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[Alain]

And I cannot think of any other DOS game featuring a similar effect... who'd have thought that there's still room for innovation in DOS gaming after all these years?

Man, that is incredibly cool!

[vdapps]

Cool effect! It's nice to see modern touches on old school gfx. I like it.

In fact, I feel like it's something we as players missed. Evolution of games took quick direction to "everything 3D" with coming of first 3dfx in 1997 and games using such thingies were dropped as "non-modern". But now with indie development super-strong, it's time to implement everything we missed and AAA studios are never going to provide.

[oldblood]

The whole aesthetics and vibe with this game never cease to amaze!

[Thaumaturge]

Implementing that "deep canvas" in DOS is quite impressive! ^_^

(As, I'll confess, are the visuals overall! ^_^)

[Ondra]

This is awesome!! I am so jealous right now, I must trash talk this everywhere to be able to even look on my project again.

[propapanda]

Cheers, I appreciate the kind words, everyone

This is awesome!! I am so jealous right now, I must trash talk this everywhere to be able to even look on my project again.

Well... they do say there's no such thing as bad publicity

Cool effect! It's nice to see modern touches on old school gfx. I like it.

In fact, I feel like it's something we as players missed. Evolution of games took quick direction to "everything 3D" with coming of first 3dfx in 1997 and games using such thingies were dropped as "non-modern". But now with indie development super-strong, it's time to implement everything we missed and AAA studios are never going to provide.

That's an interesting point. I've always felt like the transition to 3D graphics was rushed. We went from intricate, high-quality art where every pixel was deliberate to well... blocky polygons with muddy textures. Of course, eventually graphics fidelity surpassed what came before, but it certainly does feel like there's something of a missing link where things went unexplored in the 2D realm.


As for the progress on the game, it's difficult right now. Not for lack of trying, but it feels like something went wrong somewhere along the line: Over the last week I managed to add support for Sound Blaster (OPL3) music, which is very appropriate for the game's period and, of course, any self-respecting DOS game.
The trouble is... it just sounds kinda crap. And I don't just mean my lack of skills in the music department -- for the life of me I just cannot think of any games of the DOS era that had genuinely spooky music. The Sound Blaster FM synth lacks effects such as echo and reverb, and those effects are what makes many spooky soundtracks, well, spooky. Not to mention a decent sounding piano or, gasp, a string section...

Audio and music is intended to be a big part of the experience of this game. The sounds I've heard over the course of the last week suggest that the period-appropriate FM synth just isn't going to cut it, sadly.
Which leaves CD-Audio (or MP3) as the only other option. The advantage there of course is the plethora of high-quality soundtrack material available for licensing, which has the added benefit of leaving me with one less thing to worry about.

But at that point it doesn't feel like much of an old-school DOS experience anymore, does it?

And that kind of leaves me wondering whether the whole DOS thing is even worth the trouble. If the medium cannot transport my vision without betraying what makes up the medium itself, then perhaps that's a sign I ought to go crawling back to Unity; it's less fun and certainly less avant-garde, but it does let me create what I envisioned without compromise.

[bayersglassey]

for the life of me I just cannot think of any games of the DOS era that had genuinely spooky music

Not a DOS game, but this immediately made me think of Sweet Home for the NES, which had some creepy music for sure...

[propapanda]

for the life of me I just cannot think of any games of the DOS era that had genuinely spooky music

Not a DOS game, but this immediately made me think of Sweet Home for the NES, which had some creepy music for sure...

Wow, that's an excellent example of creepy music with extremely limited hardware.

Strangely enough, I can also think of several examples of genuinely spooky NES soundtracks. It's just in MS-DOS where I can't come up with much... even games that ought to be spooky, say Alone in the Dark, just don't seem to do it for me. The witch's forest in King's Quest V isn't too bad, I suppose.

Would love to hear more examples if anyone has them

[propapanda]

Been way too long since my last update! Always that pesky real-life work (you know, the kind that pays the bills) getting in the way.

Quite a lot has changed since last time around: The DOS game I was working just wasn't panning out. For various reasons. Most of all I just didn't enjoy coding it, and for a project like this, that's perhaps the very best reason to make a change.

So I figured I'd cut my losses and pivot (again): The story remains pretty much untouched, but I'm re-rendering all the assets in higher resolution and wrapping things up in a bit of a meta-narrative. The player now has an entire late '90s operating system at their disposal and can (more or less freely) use tools such as email, chat, an image editor, and the obligatory command-line terminal to uncover the mysteries of The Webmaster.

Guess you could describe it as a "found footage game".

