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Thanks!

The lack of actual chess puzzles is a bit of a cop out on my part, for lack of a reasonable programming solution (that and the desire to simplify parts in order to get the game finished) to implement a working chess system. I hope to have something interesting for the challenge but it may also not be a conventional chess puzzle... :-)

I'm still tweaking the graphics here and there so I'll try and sort out the hat issue.  The walk cycle has bugged me a little, sometimes I feel like waheela, sometimes like san.daniele.  I may try an extra frame and see how it looks.

Thanks for playing.  I'll try to make the wait for the full thing not too long!

Pledged!  (sounds like something you do to polish a table, but I think I've given you money instead)

So, five months on from the last post, and two months shy of this being a three-year project... it really shouldn't be, the game takes about 15 minutes if you know exactly what to do, but I prefer to just laugh at my own jokes and take my time... and it still doesn't feel *that* close to completion.

You can however almost play through from beginning to end without any bugs that throw you out, and there's only really one awkward coding thing left to do.  The rest is just spit and polish, dribble and time-wasting.  So, as some sort of inevitable deadline-failing gesture, I'm going to ask whether people want to endure listening to what is effectively myself taking the piss out of myself in the form of a point-and-click adventure that is about chess people, but rarely about chess.

Tomorrow, at noon (BST) because I have the day off, I will unleash it on here, an effective alpha test of the game that will take you from the beginning to the very last scene... which I will shroud in secrecy and not let you complete (not just because it isn't finished/designed/coded/panicpanicpanic)... it involves winning the game, and we all know how that works in chess... well, at least in principle.

I may also forget to turn debug off. But hopefully I will remember...

EDIT:
Alpha build here(~1Mb)

Half an hour early, and I've managed to beat a deadline!
Okay, really, why I've posted this, is because I've not let anybody play it really for a long time, and I feel I should.
I've left a few of the key bits out (the chess challenge, and the ending) as they are quite self-contained and (not coded yet).
Post here, or PM or e-mail, and you can get your name in the extended close credits sequence...

Thanks Khris!

It was a GUI that was there from the beginning of the game (displaying credits and then used for nothing thereafter...) and never actually made to disappear.  It just happened to be the right size to just cover the bottom square of the board...

Onward and upward!

Hopefully this is a simple question and I'm being a bit silly... but I can't find any particular reason for it...



See this picture, a hotspot area has been highlighted in blue.
It seems a bit odd that it is fractured and not continuous, but it's my lazy way of coding a simple chess move and attaching dialogue to it.
Unfortunately the upper square seems to work fine as a hotspot, with all the expected responses, but the lower square does not respond at all to anything.

The weirdest thing is that the two squares just next to them (where the bishop and rook are stood, above and below the horizontal band) are blocked in the exact same fashion and yet both squares work perfectly fine (i.e. they give the same expected response).

Please explain this to me, this game has taken much longer than it ought to have... (and if you do help, I will have something playable all the way through by the end of the bank holiday, and if you're really nice, I'll let you play it too!)

Happy new year people!

I have updated/tidied up the original post and am working really hard to get this in a releasable format, I can't let it get to three years!
Also, some information is in the previous post, but I didn't bump it at the time...

Dudes, save your money and get Spud's Quest instead.
Only a fiver, made by a lovely one man team, and you can actually try it first as well... not entirely built on Dizzy dreams...

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/409406442/spuds-quest

Spoiler

I played an indie game recently, Home, that potentially plays a little with the ideas you presented.

I'm probably going to spoil it by explaining it, so maybe play it first, then look at the next spoiler...

[close]

Spoiler

Okay? Still interested?

Essentially you play through the game, and throughout, you have a series of seemingly innocuous Y/N dialogue choices (did you pick up the letter?), and active choices (exploring a particular place etc,).  These choices effectively inform the protagonist how he interprets the situation, even (potentially) deluding himself about the actions that may or may not have happened.  The end product is that the game can be played through several times with the same situations faced, but the conclusions that you take away (with the aid of the protagonist monologue) have been directly informed by your actions... it's quite a neat way to mould the protagonist to the player.

