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Bleh...had what seemed like a good idea, then tapped myself out really quickly.  But I did develop the little guy below, Morp.  He's a blob that can shapeshift into anything small enough for him to absorb.

Mainly wanted to make a game with zero text or dialogue, focus on art and animation, play with Photoshop and After Effects.  His swim cycle animation is adorable.

But 99% of the puzzles I was coming up with were a variant on "what kind of food will lure this undersea creature over", lol.

Anyways, I'm out.  Good luck everybody!

Creamy: Oh shoot, thanks!

Heh, this gave me a funny idea to explore. I'll see if I can come up with something good.

Update: Four more positive cases today in the department near mine.  It turns out they've been lying about the numbers to avoid paying $1500 per cleaning, because the cleaner is a lazy idiot who just walks through lightly spraying each office once and doesn't do any real cleaning.  Fortunately my boss put the pieces together and we're trying to get the upper management on board to put a stop to this nonsense.  And I finally got vocal to the people walking by maskless to chat with my boss.

cat: I'm just advocating dealing with the reality of the virus.  I'm not sure where you live, maybe it hasn't been as bad there.  Around here it's horrifying.

Anyone, of any age or health condition, can get it.  And it's not the flu - if you survive, you can still suffer for months, or be permanently damaged.  Lose teeth, lose hair, brain damage, vascular damage, breathe at 80% lung capacity for the rest of your life, etc.  You can have it, think you've recovered, then drop dead weeks or months later.  It's a crazy lottery of terrifying stuff.

The U.S. has a 3% death rate, which is a nice way of saying over 300,000 have died since March, 3-4K new deaths per day right now, 250K new infections per day.  Some countries are at 9-10% death rates.  And our 3% depends on our hospital infrastructure not getting overwhelmed - which it's currently heading for.

And masks are good and should always be used, but they're not magical shields.  They're a last defense.

The U.S. sooort of tried inconsistent lockdowns - which is why we're drowning in COVID now.  We should have locked down hard for a month or two and killed it, like other countries did.  But idiots in power politicized it, got the lazy, selfish and childish citizens on board, and here we are.

I always want to be understanding to people, but ugh.  My job basically involves telling grown adults not to do stupid things that can hurt people - and it's killing me that I'm locked in a situation where I don't have the authority to officially tell these coworkers to stop being dangerous, it just devolves into childish reasoning and bullshit fake-science arguments.  And the people who do have that authority to control them are part of the problem.

Update - the parole officer who kept coming over to tell us about all the infections - bedridden for three days, has now tested positive.

Other update - my brother is now forced to isolate because his nearby officemate has tested positive - officemate only masks up half the time - was leaning over my brother's shoulder to read stuff all yesterday - and, surprising no one, voted for the Tyrant.

Oop, good point, I missed that!  Thanks!

Thanks!  It'll definitely be consistent across characters - I'm tracing shapes from Shag's work, then modifying to suit the character in a way that'll let me do easy rigs in After Effects. The main reason I thought of him was his non-existent knees, so I wouldn't have to match colors and shading on a separate calf part below the thigh part, for instance.

I do get a little weirded out at how tall he makes shoulders and upper chests above necklines.

Hi all!  I'm trying a new art style for a new game in planning, Not My First Apocalypse: Superspreader.

I've never tried shading my flat cartoon work before, so I welcome advice on shading and balancing the colors, etc.  Background is just a test shot to see if she works in a dark room with a pool.  General character style is an imitation of Shag, and the whole game will have a similar retro/lineless art style.

The lifeguard is green and spotted because a disease called "the Spread" is sweeping New Atrocity - victims turn into green, super-sexy versions of themselves, mate with the nearest available partner to infect them, then disappear.

Thanks for your help!

Thanks Cassie.

Cases are rising (well, everywhere, but) in NY again, and it's finally blowing up in the government building where I work.

There's a parole office fifty feet from my desk, and it's the main source of cases.  Half the officers in there are mask deniers, virus hoaxers, etc., so not surprising.  Even after 8 cases in the past few weeks, some of them still walk around without masks on, going back and forth by my desk.  One of the officers kept coming to my desk last Friday to tell my boss how much infection they have.  Then sounded angry and panicky yesterday about it - and then IMMEDIATELY launches into how skeptical he still is that it exists or it's dangerous, because "our Governor is probably just trying to cause riots so he can play hero and be a king and sell another book".

