The Grey Zone

Soundfonts!

noreply@blogger.com (TwinMoon) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 16:37:00 +0000

In my ongoing 'share the knowledge' series, here's one about Soundfonts. If you not interesting in writing music, this probably won't interest you. There. You have been warned.

I didn't know about Soundfonts until recently, so there's a good chance other composers won't either. This one's for you!

Soundfonts can be used by audio applications such as Cubase and FL Studio. They're usually a collection of samples from one instrument. Soundfonts are easy to create, which explains why there are so many free soundfonts to be found lying around the Net.

Here are some of my favourite free soundfont sites (sorted on usefullness, best one at the top):

DarkSword (all great, but especially grab Squidfont Orchestral)
Nando Florestan (This guy made some very high quality soundfonts, just get them all)
HammerSound (loads of 'em, though with lots of broken links)
SoundFonts.it (Quality differs a lot, but also check out their free VST's if you have Cubase / Fruity Loops)
HomeMusician (very nice site overall, there are some diamonds between the coal)

Soundfonts have the extension .SF2 - if you encounter .sfArk, that's a compressed file. You can open it with sfArk.

Last advice:
If you're looking for a specific instrument, try googling "soundfont instrument". It's how a found a tin whistle (which I used in the score for Damsel).

Games, seriously...

noreply@blogger.com (TwinMoon) — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 16:39:00 +0000

Something's been bugging me for a long time:

[rant modus on]

Why is it so difficult to make an adventure game about real people & their problems?

I know games are meant to be escapism, but why does it have to be pirates and science fiction all the time? Surely someone must care enough about the world to have something to say about that world?
Now, before you say "Well, who are you then?", yes, I'm no better than the rest. I've made a game which uses a fantasy setting and am working on a comedy game right now. But that's where this is coming from actually: I like literature, and am very annoyed that I'm not writing a better story.
The fantasy settings are probably used so much because they're easier: lots of examples to inspire you and no research necessary.

To be honest, I have no clue how to make what I want.

Adventure Games have one serious limitation: there must be puzzles to solve. In my opinion that limits my serious game to an investigation.
Why? Let's say you'd make "Cast away - the adventure game". So you're stranded. Puzzles are about making a shelter, getting food, etc. But then the meaningfull human part ("Oh, I'm so sad I'm stranded here") is no part of the game, since you'll have to deal with that in cutscenes.
The puzzles are no part of the story.

Only in an investigation you could that: as you solve puzzles you learn more about the story, and the player will pay attention to the story because it might contain clues. So why don't we see any of those?

Good question. Come to think of it, what I'm describing seems to be a computer game version of Citizen Kane.

This post has been an attempt to put my thoughts into writing. I didn't post this immediately, and now suspect Diamonds in the Rough might be the kind of game I'd want to make (but I'm not sure, since I haven't played it).

3D & Me

noreply@blogger.com (TwinMoon) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 23:50:00 +0000

Normally on the Grey Zone, my comments are neither black or white; hence 'The Grey Zone'. In this post however, I'll display total and uncompromised optimism.

When drawing in 2d (and we all know that's the only amount of 'd' you need for Adventures) it can really help you to make a 3d model first.
Now, I'm not very good with numbers. I still have nightmares where I have to make sense of all those x,y and z co-ordinates. Spiders, giants, falling... it's all a walk in the park compared to that.

So I braced myself, made some coffee, cleared my agenda for the day and decided to find me a 3d model of a greyhound bus.

And it's freaking easy!

Just google 'free 3d models' and you'll be bombarded with 'em!
I tried archive3d.net and got my screen full of 3d objects, links to pages 1-300 and a link saying: next 300 pages. I said I'm not good with numbers, but even I know that's really a lot of fucking images.

Only problem: I don't have a 3d editing program. Hm.
It seems googling for '3ds viewer' didn't give me a lot, but two freeware viewers did a good job:

LynX 3d Viewer. You can get Lynx 3d Viewer Lite at the ozone3d website, but you'll have to register, so better get it here.

Viewer3ds. Didn't try it. The only reason I mention this is because these guys are weird: their unique selling point is that their program uses animated buttons. Ok ok, so those buttons are cool, but what do I care when (in their own words) "[Viewer3ds] does not use the latest 3ds reading engine." ? All their other products do!

Frog 3d. Not only a cool name, but also a pretty darn good program: you can open any 3ds file, rotate it with the left mouse button and zoom with the right button. Easy peasy.
It doesn't show any textures though, but if you're using it just to get some reference images, it's all you'd need.

Visitors are among us!

noreply@blogger.com (TwinMoon) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 19:42:00 +0000

A few weeks back I put up a counter, and you know what? The whole world is reading this! Only place that doesn't visit my blog is the antarctic. Here's the top 11:

17.27%	Australia	5.45%	Austria
13.64%	Netherlands	4.55%	Cuba
13.64%	United States	3.64%	Romania
7.27%	Germany	3.64%	South Africa
6.36%	United Kingdom	3.64%	Greece
6.36%	Canada

As you can see, Australia is definitely in the lead. No worries, mate!
They're closely followed by the Netherlands and the US. Und wir grussen unsere Deutsche gaste!

The funniest thing was seeing that someone visited my site through a translation proxy. Not having any trouble with English myself, I never knew you could do that, and it was interesting to read my own site in Portugese. I wonder if I translate well?

Anyway, back to working on Adam utiliza el transporte público. And if anyone has played Diseño poco inteligente, don't forget to leave a comment at the AGS database ;-)

The Nearly-There-Blues

noreply@blogger.com (TwinMoon) — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 00:10:00 +0000

Yep. I'm at that step of development. I've done all the easy work, and losing interest. That's probably the upside of being a team; you can motivate each other. I'm just me, and frankly, I'm not a very motivational guy.
That's probably why Ben There, Dan That is so much fun, you can just picture those two guys making up joke after joke, the one competing with the other.

