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[PsySal]

>>>GET IT HERE<<<

Here is what the press were saying about this back in 2003:

"This is the ugliest game I have every seen."
- random IRC user when I released it. I still remember somebody saying this, and how badly it stung back then!

"That's it? I though it would be longer..."
- a friend on IRC, after he beat it, since I had been talking about it for years.

"I can't find the last piece of wood... Oh, wait here it is."
- mv, aka Xavier Dang who along with Mike Burke did the (awesome) music for it.

"LOL this is horrible!"
- another random person on IRC



Alright TIGS! This is a game I made waaay the heck back in 2003. It was misplaced for a long time, and randomly browsing my hd I found it the other day. So I decided, what the heck: I'm "announcing" it here.

Please approach this one out of general interest! Feedback is totally welcome, of course I've learned a huge amount since then. I will say at least that I poured a lot of heart and soul-- or at the least, blood sweat and tears into this thing. And I learned a heck of a lot. Such as:

Assets can take a very, very long time. Way way way longer than you think. If you are an indie, do not make assets the same way that big studios make assets. (luckily, but now I think everybody knows this.)

Well, that's mainly what I learned.

What I've learned SINCE then is you shouldn't be afraid to put something out there, even if it's a little bit bad. Your job really is just to do the best you can. You can't take criticism too hard-- I think if I hadn't received so much negativity back in the day I might have done something more with it. That said, it's not a fantastic game though also not terrible. It was a lot, a lot, a lot of work! If somebody here enjoys it a bit, even in a fellow game-dev sort of way, then that is excellent.

Tchus!

[Widget]

Looks interesting but the download isn't working for me. It begins without any problem but then immediately cuts off

I'll try again in 5 or 10 minutes just in case something's up with my connection.

EDIT: Just something odd going on my end, it seems. Downloading it now and looking forward to giving it a try.

[PsySal]

Sorry, dl link is fixed now, should have tried it before I posted here!

Thanks for giving it a try!  

EDIT: my guess is you probably were dlding it as I was re-uling it... Nothing too strange, just coincidental timing. Sorry!

[HDSanctum]

Well it was fun until I got stuck in the woodchopping minigame. Going slow or fast, I just couldn't build that meter up very far.

I really liked the intro sequence, sets up a pretty cool story.

Those press comments are hilarious, good to see you can take it in good humor now

[PsySal]

@HDSanctum thanks! I think to beat the wood chopping game, you need to alternate regularly between the two buttons, or something like that. So it's not purely button mashing, if you hit the same button twice in a row it drops the meter a lot. That said, it's been sooo looong since I tried this out so I could be wrong =)

Thanks for playing!

[Widget]

It's pretty entertaining. Got it's quirks but there's a nice solid base there which was fun while it lasted 

I can empathise with discovering how much of a timesink the assets very quickly become; when I still harboured a few fantasies about learning to make games that's what I let bog me down and sap all my will to keep trying. Anyway, I really like the character's running animation. It looks really fluid and ties in nicely with the rest of the graphics; the only thing it's lacking is another four directions but I like what you did 

[PsySal]

@Widget thank you!

I used a paper-doll system, painstakingly coded and animated =) IIRC part of the reason that it syncs so well is that the doll actually has a point that moves around a little bit that is the "anchor point", which represents the doll. So, the paper doll editor has a bunch of control points that links to each body part, and then another point that is used to connect to the sprites actual position. By moving that point around throughout the run cycle you can cause the character to move forward only when their leg would be propelling them forward.

This is a weird fetish of mine. Actually I'm working on a flash game where the running is modeled realistically with each foot coming down onto the ground and propelling the player forward only then. It's definitely overkill but at the same time, it's pretty cool and I plan to use it for other little games, particularly more actioney ones as the current project (Diver After Coral) is really a wierd story-based game without any action at all.

[GZ]

This is something I'm interested in, since the first big project I did was also an RPG. It won't run on this computer for some reason (it never gets past initializing fog mapper) but I'll try it on another one of my computers later.

[Widget]

It's definitely overkill but at the same time, it's pretty cool and I plan to use it for other little games, particularly more actioney ones as the current project (Diver After Coral) is really a wierd story-based game without any action at all.

Yeah, sounds over-engineered beyond but it's certainly even more impressive for hearing how it was done. I'd not considered before how much the character animations could do to convey personality and set a mood; and given how much time the player spends watching them it's not a bad place to try something novel or unusual.

I'll be interested to see what you come up with in the future 

[PsySal]

@GZ hah! Initializing fog mapper... man. That brings back memories. I don't remember what that does but I do remember that. I think it's a big lookup table, actually...

Anyhow I'm busy busy busy and have lots of games on the burner. The big project is The Real Texas (therealtexasgame.com plug plug plug) but I have a largish number of side projects, some are even completed and unreleased. However I think Diver After Coral will have a wide appeal, and once it's done I'm going to make another game (at least) with the same engine but maybe kind of like an homage to Star Guard. I don't know, maybe I'll call it Moon Man.