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I just seen the movie, and let me relate my impressions in two simple words: it's beautiful.

Sorry for digging old threads, I simply had to share it with you.

Hmmm...

Locations appear tad desolate because of the lack of sprites - the game is played from first person perspective, I gather?

As to the story, it's nothing short of bizzare, but then, adventure games had witnessed too many rewrites of well-known themes to be able to take them anymore, so extraordinarity of your plot might turn out to be a positive quality in the long run.

The biggest fluke behind this law is the assumption that the world has to be made a nice place, with no harm, conflict and pain whatsoever. And attempts to make it match this ideal are turning it into prison.

Wondering how do I look like? Here you go:

Me writes good engleesh. Eef eet not leit me could write

But seriously, if there are any free positions - well, I think I make a good writer (I chose this nick for some reason, dammit). Do I make a good reviewer? Can't say at the moment, but I hope I do.

Here are new in-game screenshots: the orbital chase sequence, with revamped background, Mar Man stranded on the wasteland of Zanseman, and flock of dynamically rendered haekherese (see the "Custom animation loop" in the technical forum):

Basically, those who played demo of "Sar" already seen it in action - in the aerial battle sequence. I could think of some other kind of demonstration, though...

While scripting action sequence for "Sar", I realised that if I drew the enemy sprites at the same heights and scaled to different sizes, I'd get effect of quasi-3d. But to do so, I'd have to replace built-in AGS animation loop with one of my own making. And I did it.  Not only the technique worked, but proved efficient in scripting custom graphic and/or animation effects without resorting to standard entities of AGS engine, like characters or objects.

  The main principle is that: data about the object we want to draw is stored in a structure that contains information of the object's position, scale, animation frame and other custom properties. This data is in turn accessed by raw draw functions, which perform the rendering. In order for the technique to work, the screen has to be saved with RawSaveScreen method when player enters the room, and refreshed with RawRestoreScreen on the onset of every game cycle.

   What can you do with it? Basically, everything you can imagine. The technique allows to draw, move and animate almost infinite number of objects without having to create them manually in the editor. For example, let's say we want to draw x number of birds, animate them and make them move across the screen. Data for each bird would be then stored in a following structure:

    bird.x
    bird.y //x and y position of bird on the screen
    bird.z  //z parameter, on the basis of which we scale the bird

    bird.frame // the current frame of animation for the bird
    bird.sizex //computed from the z parameter
    bird.sizey //let's say it's equal to bird.sizex*2, so we keep the aspect ratio
   

    Now, after having restored the screen with RawSaveScreen we invoke the RawDrawImageResized and pass number of the sprite that is starting frame of the animation + frame parameter, x,y,sizex and sizey for each bird. To go through all the birds in array, we use the while[] loop. Now, if the birds have different z parameter, they're scaled to different sizes, which creates impression of some of them being closer to the screen than the others. We need, of course, to update each bird's position in each game cycle, and to keep track of the current animation frame, but these are in fact minor problems each AGS user should be able to deal with on his own. I admit that some of the ascpects of the technique are crude and in need of refinement, but this would take a professional programmer - and I'm not one. Tell me, please, what you think about the technique. If you want, I could dump the code from my own game for demonstrative purposes.

Hmmm... I can tell you what the process looks like in WME.

First of all, you need a 3d animated model in Milkshape3d format (I'm currently using the one they supplied with their 3d demo). The model is referred to in actor definition file, which in turn is parsed by the engine to create and animate the 3d actor.

Then, the background. I model it with Blender, render (usually )with Yafray, then create the geometry file, again with Blender, and export it to format recognised by WME using a decent script which can be found on WME forums. The geometry file contains:

- walkable planes - areas where actors are permitted to move
- blocked areas -  areas blocked from movement
- camera position - from where do we look at the actor
- lights - self explanatory

  Blender-created geometry files have to be scaled in order to match the actual space generated by the engine (otherwise 3d models grow to enormous proportions when rendered).

   Only THEN I proceed to create the actual scene in WME Scene Edit. I load the background and geometry file,  then create the walk-behinds by extracting some of the elements of the background picture with GIMP to set them as sprites, and setting the node hierarchy in Scene Edit in a way that makes WME render them before other elements of the scene.

