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Here's a little preview of some new art from Rise of the Hidden Sun to tide you over until we get the animation and coding finished up for the first episode. This screenshot is from the second (of four) episodes:



BTW, anyone who wants to lend a hand with traditional 2D animation -- we can always use another artist.

For those who are interested, AdventureGamers.com has just published the new installment in my increasingly mistitled "monthly" game design journal. This time, I talk about my thoughts on what goes into designing a character--both the outward appearance and the way you build personality through dialogue and actions. I hope you enjoy it.

http://www.adventuregamers.com/article/id,484/

This topic's probably been beaten to death here on the boards, but I couldn't find any RECENT beatings in the thread list, so I thought I'd pose the question again. What is your favorite adventure game GUI, and why? Let's stick with post-text editor games, i.e. KQV and beyond. What's the general feeling about Sierra vs LucasArts?

Personally, I am kind of partial to the LucasArts style, but still chose Sierra style for my game because I felt it gave me more control to do the game as I wanted to do it as a designer. I did go with LucasArts-style conversations, though.

I think the least intrusive GUI is probably the MI3-era games and the verb coin. Incidentally, I know there's one bouncing around here--does anyone have the link for the verb coin GUI for AGS games?

Cheers!
Josh

I need a screengrab of the alley next to the tavern in the town of Spielburg from QFG1. Unfortunately, I don't have the discs handy (they're in storage on the other side of the state) and I can't find any screenshots of it online. Can anyone help out? Either the EGA or VGA version would be fine--I'm not picky. Thanks!

I'm pretty stoked about this, so I wanted to share it with everyone. You can now download and listen to the musical overture for Rise of the Hidden Sun (click on the link on our news and updates page: http://www.chapter11studios.com/newsupdates.htm). The overture actually tells the story of the game in a musical composition. The finished overture will be a few minutes longer, but this gives you a sense of it. It will play during the main menu screen and end credits. What do you think?

Here's the rough diagonal walk cycle for my cowboy hero character. Is it as wonky as I think it is? Suggestions please!

Hey gang,

Here are some roughs of a sprite for Jake, the cowboy lead character in my upcoming Wild West adventure-comedy. I stress the word rough, by the way. These are just to get the ball rolling, and (among other things) lack a lot of detail that will be added later.

He's also looking a wee bit bowlegged and angry (especially on the walk from behind). Also they all need one hookup frame to smooth it out.

Anyway, enough of the preliminary comments. I'd be grateful if you could take a look and offer comments on how to improve. Anything from "his head really ought to move a little when he walks" (and I agree, it should) to anything else you can think of.

So in addition to my secret life as a wannabe adventure game designer, I write for a travel website in my day job. Specifically, I write a semi-monthly column on adventure travel. And, I'd love for it to get some exposure and have some people see and read my work. So please, if you're at all interested, take a gander over here: Secrets of the Grand Canyon.

Oh, and to make this kinda relevant to adventure gamers out there, look for a new Adventure Architect column later this month at AdventureGamers.com.

Thanks!
Josh

Since I'm not writing an Adventure Architect for adventuregamers.com this month (it's baseball season and the Sox are in the playoffs, so my brain is numb), I thought I'd post this snazzy new screen shot from Rise of the Hidden Sun to keep you all interested.



It's a scrolling shot, two screens wide at 800x600 each. If you look at the rope that's holding the bridge together on the front side of the bridge, I think you'll see what the obstacle here is for Jake.

We're smack dab in the middle of designing (or I should say redesigning) the main character in RotHS, Rattlesnake Jake Dawson. Below is a screenshot with five sprites on it which represent various takes we've had on the character over the course of the project. The sprites, as you will see, are numbered 1 through 5.

Sprite 1 is a "frankenstein" version I made combining elements that I liked from a bunch of the sprites separately. Sprite 2 is an old sample of him walking with softer lines than the harsh black outlines in the other versions, sprite 3 is a gunslinger/han solo version (which is cool but a little too modern and composed for what he's supposed to be like), sprite 4 is a recent take, and sprite 5 is an old old version that I kinda like. None of these were optimized too look great--this is for mockup purposes only, and the final version will obviously cleaner/better sized/etc.

