Posted: 7th Jul 2009 03:12
Sintra, The underground empire
Plot:
The world is about to end... and no Kyoto Protocol is going to save us if we don’t do something about Mother Earth. Misteriously (or maybe not…) a tip from someone, somewhere, points in the right direction. The answer lies in a small country in the most western part of Europe (also known as… (laughs) the West Coast of Europe). And the instructions are precise: on the night of the 23rd of June meet the man with the pointed hat outside the small Saint Amaro chapel, in a forest area known for its legends and myths. Everything you can think of can be found there. Templers, Lamias, Nereids, Little Folk and even the remain of Atlantis are said to be within reach of those that know their way. Or those that don’t know but are willing to try the adventure. You…
This is about it as the story goes. We’ve mingled fact and fiction from History and the folk stories and are trying to do a funny entertaining adventure that uses FPS Creator but believes that the power of the word is mightier that the sword. Well it’s essentially a “no guns” game, where solving puzzles, finding the right clues and… knowing how to evade creatures patrolling underground corridors.
The game has four big chapters, that take you from an underground maze leading you to an atlantean colony within the mountain range of Sintra (written tradition in the area from the 15th century suggests there is an hidden empire beneath Serra de Sintra) and then to the “lost” library of Alexandria, where more clues take you to a huge spaceship (Atlantean, always them) orbiting in a parallel world, watching Earth.
From there you discover your last destination: Palácio da Pena, a 19th century palace, a magic place filled with mysterious symbols and suggestions, sitting atop an old volcanic chimney. In the palace and in the park around it, and area filled with botanic species from around the world, the clues wait for someone to solve the mystery and get old Gaia on the road again. Before it’s too late and we become history…
Goal:
We are doing this as a kid’s game that grown ups will want to play. The puzzles are easy someplaces, devious others, we are looking for the right balance to keep everybody happy. And again we’re using many traditional puzzles and the popular wisdom, believing that it is a way to make people learn… playing. References to books that can be read also appear along the path.
We’ve decided to go this way because we believe there might be interest into such a game. If not, at least it will be a fantastic ride for us, made us try something different and explore things we’re not thinking about some months ago.
What we’re doing:
We’re really taking FPSCreator for a first spin so we don’t know the program that much. We’re learning as we move along. But we decided to go “out of the box” and remove the S (Shooter) from FPSCreator. So this is an adventure in First Person. And although we know that we’re not doing anything new, we’re trying to use within FPS Creator things like the comic books balloons for the characters phrases, thoughts a.s.o. We’re also exploring the use of different paths and movement of characters to create simple stealth patterns.
We intend to explore the logical conversation threads you find in RPG games, and see how it works to define options for different conversations with the same characters. A kind of log book that keeps the player informed is also in the “labs”. We’re, having fun sitting down at home and talking about what we can or can not do. And we’re working with two levels at the same time, because they’re so different settings that we feel we learn at twice the speed.
And we are…
Well, we are three. One is the victim, the player that we use to test whatever comes inside the game after each new session of work. We have plans to make him work within the game, but for now that’s what he is doing. Playing the victim. Good this is not a shooter!
Only one of us codes. And does all the graphics (well, use whatever is available, modify little things we need, for now…) levels and scripting, to make the game follow the rules we’ve set on paper. Not always easy but it has been a learning experience that will make our second game even better and easier to make. His past experience with Blender and other graphic programs and also coding are being put to test. Anyway that’s what he is studying at the university…
The story and this long text (bahhh…) area from the third part of the equation. In fact the writing, because the puzzle setting and the whole of the adventure are fruit of long hours of talking and laughing at the strange puzzles we hope to set up for players… YOU. A previous experience with GAC (Graphic Adventure Creator) in Spectrum days, for a game that run on old Clive Sinclair’s machine. That was about the same theme we’re exploring now. So History does repeat itself…
NOTE: remember, English is not our mother language, so please do excuse some typo….
And now for some images… -> press download/view
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