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Great job on those walk cycles, man!

I realize what insane amounts of work must lie behind making them feel that good. (I too found the forward walk cycle to be the trickiest, it's a very odd thing to animate isn't it?!)

I like your backdrops too, though I believe they could use some brightness/contrast tweaks and some cleaning up - but in essence the magic is already in them, and that's the tricky part!

I hope you keep the passion for this project boiling, I am very much looking forward to its release.

Looks great! Love the style and music.

Best of luck!

Ascovel: Thanks for upping my head on that talk, interesting stuff! Gotta agree with you on the reactions though. You'd wish a crowd would go "YAY!" when someone mensions Monkey Island, not "meeehh".

Sythe: Thanks sythe! Regarding that rat puzzle, I'm not surprised it comes to bite me in the rear again, I did a lot of ugly scripting in that room. Yuck.  :

Once I've done the first three parts, I plan on stitching them together into one longer game, so *then* the first part will have a functional save/load, and a lot of other things I intend to improve it with.

That's a good idea! I've considered doing the same for the Journey Down but I have now realized that the different chapters will, technically, be so completely different that for me this would never work out. Hopefully this won't be an issue for you.

Good job anyhow! Keep it up!

thanks, man! Antialiasing is working fine now!

Thanks Gothic + Leafshade. This made me realize that I am not running the newest release of AGS.

This however gives rise to another question -which honestly I feel a bit stupid asking- where can I download AGS 3.2? I found a thread in the technical forum but the dl link was broken. 

I have done some searching on the forums but have had a hard time getting a straight answer to this question:

Is it true that there is no way to have antialiased fonts in AGS when they are displayed against... say, my backdrop?

Lookin forward to this! Stay focused!

Looks promising, but holy mother of monkeys....

I just keep walking and walking and walking and walking. This game never runs out of rooms!  :o Am I being trolled?

on the waterfront
taxi driver
cool hand luke

I like this style. Here are some of my thoughts on why the pics are looking a bit flat. These comments are general but some are specific to the picture with the ruined building with swamp foreground.

* You are only rendering the front faces of your volumes, never their sides. Do not fear perspective!
* You've got nice ambient occlusion but never cast any harsh shadows. (or sharp highlights) Do not fear your light source!
* Your middleground and foreground have roughly the same value range. Separate them more. (add some reflections in the water from the door opening etc) Do not fear reflections!

btw, the fuse box or whatever it is has the same value as the sky and has the same shape as a window. At first glance the viewer will be much confused. Also, I recommend merging your entire file a little now and then not to get to barred in by your own framework. The more layers, the more difficult it is to try out big changes in the picture.

Keep up the good work!

Missed the IRC event but just watched the 2008 downloadable ceremony and thought it was awesome. Good fun seeing all these characters we know and love mingle together, presenting awards and whatnot. A neat little thing that certainly bonds the community permanently. Honestly I'm not sure how important the interactivity of it was though. It could just as well have been recorded and posted as a video on youtube. This would no doubts be good external exposure for AGS as a platform as well. Also, being a video it would allow for more crazy editing such as adding short, memorable sequences from games, etc.

I realize making such a ceremony is incredible amounts of work however. I'm impressed by the 2008 effort, it was very well executed in many ways.

So in short, I don't know which is better irc or download, but a video ceremony would -apart from being a fun event - ALSO be good constant, passive promotion for AGS.

edit: just read the whole thread and see that video event has been mentioned, do not confuse this with what I am proposing. Not the same idea. I'm talking edited recorded ags material, not live actor stuff.

Good job on landing the PC Gamer coverage, man! That is some wonderful exposure you got there.

So I have to tell myself I don't care about it till it's finished. There is always room to tweak things (not recreate) when you're game is finished, but it should be finished. Let the people that play test it judge it. Changes are the things that would bother you are actually not picked up by the crowd and are fine the way they were to start with.

Amen! The tweak trap is a dangerous one! It is always more comfortable spending time remaking things you aren't content with, instead of actually finishing the stuff you haven't even begun work on. I'm certain this kills very many projects in their infancy. If you can focus on just finishing everything you have set out to do, instead of falling in the tweak trap over and over again, you'll find that you can do amazingly much in a very short time!

Regarding time estimation, the one thing I learned is that nothing takes up so much time as animation. So ask yourself if you truly need all 37 of them or if you through some nifty trick could reuse several of them and thus require less animations. It will save you lots of time and help you avoid loads of unnecessary headache (a good example would be: make sure your character can be mirrored so all char animations can be used for both left and right without being redone.)

Hey all!

Just wanted to mention that Simon D'souza, the musician who did all the sweet jazzy reggae music on chapter one of The Journey Down, has just released the entire soundtrack on his website! Also make sure to check out his other freaky musical creations while you are at it, it's balls to the walls whacked out awesome!

Also, here's a neat little mashup video he did with some comments about the music.

Enjoy the music! 

Thanks for the kind words CosmoQueen! Regarding chapter two, I'm equally curious!

Btw, here are a couple of interviews about the making of the game if anyone is interested:

Interview on Zombie Apocalypse
Interview on the Slow down

As well as some of my thoughts on backdrop design for adventure games:

My own article on HardyDev

Your test video looks great. Nice flow!
Very curious how this will turn out. Best of luck to you!

Crimson Wizard: That was an animation test for chapter two:) I have remade it now in 640 x 480. It looks awesome.

GarageGothic: I never animate anything in grayscale. I always do that stuff after having colored the whole piece. For better or for worse:)

Snarky:

Thanks for your kind words and lovely honest feedback! Regarding the japanese stereotype I gotta admit that was a bit of a cheap shot, hopefully I'll be able to steer away from similar low-blows in the future. All other comments are valid as well. I will keep it all in mind for chapter two! Only problem is, the more I keep raising the bar in one place, the more I need to keep on raising it in the rest. It's an arms race against myself that I appear to be having a very, very hard time to win.

mouthuvmine:

Agreed on the character outlines. When zoomed I liked the look of it but it never blended very well once it was 1:1. As you yourself mentioned, this will solve itself by upping the resolution. That's my plan. As for sound, chapter two will have a more detailed soundscape I can promise you that!

ddq: Thanks for the feature, man:)

BaconPigbutt: Thanks for playing!

Dualnames: Thanks! Let's hope the story evolves in a direction that is more to your liking!

Mordalles: Thank you! If you're a sucker for visuals... Chapter two will look even better:)

forest_guru: Glad you liked the game and the music! I am incredibly fortunate to have found such a skilled and fitting musician for the game.

Sughly: Chapter two is no less than a year away, hope you'll survive until then!

lazycalm: Thanks!!

buddha: Regarding alternated descriptions, I agree! It was actually first at the end of the production I realized this was important so you'll only find such descriptions in a few select places. I'll do a better job at this in chapter two, I promise. Also promise to bring in some more backstory dialogs with Kito:)

man, that cute little animation where the bear by the stove gives the other bear a kiss... it just rocked my socks off. What an absolutely awesome little piece of animation. good job!