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Duke Grabowski, Mighty Swashbuckler! Point-and-click fun! Kickstarter

Total Posts: 67

Joined 2014-08-09

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Thank you for all the tips. I enjoy writing stories more because I really find it difficult to draw. I did not think you could learn to draw to such a level that it would be commercially viable. So thank you for pointing that out. There is one thing that I envy developers most of all for and that is being able to bring a world to life. A small act of creatism. Being able to create people and culture and story and to make it come to life on a platform for many others to enjoy. To be able to do that must fill you with a great feeling of accomplishment.

     

Total Posts: 67

Joined 2014-08-09

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Just to let you all know, the game is now on steam green light. Your vote would be greatly appreciated: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=300405032

     

Total Posts: 67

Joined 2014-08-09

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If you could also spare some of your time to give a vote for the game to come to GOG, that would be greatly appreicated: http://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/duke_grabowski_mighty_swashbuckler

     
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Total Posts: 1289

Joined 2012-07-15

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Voted both on GoG and Steam Greenlight, and backed the game for $100 at kickstarter. I’m SUPER-excited about the “how to paint the Bill Tiller way” -DvD! I pledged for that same DvD-reward on the AVS-year one kickstarter, but, sadly, that fundraiser was unsuccessful. This time, it seems the fundraiser will meet its goal. Can’t wait to start learning! Grin

billt - 15 August 2014 03:43 PM

  Sorry if I came off as thin skinned.

I meant no offense by that, caring a little too much about what other people thinks is just part of being a perfectionist, and is, I believe, a necessity to excel in certain crafts. I just didn’t think some of the negative comments earlier were being very contructive in their critisism, so I wanted to try and make sure you wouldn’t let them bring you down Smile

Yes generally one point perspective is not the best one to use, though I used it three times in the demo. With the Jail I just wanted to mimic the one from MI2 enough that people might notice it but changed it enough to make it not an obvious Easter egg. If I changed it to ¾ view then I don’t think the Easter Egg would have ever been noticed. I used one point on the bridge inn too because I wanted to kind of use it as an establishing shot and to have the viewer be impressed with the ships size and presence.

And I’d say you’ve succeeded in that, the ship-scene looks spectacular and majestic, proving there’s a lot that can be done with 1-point-perspective too. Looking forward to seeing more backgrounds in the next update.

By the way Duckman was one of the inspirations for the CMI style.

Nice, I love Everett Peck’s art! I can recognize the odd shapes and angles. In my opinion, the color palette in CMI is much more beautiful and harmonic than that of Duckman, which can be a little icky at times Tongue

     

Duckman: Can you believe it? Five hundred bucks for a parking ticket?
Cornfed Pig: You parked in a handicapped zone.
Duckman: Who cares? Nobody parks there anyway, except for the people who are supposed to park there and, hell, I can outrun them anytime.

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Total Posts: 13

Joined 2009-12-11

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Dag - 21 August 2014 07:47 AM

Voted both on GoG and Steam Greenlight, and backed the game for $100 at kickstarter.

I also did all three (although I pledged slightly higher.  I’ll be adding yet more money to my credit card balance, but putting myself in more debt is worth it for a new game by Bill Tiller and Gene Mocsy Smile).

I meant what I said over at Steam and GOG.com too.  I’ll gladly double dip if need be to get the game in both marketplaces.  I’m extremely excited for this game, and would buy it twice in a heartbeat. Art in games by Bill Tiller are always gorgeous, and Mr. Tiller and Gene Mocsy have improved in the design department tremendously since A Vampyre Story and Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island. They designed Perils of Man: Chapter One, which has some of the best puzzles I’ve played in an adventure game since the 1990’s classics. If Perils of Man is any indication, we’ll all be in for a real treat once Duke Grabowski is released. Smile

     

Total Posts: 67

Joined 2014-08-09

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Hello JenniBee you have good taste!

Gene is an excellent writter and together with Bill Tillers art you got a great combination.

     

Total Posts: 67

Joined 2014-08-09

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p.s Please help spread this little video I put together

     

Total Posts: 18

Joined 2008-10-18

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What would be interesting to me is who is in charge of the whole project. The one doing the planning, handling the finances, monitoring the progress and is making grave decisions if needed (1). From the Kickstarter page it looks like its Bill but it isn’t exactly clear.

I haven’t supported this Kickstarter yet because I have doubts about Bill as a project leader. I absolutely love Bills art, his sense of humor and the story concepts he’s writing. So if someone else is running the project with Bill throwing in his work I would support the project without hesitating. But from people from within the game industry I’ve heard that while Bill is a very nice guy with marvelous skills he lacks in the area of the things I listed above (1). And the way the AVS Year 1 Kickstarter campaign went to me supports this impression (unbalanced reward tiers, somewhat chaotic in the comments and with new ideas). This is just my personal impression of course but one that is shared by quite a few people in the german community (you can read the AVS Year 1 thread at adventure-treff.de for example).

So I would like to see something that makes me more confident that this project will work out more or less as planned at the moment after it has been funded (no game is released on the original planned date but the delay should be reasonable).

     

Total Posts: 67

Joined 2014-08-09

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Bakhtosh - 26 August 2014 07:05 AM

What would be interesting to me is who is in charge of the whole project. The one doing the planning, handling the finances, monitoring the progress and is making grave decisions if needed (1). From the Kickstarter page it looks like its Bill but it isn’t exactly clear.

