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Hey all,

Thanks for the nice supportive messages in this thread! After two weeks of careful thought I've decided to continue work on Buccaneer 2. I'm not going to give ANY estimate on when it will be done, because my Winter 2005 estimate was, well... very lofty.

m0ds, I'm hoping Jan is indeed still interested in working on Buc2. I'd better try and contact him to see if he's still interested.

My cutscene artist however, has left without any notice. So I'm once again without someone to draw the introduction sequence. I've sketched most of it on paper so if anyone's willing to help out there?

Rui, thanks for your offer to help with the coding! So far, I am able to code most of it myself. I have DAY 1 roughly completed (out of the 5 days in total) and am somewhat confused already by all the GlobalInts I keep calling for events, but hey, I've got 'em documented... the dialogue writing however, that would be nice. I'll get back to you on that!

To prove that I've resumed work, today I drew a nice screen to be used in the short prologue... this prologue can be likened to Fate of Atlantis' quest to search the statuette at the beginning.

Hey all,

I've thought about posting about this in my Buc2 thread in the "Games in Production" area of the forum but instead posted it here...

After a long time of not doing anything I've decided to cancel Bucaneer 2. It's been on hold for a very, very long time now, and I really can't see myself working on it anymore. Real life commitment and a general shift in interests have lead to this.

I'm willing to offer ALL the files I have of Bucanneer 2. So if anyone is interested in developing a sequel, a spin-off, or something like that, please make it known in this thread... I'll get back to you then.

- Jaap

Thanks for the feedback guys.

About his mouth, true. When I first sketched it, I didn't pick up on it for some reason. Later, when I was well into the painting-process, I noticed it wasn't right... unfortunately, there was little I could do about it then.

Next time I'll be more critical of the sketch!

This painting isn't game-related at all. This weekend I went out and got myself a very, very basic starter kit in acrylic painting. At a loss at what to draw, I picked a random Calvin & Hobbes book from the bookcase and sketched Calvin on the canvas.

It's a pretty basic painting, but I wondered what you think of it.

Holland and Germany both sound like good options to me.

But seeing as I live in Holland, that's a bit biased...

I've been toying with the new digital camera! (and with my fresh haircut... )

Wow, this looks wonderful! The GUI is stylish and easy to understand, which is absolutely perfect!

And you've very script-wise sorted the dialog... looks very neat and goes with the theme of the game very well.

Keep up the great work!

As much as I love the comics, I agree with what others said. Don't do it. There are several interviews floating about on the internet (google for them) where Watterson makes it very clear he doesn't want his art to diminish in such a way. He takes Garfield as a prime example of what he doesn't want. That cat has been merchandised for every ounce of body fat it possesses.

Whilst the Luther & Descartes idea might work, both were very religious men, so it'd diminish somewhat. *grin* (only kidding here, but I don't really think it'd be fun.)

Also, there have been numerous C&H websites (www.reemst.com most notably) that have been shut down. They were nothing but fan pages, but still the publisher of the strip shut them down because they weren't official.

So a game would suffer a lot more, I'd say.

Isn't each game/story a work of fiction? As such, writers and designers alike take a liberties in writing their stories. They fictionalize areas of the world to make them work. Stephen King writes about New York and a certain Tower being constructed there. It is, in the real world, not there.

Jane Jensen has completely messed up the French Quarter for Gabriel Knight 1. Reality and fantasy mix in these settings, as is the case in Zak McKracken. Guy Gavriel Kay thought up a fictional Toronto for the Fionavar Tapestry, even though he lived there. This is the case in almost all stories/games. Except when they're a "Real Life" kinda thing.

Does it bug me that lots of movies etc talk about Holland being a drug-paradise? Not really, no. Does it bother me that there are a lot of coffee shops everywhere doing this? Yes. But I don't take it out on Quentin Tarantino for using a reference to Amsterdam in Pulp Fiction.

Does it bug me that often gay characters are stupid stereotyped Will & Grace characters? No. I don't see the humour in such depiction, but then again, I don't watch it. Or, if it's a part of something I do like, I ignore it.

Dutch historians might take offense at how I depict Amsterdam in the mid 17th century, to make it fit Buccaneer 2. But hey, as long as the story works and it's not an attack on a certain group of people, it's fine by me!

Just don't go making a game about the entire Islamic world being into global bombing and making a Klu-Klux-Klan member a valuable player character who saves the world by insuring White Superiority becomes a global law. Such racism and hurt should be directed elsewhere, e.g. prison.

And now I'm off to be politically correct elsewhere...

Well, I watched "Watched" last night. Enjoyable movie, excellent pyrotechniks. Lots of camera-cutting which works very well again here. Same as with Falling Tree 2.

I'm somewhat curious on what happens to the two guys in the car now... I can guess, though. (I can understand not wanting to lose the car to a 8-minute feature ).

Have yet to watch the featurette...

I'm interested to hear what you think of Nouveau Morte 2! (Or, anyone else out there willing to download a 35 WMV file...)

If your movie is shot in traditional 4:3 aspect ratio, Pinnacle Studio offers very little.

You can, in the menu bars above, set the ratio to 16:9 but this will give you a very squashed display.

A workaround is to add a permanent Title-track to the movie. This title track has to be as long as the movie and consist of two black boxes hand-drawn to the top- and bottomside of the movie.

This is, as far as I'm aware, the only Pinnacle-solution. And being an Avid Pinnacle user (pardon the pun), I'm also quite sure it's the only Pinnacle-solution.

