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[Windybeard]

This is looking really great! looking forward to a demo!

[SiENcE]

Finally we have a name for our game.

Aeon of Sands

All team members aggreed, that the games story and graphics does not fit with the name Dungeonspace. Therefore, we have decided to rename the game. We hope you like it  .

Besides, we have a new screenshot for you.

[SiENcE]

Yesterday i added ingame door support to 'Aeon of Sands'.

You can read more Infos here http://aeonofsands.com.

[Miguelito]

Excellent name, IMO.

Limiting your scope to not "OMG AN ENTIRE FANTASY WORLD AND ALSO THE UNIVERSE TOO" is a big decision, but in my opinion will pay off immensely. It immediately sets the tone of your game and differentiates it from billions of "elves'n'orcs" dungeon games.
That name made the game a lot more interesting to me.

The best thing about this is that the name is the game - you have a limited, clearly defined location right in the title. It's like the Lord of the Rings being named after the bad guy - it just makes sense.
Personally, I have a huge weak spot for narrative set within a limited space - think of the first Die Hard movie, where the smaller scope was actually a huge benefit for the movie. Who knows, you might even find some more inspiration there, like how to design the villains or what the heroes' motivation is.

Just out of interest, are you going to take the design into an Egyptian/Arabic direction, or will you come up with a new fantasy setting where knights were running around in the desert? Both seem really appealing to me.

[SiENcE]

Hey Miguelito,

thanks. We are glad you like the name. Finding the right setting and name was a long process with lots of talks and decisions. Limiting the scope was the idea behind this.

We definitely want to make a game with a narrative setting. The setting and theme is already set and parts of the intro graphics are done. Take a look at our website: http://aeonofsands.com

Sorry, but at the current state I can't say more about the setting or story. But you are on the right way .

If you like, we can have a talk via irc/icq .

cheers

[marcuz]

Excellent name, IMO.

Just out of interest, are you going to take the design into an Egyptian/Arabic direction, or will you come up with a new fantasy setting where knights were running around in the desert? Both seem really appealing to me.

Thanks Miguelito, the work behind the name, the concept and even the visual style, theme reccurrencies, etc, is the same process, and not completed until the last thematic design will be nailed graphically and agreed upon between we in production.
But the name is something that luckily we agreed kinda strongly upon.

I for one have a strong sense of what direction I would like to push it and how, in which tone and for instance, I've finished last week a rough intro for internal use and I'm this week proceeding to make actual concept artworks for stuff that while will not be seen inside the game, is part of the world as we are starting to conceive it.

But the actual script, aside some very interesting guidelines, as I perceive them, at least,  is, luckily for everybody involved and for the eventual player, not in my hands

That said, I hate knights: I know somebody loves them too.

[Miguelito]

Nah, it's more that the only character icon in the screens seems to be a standard normal European knight so far.

That said, it would be amazing if the character classes were all fantastically original with a boring normal knight-type being the "exotic" outlier.

[marcuz]

My lips are sealed there.

One thing I can say about the portraits, though, is that the couple I made for the purpose of the demo are just placeholders, and that I'll make a reasonable number of them consistent with the whole game theme and with the interface skin. 

[SiENcE]

Scaling pixelgraphics is a pain!

Don't understand me wrong, I really mean scaling to nativ monitor fullscreen while preserving the aspect ratio.

I write this post, because most indie games start in window (only) mode or do a wrong aspect ratio when scaled. It's also hard to find dedicated informations how to solve this issues.

Here are some hints, how to scale right to fullscreen

• Of couse, if you want to draw pixelgraphics, you always choose a low resolution to avoid to much work!
• If you want to scale pixel related graphics you want to choose nearest filter to avoid smoothing!
• If you work with pixelgraphics you don't want to use the build-in monitor scaling!
• If you work with pixelgraphics you don't know, if the user configured his monitor for correct aspect ratio.

