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Played it a couple of weeks ago and I'd say it's an impressive game (or demo) considering the time restraints. The graphics and the atmosphere of the game are really top-notch, some additional animation would probably add more life to it. Hope to play the extended version soon and congratulations on the 4th overall place in the LD jam.

Good work, this is a great MAGS release. The graphics and music are lovely and the car controls and feels just like in an old dos game (in a good way). Reminds me a bit of Lamborghini American Challenge. Also, I would have gotten a totally awesome high score, if there weren't for those meddling roadcows and pesky snowmen.

Sometimes they play groovy music together.

[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/3IBcyPC.png[/imgzoom]

Those new backgrounds and characters look good indeed, although some of them feel a bit artificial and plastic, but I guess it's still a bit too early to judge. Would really like to see it in action with full character animations and stuffs.

Also, I'm not completely sure that the game needs a remake. The original pixel art looks still pretty good to my eyes and thanks to ScummVm there's support for modern computers and across different platforms. I'd actually rather see them using all this talent and energy to create new original adventure games.

[Update 7 (19.09.2014) â€" My conversations with dialogues]

Update 7 (19.09.2014) â€" My conversations with dialogues

We've been traveling through the forest of Taeper these past weeks and I must say that this has been one of the weirdest experiences of our journey so far. There nothing odd about the forest itself, it's actually quite peaceful and beautiful, but its inhabitants, the people and creatures who live here, are of the most peculiar kind.

For example, just the other day I saw an old man standing under a twisted chestnut tree, fiddling with his staff and stroking his long gray beard. The expression on his face was as blank as a side of sole leather and every time I approached to talk to him, he said: “Welcome to Taeper! I like swords!” It did not matter what I said or asked, the answer was always the same. We actually set up camp not far from the place and when we left in the morning, the man was still there, stroking his beard and muttering about Taeper and swords.

It just seems so odd and unreal. What's wrong with these people? It's almost as if they're stuck in a loop. Most of them are completely unresponsive and some seem to react to only certain questions and very specific trigger words. Is this whole forest enchanted and they're all controlled by some powerful dark magic? Are they mindless golems or conjured up illusions, put on this path to either aid or confuse people?

Well, luckily we'll be out of these accursed woods pretty soon and hopefully there will be sentient beings waiting us on the other side.



Since Kingdom of Ehcilc is only my second game, I'm using it to test out certain gameplay features, puzzle types and story elements. And just as I'm exploring the possibilities of the 4-verb gui, I'm also going to try something a bit different with the dialogue system. What I'd like to do is to give the player almost full control over the conversation and most of the time an option to stay silent or simply leave.

In many dialogue-heavy games, the player usually chooses a line or a topic and then there will be a conversation carried out between the characters. Sometimes you get a short answer and are then allowed to choose again, but often it triggers a rather lengthy conversation without the player having any chance to contribute. This means that you're not actually talking, but only influencing the conversation or slightly changing its direction. Such dialogues can sometimes look very static, especially without fancy animations or voice acting, and require very little interaction.

My plan is to let the player choose almost every line the character says in a conversation, which means huge branching dialogue trees with different options, including the choice to stay silent or rudely leave. Additionally, I would like to make the dialogues in the game feel as natural as possible and more similar to an actual realistic conversation, so that the NPCs wouldn't just stand around and wait for you to ask them the same old questions over and over again, but get bored/angry with the player and even initiate conversations themselves. All this will hopefully lead to more engaging and less repetitive conversations and make the characters feel more alive and meaningful.

I don't really know how clearly I managed to explain it all and how many people would actually enjoy this kind of system or if I'm able to implement it at all, but at least I'd like to give it a try.

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

   

Honest, Officer, it'a a Kazoo.

That's no kazoo! That's a blue tentacle!

[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/qn9lvtL.png[/imgzoom]

Congratulations, Tabata! And thanks for the fun competition, AprilSkies.

Also, thank you all for the votes that got me this fancy silvery digging equipment. I can now go and build some more pixely sand castles with those thingies.

There's an interview with Grundislav in indiegames.com.

And the game looks really promising, good luck with the release!

1. Tabata
2. Cassiebsg
3. Siliconangel

Made a quick edit to give you some ideas to try out:

[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/F6iXsMB.png[/imgzoom]
Rounded up the head, brought hands closer to the body and injected some steroids into the legs (although skinny legs are fine too and much easier to animate).
And maybe the shadow should be behind him? At least the shading of legs and neck leaves an impression that the light is coming from the left.

Regarding animation: when working in low resolution, even one pixel can create an illusion of strong movement. With his current animation, the guy seems to be a bit out of breath and gasping for air. Maybe you could use something else for idle animation, like looking around or scratching himself etc.

Also, don't take my edit too seriously, since I've been actively pixelling/drawing only about a year.

Hobo that's amazing! You should animate it!

Thanks. A stunning 2-frame animation added to the post!

I'm not much of a beach person, but I do like sand castles:

[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/dqT8S1Z.png[/imgzoom]

And here's an animated version:

[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/G4sq63m.gif[/imgzoom]

Congrats Tabata! And thanks for hosting such a great competition AprilSkies.

[Update 6 (27.07.2014) - Colors... those wonderful, beautiful colors]

Update 6 (27.07.2014) - Colors... those wonderful, beautiful colors

The daily routine of travelling and these long hot summer days have been quite exhausting and because of that I have neglected my diary for more than a month by now. We've actually covered a lot of ground and I finally feel that both my mind and body are starting to get accustomed to the strain of the road and I've begun to write down my thoughts once again.