What I'd love to get from you guys here is some thoughts on the designs themselves, and of course any tips you can provide. Also, how about a color scheme for him? Nothing is set in stone right now, so all options are on the table.

OK, here is the image:

Hey gang-

AdventureGamers.com has posted the latest installment of my game design journal here: http://www.adventuregamers.com/underground/article/id,423 This month's topic is project management/design documents. I hope some of you will find it interesting.

Just popping in to say hi and show off a little sketch that I  posted on the Chapter 11 Studios website. Get thee there!

http://www.chapter11studios.com/newsupdates.htm

And there will be a new Adventure Architect this month as well... 

hi gang-

some of you may recognize me as the guy who writes the adventure architect articles over at adventuregamers.com, or the guy who's making that wild west game at chapter11studios.com.... (or maybe you dont recognize me at all...)

but anyway, by day i am also a travel writer (aka my fulltime job) and i just published a new article that i want to pimp out... basically if it gets lots of clicks and finds an audience, i will get to do more of them.

here is the link! it's about adventure travel in maui, hawaii:
http://www.smarterliving.com/advice...ice.php?id=7241

thanks for checking it out!
-josh

Hey everyone,

Just a quick note to let anyone who might be interested know that the good folks over at AdventureGamers.com have posted the newest installment of my design journal, Adventure Architect. It's a bit more newsy than development-related this month, but I promise next month I'll get back to a design focus.

http://www.adventuregamers.com/underground/article/id,407

Anyway, enjoy if you so desire! And thanks for reading.

-Josh

I have a question about what to do re: background art vs animation on the quick sketch below.

Basically, when the character walks into the room, the ground is flat and the stairwell that you see on this sketch is hidden. After a few actions, he manages to drop a stalactite from the ceiling onto the ground, smashing into ground and busting open the hole with stairs that you see below.



My question is, if you were creating this screen, would you:

a) draw it with the ground flat, and then animate the falling stalactite and the stairs appearing?

or

b) draw it with the stairs showing up as is, and cover it with separate element image of flat ground on top of the stairs?

p.s. ignore the layout of the screen, it's just a quick sketch that I did to illustrate the question. the actual screen will fix the proportion problems etc.

Hi there,

I was wondering if there is anyone out there who has devised an organized way to map out dialogue trees in your game design document who would be willing to share your method with me?

Basically I'm getting ready to start writing the dialogue for a huge chunk of the game I'm working on, and there's a lot of things like "If character A has acquired object X, say this; if character A has not, say that; If character A talks about such and such with character B, he can talk about this and that with character C as well." So I'm just looking to see if anyone else has devised a logic tree kind of thing for dialogue in general already, or if I should go find my own system. I just didn't want to duplicate effort if there's already something useful out there that other people are using. I'll probably tailor anything that's out there to my needs anyway, but I think it would be easier to start with something than invent a thing from scratch.

Anyway, thanks in advance.

-Josh

Hey everyone,

I'm looking for someplace where I can download some Sierra-style GUIs. I checked out the AGS resources page and found this link:

---GUIs with AGS (German) - GUIs simulating SQ3, SQ4, SQ6, KQ5 and MI1 for you to try out, by Lucasfan.

But unfortunately that link is broken.

Can anyone help me out?

Thanks in advance.

-Josh

<snip>
To follow our progress, visit our news page:
http://www.chapter11studios.com/newsupdates.htm
</snip>

Something about this looks wrong to me, but I'm not sure what it is. I think it has something to do with the shoulders and arms as she walks. Suggestions welcome!

Hey all,

For those who are interested in following along on one person's game design odyssey, the latest installment of my design journal is now online and, as always, kindly hosted by the good folks at adventuregamers.com. This month, I discuss a boneheaded mistake I made early on that forced me to redo some of the work I'd already completed. Plus, there are snazzy screenshots with character sprites.

Find it online here:
http://www.adventuregamers.com/underground/display.php?id=365

-Josh