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[Sved]

No worries, all these are just mock-ups to get the overall feel, they will be heavily modified and torn apart to be put in game ^^

I got the layers modifiers to work in C2, so the characters is now able to go in front and behind elements in the scenes, without destroying my pathfinding, yay!

I also tried to create transitions scenes, some zoomed-out places to navigate between the important zoomed-in ones:

[kraed]

This is what is all about! Nice work, keep us updated. I'm interested on your workflow, these type of styles have been appealing a lot to me lately. Bonus points for C2, C2 ftw!

[DrSchizo]

Good work and really nice artwork. It really makes me want to play the game!
The minimalistic background and the big guys from the first post remind me of Another World.

You can use as well Adventure Game Engine: "Adventure Game Engine is a freeware that allows you to create your own Point & Click adventure games for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Web, iOS and Android. It is free for personal and commercial use. Note that you do not need to learn any script language if you decide to use Adventure Game Engine." It is made with Unity and is specificaly design for Point 'n Click adventure.

You can see a demo on your browser, Android and iPhone.

[Sved]

@DrSchizo: I loved Another World, but totally forgot that game until you mention it. I remember environments in late game that could be nice to "inspire" from ^^

Adventure Game Engine kind of does what I need and more, but I already got the pathfinding to work and plan to use some OpenGl effects, particles and other fancy tricks, so I'll stick to C2 for now(and I bought the license some time ago, so I have to use it somehow ^^). I think if I ever do a game with dialogues and inventory, I would consider that one instead.

@kraed: Thanks! Workflow is a bit erratic... that's the first game I didn't plan from top to bottom as I end not developing them (but have a very nice design doc to put on my shelf).

Here I explored lots of art directions and fixed the graphic style before anything else, with few general game ideas (empty spaces, exploration, restricted colours) and a very rough storyline. It got me much more excited about creating content, but I start to see issues as I put things together to make a game out of them.

I am now tackling a big one: empty spaces are nice to discover, but they lose their charm if you have to cross them too often. I implemented a kind of double-click/tap to teleport through but it looses the ambient as you skip through everything... I tried to triple the speed of the character when you double-click but it feels funny (possibly because nothing is animated yet).

I ended to rework the sequence of the places and started to think out lots of shortcuts to reduce backtracking, and I think it may be the best way to keep things interesting without skipping or speeding through everything.





I am also testing to have another time of the day sometimes during the game, so backtracking won't be so boring (and if you are like me, you will want to visit all the places to see how they changed). Problem would now be to integrate the narrative around it, but if that works well, I will do different light settings for each place (day, dawn/dusk, night)

[Sved]

Some extracts of post exchange with Gavan, who shown interest in creating the music for the game.

Some topics I wandered around but didn't managed to put down yet were the transmission of religion and history over time, how things are interpreted by our successors. For example, traffic signs were symbol of power, strong graphic icons that controlled flows and people, imposing rules to be respected, and they are everywhere. So it's kind of logical that people would collect them and adopt them as decoration/personal icons and even attribute them powers and stories.

I also liked the ideas of descendants of birds that can't fly anymore, but are longing for that feel without really knowing what they miss. I rationalized it by the air being thicker and the sun weaker, so no hot air currents could be found. That could also bring religion, worshipping sun and flight as something that birdkind lost by original sin and should strive for.

Traffic signs could then be considered pagan by the religious authority, making unauthorized shrines in secret places quite common...

Back to your reply, I really like how you refocused the whole attention to the tribe, its people ad some direct priorities of survival. The nomads that moves from places to places when the environment forces them to is a great concept to add! I like the idea that the hero could bring some stability and comfort to them, but would create other problems that they didn't have with their previous lifestyle, taking responsibility for it. That could be great material for drama.

I don't want to make the birds look too much like an american indian cliche so some mixed mongol/bedouin habitations made with recovered human items could fit nicely... that's something I can start to visualize, and having a village feel will bring some life and purpose to the other characters. I guess I'll do some tries on these soon.

I also considered adding other evolved species, but after few tries, I think it would derive the original minimal feel if the world is too populated. Instead we could have leftovers of civilizations that fought over the human heritage (which could add a layer of scriptures, markings, defenses and traps around the ancient human buildings). So i'm thinking to limit life around the village to bones, critters and crawling insects as puzzle material or decoration.

