Messages

Granted: But now no one can ever finish The Curse of Monkey Island, because the pirates won't stop singing. You've ruined one of the best adventure games ever made

I wish I could do kung fu fighting.

Your sprite  designs are gorgeous! I seen you been at this for a while. Very inspirational.

Thanks, MufasaRKG. I've spent a fair amount of time on polishing and redesigning them, but I think I've finally reached the point where I'm mostly satisfied with the results. Animating them feels still pretty difficult though.

[imgzoom]http://tulevik.eu/ags/KOE/DemonAnimated.gif[/imgzoom]

[1. magnified thoughts by Mandle]

1. magnified  thoughts by Mandle - this sounds like some actual useful advice and that's a very unique and clever way of filling the shape.

2. a melting heart by AnasAbdin  - yup, love for games and especially for making games is definitely necessary, usually nothing good comes out of hate and apathy. So, melt it up and shape it into games.

3. an elseif  by jwalt - I was a bit torn between Blint and elseif, but I think jwalt's use of shape is slightly better, so I decided to go with it. And I certainly have a fair amount of ifs and elseifs in my games.

a Blint by Cassiebsg - various monsters and villains can be very important ingredients in certain games and I've already put your advice into good use. Behold, a new version of Kingdom of Ehcilc:

Spoiler

[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/BvVzjEl.png[/imgzoom]

[close]

coffee by cat - nice coloring, but sadly I don't drink coffee , haven't even had a single cup in the past 5-6 years, so I find it completely irrelevant when developing games (or maybe that's the reason I havent made any great games yet ).

[Update 12 (11.04.2015) â€" More pixels! All new and shiny!]

Update 12 (11.04.2015) â€" More pixels! All new and shiny!

Sometimes you've been on the road for so long that it becomes all you know and sometimes you even lose sight of your original goals and destination. I've been talking a lot about reaching the mountain, but in fact that's only half of the journey, we also have to climb it.

On the other hand, this midway point is not that far away anymore and if we maintain the current good pace, we could reach it in a month. According to my maps, there's a small settlement somewhere at the bottom of valley between the steep flanks of the mountain range. I don't think anyone actually lives there, but I've heard that it serves as a meeting and resting place for adventurers and travellers from all over the kingdom. I suppose we can afford to make a longer stop there and maybe replenish our supplies and... but let's not get ahead of ourselves, we have to make it there first and then we'll see what fate has in store for us.



It's been about a year since the development of the game started. I made the AGS Games in Production announcement on April 19th and had been working on the graphics and making initial plans with Atavismus a few weeks before that.

A year might seem like a long time for a medium length low-res adventure game and it probably is, but I haven't really been doing it full-time. I don't work on it every day, sometimes I don't touch it for weeks and on couple occasions (during MAGS for example) the development was on hold for over a month. It's possible that I'll do another MAGS or just a random short game before finishing Ehcilc and I'm fine with it. To be honest, I'm not in that much of a hurry. It's still mainly a learning experience for me, an entertaining hobby that I enjoy when I have the time and will for it.

Since it's been a year, I've also gotten a bit better at pixelling and lately I've been experimenting with a somewhat new and more polished style (the image above). And before anyone asks, then no, I'm not reimagining or redrawing everything. I have actually deliberately left most of the backgrounds in a semi-finished state, because I knew that this whole thing was going to be a long process and I'll be more experienced and skilled in the later stages of the development.

[imgzoom]http://tulevik.eu/ags/KOE/update12.1.png[/imgzoom]

To better suit the new style, I also added extra shading and antialiasing to the characters. In an earlier update I mentioned that the color count for characters was between 10-20. My new approach adds about 5-10 colors, so the change isn't actually that significant. In overall, I feel that all this is a step in the right direction and I hope that potential players will enjoy it too.

Thank you for reading and please don't be shy to post comments, argue or ask questions.

Congrats on the release, this looks fantastic. I really enjoyed the first game in the series, but sadly haven't had the time to play the second one yet. They're both on top of my playing list now and I'll report back as soon as I finish them.

A good community that offers help, feedback, support and inspiration is often a key component, especially for hobbyists and small indie devs. I'm sure that a bunch of great games would have never seen the light of day if there weren't places like the AGS forum.
[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/uCwEqE2.png[/imgzoom]

Those pixels look great! It's a really atmospheric and effective style and I love that despite the low color count everything is still very recognisable. Good luck with the development and I hope to see more content soon!

So we can note down that your most urgent ingredient is named "copy and paste" 

  Yes, pile up those flappy bird clones and you'll be scroogemcducking in money and admiration in no time.

* Professional advice from a two-time MAGS winner and AGS awards nominee

Easiest color ball ever:

[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/p88vpjZ.png[/imgzoom]


* Not an actual entry, since it's copy/pasted from AGS website and not drawn by me.

Thanks guys, for bothering to read and comment.

I love Ehcilcian Medusa a lot! Good luck animating her hair

There are occasional "bad hair" days, but animating small details like this is probably my favorite part in making this game.