A few other cases have hit on higher floors, and the housekeepers sanitizing those floors tend to go clean, then come downstairs, take off their mask and walk around chatting.

Yesterday, several unmasked people stopped to chat from three feet away with my unmasked supervisor, one of them from Parole.  A few days ago I had to stop an unmasked coworker from walking one foot away from me to show me something on his phone that I didn't even want or need to see.  He got all pissed and huffy and yanked his mask up but didn't back away until I told him to again.

Fortunately, the masks-make-you-sick building manager is retiring in a couple weeks, fingers crossed his replacement actually believes in virus safety.  I think it's time to report the whole building to our Mayor and Governor and see if they can do anything.

In this same week, I've also had blow-up arguments with my mom and brother, who are both using the "I'm smart and careful, so it's okay for *me* to"...go out to lunch at a restaurant, find out they got exposed but not isolate from their wife and baby because "ahhh, no point, if I have it they have it by now anyways, probably".

I hate, HATE that I might get sick and die, or kill my wife, because of all these fucking idiots.  The sheer amount of people whose last words must be, "But I didn't!" know, believe, think, etc., as the virus eats them alive.  The thought that I might die and some asshole will go, "But - but - I didn't MEAN to -"  It's worse, somehow, than getting intentionally murdered.  Death by "oops, oh well".

Congrats TheBitPriest!  A well-deserved victory!

Looking for voice actors for NMFA: Stormpuncher, to release a voice pack within a couple months. Details at link, thanks for looking!

https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=58655.0

All parts have been cast, thanks everyone!

I mean, I don't mind larger file sizes...these days, 345 MB is just a few minutes of downloading on a good connection.

If it's a real concern, you can use a site like https://www.freeconvert.com/wav-to-ogg to batch convert all wav files at once to ogg, a smaller file size format.  Just upload, convert, click Download All, unzip, and swap into your game.  It keeps the names for all converted files, so you don't have to rename EGO1, EGO2, etc.

This game was gorgeous and so much fun, do yourself a favor and play it!

Wow, *fantastic* entries by everyone this month.  Huge applause to everyone for your hard work!

Reviews!

Ice Station Zero:

Spoiler

Very nice atmospheric piece.  You can really feel the cold and isolation in this one.  Puzzles aren't difficult, and really enjoyed the effective use of simple animations to bring the game to life.  The two-frame jumping animation of the generator running made me giggle, reminded me of early LucasArts.

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Rain and Snow: The Bouncer:

Spoiler

Fun game, fast-paced focus and skill test.  Like Papers, Please for the Friday night drinking crowd.

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The Cabin:

Spoiler

WOW.  Just wow.  Incredibly well done.  Impressed from the moment the intro started.  Loved the navigation system, reminded me of Myst.  I saw your comment about finding the inventory, and I agree, that was a unique and interesting dynamic for an adventure game.

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The Cradle:

Spoiler

Another visually stunning entry.  Background, weather effects, character animations were gorgeous.  I'll admit I got lost on the puzzles and had to ask for hints - I guessed what I was supposed to do, fire, shelter, etc., but couldn't find the right combos of objects in the combination areas by random experimenting.  If the creative team had more time to enter guidance for the player, this game would be perfect.

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The Cat Case:

Spoiler

Absolutely adorable art on this one.  Love the backgrounds, the characters, little touches like the "feather bed" made me laugh.  Needs some cleaning up on dialogue punctuation, and walkable areas sometimes walked right over spots like the crime scene, or up onto walls/room objects, but just a minor issue.  Enjoyable, cute game, I'd love to see more in this universe.

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Thanks very much!

And just re-uploaded - game crashing glitch found when the cab flies in, should be fixed now.  All download links have been updated!

Thanks!  I think I saw the problem...locked the cab view to bob in place, then never unlocked it when it goes back to flying view.   And only had frames for a Loop 0 Down animation on view 7.  Added more loops and set it to UnlockView properly.  Thanks again for the catch, and please let me know if you all find anything else!

Download link updated:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/q9w92wxvgb97xoq/NMFA_Stormpuncher.rar/file

Creamy: No worries, I could think of a bunch of Kurt Russell flicks that could apply. 

And not sure if it's my phone, but I can't see anything when I reveal your spoiler... could you please repost or PM me? And thanks for the catch!

Creamy: Lol, is Roger the Kurt Russell wannabe?