An ancient AI is interesting to have in late game. I wouldn't like it to talk in a way that we could directly comprehend (to give the feeling languages have changed too), but some obscure info screens with  friendly automated gibberish (things that sounds like foreign train station announcements) would be great for puzzles and ambient.

[DrSchizo]

I really like the transmission of religion mechanism.
What you wrote make me even more eager to play to the game!

[Sved]

Thanks DrSchizo, that's very encouraging to read!

I'm now looking into making these concepts into a game, and listing down features & specs I will need to implement to have things working... and there are are much more than I expected at first. I started working out the full map of places that will be in the game and the main game workflow & features(storyline, shortcuts, puzzle sequence, collectibles, achievements...)

Just to post something and show that things are coming along, here are few extracts of the GDD, things that I wrote down to keep track and will have to do later ^^

CONTROLS

Tap/click on environment: walk to area/ pick up character or object
Tap/click on character/object: pick up character or object
Tap/click on player: drop pick ups

Double tap/click: skip to area/pick up character or object

Pinch in/out: zoom or dezoom the view (20 to 100%)
Hold tap/click: pan

Players tap the extremity of a scene to proceed to the next one.

Players can take the hand of a supporting character to bring them somewhere and have them interact with the environment or other characters. Some characters may refuse to be taken or can disturb puzzles.

Players can take two items at a time in hands. Matching items will combine automatically, but are limited to the area they found it in. All objects and character are dropped before leaving an area.


TECH ISSUES TO SOLVE (these are the hard ones for me)

incoming calls/messages/chat/notification/others
other interruptions
dynamic music
automated save/load system
manual save/load system
Screen settings + responsive
Hints
Achievements


MAIN CHARACTER BASIC ANIMATIONS

Idle rocking on heels
Idle sit & play sand/ash/snow
Idle brush dress
Idle look left & right anxiously
Idle kick a rock
Idle hop left & right

Walk left/right
Skip left/right

Climb up/down
Jump down

Pick thing
Drop thing
Take someone’s hand
Let go someone’s hand

Press something
Pull something

So yeah, we are not there yet ^^

[Sved]

And it mooooooves!

(I have no idea how to make smaller gifs, it may be slow to load at first)



Testing now together some depth, pathfinding, parallax, lighting effects and PARTICLES!

[Calined]

this begins to look really neat! =D
i can tell your influences from "finding teddy" and "sword and sworcery"~
it's somewhere in there but still it's own thing! =)

[30/30]

Beautiful work!!!

[Sved]

@Calined: thanks, forests are fun to do but maybe a bit too lively for the game, I may make it much darker and grim to fit the rest of the game ^^

@80bit: Very glad you like it, I loved the look of Sprout. Best of luck for Greenlight!

I wanted to have a solar salt plant as Temple of Light, both for its mystical look and the fact that it 'could' still work with a nudge here and there after few thousand years. It would be one of the first big step in the game, so we could switch on other Ancient Places of Power. I still need to work on the foreground elements, but the outdoor angle should look something like this:



I also plan to get the player to have some aerial view of the place somehow. I really like how these things look from top view.

[MrAwolf]

great style.!

[Sved]

@MrAwolf Thanks, I quite like where you are going with the 7 towers, glad to see you around here!

And one of those screens where there is more hidden than seen, as usual I divert to art when things don't work the way I want in "programming". in this one, I'm trying to have the whole scene moving with parallax.

[oahda]

So pretty.

[Sved]

@Skomakar'n Thanks, not sure this one will still make it to the game though, it was more for concept ^^ Didn't see your devlog since your kickstarter topic, I'll check it right away.

[oahda]

@Skomakar'n Thanks, not sure this one will still make it to the game though, it was more for concept ^^ Didn't see your devlog since your kickstarter topic, I'll check it right away.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/61894646/boats.JPG

Haha, suiting picture to post. Looking very cool.
I hope some nice night scene shows up, anyhow!

[Mauricio Gomes]

Taking a look at this again, since it is the same genre as my main project.

It is looking very sweet, I also liked the musician ideas.

Really cool =D Lets make this genre flourish again ^.^  (well, although with recent Tim Schafer and Telltales help that is not really hard )

[Sved]

@Mauricio: yes, let's!

And still a work in progress, but things are starting to feel logical when placed on maps (at least to me ^^).

[Sved]

Now reshaping and refining the map.

[Mauricio Gomes]

What happened to the cool 3 towers and the dam-looking thing? (ie: the wall with squares between water and land)