Hope this helps!

Woohoo! I found a free place that hosts my horror movie "Nouveau Morte II"...

Get it at:

http://www.romskye1.co.uk/download.php?file=NM2.wmv

And please, I'd love some feedback!


And if that link didn't work for you:

http://www.romskye1.co.uk/index.php?file=NM2.wmv

(Copy and paste the link to a new window to make it work...)

And if they still give you a hard time, just surf to http://www.romskye.co.uk/ and head over to entry # 118.

I read several, then gave up, sorry to say...

The jokes didn't work for me, plus the graphics of the comic are... well, simply ripped from the X-Com game (the first one, I believe). They are hardly suitable for a comic and fit in very poorly with the hand-drawn stuff.

The X-Com universe is a very dark one and I'd love the idea of a comic based in that universe... but for it to be fitting, dark and brooding.

Off-Topic: Some X-Com fan-made material out there that does get me hyped is the Xenocide project at http://www.projectxenocide.com/.

I really like that OTT trailer! Lots of rapid movement. Horrible, horrible voice-over though, hahaha. I tried something similar once with a similar result... Ah, how I wish I started smoking when I was three, then I'd be able to produce the ideal trailer-voice quite naturally.

I'm currently working on getting Nouveau Morte II online... I've made a WMV version and it has english subtitles! (woohoo). It's about 35 megabytes big and will most likely be available sometime this week... I'll update accordingly.

My "features" (if you can call it that) are mostly around 10 minutes long. I've tried expanding the length, but this has only resulted in a very, very boring movie. That was the first cut of Nouveau Morte 2. It's still quite evident from the movie that it's rather not-fleshed-out, but at least it's watchable now.

The wording worked, because the movie Movement is indeed about a jealous ex-boyfriend over lesbians... so he uses his current girlfriend to murder them. Don't ask where that plot came from...

And yes, the killer is indeed fucking freaky.... I look at him every day in the mirror. Mwuhahaha

I'm now off to watch Falling Tree II.

Since lgm and mods have been showcasing some of their film stuff here, I figure: why not me?

So far I only have three trailers online instead of full movies, but that might change in the future.

For now, I'd love to hear some feedback on what kind of emotions these trailers instilled in you. I am, of course, looking for deep, deep fear.

But I'll settle for a good laugh.

http://www.sweetnessfollows.net/films.php

Oh, the pages are in Dutch, but the trailers are not.

Darth, my apologies for not only double-posting... but triple-posting. I know it's not allowed, but felt compelled to do so, to announce the following.

The rolling demo for Buccaneer 2 has been released! Two years after announcing the game, I've finally reached such a state that I'm willing to show some in-game material in the AGS engine to you all. It's approx 1m30s long. It showcases several locations, characters as well as a beautiful screen from the game's intro.

I hope you all enjoy this very sneak preview at what's to come before the year is out.

Click here to get it!

Or... alternatively, visit the first message in this thread.

Also, don't forget the man is responsible for the coding on "Knights of the Old Republic 2".

No, really.

How does this Discworld Noir idea work exactly?

When the places become available, they're highlighted permanently?

Hey all,

I didn't know exactly where to put this, since it's adventure talk and also related to my own game, but I figured it fitted here the most.

I'm currently busy getting my map screen into the final format and there's still some stuff that's bothering me. The map shows an overhead portion of Amsterdam, and as such, it's quite cluttered. I'm not an avid fan of pixel hunting, so I'm thinking how best to approach this problem.

For reference:

Gabriel Knight 1 had a simple map. Just a vague blue/green background and icons on which you could click. These icons represented various locations you could visit. This made the map very easy, very quick and the need to pixel-hunt was very efficiently terminated. The game was divided into several days, so it was a big surprise which of these locations you had to visit in order to complete a day.

Gabriel Knight 2 solved this problem. Locations you had to visit could blink if you pressed the HINT button. Apart from the Neuschwanstein bug (it never stopped blinking) this worked very well too.

Monkey Island 1 had this large overhead view of the first island. If you moved your cursor over a location you could visit, its name would come up. This worked very well, since there weren't many locations you could visit.

The Fate of Atlantis used a similar method as well, e.g. when you traversed the outer ring of Atlantis. This maze-like structure had rooms you could visit, by simply clicking on them. The purpose of the room remained a mystery until you arrived.

Now... onto Buccaneer 2.



Below is the area map of Buccaneer 2. It uses a system very similar to FoA and MI. This is because I'm using Proskrito's fabulous GUI, so the MapRoom function came along with it.

However, on this map screen we're looking at about 12 locations you can visit. Not instantly, but near the end of the game, there will be 12 visitable locations. Now, some of these can be eliminated (e.g. on a certain day, not all 12 locations are neccessary, so they aren't there).

My main problem with this map is the pixelhunting that will be required to visit these locations. The labels appear only when you move your mouse over them. I don't think it's adventure-fun to try and find a carpenter's workshop by moving across the entire map one inch at a time.

I've been thinking about doing "a GK2" where you could press the HINT-button and have all the visible locations be highlighted. This would, IMHO, decrease the immersive factor somewhat... so I'm somewhat stumped.

And now, after several paragraphs, finally, my question. What system do you prefer? Or, do you perhaps have any suggestions for me?

Another random portrait... ArtPad is fun!

http://artpad.art.com/gallery/?igw03vvabj4