Messages

Good point, Vince Twelve...I'll fix that in v 1.1.

Thanks for the heads up!

Vince Twelve-

Spoiler

Did you USE the portcullis first to get a close-up of it? Just click the hand icon on the door and you should get a close-up of the door with the lock readily visible.

I just checked and I see I didn't say that explicitly in the walkthrough...sorry about that! I added it in, so it will be fixed for version 1.1

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Fribbi AGDI joker-

Thank you very much for your most kind comments!Ã,  It is an encouragement to me to work on the sequel! Of course you are very much welcome to post about it on your website. Although I can't read the language, I did check it out and it looks cool from what I can see! Again, thank you!

grandma-

I'm glad you enjoyed it! Yes, I WANT very much to do the sequel! I did Prodigal 90% myself, and got pretty burnt out on it. I hope to get a team of AGS veterans together to work on the next one, so I'm not stretched so thin. That is the reason I want/need it to be popular before I tackle another game. So spread the word!Ã, 

nelinastungeon-

Although I appreciate your comments, I have requested a moderator remove this or at least hide the text, as you are giving away a spoiler to the game on a public forum!Ã,  This kind of comment should have been sent to my email, which is readily available from the game manual. Here is what I have to say in response:

Spoiler

While I realise this game does seem to end off very dark and hopeless, as you have noticed, such is the horror genre. movies like "Night of the Living Dead" or "Carnival of Souls" are pervasively dark and end a tragedy.

There is more to note, however, about the ending of Prodigal. We came into the middle of the conversation with Ashley, so we really don't know WHAT Jacob told her and what he did not. There is the hope that Jacob, being an "good" person, will not end up doing what his brother, and all the others before him, did.

Furthermore, we don't have the FULL story yet at this point about WHY the trap is, and IF the other side of it really leads to paradise, as the Demelza believe, or not. We also have the (hopefully) clearly warped view of the Demelza as to WHY this trap was created.

I guess what I'm saying to all this as that we don't yet KNOW the whole story. To leave it off here without playing the "next chapter" would be to do the story injustice.

To equate it to something else, what if you JUST watched Star Wars Episodes 1-3, and never watched 4-6? Episode Three ends off in an incredibly dark way, with seemingly no hope for the entire gallaxy! Without episodes 4-6, it would seem that Lucas has written an appaling tale of betrayal and tragedy!

So the end of "Prodigal" has not yet been revealed. There. That's what I'm trying to say.

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Ozzie-

I actually prolly go farther in the chills side than Gabriel Knight ever does...although there is that one scene in "Beast Within" in the cave...man, that was ILL! :b

Glad you like the game's look, though! It was a HECK of a task for 1 person to pull off! I wouldn't have made it without Edgar stepping in to help with alot of animation late in the project!

Peter-

I PMed you about it. Sorry for the delay on a new version. :/ We're working on it...

Trisk

Spoiler

These should already have been addressed, but I'll answer 'em anyway:

To get out of the bedroom just walk west. You are probably trying to leave to the south, that is a wall. I'm sorry if that is a bit of a confusing part, but that is true to the actual 3D render. The camera is backed into the corner of the room, making the door to the left. (In an early draft of the game, the bedroom was taken from a different camera angle, ceiling looking down.)


As for the portcullis, use the key on the lock, not the door! lol, I've often tried to jab my house keys into various places on the door, but it never works as good as putting the key in the lock! 

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Well, I just had the savegame crash happen to me while testing Prodigal.  :'(

I'm working with SSH to see if there is ANY way to resolve this, otherwise I might have to remove the savegame module from version 1.1...which would stink, cause the stock GUI looks so bland.  :'(  :'(  :'(

This also may delay my original prediction about releasing Wednesday, as I look into my options.

I'm porting Prodigal over to AGS 2.71 RC3. In my testing of it, I noticed a small, easily fixed bug involving the legacy code. I thought I'd note it here in case anyone else has legacy code in their games.

I started Prodigal on AGS 2.62, so the first half or so of the game has all the old style AGS coding in it. While this wasn't a problem with AGS 2.7, 2.71 RC3 has a bug with legacy code in relation to:

SetCharacterProperty (EGO, CHAR_IGNORESCALING, 1);

This USED to show Ego at 100% size, ignoring walkable area scaling. On AGS 2.71 RC3, however, it shows him as 50% size, for some reason...suddenly he was very, very itty-bitty.

