Exorcise the RAM Ghosts! Confess your game dev regrets!

[Retro Wolf]

My on off relationship with Games Development since 2009 has generated a lot of unfinished projects. The games that our beloved AGSer Ghost calls "RAM Ghosts". I was thinking about it today and felt motivated to write this:

CLICK HERE!

So who wants to share their best RAM ghost regrets? Maybe you've got a screenshot or two of a project that only you know about. Half an unfinished walk cycle?
Maybe you've got something lurking on your harddrive from the old days, the embarrassing noob days!
Come on don't be shy! You might even get get motivated to pick up an old project, be a RAM GhostBuster!

[Ghost]

I can't tell you how proud I am right now. I must be the most smiling man on earth and that is awesome.

I'll make sure to share an exorcism right here, just need to dig up some screenies.

[monkey424]

Just a few years ago, I had a handful of RAM ghosts floating around. But they're slowly being exhumed, or reincarnated, or something.

Except for this one..



No, not this one. Too many painful memories.

[Fitz]

Oh man... Aside from games, I dabble in prose and comics -- and the amount of things I started and dropped, or abandoned halfway through, is INSANE. Not to mention these one-sentence ideas and lenghty notes that I never gave up on, it's just that I never gave them more than a minute of my time.

Aaaanyway, back to games. There's one idea that popped up in my head when I was barely starting to work on Gray -- must've been 2011 at the latest. I had a dark idea that'd really profit from the three color palette -- and lo-res graphics similar to Monkey Island 1, with lo-res characters and realistic dialog portraits. But it had to wait till I finish Gray. And then I did -- and I was too worn out to jump right onto the next project. But I kept thinking -- and rethinking the whole thing. Eventually -- inspired by this kinda creepy, kinda goofy story of a dude making a deal with a woman claiming to be a vampire to turn him into one, too (which ended in them meeting and him getting robbed by the woman and her b/f) -- I went for a more comedic approach, and sketched this:



and then decided on this hi-res, gradient-based graphic style (still using the four basic colors)



The basic idea was to draw characters with simple, possibly straight lines and geometric figures. Notice the lack of noses in all characters.



I had a fun idea for gameplay mechanics (and a few plot twists that'd change the gameplay totally), I had funny/silly puzzles... But I had no real story. All it was was just the goofy vampire fella walking around, using inventory items, etc. So I left it and focused on other things. Then I made Monty, now I'm making Magenta -- which is going to take a while. Not to mention I'd like to make sequels for Monty and Gray, got TOO many ideas for thise.

[CaptainD]

I'm always a little sad that my RON game never got finsihed (was making it in 2007)... it IS lurking somewhere on an old unatached hard drive.  I don't even have any screenshots to show since all the screenshots I had were hosted - like the game demo files - on a now defunct domain.

In "The Life of Death", our good friend Death finds himself suddenly mortal one day.  (Yes, it is heavily inspired by Discworld...)  He has to find the answer in the newly-opened and incredibly badly drawn RON Park, and delve deep into the underworld of RON using a rubber chicken with a pulley in it to travel an abandonded cabelcar wire.

[Sigh]  Maybe one day...

[Retro Wolf]

After rummaging through an old external hard drive, I've rediscovered some old vector files.
This was the third AGS project I ever started, I haven't messed with vectors in years.
The robot was inspired by Joey from BASS.
I wish I could show you art from the project before, that was horrendous. From what I recall the walk cycle was bad in a kind of epic way.


Slightly off topic but I also found these files too:
Before I discovered AGS I made a few cartoons, you could call these "Flash Ghosts".

Spoiler

I made this one after I dumped a girlfriend, she broke my heart so I made a cartoon about a psycho girl with weird friends.
At the end she literally turns into Satan and pulls out the guy's heart. Quite a psychologically cleansing process as I recall.



This one was called War Bastards or something, it was going to be a series of cartoons about warring factions.

[close]

Looking back at this vector art I can see a lot of things wrong with it, but perhaps it was something I should have kept working on.