Spoiler

[close]

Will his dialogue refer to this in some sly way?

Haven't written much dialogue for him yet, but that sounds like a really neat thing to slide in there somewhere

Congrats to trophy winners! And the competition was as entertaining as always, thanks for hosting it, Mandle.

[Update 11 (24.03.2015) â€" Quite a character]

Update 11 (24.03.2015) â€" Quite a character

While travelling through Ehcilc, I've noticed something strange â€" there is no evil in this world. There are no good or bad races or burning hatred between different ethnic groups, everyone are considered equal. Of course there's plenty of noble heroes and notorious criminals, but they're all evenly spread out among an incredibly diverse population and even the worst of the villains aren't really that bad, they're not truly malicious.

I grew up in predominantly human community far from the plains and mountains of Ehcilc and bedtime stories of vicious monsters and dark creatures was a pretty common thing. I haven't seen any of that in here. It seems that most Ehcilcians don't even grasp the concept of it, the concept of true evil and overwhelming fear.

Yeah, they fight and picker and get on each others nerves and there's lot's of cultural differences between the races that don't always translate well to others, but it's nothing too serious. Battles are fought in a civilized manner and many of the problems are actually solved with diplomacy and well-argumented discussions. Sometimes it feels like it's a bit too good to be true, though. Like there's something lurking beneath the surface and just waiting to burst out…

[imgzoom]http://tulevik.eu/ags/KOE/update11.1.png[/imgzoom]

There will be a few other human characters in the game besides the heroes, but most of the world is inhabited by weird fantasy creatures, whose appearance is usually thematically stereotypical. Still, despite the looks, many of them have odd Ehcilcian quirks attached to them, which might make them feel a bit off or even backwards.

One of the most popular and well-known mythical beasts is probably the dragon and I've been thinking whether I should add one in the Ehcilc universe. There's actually a spot in the game where it would make sense and where it would fit, but that's not really the problem. While classic dragons can definitely be considered a cliché or a trope, they have also been averted a lot, even in adventure games. For example, there have been tiny dragons, fire fearing dragons, cowardly dragons etc. So, it's been hard to come up with good spin that would make a dragon unique and interesting enough to justify its inclusion in the game. But I have to admit that not all characters are so carefully planned out, some of them just happen randomly.

To save time and make drawing easier, I sometimes copy/paste together various pieces of similar backgrounds (like the cave sections) and then modify them to suit my needs and every now and then the results are unexpected.

 

The first image is a cutout from one of the backgrounds. On the second one you can see it duplicated, mirrored and put together. And with couple of little modifications we have a face of a stone guardian. I didn't originally plan to have a character like this in the game, but since it just kind of happened, then why not?

As mentioned in the previous update, some characters are vital to the story, while others offer optional lore and alternative solutions to puzzles. I'm currently trying to figure out the right balance for it and somehow make it obvious that there are certain characters that you don't have to talk to. This would probably be helpful for those players who don't enjoy long conversations or my style of writing and would rather skip all that.

Among other news, the production of the game was on pause for a while, since I was busy working on a MAGS game in February, but I'm now back at it and it's progressing steadily.

Thank you for reading and please don't be shy to post comments, argue or ask questions.

All the graphics have been done. Programming begins !

That's great news! I'm very impressed with the art style and would really like to see it all come to life.
Good luck with the programming and if you don't mind me asking, then how big/long of a game are you planning?

Congratulations to all the winners and also nominees!

I quickly browsed through the IRC log and the video and looks like it was a real fun event. I'll try to be part of it next year.

Does anyone here have the Chzo Mythos special editions(5 Days a Stranger, 7 Days a Skeptic, Trilby's Notes and 6 Days a Sacrifice)?

You mean these? I didn't even know there were special editions, thanks for the info, I'll check them out at some point.

[available in Italian]

Thanks for playing selmiak and ThreeOhFour!

even if you ran out of space to utilize its full potential.

Yeah, it was supposed to be a bit longer and I had a whole another room planned out, so that you would lose your senses more gradually and actually use that concept in solving puzzles. An earlier version also had the sense of touch in the GUI and a puzzle relating to not feeling temperature and pain.


Also, the game is now available in Italian. It was translated by Stefano Siclari and implemented by Cino. I didn't take part of the translation process myself, but both Stefano and Cino are nice and professional people, so I'm sure it's of excellent quality.

This was a bit of a surprise and I kind of have mixed feelings about this. Of course I'm glad that I won, but the game I voted for didn't

Thanks a lot to all who played and took part in the voting!
And thank you xil and springthoughts for making good games that I enjoyed playing.

[1. WRK2. Tabata3. selmiak]

1. WRK
2. Tabata
3. selmiak

As someone, who has never seen a single full episode of the show, I found it utterly confusing and scored a whopping -130 points
I think I got like 2 things right by just randomly doing stuff.

Great and original idea though, I'm sure that fans of Dexter will really enjoy this little treat.

This just keeps getting better and better with each update and the pace of your development process is astounding. This is definitely in my must play list of 2015.