Messages

The game has finally been released!

[by visionmind]

by visionmind

You want us to keep you safe by flying your planes and driving your vehicles.  You want us to keep the peace by efficiently deploying your law enforcement and military forces.  You want us to keep you fed by managing your food production.
We are the Artificially Intelligent Distributed Network.

But there is one thing you should know. There is nothing artificial about us.

About
Wrecked follows a young man who crashes into a barren desert landscape, with his sister, and discovers the only way to escape is to find out why they crashed in the first place.

Background
Initially, Wrecked was just supposed to be a quick starter project to cut my teeth on, but after more than a year later I've learned there is no such thing as a quick project.  In many ways, it is one big experiment to prove to myself that I can go from A to Z with a game.  I'm also eager to see how people react to it, particularly with certain design choices.

Notes
Updated Wrecked 1.1
I've added feedback for many interactions has been added, or modified.
I've modified a few of the backgrounds.
Unfortunately, because of some significant changes, this version's saved games won't be compatible with the old version.
I've changed the location of an item. Which one?

Spoiler

The bandages

[close]

Walkthrough
Available Here

Download
Wrecked Download Page.

visionmind

Yeah, I'd have to agree with Gribbler to a certain extent. By using 3D platformer they completely lost my interest.

It doesn't help that I'm not a huge fan of 3D platformers, and cheap 3D character animation is a painful pet peeve of mine.  Good 3D character animation is great, but because it's so expensive and games like this, and the new Jane Jensen Moebius game, just can't afford it, I'd prefer 2D (even stylized) animation, or in the very least pre-rendered 3D animation, with the same budget.
That said, I love 2D platformers of all kinds (assuming it needs to be a platformer) including ones that use 3D geometry, like Trine 1-2, Giana Sisters and The Cave, which were all beautiful games without huge AAA budgets.  Or even a beautiful game like Fossil Echo, with it's 2D characters and 3D pre-rendered backgrounds. In other words, while I don't need the mechanics to be exactly like the originals (disregarding KQ8, which was probably the game that originally inspired my pet peeve) they/I sort of got unlucky with their current choice of design.
This is, of course, just my own preference, and it seems like other people don't mind that it's a 3D platformer so that's a good thing for them. I do hope they find an audience out there, even if it's not me.

I'll just have to wait another few decades before they reboot it again, in a style that doesn't so conflict with my tastes.

visionmind

Yes, I was able to get into the editor, so that worked (thanks Crimson Wizard).
But I then tried to create my own test game using the standard BASS template, changed the resolution to 640x400, changed from 16 bit color to 32-bit color, and changed from using DirectDraw5 to Direct3D 9. I then added some of my own backgrounds into the first room's background, replacing the template background.  When I tried to run the test, I got two critical errors (it wouldn't let me run the game)

This was the first one.


After clicking OK I got this one


Also, when I tried to change/add backgrounds it gave me another error:


Unfortunately when I tried to save my demo game the program crashed.

Sorry, I'm not sure how much that will help.

Good luck,

visionmind

This unexpected error threw when I tried to start AGSEditor.exe.  After clicking OK, the splash screen just remained until I ended its task.

I'm using Windows 7 x64.

Even still, I'm really looking forward to a limitless AGS, so thank you for your work.

visionmind

A beta version of the game is available and I'm looking for playtesters! If you're interested, head on over to my Help Wanted page for more details.

Hello,

I am looking for playtesters to mainly help find bugs for my game Wrecked, but other general feedback is also welcome.

Please reply below if you're interested and I'll PM you the link to the game.

Thank you.

visionmind

Yeah, I've used AGS, and even made a small platform game with it.  And while I did get used to its UI and the GML, my collisions system never worked reliably.  I even scoured around looking for a well made collision system in an open demo to learn from, but the better examples always got into some unexplained bitwise sort of math that was way, way over my head.  Floor and ceiling corners were the worst, not to mention when trying to collisions to work with a thrown object.  It obviously can be done, but not without some complicated programming (relative to my skills, anyway).
The book Game Maker's Companion might have a good solution, but unfortunately it's not commonly available without buying the book. Here's the result (youtube video).

Good luck.

Thanks Khris, that works perfectly.  That's the sort of solution that makes me realize how much I overcomplicated the whole issue.

visionmind

Awesome monkey, that makes sense.  Thank you.

To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what you're asking, but I'll try...  AGS is a raster system, unlike Flash, which means upscaling will usually make things blurry/pixelated.  I don't think it's that big of a deal, but it really is a subjective opinion, ie it really is a matter of taste for you.  I think there are different audiences who prefer different things.  I think most people here in the adventure world don't mind, since a lot of games are made in 320x200 and upscaled to fullscreen, whereas 'out there' people are always demanding higher and higher resolutions.  4K.  That is, of course, my own observation.  You could go to a higher resolution, but I can attest they do add a significant amount to your workload, but if that's worth it to you, that's fine.  That said, I also don't see the point of making it in 640x480 just to upscale in Photoshop, as you said.  Either work in a higher resolution, or let AGS upscale it for you.  That said, it really is a matter of personal preference.

As far as feedback on your art style, that really is personal taste.  Just look at a bunch of games in production, or finished, and you'll see a wide variety of art styles that people enjoy.  The most important thing is if your consistent.

