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Look what I just found lurking on the interweb! What's that you say, Technocrat? PC Gamer magazine's best free pc games of October? Hmm...

*head swells*

Guess I've got to make episode 2, now! Shouldn't be too hard, I'm already about half-done with the graphics for part 2 anyway!

Played a bit and I gotta say, it really looks and feels like Advance War.

What I noticed:
- during battle, the text seems to run really fast, and before all the action; is this intentional?
- by accident I attacked my own troops and was pretty surprised that this is indeed possible

- Yes, it's supposed to run fast - it's more of a mechanism to show the battle is being computed, rather than to inform the player. The only useful information to them is at the end!
- I always hate it when games exclude friendly-fire. Where's the fun in that? So here it's become extra friendly.

The first time I was reading through, I switched off at "professional investigator". I'd agree that making them something else is a good way of making the story more interesting, adding elements of "fish out of water" help show how a character is.

I'm going to have to say that I don't think shading for that character would be too complex on a walkcycle - once again, anime style, fairly straightforward.

[====================================Operation: FORKLIFT - A turn-based strategy ====================================]

====================================

Operation: FORKLIFT

  - A turn-based strategy

====================================


The tiny island-chain republc of Vontinalys has been seized by the merciless forces of the Socialist People's Union for Democratic Democracy (S.P.U.D.D.) following the outcome of its first free elections. As a new commander for the League of Nations you must help to lead their elite peacekeeping force, the White Helmets, to victory over the tyrannical military despotism that has ensnared this nation. All the while, getting around the somewhat overinflated ego and reputation of your own leader, Colonel Kraft.





A turn-based strategy inspired by games like the Nintendo Wars series (Advance Wars, Famicom Wars, etc), and the handheld version of EndWar. Featuring:

- strategic/tactical gameplay built out of a system for adventure games, with considerations such as terrain, flanking, and supply-line replenishments.
- seven different units to deploy
- singleplayer campaign, skirmish mode, and two-player hotseat gameplay as either SPUDD, or the League.
- four different endings!
- brilliant soundtrack composed by ShiverMeSideways
- 20% more bears than the next leading strategy!
- In-game editor to craft your own battlefields - which you can then share with your friends!

Your Game Community Needs YOU - SIGN UP FOR ACTION TODAY

Or get it from Gamejolt here!


With thanks to ShiverMeSideways for the soundtrack; Jim Reed, Mr Matti and Monsieur OUXX for playtesting!

So go on - get to the battlefield! The people of Vontinalys are counting on you!

I spent ages just going around trying to pimp everything...

Nobody can top H. H. Holmes! He used an entire hotel he had built in Chicago as his murder weapon!



"The ground floor of the Castle contained Holmes's own relocated drugstore and various shops, while the upper two floors contained his personal office and a maze of over one hundred windowless rooms with doorways opening to brick walls, oddly angled hallways, stairways to nowhere, doors openable only from the outside, and a host of other strange and labyrinthine constructions. Holmes repeatedly changed builders during the construction of the Castle so only he fully understood the design of the house, thus decreasing the chance of being reported to the police.

After the completion of the hotel, Holmes selected mostly female victims from among his employees (many of whom were required as a condition of employment to take out life insurance policies for which Holmes would pay the premiums but also be the beneficiary), lovers and hotel guests, torturing and killing them. Some were locked in soundproof bedrooms fitted with gas lines that let him asphyxiate them at any time. Some victims were locked in a huge soundproof bank vault near his office where they were left to suffocate. The victims' bodies were dropped by secret chute to the basement, where some were meticulously dissected, stripped of flesh, crafted into skeleton models, and then sold to medical schools. Holmes also cremated some of the bodies or placed them in lime pits for destruction. Holmes had two giant furnaces as well as pits of acid, bottles of various poisons, and even a stretching rack. Through the connections he had gained in medical school, he sold skeletons and organs with little difficulty."

27 confirmed victims, and that's only because the bodies were so badly dismembered they couldn't accurately say how many there were. After he fled creditors in Chicago, he tried to construct *another* hotel like this in Texas!


Though for sheer quantity, Harold Shipman still holds the highscore at 218 confirmed kills.

Ah, I hadn't heard of repeatedly_execute_always. That sounds like exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for! Much obliged!

Right now, as a background effect, I've got a number of objects, that move down across the screen (like the "code rain" effect in the matrix"). Essentially, hey do this by increasing their "y" value every cycle, and when they reach a certain value (the bottom) they move back up to the top and begin again. This is all well and good, except that I've found when somebody says anything, all of the objects freeze still. I assumed that this was because the speech was blocking the rain from dropping.

