Aquaria: Sacrifice v1.12

[TheBear]

Update #3

So...like most mods this kinda died for a while. Bit off a little bit more than I could chew and lost motivation. About a month ago I brought up the mod with an old friend and he offered to do some programming which got me excited again. Its been awesome having someone to bounce ideas off and the mod is finally making some progress towards something I'm happy with. We've almost got the opening cut scene done and my friend is working on a simple dialogue tree system for the narrative. Story and characters have been outlined and I've been slowly moving through the dialogue. Still working on maps like old times...two screenshots below to make this wall of text more interesting. Hopefully I'll have some form of a release window for you guys by the end of the year. No promises.

 

[Hiro]

Woohoo! Update update!

Yeah, trying to do big mods straight off can be a little big.. Thats why I made that battle arena thingy. Its small so its easy. xD

Very much looking forward to this man, good luck.

[Chibi]

Wow. The scale of this is really evolving: keep up the excellent work! The mod looks very polished: everything is in its place, just like it should be.  Mods, if not up to the standards of the beginning game, should at least strive to do that. 

[EDIT] What is the priest doing in the throne room? 

[silverflagon]

I've just looked at all your screen shots they look great

[TheBear]

I realized that the first post in this thread wasn't providing a very accurate overview of where I was going so I spent some time to update it. It includes a brief overview, some screenshots, and a peak at the world map (should have 2 more maps once completed). Aquaria: Sacrifice is now the official name of the mod...at least for the immediate future. One of my earlier posts stated this would be released in 3 separate parts but I decided to ditch that a while ago and it will now be released as a complete campaign.

Below I have some screenshots of two dialogue tree prototypes. In both examples the character that is currently not talking is made darker. I was hoping you guys could tell me what you do/do not like.  I'm not much of an artist so if anyone has any examples of dialogue systems they like as well as any other random suggestions (font etc) it would be much appreciated. I'll have a rough release window in my next update but it could be a bit longer than anticipated as my programmer seems to have disappeared.

Text is filler...sorry for the confusion.
Example 1
 

Example 2
 

[Chibi]

Very interesting idea: looks like a parallel to early versions of Aquaria (I believe the first prototype was leaning towards a role-playing game). If a classic RPG is what you have in mind, then I would use example 2, but if you want something more original choose the first. I have no preferences between the two myself. Good work man! 

_{My only suggestion would be to touch up the dialogue a little, though sophistication of speech is not particularly necessary in a mod.}

[ChimeraThing]

Looks awesome! Why is the rest in latin, it looks like  the stuff that is in Apple Pages when you open the fancy brochure.

[TheBear]

Woops...meant to add a disclaimer that the text is just filler. The first line is Warhammer Online stuff so...yeah none of this actual dialogue. Latin looking text is an old filler text you can find through google. Really helpful to see how the layout will feel for websites, brochures, and Aquaria mod dialogue trees.

[Hiro]

I think if you want to have the whole person who is talking is brighter/person not talking is darker thing then having the full bodies shown is better (as in the top option).
I think the font in the second option is better, looks more Aquarian style.
I prefer the circles over the numbers, as in the second option.
I think I prefer the black bar through the middle that reaches the sides of the screen as in the top option, rather than the black box at the bottom. Seems more..important or something. xD
Oh, and that next button is cool.
(lol, listing things..)

Great work man, this looks really interesting (and its come so far too! ).

[Halo364]

I'm liking example 1 (the black bar through the middle) better.

[scyld]

Why is the rest in latin, it looks like  the stuff that is in Apple Pages when you open the fancy brochure.

Lol... "Lorem ipsum sit dolor amet..."

It's a common half Latin, half nonsense paragraph of gobbltey-gook used to test layouts and type faces.  The canonical "Lorem ipsum" paragraph was derived in the 16th century by taking snippets of words from a text of Cicero's.  It's used often because it is meaningless and its distribution of letters is similar to that of English's.  Sometimes additional words are added to make it even cloer to an English distribution of words, and sometimes that Latin-y nonsense paragraph is generated randomly.

[Sleepwalker]

How's this coming along?

[Danger Mouse]

I'm wondering the same thing... and will you allow people to use your work for the scripting with future mods if we give you credit?

[TheBear]

With the amount of time I've put into this so far and with the disappearance of my programmer I felt that I really should put some time into scripting. A) to see if I could understand it and B) to see if it was possible to do what I wanted to do.

Treasures and Turtles
Flag system figured out and thus collectibles show up in their proper location. Turtle transit system works and now comes with a spiffy menu that lets you choose where you would like to go. It still needs a bit of work to get the menu to change based on what turtles are flagged but all of the code is there.

Dialogue System
It took forever but it seems to work pretty nice...comes complete with pretty fades.

Blue Crystals
The above systems offer a lot of extra functionality I could add in. One system I've been kinda thinking of would be a shop vendor. Instead of treasures the player would collect scattered blue fragments. These fragments could be turned in to an Archivist to obtain forms not part of the main storyline as well as allow the player to choose which treasure they want.  On top of this would be dream/nightmare scenes from the crystal after say five were obtained. But then again idk. Things to think about.

Here's a video of the transit and dialogue systems in action.  wmv(12.1 mb)
- sorry about the crappy audio I'm a nub with this stuff
- also this text is filler

As far as a release I'm going to pull a Valve/Blizzard and say it will be done when it's done. There's a side writing project that I need to put some time into off and on over the next 2 months. I've been jumping around working on all sorts of things (maps, writing, programming) but starting this weekend I'm going to focus on moving more linearly.

I'm wondering the same thing... and will you allow people to use your work for the scripting with future mods if we give you credit? Smiley

Sure but it could be a while.

[Chibi]

That looks amazing TheBear - that approaches the quality of work had Alec and Derek expanded upon their early ideas of an RPG Aquaria!