Adventure Gamers - Forums

The conversation with Tom straight after that scene had a lot of z instead of s. Just little things like that.

I did that on purpose, to show he has an accent. But it’s probably too weird. Maybe replacing the “s” by “sz”?

Once you’ve cut back on some of the hotspots, keep everything as though the player is examining it. Once the player has examined it once and the protagonist thinks you’ll need it, then change the cursor over that hotspot to one that indicates an action - wheather that’s to pick it up or to use it with something else.

Yes, but maybe not for all items : for obvious items which are meant to be taken/used, I think I’ll display the “pick/use” icon immediately.

About the inventory bar : I think I’ll do a test, and make the icon clickable. And remove the hovering to the bottom to open the inventory. The inventory bar will stay open until you go to another room, or click again.

That’s more simple, maybe a bit less practical/reactive, but less confusing and it won’t get in the way anymore. (well, I’ll remove all items in the bottom left position to avoid problems)

About the inventory bar… Daedalic has one neat trick for it. Their games use mouse’s scrolling button, as well as virtual clickable icon to open inventory. Icon is necessary because laptops/tablets/Mac computers don’t have scrolling mouse button (or proper mouse; yes, I’m looking at you MM!) but it’s neat feature when you play on PC.

Well I’ve played several Daedelic games (Deponia series is my favorite :p) and I couldn’t even remember lol

Anyway, considering I don’t use right clicking on screen (except for describing items in the inventory itself), I will make it so right click brings up the inventory bar. (in addition to the icon)

I think most Mac users don’t have right mouse buttons, so the button will be necessary in any case.

You’ve probably seen it already, but Jack Allin has posted a news about my game on the site, and I’m very thankful for that

http://www.adventuregamers.com/news/view/28813

I’m having great progress lately, and Chapter 2 is almost finished. It’s the biggest one, there’s really a ton of stuff to do in it (including mini games)

So if you liked the demo of Chapter 1, I think you’ll love it!

Also, I’ve worked on several changes following your feedback. One of these is the possibility to see all the hotspots on a screen at once, by pressing SPACE or clicking on the goal in the top bar.

Here’s a regular screen :

And the same screen with hotspots :

Not very pretty, I admit, but it’s meant to be practical! And it’s automatic (no programming overhead for me, I don’t have anything specific to do for each room)

Also, I have changed the inventory interface, so it’s more classical : you click on the button to open it (you can also right click anywhere). It stays open until you close it or switch to another room.

Now, the interface doesn’t get in the way anymore

What do you think?

These are great changes! I personally like this colorful hotspots screen. I don’t know if it’ll seem too colorful for “serious” gamers but it fits right in with the tone of the game.

There you go! A new demo version 1.1 is now available!

The previous demo version (1.0) was met with very positive feedbacks so far (thanks everyone!)

Some of you have suggested a few things to improve, and have encountered some minor bugs.

So, I’ve made some changes :

- Added hotspots view! Just press the SPACE bar, or click the button in the top interface, to see all the things on screen. (see my previous post)

- Added “look” icon, to separate hotspots we can act on (often the most important ones), and hotspots we can look. (This might make the game a bit easier, but less daunting)

- Inventory and menu bars now open when clicking on a button (instead of hovering at the bottom / top), and stay open until we click again or leave the room

Other changes :

- Fixed the sound volume interface
- Faster text writing
- The royalty free music is now without watermark (licence bought)
- Removed Tom’s accent, which most people found awkward
- Removed some useless / confusing interactions here and there
- Fixed a bug with some of the interface staying on screen on monitors without a 16/9 aspect ratio
- Corrected some music bugs (in some cases, the music wouldn’t play or loop)

To download the new demo version, go to the official game site and enter your email address just below the banner.

(NB : Entering your email will only get you a private download link, you won’t receive the newsletter or anything else)

For the people who already download the previous version, this has the exact same content, which is the whole Chapter 1 (between one and two hours of gameplay)

The Demetrios game project has progressed quite a lot lately, so it’s time for a quick update status!

First, the preview demo has been fully translated to French. It’s working great and it didn’t take a long time to implement, so this definitely opens the possibility to new languages translations for the release
The language (English or French) is automatically detected on startup, according to your operating system language. (NB : It can also be changed manually in the options)

Also, Mac and Linux exports have been officially added!

I’ve corrected a few things, especially some performance issues : the game would slow down more and more as you’d play it, and this also made the Mac version crash often (memory leaks and such) Now it’s fixed!

You can now download the preview version directly on the site (no email required anymore!) Also the Windows version now comes with an installer, and includes DirectX installation (some people had trouble with that)

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DOWNLOAD THE DEMO :

The demo is available for Windows, Mac and Linux, right here : http://www.demetriosgame.com/en/demo/

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I’ve got a whole lot more to talk about, as I’ve been having great progress lately - but I’ll save that for later. Stay tuned!

Lately I’ve been working on an HTML5 version of the demo. That way, people can try the game without having to download it! (which is tedious for many people who just won’t bother)

I am using Game Maker Studio to make this game. More details here :

http://www.demetriosgame.com/en/news/HTML5_version/23.html

I’ll let you know when it’s available

I just finished playing the latest demo (v1.22 for Windows) and I’m really looking forward to the complete game! Excellent work so far.

Some feedback for COWCAT:

1) Is there a way to play the demo in a windowed mode? I’d like to do a couple screen captures by using the PrtScn button on my keyboard and pasting it into the Paint program for providing feedback, but this apparently only works in a window, not when the game is full-screen.

2) When using the hot spot indicator function, some of the interactive item descriptions overlap other descriptions.