Maybe this is slightly different to what you were thinking of, but I think it's interesting all the same...

[close]

I agree with this ^

Getting things to a complete state, regardless of size, is a tricky task.
I think you can still Kickstart in the absence of a history, so long as the evidence you provide in the pitch demonstrates the care and attention required to getting something done.

I've backed fifteen projects so far... and this is the only one that either hasn't had an almost complete product, a demonstration or a track history of completing stuff. And man, what a pitch... the love that's already gone into this thing, you can easily see it's not the money the creator is after, it's just the chance to make something beautiful.

And that's how you tell the difference...

(although a gallon of gorgeous pixel art also helps in my case...)

Stretch goals announced....

BASS2 after a million ...

That's BENEATH A STEEL SKY TWO.

(although why they don't Kickstarter it separately I don't know...)

Not made in AGS but definitely of the Snatcher mold, are the Fedora Spade series in Game Maker. Along with a similar adventure called Missing.

http://studioeres.com/games/fedora
http://studioeres.com/games/missing

I really wanted to start a similar engine in AGS at one point, but I've not really got around to it.
I do like the style...

Depends if Matt finishes a game...

My name is James Riley. And I'm sure I sent you a demo of my game...

It was a good day, as people have said the talks were excellent, and I got what I wanted out of it, which was to be inspired and motivated to work on my own stuff more, and to also kick Matt's behind into finishing something (seriously, finish a game Matt ).

Cheers to Mark for organising it, I can imagine it's never easy and a little bit nerve-wrecking. Although all I actually wanted was to win CD1 of Discworld Noir, because I can't find mine...

On a train! Slightly hungover! But still!
See you lot shortly...

[UPDATE 08/10/12:]

I may have subliminally grabbed that from my sub-conscious, but not intentionally.

In new news, I'm aiming to have a decent build ready for AdventureX (which I'm going to try and wander along to), which means I'm back to working on it. Woo!

I've got a few chess puzzles designed, but coding them is probably going to take a backseat to getting the structure of the rest of the game sorted. At the moment, I have just one final room to draw! I've also taken the executive decision to put carefully selected Beatles midis as my background music for the public build; at the moment it works quite well, but some modifications to the arrangements probably need to be made if I were to stick with it.

Have to finish with a screenie of something, otherwise Darth will probably lock the thread. I'm working on it! Right now! I assure you!

UPDATE 08/10/12:
Massive amounts of progress!

A lot of it is dialogue and coding wise, so no extra shots (I have finished the background for the final area, but I'll leave that to be discovered).
I also think I've figured out how I'm going to do the chess puzzles, although they will not be the focus, and there will be a way around for those not that way inclined. That's the only major barrier to completion, and I think the end is in sight!

Furthermore, in a strange bout of insanity, instead of a walkthrough, there will be a short story attachment with the game that works in the same way.
While I hadn't touched the AGS files in about ten months, I had started writing the story separately straight into a Word document. It has helped me shape the game and puzzles quite a bit, and there will be plenty of additional bits not in the 'walkthrough' that you'll have to play with to find out.

I don't know why this 'short' game as taken me as long as it has, but it will definitely be finished!
When?

I haven't a donkey's...

The next one will be a one room, two (maybe three-ish) character affair... because after finding that coding six rooms and twenty characters takes this long, I need to try something different...

Excellent.

I can see an extended spinoff where you work your way up the political chain BS-ing and swearing your way up the party ladder (in a Thick Of It like manner), before hilariously trying to spin your way out of a major f-up using very little information whatsoever. And a very careful selection of words...

Ships are definitely my bag, I may very well enter this one!

Mo the Hawk. He's carrying a mine to drop on people he's that badass...

Ponch pour moi.