Messages

Although now having done a longer episode, I can safely say I want to make part three another single-room affair!

What a shame! I really enjoy your artwork and the strong atmosphere it conveys. I was really drawn into the world with the depictions provided in this episode. On the other hand, the way Episode 1 started was just perfect looking back at it now: With only one room a lot was left to the player's imagination and it just worked. I guess you will find a way of keeping it interesting and the suspense up with another one-room-episode. I definiately look forward to it!

Well, it's only going to have one physical room, anyway...

Getting into the final leg of production, we're now on to playtesting - many thanks to cianty and kaputtnik thus far (the latter of whom is also engineering the music for it). Once I get the mere "confusing puzzles" and "game-breaking puzzle-bugs" thing that seems to be endemic to my games out of the way, it'll be set to go. I now predict a pre-2011 release.

Although now having done a longer episode, I can safely say I want to make part three another single-room affair!

How do you get the knight?

Spoiler

Get the wetware node from the toilet, use it on the panel by the door.

[close]

OMG I am stuck too. And it seems that I can't save the game. When i try to save it, it doesn't work. Help with this please and getting out of the room. I have the shower gel, the memory card and tray. i am stuck

Yeah, the save thing was having a bit of trouble, but it should work in the version I've currently put up.

Spoiler

The three metal things are:
- the shower hose. Use the cutters from the cupboard under the bed to get it.
- the trophy. Get that from the cupboard.
- the grille. Cut the cable from the post in the middle of the room, and use the cable to get the grille.

[close]

After that,

Spoiler

You need to get rid of Cheffie so that you can make a metal fork. Get the wetware nodes from the toilet, and put one on the food machine, and one on the terminal by the door. Get the memory card from the food machine in the real world, then use it with the terminal by the bed. Check your emails in the virtual world to receive the virus, and put it on the memory card. In the real world, put the memory card into the food machine, then go back into the virtual world. Ask Cheffie about new recipes, which will activate the virus. Because Cheffie is now infected, you can ask the knight to get rid of Cheffie. Once that's gone, the food machine will make your metal tray and fork - put all of the metal into it, and use it to make the crockery. You can then use the metal fork on the terminal by the door.

[close]

Hope that helps!

In one of my bored-numb moments, I made a few tweaks to the game. It's now slightly less buggy, the save/load works properly, and the main track is now Pablo's new music for the series.

In other news, I'll have all of the text/dialogue for part 2 wrapped up by the end of tomorrow, and something playable by the weekend, for those who are down for testing. I think some of the writing is lousy/nonsensical, but that's what objective testers are for!

But nobody can play it, as there's no executable for the game!

Thank you very much!

/ screws head back on

Right, now it's the definitive slightly-more fixed edition.
I think my brain is turning to mush.

In one of my bored-numb moments, I made a few tweaks to the game. It's now slightly less buggy, the save/load works properly, and the main track is now Pablo's new music for the series.

In other news, I'll have all of the text/dialogue for part 2 wrapped up by the end of tomorrow, and something playable by the weekend, for those who are down for testing. I think some of the writing is lousy/nonsensical, but that's what objective testers are for!

Reviewed. By me.

Aha, the bribe paid off, then!

Wow, thanks for that! Now it works swimmingly.

And yes, it's rather messy! Everything I do tends to be, but I usually pretend it's a style I have!

I've repurposed the "interact" cursor for my multi-purpose cursor that does everything. Left clicking will walk and interact, and right clicking will look/cancel selected inventory items.

I've only just discovered a problem that it causes - when clicking anywhere in the backdrop of a room where the player is not shown, it crashes, telling me:

Error: MoveCharacterBlocking: character is turned off and cannot be moved.

I can kind of understand *why* it's happening, but I'm not sure what I could do to my cursor script to work around it. It might just be the seizure I've just had addling my brain though.

Code: ags

function on_mouse_click(MouseButton button) {
  // called when a mouse button is clicked. button is either LEFT or RIGHT
  if (IsGamePaused() == 1) {
    // Game is paused, so do nothing (ie. don't allow mouse click)
  }
  else if (button == eMouseLeft) {
    //ProcessClick(mouse.x, mouse.y, mouse.Mode );
  if(player.ActiveInventory!=null){ProcessClick(mouse.x, mouse.y, eModeUseinv);return;}
    if(player.Room!=3){     // The main menu. I think this stopped me noticing it originally
    if(Object.GetAtScreenXY(mouse.x, mouse.y)==null && Hotspot.GetAtScreenXY(mouse.x, mouse.y)==hotspot[0] && Character.GetAtScreenXY(mouse.x, mouse.y)==null){player.Walk(mouse.x, mouse.y, eNoBlock, eWalkableAreas);return;}
    }
    ProcessClick(mouse.x, mouse.y, eModeInteract);

  
  }
  else if (button == eMouseRight){
    // right-click our mouse-wheel down, so cycle cursor
        if(player.ActiveInventory!=null){player.ActiveInventory=null;mouse.Mode=2;return;}
        ProcessClick(mouse.x, mouse.y, eModeLookat);
  }

}

well. lol. I just realized you've already finished this picture. Oh well, don't hate me now but I just totally tore your old image apart.  :



I started making a paint-over with some simple points I wanted you to have a look at but somewhere in the process I forgot I was working on someone else's image and just kept on experimenting, thus I'm afraid I may have strayed faaaaar from your original concept. Also, sorry for the smudginess, I painted it on your lowres canvas and doubled its scale now for showing purposes.

