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That's actually still sort of unspecified. All I know is that I want them all to follow the same look, whatever path I may choose. I agree that the pitch black look does kill off quite a lot of potential emotion. In short: We'll see:)

Hey anian thanks for the feedback. I hadn't noticed that little leg-glitch, I'll nag Henrik about it As for textures, I think we're going almost 100% texture free, we will however do some form of cel shading, how exactly that turns out is still up to the gods though. Stay tuned, I say.

We've just updated the devblog with a little sneak peek at the Dockmaster's voice. Click his non-rendered portrait to check it out over at the slxgames website:



As always, feedback is mucho appreciato. 

Man I'd love to see this in action. Or rather, I'd love to see the results.

I hate to sound like a d1ck but honestly, is it just me or does TTG's take on JP look completely ass-side-up?  :o

I'm not referring to the gameplay, but the actual look of the game. I wonder what on earth they are doing? The colors and lighting is all bonkers. They missed the matinée feel of the movies completely, there's no magic here whatsoever. I am truly blown away by how difficult it seems to be for them to replicate the ambiance of the franchise. Can it truly be that difficult? Are they spreading themselves crazy thin? (as in: is only one poor malnourished artist working on this project??!).

It's obvious TTG have the talent... both tales, samnmax and the bttf games all look polished. But this? They must have the tightest budget on earth for this game. Too bad.

Hey y'all!

Henrik just updated the blog with a first pre-render of our new fancy 3d characters. Please note that this is NOT what the final scene will look like. Lighting, shading and other fancy shizzles still needs to be put in place, also the backdrop is going to be animated and obviously there will be music and more sound effects. This is merely a sneek peak at a work in progress. If you're curious, check it out on the devblog through the link in this picture:



Also, here's your chance to listen to the wonderful voice of Anthony Sardinha, who is also cast for the role of Bwana.

Comments, as always, are appreciated! Thanks.

heh, I'm actually doing my best not to implement in-jokes such as having chuck allover the place, but if you chose to see a plant as chuck, and not just an ordinary plant, I don't blame you.  My instinct too would be to hover and see if there's a chuck hotspot.

Just spamming with a quick update from the dev-blog. Don't forget to tell everyone you know to follow the damn thing! 

I've d1cked around quite a lot with this backdrop. I hope you who have played the "prototype", find the changes as improvements and not the opposite. (unprovements?)

Characters look awesome, man! Specially like Dietrich. Not sure why though.

Good job:)

[Armageddon:]

Armageddon: The fading gradient is just something I threw together, I agree it looks kind of out of place there. I'll likely wind up changing that a million times before release. Thanks for your comments:)

Ascovel: I couldn't agree more. Fish in pockets RULE.  

David Ostman: I know what you mean about low res vs high-res, it's a very good point. I only really see it as an issue with people who have played the prototype though, which quite frankly, isn't that many. It's a bigger problem for bigger brands such as MI, when doing their SE releases. So many details imagined differently by so many different players. I try not to see low-res art as a style in it's own right, but it's hard to ignore that the low-res style carries a certain awesome vibe with it. Had Gemini Rue had the same rating success if it were a high-res release, looking like, say, a cheaper version of the new DEUS EX game? I don't think so. The retro-vibe helped lift the game to indie-retro-loving heights. So there's no doubts that low-res has a lot going for it, in many ways. Man I could rant about that forever.



Thanks for the comments y'all! Keep 'em coming. They make a difference to keep things pumping!

I couldn't agree more with the lot of you. This is no literary masterpiece. Returning to Cocytus though, was a very nice experience for me, I love the place. If you're interested in books of this kind but actually want good writing, I can recommend Arthur C Clarke's RAMA and 2001 series, which basically do THE DIG, but, well, good. Those series are by no means perfect either though, but I'll gladly recommend them to any DIG fan since they are certainly in the same vein of storytelling, and, well, more polished.

Vince: Who knows, maybe it is. I hope some other fiery point n click soul comes to claim it after me 

Acovel: Nice thought, but no, no such luck. Unless it flew wayyyyyyy above my head, who knows.

I am thinking about doing a interactive\documentary on Gravity Waves and Einstein's general relativity.

Sweet. I have many times fantasized about creating interactive learning software in AGS, an honorable quest, I say.

