In the mean time, here's a screenshot for a room I've completed.to script earlier this month.
Not a lot of news this month, I'm afraid. November was awfully busy for me and I wasn't left with much time on my hands to concentrate on gamemaking. But some progress was still made for both FCotW2 and my little side project I mentioned earlier on this blog. December is bound to be crazy too, but at least I'll get some serious game work done during my Christmas vacation.
In the mean time, here's a screenshot for a room I've completed.to script earlier this month. Wow, time flies! It’s now almost two years since the first part of Far Corners of the World was released. Part 1 itself was two years in the making, and Part 2? Well it is happily thriving and growing and partially playable, but still a long way from completion. Another two years? Let’s hope not! But I have learned to be wary predicting the progress, since so many factors are to be considered. Anyways, here where I’m at: Block 1 is done and dusted and fully playable with all music, animations and cutscenes. For block 2 I’m currently writing texts for hotspots, objects, characters and dialogs plus adding some animations here and there. To give you some further insight, block 2 plays in a town called Drumston, which covers more than 20 screens and more than 30 characters. No puzzles implemented for block 2 yet, but hopefully I’ll be able to start with that next month. Here's a screenshot from block 2 of the game: In other news, to get some diversion from the monster project that is FCotW, I started working on a much smaller-scaled AGS side project. It’s only 2.5 rooms and doesn’t even feature any real puzzle solving. It’s more of an interactive story really. We’ll see how that one progresses, but I hope it will help me polishing a few of my skills and allow me to release something prior to FCotW2, which is still some way from completion. Optimally, I want to release at least one new game every year, even if it’s only some tiny one-room thing. That’s the plan at least, but plans can change, and no matter what, the FCotW series will stay my main project for a long, long time.
Now I’m off to London for a few days of vacation. See ya all in September! As June draws to a close, I guess I should give another status update on FCotW2. I managed to get lots of scripting done last month, but it was mostly tedious detail work like getting the timing of certain animated sequences exactly right or filling in some missing action descriptions. I also did some polishing on a couple of dialog trees, which was a nice diversion.
Currently I'm about two major dialogs away from completing the scripting of block 1 of the game. This might be a good opportunity to give you an overview on how the whole game will be layed out: the game can be divided into six blocks: Block 1 and 6 are the beginning and the end of the game respecitively, both blocks are rather linear. Blocks 2 and 3 consist of several puzzles that can be solved in any order. In block 2, some puzzles are also optional, you only need to solve a subset of them to proceed. Block 4 and 5 are alternative paths, in a normal playthrough you'll only do one of them. Since I am in a good mood, I'll also show you another new screenshot from FCotW2: You know, I really should post here more regularly, if only to motivate myself to get some more work done. But the thing is, I don't find myself with a lot to say lately. Not to imply there wasn't any progress on FCotW2 (there was!) or that I don't have anything new to show (I have!). It's just that I've been super lazy recently, so progress is on the slow side and I don't want to go too deep into spoiler territory either. There's still a long way to go until the release of FCotW2, so I better pace myself.
Anyways, my plan is to have a monthly update from now on, and to have a very specific topic to talk about each time. For instance, next time I plan to give you a comparison of concept art vs. the final version for my background art, and I will write about my process of getting there, probably using an example from FCotW1 as a demonstration. In the mean time, I give you another screenshot for FCotW2. Don't worry, there are dozens you haven't seen yet, but I better keep releasing them sparingly to not spoil the surprises. See ya next month! Wheeeeeeee! FCotW1 was nominated in two categories at the AGS Awards 2011 - "Best Original Story" and "Best Puzzles"! I'm really happy and deeply honored and thank everyone who has voted for my game! Now it's time for choosing the winners in the various categories, so go back there and cast your vote for whatever games you deem most worthy. Note that you must be logged in at the forums to be able to participate!
In order to celebrate, I also present you a brand-new screenshot for FCotW2 that I've finished tonight: The Emporium of Wonders, an intriguing place that you'll visit in the next chapter. Good news everyone! The game world of FCotW2 is fully designed now, meaning all the screens are in the game and can be walked around in by the player character. If you read my last update, you know why this is such a big deal! And let me tell you, the game is shaping up to be quite a bit larger than part 1, with lots of fun locations to explore.
Of this game world, more than half of the backgrounds are done, the others exist in various states of completion but at the very least as concept drawings, which show me exactly what I need and how the screen is structured. Of course I still have lots of characters to draw and most of the scripting and dialog-writing to do, but this will be a fun diversion once the background art is out of the way. As promised I also give you a new, almost finished background: I've recently posted a new screenshot for FCotW2 on Twitter, guess I might as well post it here too. As you can see, graphics are still not my strong side, but I am trying to add a little detail here and there compared to part 1. All the screenshots are work in progress, so they might still change 'till the final version.
Time for a small update!
Work on FCotW Chapter 2 is progressing nicely. Currently I am mostly working on the backgrounds - I've completed some really cool locations recently and even if there isn’t much to do yet, simply strolling around in them is quite fun already. Orignally I planned to have all the background art finished by the end of the year, but I guess it might take me a bit longer than that. Anyways, here’s a first screenshot from a pivotal scene early in the game: |