A quick rundown of what major points I have addressed:

* There was no depth, I added fog.
* Lighting was not coherent, I repainted it, all the time thinking about my main and ambient light sources.
* Ground was boring, I added city lights to get scale into the scene as well as a secondary light source.
* The windows reflected a color that by no means seemed to exist in your sky. I repainted them to reflect the sky.
* Compositionally your bent building and tree were both causing a mess, I repainted them to get better flow.
* The whole composition felt awkwardly flat. I skewed everything into perspective to make it more dynamic.

Again, I realize this was taken a bit too far here, but perhaps some of the points and how I have addressed them will teach you or someone around here something. Thanks for making me sit down and paint for a couple of hours. I needed that.  

Very much looking forward to part two of technobabylon. Best of luck!

Hell's teeth, that's impressive! Now I feel inadequate, haha!

Very helpful points though, I'll make sure to include them in my drawing process for episode 3!

If I were making it, I wouldn't personally be calling it "Shadowgate Remake" - probably something like "Return to Shadowgate" or "Shadowgate Reborn", something a little more dramatic.

Also, I'm going to agree on the whole "use a lower resolution" thing. When  I first started with AGS (wow, must have been six years now  :o) everything I did was 800x600. Once I learned that resolution doesn't equal quality necessarily, I found it a lot easier to make decent backdrops!

Well, it seems my illustrious manager in the real world has decided to send us all off for a course in Seoul for the week, so that puts my testable version back a little bit. Only by a week though, I should still have it would up by the beginning of Decemberish.

Since making things with AGS involves drawing, writing, sound and scripting (or seperately as components, if you've got more than one person), everyone evidently has something they can do towards making a finished product. And, I would guess not everybody got them from studying them in an academic institution.

So, what do you know, and where did you get it from?

Personally, I like constructing the stories of games, and the blame firmly rests on the obscene amount of reading I used to do as a young 'un. My drawing still sucks, but I'm improving, I think - that's mostly coming from internet tutorials, and a lot of trial and error (emphasis on the latter).

[TECHNOBABYLON - PART II]

What is this, National Suicide Week?

TECHNOBABYLON - PART II

In the city of a far-flung place and time, a veteran Civil Enforcement agent finds the 20th anniversary of his wife's death further soured by blackmail - with the lives of their unborn children. How long will he have to do the bidding of his hidden puppeteer before it impacts upon his work? And can he add this secret to the growing array that he already must conceal from his friend and colleague?






Part two has taken me a month thus far, but I intend to have it completed by the end of November at the latest. More than just one room, we're going for a wider perspective of the city than the narrow view of a shut-in girl.

Graphics and planning will be wholly finished by the end of tomorrow, so I ought to have something mostly playable by the end of next weekend

Graphics: 100%
Sound and Music: Under construction, courtesy of kaputtnik
Gameplay: 95%


- Having learned lessons from last time, I'm going to see about getting people to actually test it this time around, so if you'd fancy a sneak preview, I should have something testable by the end of Sunday the 21st.
- Also looking for a provider of better music than I'm currently capable of raking up by myself!

Estimated release: Before 2010 is done!

See you in the future...

Well, since it seems that people are finding far too many game-breaking things that I'm as-yet unable to locate, here's how you get the cheat mode:

Spoiler

In the help menu, there's a special button at the bottom. When you press it, it'll ask you for a password, which can either be found on the editor on a little piece of card, or you can just read it here. The password is:

                     SWORDFISH

Now you can smite units with your cursor over them/give your units full health and ammo/unlock all missions, and various other things.

[close]

Have (more) fun!

Wow, so much good advice! Especially for the height things! And I wouldn't have thought to use the red tinge originally myself, I'll give that a go too.

Looks like Episode 2 is going to look shinier!

Spoiler

Finishing mission 6 (the one where you must lose all your troops) is impossible. Every time an enemy attack my troops, the next time I click on one of my units, Peces will tell me I'm attacking my own troops and the mission will be a failure.

I tried to bring all of my units as close as possible to the enemy base, then ending my turns without touching any of my units afterward, the enemy destroyed them all by 18th turn, captured the very last city I owned by 23th turn, and the mission was still a failure. Do I have to lose all my units or lose as many units as possible?

Pressing the ENTER key during a message from your commander or a private will end your turn and you will see the enemy moving his units under the messages.

Also slightly nitpicky, but it's possible to attack helicopters with artilleries, and it's also very effective. If all those RTS I played told me the truth, doing so should be impossible or hardly effective at all.

[close]

Damn it, I was sure I'd fixed that.Well, if you want the easy way around that mission, there's always the cheat mode!

Having had a little more practice, I'm taking another stab at outdoor scenes. Namely, this balcony poking out from the side of a skyskraper (it's supposed to be curved, no need to worry about that).



What I'm most concerned about it trying to give the impression of the sheer height above ground of this balcony. I decided to make the ground dark because it's sunset, but also because every attempt I make at lit roads looks like crap.

My thanks in advance!

Well, I'm glad everyone's being so positive! Once I've done the first three parts, I plan on stitching them together into one longer game, so *then* the first part will have a functional save/load, and a lot of other things I intend to improve it with.

Btw, you misspelled "babylon" in the thread title 

You'd think that'd be the kind of thing I'd have noticed two weeks ago, wouldn't you?

@ blueskirt

Can you really blame the bears though? Can you really accuse an animal with no conception of morality of undertaking an "attack" as such, rather than just defending his territory?

(he says, wriggling out a justification for what was obviously an oversight)