Easy enough to fix, though...just replace with the new code:

cEgo.ManualScaling = true;
cEgo.Scaling = 100;

Just a quick note to any others who are porting up to 2.71 RC3.

Trisk

Quick update on the new version, which I hope to have out tomorrow, 11/16/05.

I ported the game up to AGS 2.71 RC3. I'm hoping this will fix some of the strange bugs that certain people have been experiencing.

The most common bug is crashing in the save/load gui. Because of this, I'm going to initialize the STOCK save and load GUIs. If SSH's GUI won't work for you, you can try using the stock AGS GUIs to see if that helps.

You'll access them with:

CTRL-S -this will open the stock save GUI
CTRL-X -this will open the stock load GUI

I'm going to go test the game now. Let me know if this sounds like a plan!

SHE DEVIL- Thanks! Glad to hear you enjoyed it!

Vince Twelve- I tested the game extensively with the middle button and never had a problem. If I understand the theory of the "middle mouse button code" correctly, (Pumaman, tell me if I'm wrong) The game just skips forward, moving Jacob along his path until he enters an area that would initiate code. So no, in theory, clicking the mouse button to skip ahead shouldn't do anything that wouldn't happen otherwise.

That said, and being that I am CONFIDENT that these problems are NOT with my code, I'm working hard to get a new version of Prodigal out on the latest AGS version, 2.71 RC3. This may go a long way towards removing some of these problems.

Hammerite and Mordalles

Spoiler

Yes, that is correct. You were playing as MIKE in Prodigal 0. I flip flopped ALOT on whether or not I should change his shirt color, but I decided if I DIDN'T, you'd get the connection right away during the opening cutscene. I didn't want that, so I changed his shirt from red to green. But that is Mike, a slightly more SANE Mike.

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Rosie-

I'm sorry this is happening! I say again, when the new version is out, I'd be glad to make a save for you and send it so you can keep playing! It really wouldn't be a big deal, either...I can beat the entire game in about a half hour. :b

Peter-

I PMed you for more info.

SteveMcCrea- Yes, I've played Eternal Darkness! ^_^ An awesome game, it was my favorite Survival Horror game ever...until Resident Evil 4 came out and was one of the best GAMES ever, never mind best Survival Horror. :b Although I never actively thought about making the horror beats like the ones in E.D., they were rolling around in my brain and prolly came out subconsciously.Ã, 

buloght- Well, don't keep 'em to yourself, tell me about 'em so I can fix 'em!Ã, 

cp- The next game would, if I make it, pick up RIGHT after where this one ended, and yes, it wouldn't change a THING of this game's story. We gots BIG plans for this story, and this game is only hinting at the depths it will go...there were multiple plot twists that didn't make it into the game because they just didn't have relevance to the story at hand. For instance, what was the real story behind their parent's death? It all ties into the story later on.

Rui "Brisby" Pires- Thanks so much for all the kind words! My favorite part of this game was doing sound and music design, and is the part I'm MOST proud of. Standing in the ditch along a busy highway next to a swamp, arm outstretched with mic in hand, smelling the stink of swamp while waiting for a break in the cars to record the sound of swamp frogs for the forest at the beginning...just one of dozens of fond memories I have designing the audio portion of this game.

And thank you for the vote of confidence in my puzzles! I'm also really glad you figured out how Prodigal 0 tied in. I hope people that play both will "get it."

Has anybody else who's played both understood Prodigal 0?

-Mordalles too much to talk about here...I PMed you about it.

Thanks for the kind words all! Spread the word about Prodigal! 

InCreator

Hey, I'm glad you enjoyed the game! Yeah, I was calling it a thriller more than horror for a while, but when the end got to being the way it was, I started billing it as a horror/thriller. I hate games where the end LAMES out and stops being scary, so I worked hard to make the end the crecendo to the chills. :b

As for the technology...I recognize some of my rough spots. Keep in mind this game was 95% done by just ME, and that made a tremendous work load for one person. Edgar Rocha did all the inking for the character closups, but I was still coloring them all. He also did most of the monster animations, which look fantastic, but that was late in the game, so I didn't utilize his tallents as much as I could have, had I known how good he was at animating.  :

I was doing ALL the storyboarding, most of the dialogue, 3D rendering, programming, sound, many of the music bits, FMV, puzzles...by myself, which started to get overwhelming. It is for this reason that I say I'll only do a sequel if this one gets popular. If this one does well enough, I should have enough respect in the AGS community to be able to put together a tallented TEAM to help me.

