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Hello! Here's a bit of a teaser - the current, work-in-progress intro to the game, in fact.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDbs6he3Z_k

Alpha demo will be going out next week to people who sign up via the website.

That sounds useful but I'm not sure what to do with this information, I tried adding another if-then but no matter what I do, I can't pick up those inventory items.

What's your new code?

a custom dialog script

Tell us more about this?

It *could* be AGS conflicting with something else on your setup, of course. But it doesn't sound to me like there's anything wrong within your AGS project.

At this stage I think it's safe at least to say it's not an AGS issue. I recommend backing up the game and doing some Windows / hard drive diagnostics. Good luck!

Difficult to tell without diagnostics. But it doesn't sound like an AGS issue on the surface. AGS usually pretty swiftly tells you when something's not scanning properly, and crashes straight to desktop with an error.

Does the problematic room load okay when you move to it in-game?

Does the game compile okay?

Alrighty! I almost have a 30-40min alpha demo of this ready, which comprises about a quarter or so of the full game.

If you'd like to have a play, you can add your name to the list via the purple bar at the bottom of reality-falls.com

Alpha ETA some time in November.

Funnily enough, using room scale will actually force you to get your perspective spot-on, because if it isn't, you'll really notice when you configure room scale!

Yeah, all timers are "hidden" unless you specifically script something to happen while the timer's running.

Assuming you just want to set a timer and have it count down to a game event, then

Code: ags

SetTimer(1, 80);

will set Timer No. 1 to 80 game loops, i.e. 2 seconds. You want to set this at the point in the script where you want the timer to start counting down.

Then, in RepEx, you control what happens when the timer reaches 0. This is so that the game is checking every loop to see if there's any time left.

Code: ags

if (IsTimerExpired(1)) //This continually checks whether or not Timer No. 1 has expired and returns the below if it has.
  {
    //Whatever you want to happen
  }

Hi all! I'm looking for a small handful of people who are interested in playing a short (20 mins? 40 mins? Who knows... yet) segment from the start of Reality Falls.

It's rough, ready and unfinished, but I'm looking for feedback on pacing, structure, atmosphere, puzzle difficulty, and all that good stuff.

If you're interested, shoot me an email at lewis[at]gameifyouare.com or a PM here.

Thanks!

Quick update! With the advice of the lovely helpful people on the Critics Lounge board, I've been reworking the art style a little. Really pleased with the results. New shots in the OP!

Short-run / individual unit production is hella expensive, and you're unlikely to find a large and dedicated enough market to pay 30 bucks for a copy of a game that's usually $10.

Sadly I also don't think you have a viable marketing plan. You've found yourself in a catch-22 situation: if loads of players pay money in, then that money can be spent on expensive advertising to make the games more popular! Which, yes, of course, when you make a lot of money you can reinvest it in advertising and make even more money. But that's precisely why the "big boys" have a monopoly over the scene, and why indies struggle to cut through the noise. There are so many indie games, and it's so hard for them to get that initial attention when major publishers dominate the media landscape. Why would this venture be any different?

I think you would need to have some decent start-up capital and do some very in-depth market research to give this one a shot. It's a lovely idea, I'm just not sure it quite works.

You guys are totally right, the richness of lighting makes a HUGE amount of difference.

Here's something I've been working on for the bar scene. Still needs a bit of TLC but I reckon it's already shaping up to so much better.



@Ilyich - LOVE the hotel foyer treatment! The mood of the scene wants to be slightly colder than this but it definitely gives me a very strong idea of where to go with it. Thanks so much!

Thanks, that's super-duper helpful!

Hi Lewis,

What bothers me most is the difference in treatment between the chibi character and his realistic portrait. I have trouble linking them.

Isn't that the portrait of the guy the main character is talking to with the grey hair?

It is!

I will, however, almost certainly have the portraits replaced in the final version. So don't worry about those for now. Mainly the environments I'm looking at right now. Cheers!

