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Oh, hey, awesome! A Finnish movie, too.
Back when this came out, I recorded it off the Finnish national broadcasters website and had a copy of it up so I could share it with friends, but didn't dare make it public for copyright reasons. Good to see it's out in the open now!

Thanks! Yes, 100 % made in Finland. It's really amazing (and a bit weird) that we got to do a government funded Lovecraft movie! Its festival rounds are over, so now you can share it much as you like!

WOW! Amazing stuff! Condolences on the passing of the actor who played the professor. He was great!

The main actor reminded me a lot of Jeffrey Combs (Herbert West from The Reanimator movies), high praise for a Lovecraft movie!

The special effects for the creatures were very good for a short indie film!

What was the approximate budget of the movie, if it's okay to ask? $100,000-$150,000 (U.S. dollars) or so would be my guess (Not including promotional/travel/competition costs. Just the cost of production until the final cut was "in the can").

(Also, no disrespect intended, but the line "It must be gas. What else could make a sound like that?" made my immature mind giggle)

Thanks! Yes, our late professor was a great actor, very professional and a easy to work with. His "stare" at the middle of the film is one of the high points of the movie, I think.

The budget was pretty close what you guessed. I think it was around 130.000 â,¬. Big part of it went to the rent of the actual icebreaker where we shot the film. But it was nice that everyone got paid for their work, for once!

And I've heard so many gas / ass jokes about the film, that nothing can shock me anymore!

Hello there!

Eons ago I posted here a trailer for our Lovecraftian short horror film "Sound from the Deep". It had a good run at film festivals, and we won over 10 awards, and got to travel around the world with it.

Now it's finally found its place on YouTube:

Have a look, and spread the word! Curious to hear your comments, too.

What is the scaling value of the character? If the animation is using different sized loop (for example the loop is 10 pixels wider than the default character sprite) and the scaling is not 100 %, there can be a slight offset. I'm not sure if that's the case, but I posted a question about it yesterday: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=59095.0

If you have changed the walkable area scaling, that could have caused the slight offset.

There's also Character.LockViewAligned, idk if may work better?

Thanks for the tip! I just tested that, but it the results seem the same. And my all of my animations are aligned at the center, so the default LockView is basically what I want. I feel that these commands are useful if the scaling is at 100 %, and the sprite's size is changed and/or position in the frame is different. This is from the manual:

eAlignCentre Leaves the frames centered in the middle.
This is the default and using this is equivalent to just calling LockView.

When the action is blocking, and I know the scaling of the character, I can play around with the width of the animation spite. Like if I change the width from 52 to 54 it may work better when the character is scaled to certain value. Problem is that the player can look at the item in several different scaling situations, and some of them scale nicely, some cause that irritating jump.

You can make sure that the width in pixels of all character sprites is either even or odd. If the tiny offset persists, you have to make all character sprites the same width.

Thanks for the input! Yes, I've used even pixel sizes in my sprites width. In my example, my character has an object, that he can look at any time. The normal character width is 50, but this look animation has a width of 52. All of the loops have the character aligned in the middle of the frame. Depending on the characters scaling, it will show a annoying jump when the animation plays. Sometimes it's bigger, sometimes smaller (character's scaling value affects it).

It might be that it doesn't bother so much other people, but I find it quite annoying. So if there's no magic tricks, I need to think about making the frame of the character a bit wider.

I have a small problem with couple of my animations. 

When my character's scaling is not 100 %, and I want to animate him using a loop that is bigger than his defaul sprite, there will be a slight, but an annoying scaling offset. It can be seen more clearly if the animation is only for the hand, or head, and rest of the body stays still. The effect is that the character jumps about 1/2 pixels left or right.

Is there anyway to avoid this? In certain cases, the animation loop has to be bigger than the character sprite, and if the character is scaled up or down, the problem will show up. I found out that I can fix it a little bit by moving my sprite to the other end of the frame when drawing it, so that the action fits to the default sprite size. Then I used LockViewOffset to center it again in the game. But even then, I can notice a slight jolt or a jump in the sprite.

Is there anyway to make make the transition absolutely flawless if the scaling is not 100% and there's a difference in the loop size?

I tried to search older topics for this, but couldn't find them. Any help is appreciated!

I've been waiting for this game sincer your first post (2017 wow!). I'm curious about the mechanics and I'm in love with the visuals. Good luck and best wishes for the final stretch of the development!

Very nice to hear that, thanks for the support! Yes, the first post might have been in 2017, but I started making the game at least a year before, maybe two! I defend myself by saying that I've done other stuff too, and in some years it wasn't possible for me to work on the game so much. And at first I knew nothing about coding...

This game is looking outstanding! I'll be keeping any eye on your progress.
It's reminding me a little like Dark Seed, but I think that game was also based on Lovecraft.

Keep going! 

Thanks, nice to hear that! I guess there is some similarity, in both games there's a building at the heart of the story. And an ordinary person who get sucked into cosmic horror.

The title screen looks really, really good.  Creepy, but not TOO creepy.

Thanks, I'm quite happy with that pic too, it kind of sets the mood and tone for the game nicely.

I'm glad you'll have more time coming up to devote to the game so we'll finally be able to play it soon(ish?)...I'm guessing your "early 2021" date no longer applies!   

Oops, I forgot that I gave that deadline, need to fix it! So let's now say the game will be ready this year. 

Anywho, I know you've said you can die mid-game or at technically any point if you're not keeping your character's needs met, but assuming you get to the end-end without dying, how long would you estimate that the gameplay is?  I like that you have plenty of "time/days" to complete what you need to, and that you have the ability to pause the game (something I'd definitely require!).  I can't wait to see more as you near the end of development!