    This is the garage way of 2.5 D adventure game creation. I hope that my post is comprehensible enough - and that Mnemonic's assasins won't get me killed for revealing the arcane secrets of creating adventure games in WME.  8)

Donna: Avenger of Blood

   I still remember a nightmare I dreamt when I was still a child. It had me - and someone else at the same time, for it seemed as if I was watching a movie - descending into some kind of underworld. The lower we (them) descended the older everything became - for example, I remember me (him) fighting a dinosaur - almost as if descending into the depths of earth was akin to descending into the past. Note - simmiliar theme shows in Jung's dream of the abadoned house! End digression.  At the bottom there was a city, inhabited by rats - ordinary sized rats bestowed with incredible intelligence. They had some kind of spacecrafts - though they didn't take off into the sky, but into stellar space that stretched beneath the underground city instead. The protagonist (me) boarded one of them and took off (down?).

     The space appeared infinite, and there was a quality of decay to everything inside the alien craft - as if decay, rust and insanity permeated everything, permeated the universe.

      The end of dream had me (him) telling the story to disbelieving psychiatrist, a girl whom I didn't know was sitting beside me (it seemed as if in the dream she was mine - his - spouse). As soon as he (this time it was him) finished his story, the wall behind the psychiatrist darkened, opening into another dimension, orthogonal to the three dimensions we know. A figure with no recognisable features, eerily white, and looking barely human, walked along this dimension (I still vividly recall the other-dimensional quality of this vision!) towards the man and the girl - then it seemed as if the girl became surrounded by thick, webby substance, only to dissapear in the next instance. The figure then walked back, and the other dimension once again became invisible.

       The closing scene had comic-book like quality, as opposed to movie-like quality of the rest of the dream. It ended with words that went like "Whoever stole secrets of the underwold, he'll have to pay the price." The words ended the dream.

         For years I was afraid to tell it to anyone.

Good news for all of you who impatiently wait to jump into shoes of At Teuren - here's new background art I created today. The dark, looming place you see on the picture is the Sanctuary on the planet of Leeyandai.

At last, some good news I already started to think of "Donna" as another promosing game that died before it was actually born...

[edit by darth]

Story takes place in fictional state, or even Empire - Aettan. Aettan is in a state of crisis after failed war with Tor Haun. Insurgent  movement arise, striving to overthrow thain, or the monarchic ruler of Aettan. Thus the Guard is formed, in order to protect thain and current order. At Teuren is one of the Guard members, currently on trail of Assasin Lodge. As he wanders abadonned, crumbling streets of the city of Wosmanto he learns of the existence of Order - a sectarian organisation, whose members believe the only way to atone sins of Aettan citizens is to be found on the nightmarish planet of Leeyandai, in a place called Sanctuary. Sceptical at first, At Teuren departs from the Guard, joins the Order and embarks on a jorney to Leeyandai.

I will follow this post with some screenshots, demonstrating how poor this game's graphic design is.



You can download it from two separate locations: my own home ftp server (84.40.234.219, account name "public", password "public"), and rapidshare (http://rapidshare.de/files/5642311/Sardemo.zip.html). Play it and tell me if you like it or not.

edit by darth - added in the story from your last post, which shall now remain locked.  Please update this thread with the progress of the game!

edit by The Book Thanks, Darth! Few words about the demo: it takes place in one of the optional storylines - that is, one of the optional side-games that are triggered when At decides to listen to other people stories. This one puts you in shoes of Mar Man, official in Ainmar prison in Toeg (where he meets At Teuren), who once lived in Imperial colony of Mes Wosman. While being brief, the demo demonstrates basic concepts behind "Sar" - non-linear puzzles, inlusion of action sequences, and ability of the player to influence the story - to certain degree - by his own decisions, or by his reactions to situations he encounters. Have fun!

"Sar" is stalled and won't move anymore futher.

Darth, lock the topic.

Problem solved - I just discovered AGS can handle Intel Indeo codec.

Pumaman: The funny thing is that - yes, I was able to play this avi with Windows Media Player after OS change.

I tried to compile and run the project with AGS 2.61, and the video still refused to play. My attempt to export the same animation in DivX codec yelded rather bizzare result - the game was minimised when video started (I HAVE the DivX codec installed).

I believe I should try to convert the existing animations using some AGS-friendly codec...  The problem is I don't know which codecs are AGS-friendly.  Nor do I know of any software that would allow the conversion.

It is only recently that I changed my operation system from WinNT (which forced me to use one of the eariler versions of the AGS) to XP. Everything worked fine, till I decided to put videos in my game - instead of playing the video, game displayed "Video initialisation error: InitRenderToSurface failed" message. The videos, composed in Blender and exported in Windows Media Video 9 codec worked well under WinNT. Does it mean AGS games don't display avi videos when run from XP? Or is it only problem with earlier versions of AGS and the soultion is to switch to a new version?

Wow!

I just seen your trailer and must confess I was impressed. First and foremost, excellent music - did you compose it yourself?

Execellent graphics - despite my doubts AGS still holds strong. Makes me feel ashamed of my own attempts.