'My' game is done!
 

The game I was working on is done. It's out on the internet and people are playing it.

URL: http://dsngame.r-i.nl/
Language: Dutch (sorry guys)
Control method: arrow keys for moving, space bar for everything else
Sound: yes, there is, so turn on those speakers.
System req: 800 mhz at the very least

(In case you're wondering why there's no site around it, it's being linked to from here: http://www.deslapelozenacht.nl )

This project went from totally depressing to ... well, a game one might actually show to some people. Mind you, the game is a conceptual mess -- a complete creative compromise. It's not something I think is really cool. We had a really weird assignment, and a troubled process. Still, we made the best of our situation. It's got really nice production values, and hopefully the dialog and story we put in there will make up for the lack of any cool gameplay.

You need to know Dutch to understand it though. Even if you know Dutch, I doubt all will be clear to you. But that's okay. :shifty:

Ah jees, I just found another bug... :o

... and I saw my nice short help screen has been replaced with something unnecesarily elaborate. Sigh.

Yeah... it seems you can never get properly started. He walks towards the sink, then the menu pops up and you start all over. Pretty weird.

Still looks nice.

Yeah that's the bug I mean. I just restarted and it works fine :confused:

The intro makes it look promising! The only thing is, the game starts over again when I walk to the sink :p. But the idea sounds pretty cool and the graphics and music are cool :).

Full frontal, eh? ;)

In the early development is his, erm, thingie was too big, so we downsized it by a pixel. Poor guy.

Well, I dunno what is up with this wretched game. Ignore it. Things will fix themselves. I need sleep now.

Looks good. I accidentally (I think) got past that tree. I don't know a single Dutch word.

What was your job in the team, Marek?

Unfortunately, no matter how many times I restart, I can't get to the sink. Curses! It does look very nice at first glance, however.

I think I understood a part where he said he wanted a glass of water. The trees are out of my league. I like the music.

I made it past the sink, but I had to switch to a different browser because my cache in Opera would always launch the bugged version and refreshing didn't work. I guess you could also just clean out your cache and download the flash again.

Very nicely produced game, I love the tree part.

I also couldn't quite make it to the sink for a glass of water. Got kicked back to start.

On another note, Marek, I thought the language used was disgusting. I hope kids don't read that. :P

Looks nice Marek, now reading the introduction...

The "help" segment is totally out of control. It's like ... 12 pages. I made sure we made some better instructions today. I've managed to narrow it down to just 3 screens, and they're no longer at the beginning of the game, but they appear when you actually need the instructions. We've also worked on getting that bug out. The new version will be uploaded soon.

I didn't think the early helpfunction was *very* annoyingly long, but it could have used a trim yes. Let's see if the updated version gets me passed the sink :P

Looking very nice! :)
Love the atmosphere. Too bad i don't understand a word... is there any plan to put up english version?
I had no problems playing the game- i'm now on screen with tree, but have no idea what to do now.

Btw, i saw graphics of character are actually bitmaps and not vectors (hard edges). Was the game made in Director?

As for "lack" of gameplay, you mentioned- i don't think that's a bad thing in Shockwave games at all. Opposite to "exe" games, i'm more interested in concept when it comes to flash. From my experience, people who play internet games, don't have much time or patience anyway, so they want something short, not too complicated, but effective. From what i saw you succeeded :)

The beginning of the game was extremely lineair though... I couldn't even walk backwards! :crazy: ;)

Yeah, we used bitmaps in Flash. This sometimes gives problems as Flash tries to anti-alias the bitmaps, but that can be disabled. Also, we learned of a trick that if you add a 1px transparent border around your sprites it prevents Flash from 'messing up' the edges (e.g. sometimes it makes the edges thicker for some reason, which probably relates to scaling).

Oh, the endless divine possibilities of being a game developer.

Will there be an English version released, Marek? I'm having enough problems learning German at the moment. Dutch would just about tip me over the edge (too many A's - it gets very confusing). ;)

I don't think there will be an English version, since there's a huge categorized list of words hooked up to this game. (For the bit with the tree.) It would be too much data entry to do that again in another language.

However, today the programmers will upload a new version with a new instructions screen that should make some sense even to those who don't understand the language. That way you should be able to complete the bit with the tree, and discover the office level that follows.

OK, Thankee very mucho grazias, sir!

This just in: there was some brief discussion amongst the team yesterday about letting the database run through a Dutch-to-English translator. Who knows. Also, the problems some of you have experienced relate to the Flash player version. Version 7.000000010243 works fine but v7.0000000003045 messes it all up or something. :rolleyes:

Anyway, today we showed the game at the festival it was created for. We actually got really nice feedback. People walked past our computer terminals and said things like 'oooh hey, this is where you can make those poems, someone told me about that'. Some people actually created some vaguely coherent poems with the words on those trees. Here's two translated examples:

"i've been shot today
and rose again in my dreams
in some dreams you were there
beautifully between the stars"

"her curves were beautiful
the mailman agreed
and of course i dream often of her
my sweet jasmijn"

There's also quite a number of suggestive lines and just funny stuff that people wrote. Things like "need more bald women!" or "come and wash us with your mighty swords" or "she licks a lot". There's also a poem that starts with "my dear pole" :shifty:

So far only 3 people managed to play the game to the end. Most people die in level 4 of the office game.

How many levels are there anyway?

don't you hate that? It's such a stupid trick and Macromedia didn't eliminate it in the new version.

I've had a chance to check this out now.

This has a ton of promise. It's got that ultra cute fairy tale feel that I love.... that sort of "Loom-ish" night time quality. It's very impressive. The pixel character is also very well done. He's naked!

Also, I can't make out quite what the dreamy bubbled graphics are but I'm guessing they are a tutorial of some sort. Also very well illustrated. I think info-graphics can get really detailed and cool looking when done right. Are those tree branches your inventory or something?

I hope the size reduction isn't a side effect of game development work <G>

Seriously - it look very good. Nice style choice. I wish I knew some Dutch. :frown:
I have no idea what was going on. I didn't run into any glitches though.

No english version.... Damn

Intrepid and LauraMac, did you read this before posting?

Who knows......... :) That's a swing away from a no. Possibly. So cheer up! ;)

Oh OK - I'll be cheerful :D

Hear that Trep, english version a maybe. :7