[Alain]

So I figured I'd cut my losses and pivot (again): The story remains pretty much untouched, but I'm re-rendering all the assets in higher resolution and wrapping things up in a bit of a meta-narrative. The player now has an entire late '90s operating system at their disposal and can (more or less freely) use tools such as email, chat, an image editor, and the obligatory command-line terminal to uncover the mysteries of The Webmaster.

Very interesting. Does that mean that the player has to manipulate images to gather information? Like cranking up the brightness to see what's in a dark picture?

[propapanda]

That's right. I've written a shader to emulate an analog VHS signal and the player needs to work with the parameters to adjust the phases, fix the tracking, NTSC decoding, and so on. That way you can expose things in the images that aren't visible to the naked eye. Think CSI's "enhance" on steroids.

To be honest I'm not totally in love with the concept: I'm worried it might be too distracting from the actual story. The older I get, the more I catch myself wanting games to just get on with the plot instead of blocking progress behind some silly puzzles.

Also, I'm not sure the average VN reader shares my penchant for digital image processing... 

[Alain]

Cool, thanks for explaining the system!

To be honest I'm not totally in love with the concept: I'm worried it might be too distracting from the actual story. The older I get, the more I catch myself wanting games to just get on with the plot instead of blocking progress behind some silly puzzles.

I understand that it can be fun, but could also get old quickly. I'd like to hear how players like it once you are testing things.

[oldblood]

These are some intense pivots, but I have to say they're looking quite good. It's definitely a unique take on a VN, and that seems promising. If you're still not fully sold on the concept--is it worth exploring something akin to a vertical slice you can put in some people's hands to see how people feel?

[propapanda]

Somehow I'd gotten out of the habit of updating/promoting my project on social media and forums. Still working on this though, almost every day.

The good news is that I've managed to stick to my concept of providing the player a virtual operating system and the tools required to uncover the mysteries of a banned horror movie called "The Webmaster".
I've fleshed out the idea and reduced the reliance on the (gimmicky) image editing. It now plays a lot more like a traditional visual novel: Not quite a linear story progression, but I do try to nudge the player in the right direction, hopefully without being too obvious about it:



The primary interface is a video-editor-like application that works as the player's visual novel canvas. Found a clue? Simply drag it into the chat window to discuss with your (NPC) friends. And of course you'll  still get to read memos, emails, screenplay manuscripts, contracts, government correspondence and all sorts of other background information scattered throughout the mysterious FTP server containing this wealth of information about an unreleased horror movie.

In the meantime, I've also enlisted the help of my trusty AI friends Midjourney and Stable Diffusion. I know it's a contentious topic so I won't post images created with the help of these tools, but suffice to say it's an absolute game-changer for me -- pun very much intended.
What used to take me days can now be knocked out by the dozen in minutes. It's especially good with messed up distorted stuff, perhaps unintentionally so. But that's something I've personally always struggled with creating on my own, so it's a real boon for me. 7 fingers on three hands? I'll take it!

[JobLeonard]

My biggest issues with AI art are

- stealing work from artists by blatantly copying their style
- the massive centralization and VC money involved (so that's more what's happening around AI right now than the AI itself)
- the energy bill involved with training ever bigger models

I don't think those issues really apply to you here. This is more like buying assets from an asset store to efficiently use your budget.

EDIT: Anyway, great to see an update, the interface looks great!

[propapanda]

Cheers, appreciate the kind words

About AI: As I said, it's contentious and the last word definitely hasn't been spoken. In this project I'm mainly using it for "single view art": Things like storyboards, concepts, sketches, backstage footage, just general imagery that the player will only see once, briefly, and in low resolution. I wouldn't be able draw it myself, and I sure couldn't pay an artist a fair price to do it for me. That's where the AI's output fits perfectly.
Anything that contains clues or will undergo more scrutiny will almost certainly have to be rendered the traditional way. The AI output simply isn't consistent enough for more.

For me as a solo-dev with a budget of effectively zero, this really goes a long way. I'm not a purist and never thought too highly of my own "art". I really just want to get this project done at some point. And if the AI helps me do that, then that's just one more tool in my box.

[JobLeonard]

I think that's a very reasonable take on the current situation

[propapanda]

Here's another brilliant use case for AI-generated imagery. Looking through my older screenshots, you may have noticed my feeble attempts at rendering a certain slimy, web-like substance (aka "the web" part of "The Webmaster"). I was never too happy with how it turned out, but it was the best I could come up with using the tools I had at my disposal.
 
So today I figured I'd train my own Stable Diffusion model for this particular purpose... and, oh boy, now we're talking! Absolutely disgusting, in the best way possible.











Just the thought of setting this kind of thing up in 3D makes my brain hurt.

[JobLeonard]

Oh wow, that's actually a perfect use case: it's basically a prettier procgen!