The gameplay duration varies depending on players actions, but it's surprisingly high. When I'm testing the game and breeze through it, skipping dialog etc, it will take me a couple of days. So I'd say the duration is around 10-20 hours, which is a lot more than I thought it would be, when starting the project. On the other hand, if you just sleep, rest and skip everything, you could probably do it in a few hours!

Thanks for the guerilla marketing, Mandle! Those were some nice words.

So a quick comment on the progress while we're here! I haven't posted anything in ages, but the game has progressed slowly, but steadily all the time. And now with Mandle's fixes, it's much more pleasent experience when the irritating typos and awkward grammar errors have been ironed out. My current work will end in a couple of weeks, and after that I can commit myself to the game full-time. So hopefully this will be the beginning of the big push, that will complete the game.

Also, here's a new promo pic!

Looks great, just like all of your animations and graphics! I'm glad the game is back on track.

Congratulations on the release! I hope I have time to play this next weekend!

If you like, give it a test and see if my game has this bug or not. Though I think I tested insistently to make sure the sound system worked as I wanted.

Hi! I did a quick test with your game, but I don't think your sound slider uses System.Volume? The sound slider is not a "master volume" and doesn't affect the music, or speech. So everything seems to work nicely. The issue I encountered is only with the System.Volume.

I cannot tell from the script, but do you change the slider's position too when you set System.Volume? They should normally stay in sync.

No, I don't touch the slider. It's always in the correct position. Moving the slider does this: System.Volume = sldMasterVolume.Value;.

Also, don't really understand what system_vol is for there.

Yes, it's not needed. I've tested many different approaches here. Main thing is that I couldn't change the volume unless I put System.Volume =1; before the volume loading script in eEventRestoreGame. Now that I've done that, it seems I can adjust it in many ways.

Just trying things here, and for some reason this seems to work.

Code: ags

if(event == eEventRestoreGame && data !=999) {
   System.Volume =1;   
   AfterLoadGame();
  }

The slider is again at 0-100 values, like it should be. The sound is playing at correct volume, when loading a save game. Even if I have muted the volume with the slider, it remembers that and stays muted. Using a zero works too, unless the slider is set to value 0. I can't see no other reason for this than an engine bug.

Ok, so, the values are correct, but they fail to be set to System.Volume. Other possibilities are:

I didn't notice any scripts that are overriding System.Volume, but it's possible I missed something. But I got some results just now, something weird is definetely going on! If I put System.Volume =0; before the AfterLoadGame, like this:

Code: ags

if(event == eEventRestoreGame && data !=999) {
   System.Volume =0;   
   AfterLoadGame();
  }

It works! Unless I have put the slider to min value 0... Then it plays the System.Volume at 100% again. Not sure what's going on, but I got it working by giving the slider a Min Value of 1 instead of 0. In the end I have now this system, and I can restore the saved System.Value.

Code: ags

// MASTER VOLUME SLIDER
function sldMasterVolume_OnChange(GUIControl *control)
{
  System.Volume = sldMasterVolume.Value;
  system_vol = sldMasterVolume.Value;
}

Code: ags

// ON EVENT
if(event == eEventRestoreGame && data !=999) {
  System.Volume =0;
  if(system_vol !=0) System.Volume = system_vol;
}

But it's not perfect either, using the slider value of 1 instead of 0, I can't completely mute the sound...

I hoped the above problem is solved, did not read all the thread. Just wanted to say that System.Volume definitely suppose to be a part of the saved game now.

At least for me, the System.Volume is not saved with the save game. And I can't seem to load it from the config file either. It would be great if someone else could confirm this (or the opposite!). I forgot to mention that I'm using version 3.5.0.23. I'll get back to this tomorrow.

The problem with this approach is that moving the "sounds" slider does not respect their relative values but instead sets them all to the same volume.

Yes, I think this would work if all the sound clips are played at the default volume. So each sound clip has to be at correct volume when importing them into the game. It is a quite big downside that you couldn't adjust the volume clips individually.

I don't have a clue about this but I was thinking that instead having a System.Volume you can split each type of sound separately like for music, sound, speech and ambient sound.

Thanks for the suggestion! I like the idea of the Master Volume and don't want too many sliders, but if it's not working correctly, I guess I could make a "Sound volume slider" that controls both the sound and the ambient sound. Then I would have the music on one slider and all the sounds on a separate sliders.

I'm sorry I couldn't help! The last thing I would suggest would be moving the call to load the volume config in game_start if it fits the logic of your game, but otherwise I'm totally out of ideas. Might simply be a weird bug, like you suggested!

Thanks anyway! Good to know that I should be doing the right thing here, and that it's not my crappy code! 

A small update, if I use the config file to store the System.Volume and do this:

Code: ags

if(event == eEventRestoreGame && data !=999) {
        
   AfterLoadGame();
   Display("System.Volume is %d", System.Volume);
  }

It displays the correct value! So the game says the System.Volume is 13 for example, but I can hear everything playing at 100 value. It must mean that the config file is working, but the actual sound that is playing doesn't obey the System.Volume. If I adjust the slider, the volume jumps to correct value. Weird...

If you define a function in your global script, you need to add it to the header (globalscript.ash) so it can be used anywhere in the game, although I'm not 100% sure if that is relevant here.

Ah, yes. I didn't have that in the header, but I tried this adding the whole code there too, and it didn't help. Weird thing is that I can do this, for example:

Code: ags

if(event == eEventRestoreGame && data !=999) {
    System.Volume =10;
  }

And the volume nicely jumps to the correct value. It seems I can only change the volume here by giving it a fixed number. Using an int doesn't seem to affect it. So that has me thinking that it is a bug of some sort. Especially when I saw the same behaviour in the two games I tested. I think I just reset the slider to max value when loading the game, and then the volume and the slider values are in sync.