Also note I started this game as an homage to Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, and it grew into what it is. Some of the backwards tech was to remain true to the era of Sierra games.

Here's a short list of improvements I would want for the next game:

-High res 16bit color all the way. 640x480 mandatory. This may not include FMV, however, for space reasons. FMV would prolly still be captured at 320x200.

-A team to help with programming and puzzles so I can focus more on 3D rendering to give each scene the TLC I wanted to.

-High res detailed character sprites. Edgar (En Guarde!) has already said he wants to work on the sequel and will probably become the lead animator for it.


So spread the word! And get some of those AGS vets to play the game! 

laters,
Trisk

I'm working as fast as I can to get a stable compile on the newest version of AGS. (2.71 RC3) Sorry about this problem in the meantime. It only seems to happen to a very small minority of players.

Unfortunantly, because of changes to the global script, the new version won't work with old saves. :/ I hope to have a patch ready in a day or two at most, with a new version up on the website soon after that.

lol, SSH! :b

Actually though, I posted this because I found myself sitting in front of the computer, blankly looking at the wall. I thought it was kind of funny that I suddenly had nothing to do with myself.  So I decided to write a little thing about it.

Now, though, I'm happily catching up on all the Gaming Goodness(TM) I missed while working on Prodigal. "Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth" is pretty darn cool!

ggp:

Spoiler

That is a known bug in this version of the game. walk SOUTH well into the screen, then walk back north and it should switch you to the north side of the pool. This is happening because you actually enter the far south side of the pool by the rocks ABOVE the zone line that would take you back to the jail cell north side. This bug will be fixed for the next version.

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SSH-OK, thank you! I figured it couldn't be something we'd done, as I never had this problem. I'll see about getting the newest version of AGS and porting Prodigal v1.1 to it.

Yikes, I used the save system extensively while testing, up to around 16 saves and never had a problem. The save engine is a direct plugin from SSH. I'll talk to him about it ASAP. In the meantime, I'll see if I can recreate the bug.

Is anyone else who is playing the game having this problem?


Edit: I just tried to recreate it and I can't...I PMed SSH on the subject, we'll see if he has any idea what it could be...

InCreator, that is a bug, alright. Thanks for reporting. I'll have it fixed for the next version. Glad to hear you are enjoying it!

ggp-

Spoiler

The exit to the bedroom is on the left wall, not the bottom. Just walk to the left and you will get back to the hallway in the cabin.

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Well, this is another one I can't reproduce...

Spoiler

Have you tried clicking on the door to exit the base of the tower, then click the middle mouse button? This should cause you to instantly arrive at your destination. If nothing happens, then Jacob must be stuck somewhere, although I'm not sure how. Do you mean AFTER you changed to the base of the tower area, you clicked USE on the stairs, or did you click WALK, then immediately USE in the top of the tower? Clicking USE on the TOP stairs should trigger an "unhandled event" e.g., the game just gives you the red X. Clicking USE on the BOTTOM of the stairs should cause Jacob to walk over to them and arrive at the top, unscathed...

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Candle, I can't reproduce this bug...could you PM me more details, or send me a save game file of it? Otherwise, I think it must just be an AGS bug. You shouldn't have been able to walk over there, the walkable area ends about an inch to the right of the rock sticking out of the water...a long way from the edge of the screen.

I clicked all around all over the place on the edge of the screen and couldn't get Jacob to go over there...

Wow, that's great Candle! Thanks! I'm on a modem too, so I know I'd certainly appreciate a split version!

Stefano- Eek! That is a bug, alright. A cute little typo. There is nothing you can do with the light though, so "using" on it wouldn't have done anything but give you a red X. Prolly why I didn't catch it.   

Oh, no problem, Barbarian!  I was just giving you my reasoning for doing what I did. If enough people complain, I will certainly make changes. Sorry if I sounded defensive, I wasn't trying to be...just putting down my 2 cents of the wheres and whys. 

Iv4n, the game is rendered in 320x240, only the character sprites and certain cutscenes will see a benefit from the higher resolution. I still consider it "the" way to play, however. Run the game in either 320x240, or 640x480, and it should work. I tested it on a friend's LCD and was fine in those resolutions...

Mordalles, I feel your pain, believe me. I'm still on a modem, too. I crunched the game as much as I possibly could...as you'll see, it is over 120MB when uncompressed.

My modem is actually the reason the game came out a day late.  :