A. Most used Monitor resolutions
1.     1920x1080   16,72 % - 1,77
2.     1366x768    15,71 % - 1,77
3.     1280x1024   10,90 % - 1,25
4.     1680x1050   8,90 %  - 1,60
5.     1024x768    8,59 %  - 1,33
6.     1280x800    8,08 %  - 1,60
7.     1440x900    6,75 %  - 1,60
8.     1600x900    4,60 %  - 1,77
9.     1920x1200   3,34 %  - 1,60
10.    1360x768    1,88 %  - 1,77

B. Used aspect ratios scaled down by integer factors 2 or 3
~680x384  (1920x1080, 1600x900, 1366x768, 1360x768) - 1,77 (16:9)
~640x400  (1920x1200, 1680x1050, 1440x900, 1280x800) - 1,60 (16:10)
~640x512  (1280x1024)  - 1,25 (5:4)
~512x384  (1024x768) - 1,33 (4:3)

Final minimum
512x384 (this should be enough work for the artist)

What todo next?
1.    Find the lowest supported resolution!
2.    So, make the nativ gameresolution 512x384 (draw everything of the game into this area)
3.    Now you are able to scale the gamescreen by integer numbers 2 or 3 depending on the nativ monitor resolution! If you have a monitor at 1920x1200, you can scale by 3 because 512*3x384*3=1536x1152. If your monitor has a nativ resolution of 1920x1080 you can only scale by 2 (512*3x384*3=1024x768).
4.    Set the nativ monitor resolution, scale your gamescreen by the choosen factor and center the gamescreen.

It sounds a bit difficult, but here you can see my final result. You will notice, that the borders are different (small size: dark blue/big size: light blue). I overlayed the different aspect ratios resolutions named under B.

What you think about? Do you have better solutions?

Compare:

nativ monitor 640x480 (unscaled gamescreen 512x384)


nativ monitor 1600x1000 (scaled gamescreen by 3*512 x 3*384)

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NHsduEaydHE/UOnHDbeb79I/AAAAAAAAFuw/5rdkq2BV4n0/s1600/Aeon+of+Sands+-+Pyramid_scaled.png

cheers

[SiENcE]

Little news is better than no news .

The team is working hard on a playable demo. I think we are ready at the middle of this year. We recently got support from an developer called 'Moe'. He helps us polishing the graphics. He wants to combine 2d pixelgraphics with 3d lighting/shadowing via shaders.

Here is a first sample:

[marcuz]

On my side of things, I'm hard at work on the interface, at the moment, and in articulating  some of the game dynamics.
In fact, at some point next to the current various bits of graphics it will be time for the logo and character generation, and the latter requires some detailed insight on how the story of the game will proceed.

Realistically though, I guess we'll not overthink the character generation before the demo, leaving some ample space of tweaking it when we'll got the time.

Anyway, I wanted to share a couple of candidates for the exploratory interface: there are compass rotations, animated direction keys and a whole hand drawn background; actually the bas-relief background I've drawn is roughly twice the size of what you see here, so that there will be no repetitions when I'll get to the other menu screens

[Miguelito]

Those stairs have no business looking that good.

Are you going to tone down the contrast on the deco background though? At the moment there's more light-dark variation around the game area than inside of it, it's probably just a tad distracting. (Nothing though that couldn't be fixed with just a few curve tweaks.)

[marcuz]

Those stairs have no business looking that good.

Are you going to tone down the contrast on the deco background though? At the moment there's more light-dark variation around the game area than inside of it, it's probably just a tad distracting. (Nothing though that couldn't be fixed with just a few curve tweaks.)

Thanks!
Yep, I did, after I post that shots: they were as you say a bit distracting, for different reason: one haa too many highlights the other is to saturated; the current one fits very nicely imho, but You'll have to wait a bit to see it

And I'll have to tweak a bit the stairs too, because I don't like their current first step.

[SiENcE]

In the last weeks marcuz and I worked hard on the gui, the rpg system, the inventory and graphics. The screenshot shows the prefinal design of the 'Aeon of Sands - Pyramid' interface. The character and weapon icons are only mockups, arrowkeys and compass are not included.

[old - screenshot removed]

Now i want to explain, how the game manages it's objects.

The game has 3 big object groups.
-Walls/Frames (non-interactive)
-Items (Enviroment-/Decoration-Items and Equipables).
-NPCs/PC (Npcs/Monsters/Player)

Lets say we want to create an invisible teleporter. Than we have to create an new item of the type 'nonequipable', the category 'teleport' and the definition 'teleposition' to positon {x=2, y=2}. If the player hits the tile where i placed the teleporter in our Leveleditor, the event is activated.

Code:

level.item[14] = {
 ['name']='Teleport to 2,2',
 ['type']='nonequipable',
 ['cat']='teleport',
 ['teleposition']={x=2, y=2},
 }

Easy eh?

But we don't want to predefine all events, that a gamedesigner wants to create. Therefore we added a bunch of functions to our event handler. Every Item can trigger events using the onTile, onUpdate and onClick function.