I apologize if I misunderstood what your were asking, but either way, good luck.

visionmind

I'm curious to know understand the conditions of why this was instigated this way, since it does seem somewhat counter-intuitive to the rest of AGS behavior.

The situation that I had this for was that when a certain object was visible, the mouse cursor would change to a custom cursor (which requires Anyclick) over the specific hotspot.  Interacting with the hotspot would make the object visible, while the Anyclick would change the room, which wouldn't work if it was all on the same click.
The hack I implemented to stop this from happening was to put a timer in the repeatedly execute, and then a test on the Anyclick function to ensure that it would not be called if it was on the same timer Step as the Interact function.  It worked, but only after a long while of trying to figure out if I was doing something wrong.

Thank you monkey_05_06 for taking the time to show and explain this.  It is very much appreciated.

visionmind

In this case, it is the Default AGS template, which means the Room script (and everywhere else) is completely clean.  That was one of the things that kept me up, though, was trying to find if I was recalling the Anyclick function from somewhere else, but I wasn't.  In other words, I'm pretty sure this occurs, regardless of the project (although I could be wrong, since I can't try every project ever made ).

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 );
  }
  else if (button == eMouseRight || button == eMouseWheelSouth){
    // right-click our mouse-wheel down, so cycle cursor
    mouse.SelectNextMode();
  }
}

I don't know if Anyclick is supposed to do this, or if this is an 'unintended' feature, but either way it's not how things usually work in AGS.

The setup is (as an example) is a room with a an object (oCup) and a hotspot (hBlue).  The object (oCup) starts off visible.

Code: ags

function hBlue_AnyClick()
{
  if (oCup.Visible == false) {
    Display("Anyclick has been used.");
    oCup.Visible = true;
  }
}
function hBlue_Interact()
{
  if (oCup.Visible == true) {
    Display("Interact has been used.");
    oCup.Visible = false;
  }
}

Now, unless I'm misunderstanding how Anyclick works and can't find this documented (which is a possibility), the Anyclick function should not be called initially, because the object is not initially invisible.  It seems like it should require a separate click, once oCup is visible, in order to be called.
And yet when I Interact with the object, on the same game engine step, it also calls Anyclick AFTER it calls the Interact function (which makes oCup invisible), so that Anyclick runs, even though it's function is before the Interact function in the code.

Usually AGS does not do this. If a test is false initially, and then made true after the initial test, it usually must wait until the game engine step in order to be tested again.

Now, I might be missing something, I might not know something, but either way I found this quite unintuitive.  It kept me for quite a while last night, trying to figure out what I was missing.  Is this how AGS is supposed to handle Anyclick?

BTW it behaves this way with Objects too.

So I've just finished all the basic puzzle scripting, so it's possible to play the game from beginning to end without any debugging cheats.

The next step will be to import the dialog/reaction text, assess all the sound effects needed and polish all the GUIs.  That will be a big step, but at least the basic infrastructure is complete.  Yay!

Oh, and I've also added a few more screenshots.

visionmind

Yeah, the interface is something I've put a lot of thought into, and I agree, a lot of icons is annoying.  Currently my gui has three verbs, walk, look at and interact (and an inventory item, if its active), and the right mouse button is used to scroll through them (along with an inventory item, if its active).  I would like to combine the walk and interact, since walking is never really needed on its own, but I'm not quite there yet.
One of the main things I learned from reading the many forum posts about user interfaces, is that everyone has different preferences.  Some people like the bunch of verbs.  Some people like the coinGUI (like Monkey Island 3 or Full Throttle).  Some people even like the 1 click interface (like Machinarium or Kings Quest 7).  Even with the 2-click interface, some people prefer left interact/right look, while others love the left look/right interact.  For me, I sort of feel the 2-click is a bit too minimalist, but if I had to pick I would prefer left interact/right look.  In the end, I realize, all I can do is experiment and see how well my gui works.  I, of course, hope it does because it's my own preference but the people who play it may not agree.  I'll have to see.
Thanks for your feedback, selmiak.

visionmind

That is really true.  More than once, I find myself working for hours on something that is only in the game for a few seconds.

Thank you, Mandle.

visionmind

Thanks ChaptainD. It's been a good learning experience, which is valuable, especially learning what's important to spend time on and what's not as important.

You want us to keep you safe by flying your planes and driving your vehicles.  You want us to keep the peace by efficiently deploying your law enforcement and military forces.  You want us to keep you fed by managing your food production.
We are the Artificially Intelligent Distributed Network.
There is only one problem.  There is nothing artificial about us.

Wrecked is about a young man who crashes into a barren desert landscape, with his sister, and discovers the only way to escape is to find out why they crashed in the first place.

Initially, Wrecked was just supposed to be a quick project to cut my teeth on, but after almost nine months I've learned there is no such thing as a quick project.  While nearly all of the backgrounds are done, and most of the basic puzzle scripting, I have yet to finish the dialog, sound effects and the all the little script fine-tuning.

visionmind

UPDATE 2014-08-28
I've finished all of the basic puzzle scripting, so now the game is playable from start to finish (albeit without any dialog or sound effects).  I've also uploaded a couple new screenshots.

UPDATE 2014-11-21
Betatesting Starts!

UPDATE 2015-01-02
Wrecked has been released!

Great, thank you.