Is there a better means you could suggest to make 30 or so objects move like this, or am I going to have to build characters instead and get them to "walkstraight" in the background?

Moral of the story - more testing next time!

(...or testing full stop...)

Very neat game you did there. I especially liked the cyberspace implementation.. so SystemShocking

Also quite challenging for such a small project - great work!

By the way, did you draw all ground tiles on your own or is there a special trick (like perspective tiling) ?

I was going to make it so the cyberspace looked more...cyberspacey. Kind of like the GUI on 1st drop, but the blocks wouldn't move while she was talking, so it seems kind of stilted. I'll give myself more time next episode to improve the effect.

For the tiles, I just did a whole lot of lines leading to the vanishing point, so I guess I did draw them myself? Apparently, the effect worked!

I would've prefered a slightly more IDM-ish soundtrack, but it works fine as it is.

Loved the in-cyberspace bits, funny and creepy at the same time, especially the Yotsuba-like Cheffie.

Thanks for this nice little game, will be looking forward to part 2!

I'm definitely looking to make an improvement on the soundtrack next time. Unfortunately, my musician seems to have vanished off the face of the earth!

Also,

Spoiler

Cheffie may return next time...

[close]

*Also* - game files have been updated.

Spoiler

Vending machine is now a lot clearer about what it wants

[close]

, and she'll now comment that the door is "still locked" rather than going through the whole surprised speech again. Turns out, I'd put half of a boolean "TriedTheDoorAlready" thing, just forgotten to set "true" at the end of the spiel. Oops!

...the savegames

As I say, I've no idea what went wrong with them, but when they started giving me problems I was so close to finishing that I decided to worry about it next episode. I hope it didn't get in the way of you enjoying it too much!

@ Ascovel
Glad you liked it! I'll have it improved in part 2, doubtless.

@ cianty
There's something iffy about inventory in general, that I plan on working out in episode 2 by completely rebuilding it from scratch. Overridden the baseline now though, so the door shouldn't be doing that anymore. Maybe I'll actually have someone test it beforehand next time!

[Operation: Forklift]

It's the future; it's dark; it's dank; it's decadent; it's
Technobabylon





I'll just go and speak to the building manager...it'll be alright...

Bumped out of her comfortable addiction to a simulated world, Latha Sesame finds herself physically and digitally trapped within the confines of her state-provided slum apartment, disconnected from the outside world.

As the single unknowing flaw in a grand and sinister scheme, can she escape before those plotting can correct their mistake?

FIND IT HERE ON AGS

OR HERE ON GAMEJOLT I DON'T MIND REALLY EITHER WAY

- short adventure set in the future
- my first foray into making adventure games with AGS. I feel so dirty.
- a test of what I can manage to make in nine days


...and before you ask where Operation: Forklift has gotten to, not to worry. It's essentially done as well. Just had to do this to stop myself going mad.

The posterior volume was bothering me as well, but every time I tried to get rid of it, the shape of her body seemed wrong!

Wow, lots of help here! I think I'll be cobbling it into a kind of compromise mix.

Also, thanks for the tutorial links Abstauber, that's the kind of thing I've been looking for!

Oddly enough, as a teacher, now that the school term has started I've found myself being even more productive in AGS than usual. Obviously, it's to give me something to think about in classes that isn't either children or English.

Ah, thank you! Every tweak helps!

Also, trying the front and back view now as well.




The feeling she's going to have is "fear of imminent danger", so I think maybe having the arm like that could work well. I'm trying to get her to look less like a bodybuilder on the front view, though!

(Skin shade brightened)

Is that her left, or our left you were thinking she could do with a few pixels snipped from?

True, I usually draw on "transparent" background anyway. I've changed the backdrop colour to make it a bit easier on people's eyes!

After making goodness knows how many characters for games that never got completed, I think my understanding of the human body shape is improving. On the other hand, I don't think my grasp of shading at the pixel level is keeping up with it. Granted, I can now see what a difference it makes to a character to has any degree of shading at all, but I have difficulty visualising how things like the shape of clothing dictate where to splodge all that darker colour.

Any input appreciated!

Also, as someone who's actually studied any Japanese, I can tell you that while "Before Crystal" sounds pretty daft in English, 前に would be the wrong thing to use. In this case, because you've got both "Past" and "Crystal" as nouns, your title means "Crystal's Before" (i.e. the Before belonging to the Crystal). A word like 過去 would be more appropriate than 前に  (Making it "The Crystal's Past" rather than "The Crystal's Before"), since 過去 refers to the past in a more suitable context, like bygone days, whereas what you're using...oh heck, who am I kidding. If it's a troll, he's probably intentionally botched, and if he really is real, he won't listen anyway.

:'(