In another life I would have spent all my waking hours turning Carl Sagan's COSMOS into a 80 hour long fully interactive museum, letting people through experiment and interaction experience the wonders of the universe.... Wow that sounds so cool I'm giving myself shivers.  8)

So, after lugging my five huge bags of (mostly) scifi books to the used book store, I got a 500 Kr bill and the question "If you wan't a couple of new books, just grab something from the shelf". Now, I'm about to move to another home, so the whole point of getting rid of these books was to not have so much lose junk to lug around. I was about to decline and walk out the door, when the familiar DIG logo caught my eye from one of the bookshelves.



I figured, heck, how much can it suck? I'll give it a chance.

Now, I'm no huge DIG fanatic, I like the game like any other average point n clicker obviously would, I am however specifically in love with the games' backdrop art, music and overall ambiance. The actual story never really stuck out to me as something worth getting all literate about. However, I decided to revisit the world of Cocytus a quickie by reading the book, and I'm very glad I did.

It brought me back to the beautiful purple/orange world and had me bathing in it's visual wonders once again. I liked being back. The story however was no doubts lacking, as everything that really mattered sort of suddenly got insta-solved on the last two pages of the book. I must admit though that I remember having the same feeling when beating the game. All pieces of the puzzle sort of dropped in place in a period of five minutes at the end, leaving the player/reader nothing but dazzled by all the cheap auto-happy-solutions. I personally, would not have minded if Foster took some liberties with the original story and tried to avoid the big deus-ex-machina type solution, or at least tried to embed it a bit better into the overall story arc.

As a stand-alone novel I think I would have dissed this book quite badly if it weren't for the fact that I have played the game and loved it's ambiance and art direction. As it is now, I found it a pleasant way to pass the time when sitting on the tram zooming about in Gothenburg.

Now, I'm curious to hear if anyone else here has read the book, and if so, what where your feelings about it? Also, are there any die-hard DIG fans out there who read the book? Did it strengthen the story or break it?

(Note: I posted this on mixnmojo a week or so ago but got no interesting replies whatsoever, thus I'm re-posting it here, hoping to find some firey soul who wants to discuss this with me.)

edit: PS. If anyone here is in Gothenburg, and would like to get their hands on this book, drop me a line and I'll gladly give it to you.

Sweet! Will be upgrading immediately.

Lots of nice new features and fixes! These two struck me as extra lovely:

* Middle mouse button now activates the "Copy co-ordinates to clipboard" option in all the room editor modes (ProgZmax)
* Fixed D3D tints not working properly (3.2 regression) (Nefasto)

Thanks CJ and everyone else who's been involved in this new version. I truly appreciate your effort.

It's good to see this project is still alive and kicking! Very, very promising.

Kudos to you for not talking during gameplay. There's nothing that drives me crazier than having to listen to some douchebag blabber randomly on top of perfectly good in game music and dialog.

I hadn't seen beacon before btw, what an awesome looking game.  :o

markbilly: Thanks! Yeah, we're still going for that nice sharp carved look. I'm trying not to deviate from the original style too much. Priority one though is to get all characters feel coherent, which they certainly don't do in the "prototype" of JD.

Armageddon: There will be outlines:)

David Ostman: I hear you, man. The tedious part is the actual import into AGS. A nice juicy "update" button would be very, very nice when working on frame-heavy characters, etc. But the pros of going 3d are becoming clearer and clearer to me. There is of course the tradeoff you mention, let's hope it doesn't become too much an issue. I trust Henrik to do a good job with the character animation, he is a very talented and experienced artist and should -with the sufficient amount of pain inflicted upon him- deliver excellent quality.  Regarding resolution, yes, all I can say is that I hope my campaigning and general whining about the issue will somehow win through. The AGS community has nothing to lose from turning the platform into an alternative for making fancy, high-res games.

What was this game you canceled? I'm intrigued.

Gemini Rue gets a 9/10 from IGN!

:o Congratulations! Impressive, most impressive.

And worst comes to worst, there's always doing pornography as a backup sideline for extra income!

How about a weekly porn game instead? 

Replace months with decade...

You're an artist. You'll be able to make money. Good luck!

Sums it up beautifully!

Looks pretty no doubts! Thanks for the link.