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[EJRobertson]

The History of Development
It's quite a read so I'd suggest skipping if you're not interested.
The Relinquished is a project I started dating back to around 2008. I was in a Skype call playing 'Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas' the multiplayer addition many of you would've heard about. I got around to talking about things I would change in the game and my friend asked me to give it a shot. So, I started what would become a long journey of changes and development. A few days after this, I was talking to another friend in French class about this and he jumped on the team and we started developing a project called 'Post Law'.

About a month in and we had a working flat city with fake three dimensional buildings. 'Post Law' was just an edit and would prove to be an experiment of technology available in Game Maker more than anything else; from there interest of the project began to degrade. Late in to 2009 I began looking at quite a few game maker three dimensional games and the urge grew on me yet again. I decided to pursue the full three dimensional method.

I started on a very limited engine, but for us at the time it was quite the achievement. We had a very tiny world surrounded by buildings controlling a flat character near a moving car. Work carried on with this project and we got relatively far. It was a few months after the completion of the first map I began looking at even more techniques. The engine was limited, 180 degree camera was only possible and I had a number of bugs to consider.

Then came quite a breakthrough. I had finally discovered heightmaps. Then came a full 360 degree camera and months later, the first demo of The Relinquished.

The game itself;

Playthrough of demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Cw1a6zuH8U&feature=plcp

Screenshots

On the Beach | Hmm, what's this place then? | Up to my knees in grass!

Imagine yourself, fallen into the deep ocean. Sinking and losing breath your death is an oxygen bubble away. Within the chaos of struggle, grains of sand - warm sand - push up against your dripping cheeks. An Island awaits, the most hostile and mysterious of Islands. You'd rather be drowning. The Relinquished is a game based on a Hostile environment. It features many different genres of game Horror being the most common. The game is viewed from a top down perspective as you try to guide Alexander Faraday to safety. This demo includes an introduction to both our huge map and our storyline.

The game comes with a 'Read Me' file documenting its controls, but here they are anyway;

W,A,S,D to move the player.
Shift to sprint.
Q/E to use items in your left/right hand.
CTRL to view the items you're holding and view your compass.
Left/Right arrow keys control the camera, note that some times the camera is disabled.
F opens and closes the journal while the up and down keys navigate it.
SPACEBAR is the action key.

DOWNLOAD v0.2
^{This game is around 24MEGABYTES zipped and around 27MEGABYTES unzipped.}
*please do not be put off by the file-size, a lot of work has been put in to this project.*

[Rube]

I think you've got a good handle on the horror aspects, I didn't get very far in but the section with the power going off in the basement was unnerving. Unfortunately the game has a few mechanical problems that hindered my enjoyment.

There's an abundance of invisible walls that don't feel necessary. It would help if you placed trees or other visible obstructions at the same position as the invisible walls to make it clear where I can't walk. Also there's some camera jittering going on when you bump into walls, like the camera is being placed at the position I would be in but is then being snapped back.

On my first playthrough I got the key in the first house, didn't notice the trapdoor, and exited to be greeted by the first enemy who immediately began shooting me. Not knowing where to go I tried running back to the beach, but the game wouldn't let me leave and I died.

I noticed another problem on my second playthrough - none of the cutscenes or text is skippable. I would set the spacebar so it finishes text scrolling, so you can hammer the spacebar to skip through sections of dialogue you've already read.

I managed to make it through to the part where you find the man in the tree on my second playthrough, got the journal, but when I tried entering the forest I think the game froze. I got a black screen. I could still hear the birds cheeping, but none of the controls worked and I couldn't hear my character walking if I tried any of the movement controls. ESC still exited the game.

The horror aspect is definitely there. You hooked me with the intro, I want to know what that white thing was that was walking toward the camera.

[EJRobertson]

There's an abundance of invisible walls that don't feel necessary.

Alright, I'll place fences just before the areas you cannot go to make it more clearer.

 

Also there's some camera jittering going on when you bump into walls, like the camera is being placed at the position I would be in but is then being snapped back.

I will disable the camera so it does not move at all during collisions.

On my first playthrough I got the key in the first house, didn't notice the trapdoor, and exited to be greeted by the first enemy who immediately began shooting me. Not knowing where to go I tried running back to the beach, but the game wouldn't let me leave and I died.

I'm going to make exiting the house impossible for that part of the game, instead the character will say "I'm not going back out there - there has to be another way out!".

I noticed another problem on my second playthrough - none of the cutscenes or text is skippable. I would set the spacebar so it finishes text scrolling, so you can hammer the spacebar to skip through sections of dialogue you've already read.

I'll make cutscenes skippable with the SHIFT key. You can already skip dialogue but that wasn't included in the controls and will be fixed.

I managed to make it through to the part where you find the man in the tree on my second playthrough, got the journal, but when I tried entering the forest I think the game froze. I got a black screen. I could still hear the birds cheeping, but none of the controls worked and I couldn't hear my character walking if I tried any of the movement controls. ESC still exited the game.

That bug has been fixed, a new version will be uploaded within the next hour.

The horror aspect is definitely there. You hooked me with the intro, I want to know what that white thing was that was walking toward the camera.

Thank you for such great feedback, I'll get to fixing those problems right away. I'm glad you liked the horror aspect of the game and hopefully I can deliver on the rest of the game.

[EJRobertson]

Version 0.2 is out!
-It's now more clear where you cannot go
-During the first part, you cannot get out of the house.
-Bullets nerfed.
-Added surprise to Church.
-Fixed black screen bug.
-Fixed church exit bug.
-Modified the NPCs.

*A friend is doing a play through on the demo, I'll add it to the thread when he's done.

[EJRobertson]

Any feedback on version 0.2?

[EJRobertson]

Is there no more feedback? The majority of issues Rube posted are now fixed.