3) You mentioned there are three “cookies” in every screen…does this include Bjorn’s storeroom, and the archives at Dumoulin? (I love the cookies for hints idea, by the way!) Will finding them all be an “Achievement”? How about finding them all but using none?

4) You also asked whether the cookies needed to be bigger…some of them are awfully hard to spot and they are tiny, that’s for sure. I believe I missed a few, and I spent A LOT of time looking for them. For example, I only found one in Bjorn’s bedroom no matter how hard I tried. Not sure what the answer is, but I found it a little frustrating.

5) Do dialog “choices” affect the game path at all? For example, continuing to chat up Sandra about her job (and where she lives) after giving her the cookbook pissed her off, and Bjorn says something like he’d better let her cool off before talking to her again. Is there a consequence for making her angry?

6) I ran into an error message when I found the Funfair Coins. Two different things happened: The first time through a little box popped up in the “Got 20 Funfair Coins!” description box that said “Error—Sprite Not Found”, and on another playthrough the game went into windowed mode and the following error message appeared:

All in all this is a wonderful game, and it’s really impressive what you’ve done working alone! I like the pacing, the dialogs are amusing, the artwork is excellent, and the puzzle difficulty and variety is spot on so far. I think what you’ve done to “improve” the hot spot system is great. I like the UI, too! I honestly can’t think of any real negatives, aside from the minor things I mentioned above!

I played 1 hour 9 minutes and got 13% complete. Is this max completion percentage for the demo?

Cheers, and keep up the great work!

Wow, thank you so much! ^^

1) Is there a way to play the demo in a windowed mode? I’d like to do a couple screen captures by using the PrtScn button on my keyboard and pasting it into the Paint program for providing feedback, but this apparently only works in a window, not when the game is full-screen.

To play the demo in window, you can press ALT + ENTER. I’ve also included an option in the game menu, which will be in the next demo build.

You can do a print screen by pressing SHIFT + F12 in the game, it puts the image in your temporary directory (something like : C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Demetrios\screenshots)

I added that manually because yes, Game Maker Studio seems to have issues with taking screenshots in full screen.

Now that I think about it, maybe I can just override the print screen keyboard key… Mmm… => I’ll add that to the TODO list :p

2) When using the hot spot indicator function, some of the interactive item descriptions overlap other descriptions.

I know, I’ll improve that for the final version. This function wasn’t planned at first (this was a suggestion from Lucebend here!)

For now I’m trying to do as much of the game as possible, but yeah, I’ll fix that.

) You mentioned there are three “cookies” in every screen…does this include Bjorn’s storeroom, and the archives at Dumoulin? (I love the cookies for hints idea, by the way!) Will finding them all be an “Achievement”? How about finding them all but using none?

Yes, there should be 3 cookies on each screen. I’m thinking about adding some kind of counter on the cookie icon, to display how many you’ve got on that screen (1/3 for example)

And yes, these will probably be achievements. I’ll add many kinds of achievements in the final version, and also unlockable extras (art, soundtrack,...)

4) You also asked whether the cookies needed to be bigger…some of them are awfully hard to spot and they are tiny, that’s for sure. I believe I missed a few, and I spent A LOT of time looking for them. For example, I only found one in Bjorn’s bedroom no matter how hard I tried. Not sure what the answer is, but I found it a little frustrating.

Someone else said the same thing, so I’ll definitely make them bigger. Although they’re not required to get through the game

5) Do dialog “choices” affect the game path at all? For example, continuing to chat up Sandra about her job (and where she lives) after giving her the cookbook pissed her off, and Bjorn says something like he’d better let her cool off before talking to her again. Is there a consequence for making her angry?

This should lead to some alternate dialogs later in the game - but don’t expect anything major. Maybe also some achievement. Just like everyone, I would love to make a game with many paths, but that’s not very possible when you’re a single developer making a whole adventure game :p

6) I ran into an error message when I found the Funfair Coins. Two different things happened: The first time through a little box popped up in the “Got 20 Funfair Coins!” description box that said “Error—Sprite Not Found”, and on another playthrough the game went into windowed mode and the following error message appeared:

Yes I’m aware of that bug, I’ll correct this for the next demo version. The funfair coins are not necessary to finish the demo. It takes some time to build one each time (including running some tests) so I’ll save that for the Kickstarter demo build

I played 1 hour 9 minutes and got 13% complete. Is this max completion percentage for the demo?

I would have to check but yes, probably. Also, I think everyone will get 100% when finishing the first run - to be honest I don’t like games without a proper “story progress percent”. Achievements are a separate thing.

By the way, you were quite fast, most people took between 1.5 to 2 hours to finish it :p

It’s great to get amazing feedbacks like that, really! And to think Chapter 1 is far from being the best one (IMO)

If you can help spread the word in any way, please do

I have prepared a Kickstarter page (with a small goal) and the Steam Greenlight page, which will be posted in early October.
But I’ll give you a reminder!

COWCAT - 25 August 2015 02:31 AM

I have prepared a Kickstarter page (with a small goal) and the Steam Greenlight page, which will be posted in early October. But I’ll give you a reminder!

I’ll be all over that KS, like a bum on a bologna sandwich! 

Ah ah, awesome ^^

This means a lot to me Thank you so much!

BlackJack - 26 August 2015 05:04 AM

COWCAT - 25 August 2015 12:36 PM

Ah ah, awesome ^^

This means a lot to me Thank you so much!

Shut up and take my money!!

LOL You forgot this :

(I love Futurama, BTW :p)

Well, I’ve finished programming a HTML5 version of the demo. (that you can play directly in your browser!)

This is a test version, would some of you try it and let me know if you encounter problems?

http://www.demetriosgame.com/publicdownload/demo/indexen.html