I’m not going to have voice… for me personally, I always liked how MI1 and MI2 didn’t have voice, so I could just imagine them myself. Though I think for certain games it really adds a lot (like the Space Quest 4 and 6 narration). I can always add voices in a Special Edition 20 years later.
For music I have programs already that can generate the MIDI accompaniment music I need, and I’ve got a Roland MT-32 emulator that I’ll put it through.
When it’s done I’ll put up a trailer and have the links and I’ll make a Youtube, FB, X, Mastodon, etc.
I’m mostly finished with the intro/ending/cutscenes now, so I just have to do dialogues, music, more descriptions/hotspots, little animations, clean up some rooms and code.
I’ve now finished the dialogues, as well as the hotspot descriptions for the rooms, objects, etc.
Gotta rejig some stuff at the start and end of the game, then do talk and idle animations for characters, music, as well as go through a general list of things that might need checking/fixing/altering. Then some playtesting and hopefully it should be done.
It will probably be the AI video programs that help with this eventually…
They would generate a video of the character walking, and then you could just take however many frames you wanted to use as a walk cycle.
Could probably get some backgrounds to have animations using something like Runway’s Gen-2, where you upload an image and then tell it what you want and it’ll make a video from it for a few seconds…
Might be good for animating water or fire eventually, though it’s a bit random so far from what I’ve tried.
If one of these could do some kind of colour-cycling effect that would be great.
Also I’ve the done the music and animations in my game, gotta test and check a bunch of things in it still.
It took about 3 months to finish and is about a third of the size of SoMI in terms of rooms/screens.
In that time I had to learn AGS/coding, how to do the music, animation, etc., so I think it’d maybe be possible to do the same size game in 2 months.
ChatGPT actually knows how to write AGS code, though I wanted to learn/understand it first on this game.
Eventually the AI video stuff should help with animation, though you’re always going to need a left/right AND a forward/back animation of the same character, I’m not sure how it’d manage to do both of those things.
Still waiting on @seguso and @LowLevel’s games, as I already know all the puzzles and jokes in mine!
Oh my gosh! I’m super pumped. I’m thrilled to be your first customer! Plus, a game coming out during this dry spell of adventures. I’m starting tonight! Thanks a million!
I went on Reddit and a bunch of people bought the game…
I may need to set up a page somewhere with hints, otherwise I’ll have to personally give hints to everyone who gets stuck
I really like that the game is hard despite the small number of objects.
The moment you realize a game is good is when you get stuck and can’t leave it. Because evidently, the atmosphere is so great that you enjoy wandering around and racking your brain in that world.
In my case, all I have left to do is to give the wizard something solid to cut the key. I’ve already given an ice cream to the guy dressed as a cup, but apparently, he still wants something cool. In my inventory, I only have a battery, the empty teddy bear, and the fridge magnet. It’s strange because there don’t seem to be any unresolved issues or characters who can give me anything else, except for him. Really interesting. I don’t want any hints, for now. I’ll keep trying a bit more :)"
I’ve completed the game! What can I say? You have amazing talent. You should not quit.
You should do another, and another! I would play these kinds of games forever.
sparse comments:
I was hoping for a final section with fewer locations
I think the backgrounds require some manual retouching, which I’ve become very proficient at, so if you need help, just ask me.
the music was also amazing: remind me again how did you do it?
To take it to the next level, there would need to be some puzzles that trigger visible cutscenes (which you could make animated, in the style of LucasArts, or as simple static illustrations, which are easier to generate via AI).
And then, some background animations would be needed. (moving trees, flickering lights, moving water) But I realize it’s a lot of work.
Thanks!
Glad you were able to finish it without hints… I was thinking about having a “hotspot reveal”, but I was worried it’d make it too easy.
Though I once wandered around Simon the Sorcerer for 3 hours because I didn’t see a particular hotspot (I think it was a tree stump or something), so I know sometimes it makes things frustrating.
The music I did with FL Studio, I already do that a lot as a hobby, I use things like Scaler 2 and other MIDI arrangement programs to compose it and then I used Munt which is a plugin that emulates the Roland MT-32.
I would like to add more cutscenes in future games, I think once I’ve done enough walk cycles for different characters it’ll be easier, as I can then change their clothes and heads and can have different characters walking and talking in the cutscenes. Like in MI1 where LeChuck is on his ship and one of his crew comes to tell him about Guybrush.
I’ll be working on trying to get some background animation processes as well, hopefully with the AI video generators.
I have another game I want to work on next that doesn’t involve pirates (but is still in the LucasArts comedy style), but after that I’d like to do another pirate one as a sequel to this one.
Oh, wow, you made a game! That’s great, I can’t wait to download it!
I hope you don’t mind if I avoid reading all the previous posts and just ask you: did you use AI in any way for the development of your game?
I have to admit that I haven’t followed the discussions these last months, I’ve been sucked away by other things. One piece of “other stuff” happens to be related to AI games, but of a very different kind: chess engines.
As for my brief experience with Leonardo.ai, the only thing I remember is that I didn’t feel that the technology was very good at following the details in the prompts. This was true even when I turned on the option that should have made the pictures follow the descriptions more closely. A week ago, I used the platform for an unrelated task and read that the developers seemed to have improved this aspect, but I didn’t try it. To be honest, the large amount of configuration options felt like a way to get inexperienced users like me to spend more money in the hope of getting the desired results.
I’ll leave here a few experiments I did at the time:
That’s great, I can’t wait to download it!
