I completely forgot about this game, and while doing some research found it again today. Its a visual novel very much in the style of hotel dusk, complete with 'two screens'. I think its a great reference of what we are trying to do and also is good visual research. I tried to you show my code to get the code from it but no luck so I'm not sure how they did everything, but at least it shows that its all possible. Takes a while to load but its worth it.
http://jenniferann.org.p8.hostingprod.com/2010-game-first-place.htm
This is a very, very nice interface, cheers!
ReplyDeleteWe can definitely use some of the ideas presented here for the interface as I think I can build on what I made last year. Whilst playing it, I've made some points:
- Interface is really very fluid especially with the tabs at the top for the memo. Maybe we should have something similar?
- I'm on the fence with having half of the screen dedicated to the main character (Yu) constantly. I feel that it kind of detracts from the artwork in some way. There are several ways in which we can do this
1. Don't have Yu in the scene at all
2. Have 1 character fade into the screen at a time then fade out for the next character (not including and including Yu).
3. Split the screen in half, one for Yu and the other for the character (like the Edgeworth game and my game I made last year).
- I really like the way that the mouse changes to indicate that you can interact with the environment. I'm wondering whether we can extend it to allow players like 2 different ways to interact with it such as 'examine' and 'pickup/use'.
- I love the art and animation too - really gives it a nice 'nostalgic' feeling especially in the flashbacks and the close up views of several of the items. That's the kind of thing I had in mind for the 'Game Cut Scenes' from the general plot.
Thanks again Mike!
Well Im still playing around with making an engine so ill try and incorperate those things you've mentioned. Hmm I personally like seeing the character cause i like how in hotel dusk you get to see all of kyle reactions and animations. I really wish I could of got hold of the source code as it would make things so much easier. Oh wells.
ReplyDeleteYeh I really liked that too in Hotel Dusk. I tried and failed a bit for TKON but I bet we can make it way better for HW.
ReplyDeleteHave you tried maybe emailing the creator? We still have time and the least the creator would say is 'no'. Just asked for maybe the 'type of code' rather than the code flat out and explain that you're using it as inspiration for a game project and in no way trying to rip it off.
I think I've actually figured out how to get past some of the problems I've been having, but I might still e-mail the guy about it. I imagine he's probably locked it though so someone can't get hold of the source code, but yeh I'll at least ask, I'll send them this blog too.
ReplyDeleteI think if we figure out what the characters will do and what animations we need for each one, and only create those. So for minor characters maybe we only do like one animation
Yep go for it in sending the person this blog.
ReplyDeleteFor now, I'll finish the script first and see what everyone thinks and whether we'd need more/less characters then we can work on the animations.