I stayed up pretty late last night. Well, to be honest, I have stayed up late almost every night. Maybe it's the heat or the anxiety of the road, but I often find it hard to fall asleep. I don't really mind though, since it allows me to mull over important matters and plan ahead for the coming days. But as I said, I stayed up late last night and was awestruck by the spectacular ehcilcian sunset.

There's something truly magical about the way how the setting sun unceasingly invades the lush green with faint shades and soft hues as the flames of the campfire make the shadows dance on the tree trunks and wild eyes glow in the nearing darkness of the forest. I wish I could share this bewitching sight, but I'm afraid that plain words and rough sketches can't even deliver the half of it.

This calm and soothing dusk has become one of my favorite parts of the day. It's a time when I can just relax alone in the midst of my own thoughts and absorb in everything around me -  all the shapes and sounds and colors of Ehcilc.



For some reason, I'm usually not really bothered by many common drawing “mistakes” like weird anatomy or slightly off perspectives, but when things on my screen start to look eye-hurtingly saturated and bright, I get a little worried.

In order to maintain a consistent look and make things easier to manage, I decided to keep the colors scheme of the game relatively clean and simple. This means that there's no massive anti-aliasing or dithering, complex shading or shadows. Most backgrounds use around 50-100 colors and characters usually require 10-20. Even with (or maybe because of) such a low color count, finding the right colors can be rather troublesome, but after a lot of mixing and matching and testing, I usually get the stuff on my screen looking the way I want it to look. Sadly, this does not mean that it's done, on the contrary, this is where things get frustrating, because the colors look right only on MY laptop screen.

The dusty small screen of my trusty old Lenovo isn't really meant for any serious artistic endeavours and that's why I wanted to see how the screenshots look on a bigger screen before I posted the announcement topic in the AGS forums. And while everything looked neat and pleasant on my side, it was far from intended on a real monitor. Some of the colors looked way too bright and almost none were what they were supposed to be.

Comparison of colors:

[imgzoom]http://tulevik.eu/ags/KOE/update6.png[/imgzoom]

So far, I've had a chance to look at Ehcilc from four different laptop and two different desktop computers. It's not really enough to make any substantial conclusions, but there seems to be a pattern emerging. My original color scheme looks fine on all laptop screens, but a bit too saturated and vivid on bigger LCD monitors, at least for my eyes. I solved the issue by decreasing saturation and brightness until everything looked more or less acceptable on all screens, but I'm probably going to have to tweak it some more before the final release.

All this led to adding a brightness/gamma slider to the game and I'm thinking of including other options that would allow the players to adjust the look of the game to a certain degree. Also, I'm guessing that I should find some time to create a proper color palette that I could use across all backgrounds and perhaps even invest in a quality monitor some time in the future.

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

1. Arj0n
2. Tabata
3. selmiak

"Mona and the Fire Serpent"

[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/37AkE27.png[/imgzoom]

Neat tune indeed, really sets the mood.

This "mystical Pam Daor" could be a great trophy, don't you think Hobo?!

There's still plenty of room in the treasury, so it might happen

Thank you for your kind words and useful suggestions, Mandle.

[Update 5 (19.06.2014) â€" Captain's Log, Stardate 5839.12.3]

Update 5 (19.06.2014) â€" Captain's Log, Stardate 5839.12.3

We're finally on the road and things are looking good! The weather has been near perfect, the path is clear and progress steady.

Our departure did not give cause to any fancy farewell parties or big celebrations. Few villagers wished us safe passage and swift legs and some kids tagged along with us until we reached the edge of the forest, but in overall, our prolonged stay in Ystnaf went relatively unnoticed. Well, to be honest, there's wasn't really any reason for them to celebrate, but I'm certainly hoping to give them one when we come back.

I'm still not completely sure when we will reach the mountain, but I know that the closer we get, the more motivated and committed we are.

Also, I think I should have taken more scrolls with me, because during the first few days I've already been drawing and writing so much that most of them are starting to get full:

[imgzoom]http://tulevik.eu/ags/KOE/update5.png[/imgzoom]
As some of you might have noticed (you probably have, if you're reading this), I've been writing a somewhat regular devlog/blog about Kingdom of Ehcilc. I'm mainly doing it because I enjoy reading such things myself. Unraveling the whys and hows behind someone's development process can often even be more interesting for me than playing the game itself.

It usually takes me about 15-20 minutes to write the text, plus some additional time for formatting the forum post, editing images etc. So far, the word count has been around 300-500 words per update and will probably stay in that range in the future. The first part of the update is written as an adventurer's diary and the second part tries to concentrate on a specific aspect of the game.

Besides revealing hints about the current progress, the diary segment also gives me an opportunity to share the quirky lore of Ehcilc, which means that those who are interested in the game have a chance to get familiarized with different locations and characters and know at least some of the backstory before jumping in.

I must admit that the second half of the updates has been rather vague about some things, but trust me (or ask Atavismus), I can't really reveal much about the plot or release a bunch of backgrounds and characters without spoiling the whole game. So, I hope you bear with me, because there's still a lot I want to write about and if anyone is intrested in something particular, let me know, I'll try to squeeze it in somewhere.

A pdf version of all the posts will be included with the final version of the game and a small preview example of that can be found here.

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

"Zounds!" yelled Xavier. "Who violently up-ended the sideboard?!"

"Rogue, quickly! Postpone operation, no mutant leaves!"