thing- you scored 8/10. It says under the score that "one man can make a good adventure game". Amen to that.

I'm really jelous of that... but also happy for you:) Great job!

Bumped into this at work, on Vimeo ( we got You tube blocked... bastards). This is Youtube version of this fantastic piece of animation, The Mighty Antlers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPn3keezau0

And another one from the same makers ( I presume):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVkDrIacHJM&feature=related

Enjoy!

Oh well.... Looks like I won't be seeing this cr... movie then.  :o

I bet that people who wrote those reviews enjoyed writing them more than the film they were about:) -if there is one good thing about bad films it's that they always fuel critics' creativity and make for some very funny reads:)

I'm looking forward to this movie. I saw the trailer a while back and as soon as they mentioned mental asylums and video-game-like worlds of imagination as means of therapy for a young gril ( or at least that's what I remember) it got me hooked. Now, the only problem is that it's not the kind of film you can go watch with your girlfriend... so I'm waiting for a DVD release:)

  My point is, that i REALLY love AGS and I think I finally managed to get my head around the scripting to do it on a decent level and I think it is a fantastic platform. But the way the sprites are handled is causing massive slowdowns and I often find myself cutting down on stuff because I simply can't expect everyone who plays my games to own a very powerful pc....

  Is there no way to improve that? How is Wintermute dealing with this problem? I am no expert at these things but surely a better hardware acceleration would make everything run faster....

Is AGS significantly slower than any other engine at the same resolution with the same quantity of graphics, when running in D3D mode? I've seen occasional posts from people commenting on how slow AGS is, but is this actually a fact or are people just making assumptions?

If there is a significant performance problem then this is something that should be investigated and improved, but this has never been formally reported as a problem, as far as I know.

  I've only heard that other engines are faster and never really tried them myself... Perhaps I'm being unreasonable, but recently testing my game on my girlfriend's laptop (in D3D mode) some rooms that work great on my desktop were really choppy and slow. These were of course rooms with a large number of animated sprites in them. It's quite a good laptop, too- not top of the range maybe but not old crap either.

Anyway, it seems that a room a size of 2000x600 pixels with one large parallax object in the background, a same size layer of alpha channel light/shadow object, a rain animated object sized 1000x600 px, 2 characters, each 21 frames walking animation, and flopping curtains sized 200x500, and few small other objects caused a massive slowdown.
..
And now, that I've typed all that, I think I realize I'd probably gone beyond a reasonable amount of stuff that can be placed in one room........

   But another issue is that D3D doesn't work on some computers. I remember Calin explaining it to me once... but I forgot what he said. Still, it would be great if it worked on 100% of machines.

I don't know if this has been mentioned before, but I would really like if AGS had better support for high resolution graphics. I sure understand the majority of people here make games in low res, and there is nothing wrong with that- as many great games have proved- but I think as developers we shouldn't have to compromise as it's often the case with anything  800x600 and above. I suppose it might be also a major turn-off for anyone wanting to use AGS to make commercial games.

  My point is, that i REALLY love AGS and I think I finally managed to get my head around the scripting to do it on a decent level and I think it is a fantastic platform. But the way the sprites are handled is causing massive slowdowns and I often find myself cutting down on stuff because I simply can't expect everyone who plays my games to own a very powerful pc....

  Is there no way to improve that? How is Wintermute dealing with this problem? I am no expert at these things but surely a better hardware acceleration would make everything run faster....

  If it wasn't for the performance issues, I couldn't imagine myself ever needing another engine. But as it stands now... it's just so painfully slow sometimes it breaks my heart when I have to remove all those alpha channeled lights and cut out frames of animation....

But what game?....

[indie license]

One things that has been said about NeoAxis engine is that its licence is too expensive- that's clearly not true. If you read up about available licenses it says that an indie license is only 95 bucks, and it applies if a game's income is lower then $100 K- which is most likely going to be the case with most games that aren't about shooting people in the face.... So I'm thinking, that maybe developing a game in the free version of this engine, then if it shapes up well and is nearly ready for release, paying for that cheaper license is not a massive expense, really.

  Then, of course, it has been said also that this engine sucks, so.....

  If only AGS could have more power when it comes to processing sprites in higher resolutions...... then most of us wouldn't have to look elsewhere.

BTW, really interesting thread. 8)

It works!

And thank you for taking your time explaining.  Much appreciated:)

[how do you make these objects move in the opposite direction(to the right)?]

Sorry for getting back to this thread... but I have a question related directly to it. It's very silly but... how do you make these objects move in the opposite direction(to the right)?

   - The only reason I'm asking this is that I really can't understand this piece of code. I'd actually really appreciate if someone could break it down for me and explain *WHY*?.... There are things in it I can't wrap my head around.... and yet it's so gloriously simple!

At least your goal isn't to have sex with more children than your pedophile pals.

You've just given me a fantastic idea for a spiritual sequel!

In the meantime I'll just have to satisfy myself with beating and raping children for getting questions wrong in that gaming masterpiece I Have Candy Get in the Van.

Or you could actually call it "I have Gandhi, Get in the car" and make it a sequel to the "Warm look at the life of Gandhi" at the same time- two for the price of one. That, of course, assuming the rumours about Ghandi mentioned in the other thread are true;)

  As for this game, I'll sure give it a go. But even though I like this sort of over the top provocative stuff I worry it might be too much for me... Need to see it first to judge:)