Thanks for the tips! How does this look? I've changed the aspect ratio of the floor texture, plus added some subtle reflections to suggest a polished floor surface.

Hi all.

The game I'm working on, Reality Falls, uses the same sort of top-down, JRPG-esque art style as my previous game, Richard & Alice. I'm conscious that the art was a very weak aspect of R&A and keen to improve it, but at the same time I'm keen to keep it as a solo project for the time being, meaning I'm not in a position to outsource the art to - y'know - an actual artist.

This time, I'm trying something slightly different: the same top-down false-perspective, but making heavy use of modified textures adapted from real-world photographs. I'm taking textures of - say - carpets, walls, whatever, resizing them to be nice and small, then reducing the number of colours to give them a pixel art feel and help them to sit together in the world.

I'm content that this is the art style and approach I want to go for, but I would definitely love some thoughts from people who are a little more artistically minded. Within the scope of this style and process, what sorts of things should I be looking at improving, based on the below screenshots? Anything from image composition to colour palette to the little details I as a very-much-not-artist might not even consider when putting a scene together?

I have no expectations that Reality Falls will be the most artistically accomplished game in the world, but I do want it to have its own identifiable look and feel, and I don't want to repeat my mistakes with Richard & Alice, which I played through again recently and I'm still very proud of but my goodness it does look like shit. RF already looks better, but there's room for improvement. Help me improve it! :-)

Yes, it's AGS.

Good advice! The art definitely needs work and will be evolved as the project goes on. Consider everything here a work in progress. Thanks for checking it out!

[Website | Steam page]

Website | Steam page

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2T_YGJP0n4

Welcome to Reality Falls
A dusty, dilapidated town on the former Soviet steppe, where Europe bleeds into Asia. People first settled here hundreds of years ago, but only a few remain. Reality Falls sounds like the adventurer's dream: a destination off the beaten track, home to a collection of oddballs and misfits, all yearning for something different. But something strange lurks within the curiously named Reality Falls.



A story-driven adventure
From the co-creator of Richard & Alice comes a brand new story-driven adventure. Join Adrian Watts on the journey of a lifetime, as his round-the-world trip takes him to this unlikely destination. Meet its strange set of inhabitants, discover the town's fascinating history, and unravel the surreal and unsettling tale that begins to unfold.

Reality Falls fuses intricate storytelling with classic point-and-click puzzles and a retro JRPG-style look and feel.



Follow development
Follow development behind the scenes! Reality Falls is being crafted with an 'open production' methodology in mind. Visit the game's website and sign up to the newsletter for regular updates, design musings, and the chance to get your hands on the game before anyone else.



Coming 2019 look I really don't know, but I'm chipping away at it, I promise!

*****

Well, this is a thing. Hello, it is me, Lewis, co-creator of Richard & Alice and co-producer of The Charnel House Trilogy, with a new project.

Elephant in the room: I was already working on a new project, with Grundislav and Khaled. Sadly, the project simply wasn't coming together in the way that I'd envisioned - there were significant problems with both the narrative and the very structure of the game. This, combined with real life getting in the way, led me to thinking long and hard about the project and whether it would realistically turn out a decent game in the foreseeable future, and the answer turned out to be no, so we made the difficult decision to cancel it.

But! A lot of the ideas I had for that project have come to fruition in Reality Falls. Long-term AGSers may remember a very early version of Reality Falls from literally like eight or nine years ago. I made a short demo, pretty much as a way of learning AGS. The idea has morphed since then - I think it's smarter, more mature and more interesting. The art style is a sort of Richard & Alice ++, something I feel comfortable tinkering with and playing around with myself, which is important so that the game doesn't get backed into a corner via iterations in the way Anthology did.

Anyway, that's just a bit of background. It's predominantly just me working on the project right now, but that may change in the future. Release date is tentatively, and very non-specifically, 2019. a complete mystery.