Now, if you want to create an item which triggers an event, and the event is not predefined ('teleposition' is a predefined event) as in our teleporter example, we can choose the onTile function. If the player hits a Tile where this item is placed, the onTile event is triggered.

Code:

level.item[18] = {
 ['name']='Ambient Text',
 ['type']='nonequipable',
 ['cat']='text',
 onTile = function(self)
  print(self.available)
  if self:isAvailable() then
   scene.gamegui:addSomeText("In front of you is something hidden!")
   self.available = false
  end
 end,
 }

We can place the 'Ambient Text' Item anywhere on the map and if the player hits the Tile, the onTile event is triggered and the "In front of you is something hidden!" apprears  in our textbox. Afterwards we have to set the option self.available to false, because we want to trigger this event only once a time, not everytime a player hits this tile.

stay tuned

[marcuz]

I wanted to add, that it helps me not having the faintest idea of what the code here above means, it helps my conscience.
In the meantime, while Florian will implement the compass and arrow keys waiting for him to take care of them after they were in the work for a month, (you'll do it, right?), since I've updated my to-do list for up to the demo, the next item coming up is completing the logo (halfway through it), then adding some monster fun, and completing a basic item set!
Plus a thousand of other stuff not strictly related to the graphics...
This is slowly taking a shape I like!

[SiENcE]

Are you going to tone down the contrast on the deco background though? At the moment there's more light-dark variation around the game area than inside of it, it's probably just a tad distracting. (Nothing though that couldn't be fixed with just a few curve tweaks.)

Our semi-final gui is now a bit darker for a more consistent look in later levels.

[Miguelito]

Our semi-final gui is now a bit darker for a more consistent look in later levels.

Aw, is the blue hue final? Because the contrast is pretty extreme now, before the visual consistency was much higher. Why is the BG image drawn with this massive rim light anyway? Will everything in the game have the same look in the end?
Because it looks to be the only instance where you have pure white light and high contrast, which is a bit unfortunate given it's just supposed to be a subtle canvas.

I'll stop nagging about this now, it's half derailing the thread already.

I love the look of the character portraits as they are right now. And actually the monsters too. No idea if you were planning on refining them, but the sketched look is fabulous, especially because it creates massive room for interpretation (like the female's face). Well done, and a great throwback to the classics.

[eobet]

Ok, gut reaction:

That dark background with it's super harsh white light and busy pattern does draw quite a lot of attention away from the game view, espeically since the game uses a very muted palette. The standard Photoshop drop shadow also makes the background look quite amateurish.

The game view and portraits look super fab, but the background kills the theme, imo.

In fact, the earliest mock-up with the red hue looked the best to me. Also, that drop shadow makes everything look like a window manager rather than being an overlay with a hole cut out in it which makes you see into a different world, like in the classics:

[marcuz]

Hey!
Thank you for the comments there.
Well, there are reasons why I did what I did that way, that I have yet to see if, in the prosecution of the developing, still stand their ground.

Some are aesthetical and some are narrative: I stand behind them still, but I really need to see if they both work in-game when the content will be there to calibrate.

One of my purposes is coherence of the interface with the story, and that doesn't mean with what the party sees in the dungeonview
The thing about the contrast between hilights in the skin and the more darker palette ingame, is there for that reason, the two different levels of narrative, but yes: if at some point gets really distracting, I'll have to tone it down (I've already done that with other tests of the skin to be sure).

@eobet: what do you mean by standard photoshop shadow? I had to do all of that by hand and I hated every minute of it! :D
And "window manager" has quite a nice sound to it... I'm sorry: this is probably one of the decisions that some will like and some will hate.

@Miguelito: thanks for the commet on the portraits: the first two are only placeholders that Florian needed at the time, but the finished look is exactly like in the third one: not too refined: a bit cartoony, more drawn than painted.

[marcuz]

It occurred to me I had somewhere a new interface, one new wallset (those two, REALLY competing too much for attention between themselves... what was I thinking???) I did for EoB 1 and 60 character pics I did and that nobody was interested in fit in the actual game: for some reason people is interested in having the original game converted to every system, platform, new game expansion, but not in actually modding the fisrt one...
So I get what Eobet says about hole throughout which you saw a different world; but it's not what I'm trying to do with Aeon, I aim to something else, that, if we ever finish the game the way we want to, I hope it will be more clear than it is from our production screenshots