I haven’t supported this Kickstarter yet because I have doubts about Bill as a project leader. I absolutely love Bills art, his sense of humor and the story concepts he’s writing. So if someone else is running the project with Bill throwing in his work I would support the project without hesitating. But from people from within the game industry I’ve heard that while Bill is a very nice guy with marvelous skills he lacks in the area of the things I listed above (1). And the way the AVS Year 1 Kickstarter campaign went to me supports this impression (unbalanced reward tiers, somewhat chaotic in the comments and with new ideas). This is just my personal impression of course but one that is shared by quite a few people in the german community (you can read the AVS Year 1 thread at adventure-treff.de for example).

So I would like to see something that makes me more confident that this project will work out more or less as planned at the moment after it has been funded (no game is released on the original planned date but the delay should be reasonable).

Grettings Bakhtosh

The company is comprised of three people. I know that the lead writter Gene Mocsy is very hands on with the kickstarter project, so this gives me the impression that Bill is not soley steering the project. I have seen activity around their twitter: https://twitter.com/DukeGrabowski They have pushed out a greenlight page: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=300405032 and Bill himself has also been active here in the thread. The project has just been started as such I feel they will really show their colours as we move closer the project end date. I am also happy to see that they are starting from the new company Venture Monn Industires which should allow them much more freedom. We have to remember it takes a good bit of money to push a good PR campain. As such new companies like these really need our support.

While I have mentioned Gene, Gene could you tell us how you got into writting and also how you even plan and write for an adventure game?

     

Total Posts: 1

Joined 2014-08-26

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Hi all, Gene here, 1/3 of Venture Moon Industries. I’m taking some of the load off of Bill by working on the Kickstarter and Greenlight campaigns for Duke Grabowski. I wish I could’ve helped more with Vampyre Story: Year One, but I was busy prepping for E3 to publicize my game 1954: Alcatraz.

A lot of lessons were learned last year. With Unity + Adventure Creator, we now have a stable engine, and we’re keeping the scope of this game small. Jeremiah Grant, our other 1/3, crunched the numbers to make sure our financial and time goals were realistic. The duties and responsibilities of Duke Grabowski are shared between the three of us.

Regarding my experience, I started at EA as an artist, and slowly transitioned to design over six years. I left EA to join Bill and Jeremiah on A Vampyre Story, where I scripted and wrote additional dialog. I then co-designed, co-scripted, and wrote the in-game dialog for Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island.

Next, I designed and wrote all the dialog for 1954: Alcatraz, and after that I co-designed Perils of Man with Bill for IF Games, where I also served as Lead Dialog Writer.

Every project was different—on one game, the story was already written, so I had to create puzzles and mini-games from their treatment. On another, the settings were most important, so I devised characters and puzzles that would naturally be found there. On another project, I devised a story and puzzles to help an engineer develop new aspects of his game engine.

The engine is key, that’s what I’ve learned. You have to abide by its limitations. (Unless you’re an engineer like Ron Gilbert and you can code whatever you design!)

Anyway, enough about me. Smile I’m serious about adventure games and I really want Duke Grabowski to succeed.

     

Total Posts: 67

Joined 2014-08-09

PM

Thanks for sharing your past and the process you use for writing Gene. Also peeps, there is currently a competition which has been recently revealed within an update. The competition is to name an inn, in the game. Head on over to the kickstarter and read the new update for more information: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/venture-moon/duke-grabowski-mighty-swashbuckler-point-and-click/posts

Also I have recently launched a Duke Grabowski fansite: http://www.dukegrabowskifansite.com/welcome.html

     
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Total Posts: 13

Joined 2009-12-11

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GMocsy - 26 August 2014 08:47 PM

A lot of lessons were learned last year. With Unity + Adventure Creator, we now have a stable engine, and we’re keeping the scope of this game small. Jeremiah Grant, our other 1/3, crunched the numbers to make sure our financial and time goals were realistic. The duties and responsibilities of Duke Grabowski are shared between the three of us.

...

The engine is key, that’s what I’ve learned. You have to abide by its limitations. (Unless you’re an engineer like Ron Gilbert and you can code whatever you design!)

Definitely.  I’ve coded games myself, and learned this first hand.  I made a game with a new engine that wasn’t tried and true like Adventure Creator on Unity is (the one I used was adventure engine on Moai, and my game was actually the first full game released with it), and I had a lot of problems with people not being able to run the game straight out of the box (they actually had to install the Moai devkit to run it, which is not ideal).

Since Adventure Creator is tried and true (and the development community for it is top notch), the process for both you, as the developers, and the gamers themselves should be pretty seamless. Smile

     
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Total Posts: 619

Joined 2012-06-06

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I had the pleasure of meeting Gene when he stopped up to the Phoenix Online Loft at GDC, and he is so nice, so gracious and excellent - he gave me a free Steam key for 1954:Alcatraz and chatted us up for a while.  If you want someone who is honestly passionate about games - and specifically Adventure Games, Gene is the Gent.  Truly - I backed this because he’s not only good at what he does, he also cares and cares about the people who play his games.  That means a lot in this industry.

Bt

     

Total Posts: 67

Joined 2014-08-09

PM

Duke is now past the halfway point, thanks to all contributors and these that spread the word. Thank you also to adventure gamers for providing a medium to discuss the project on and their article about duke!

     

Total Posts: 232

Joined 2010-08-21

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Go Duke, Go!

Hey bill, my fav backdrop in CMI by far was the blood island overview map. Man, I could listen to the music and stare at that thing for hours. That was the kind of thing that had all my gears turning, telling me I wanted to get into game art.

More of those beautiful night skies, I say! They’d certainly fit well in Duke. Smile

Hey Gene nice seeing you spamming here too! A man’s gotta spam when a man’s gotta spam, eh?

Rock on!

     

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