There no real cure for the nearly-there-blues, but one thing that really helps me make progress at the moment is having a to-do list.
You can work on one problem at a time - it's great to delete things from the list and see the release date getting closer.

Well, that's what's up at the moment and here's something tangible:

Lip service

noreply@blogger.com (TwinMoon) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:40:00 +0000

Anyone else struggling with talking animations?
Here's a small tutorial from an (now) experienced noob:

This is my finished animation.
The guy has an almost square jaw and a neck as big as his head, to give him a tough guy look. (The big brushy eyebrows and stubble also help ;))

It's comprised of 4 images. Of the strip below, the first image is his normal face. I'll show you how I drew the other three animation frames:

(Funny how the second image makes him look really fat - those 5/6 pixels can really alter a picture)

This guy talks as angular as his jaw is: the mouth became the upper lip, so I drew the opening of his mouth under the mouth in the original first pic. There's enough room on his chin to make it still look natural.

In the second one I made his head go up one pixel:

I started by moving half his head one pixel up. In the last pic I added one black line to the top of his mouth, because it looked better.

The third is where he pouts his lips:

I just started by removing the mouth all together, then drew in a little O-shape.

The animation sequence is: 1. original - 2. open mouth - 3. original - 4. open mouth with head higher - 5. lips pouted.

There ya go. Three simple talking pictures drawn, but it looks a lot better than just opening and closing his mouth.

The long overdue update

noreply@blogger.com (TwinMoon) — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 15:58:00 +0000

My progress with Ken&Adam is pretty good - in fact, so good I forgot to post here. I've finally gotten some flow going with drawing backgrounds, so no major hurdles to tackle anymore.

The only thing still left to really think about is the bus interface: in Part 1, you're using the bus to go from one place to another.
My idea is that there's this map in the bus station where you can look up places and then find the place where that bus stops. You'll have to constantly go back to the station, and I'm a little worried this will look like a cheap way to make the game longer.
So the station will be a minor puzzle where you'll have to find the right bus stop and dodge busses when crossing the station.

It's always dangerous to make predictions, but it won't be long now before the first part is finished. All the descriptions are scripted, a few funny responses written and I've even snuck in an easter egg, which I'm sure no one will get ;-)

Dancing Damsel

noreply@blogger.com (TwinMoon) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:41:00 +0000

Once again I took the task upon me to write music for a fellow gamemaker.

Strange Visitor (whom AGS familiairs will remember from a game with a chicken) is releasing a short game in a few weeks, called Damsel. Also with beautiful graphics by Pijin (check out the thread for Quest to End all Quests and let your jaw meet the floor).

So I'll be knee-deep in medieval music the next weeks. At last I can re-play King's Quest and call it work ;)

That's my plugging done, so I'll plug off.

Animated GIFts

noreply@blogger.com (TwinMoon) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:16:00 +0000

Been working at animation again - and as most people may know file formats can sometimes be a pain in various body parts.

Some nifty programmes in case you're ~~ripping animated gif's~~ making animated gif's:

UnFREEz is pretty amazing: at only a modest 27,5 kb it does one thing - but to perfection.
You get this small window you see to the left. Drag your gif images into it, set a delay, click the only button this program has and you got yourself an animated gif.

It's freeware, so get it here.

But sometimes after cleaning up computer a little bit too thorough, you see some small detail that needs to be changed. But you haven't got the original GIF's anymore...

That why there's GifSplitter. Locate your animated gif, set an output directory and you got all the frames broken down into loads of gif files.
Also Freeware, and at 47 kb you don't have to complain you're on dial-up.
Get that one here at FileDudes (who really should have better preview images, as you can see to the right).

Small update on things

noreply@blogger.com (TwinMoon) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:33:00 +0000

I'm busy with the first part of Ken&Adam 0, which is Adam's story.
Never thought it would be so much work, seems almost absurd for something which takes only five minutes to finish.

Main problem are the graphics... I thought I had found a good way to do it quickly, but I'm still not satisfied with any of it. Especially the small details are a pain.
But at least the character art is not that difficult, so that's a plus.

Also taking a lot of time are interactions - I'd like the game to have a witty reply for everything, which unfortunately takes a lot of time. But it makes it all the more fun to play.

n/a

noreply@blogger.com (TwinMoon) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:38:00 +0000

Sound effects

noreply@blogger.com (TwinMoon) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:03:00 +0000

My current project is taking on form - meaning I can play it. Of course it's no fun opening doors and picking up stuff if there's no sound coming from your speaker to confirm it, so I went looking for it.

Now, when you're on a budget (or no budget) it can be difficult getting some decent sounding clips. Unless you can make them yourself, which I can't.
So here's a small chronicle of my Adventures in Free Sound Effectsland:

First I went googling for royalty free sound. Royalty free doesn't mean free, but at least you can use them in your projects without risking anything. (Of course no one would prosecute you if you did rip all sounds from some commercial game, but if you can get some good sounds legal, why not?)

A site with high quality stuff is royaltyfreemusic.com. Too bad it's not a lot.

Partners in Rhyme has a lot more, but quality is variable.

But my favourite site must be Soundsnap - high quality, free and no strings attached. You can get some unusual sfx here, it's all been recorded by members of the site.

And another hint: Those looking for a specific free sound effect can always try FindSounds.

PlumberBoy OST

noreply@blogger.com (TwinMoon) — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 09:37:00 +0000

This is the music made for a platform game called "PlumberBoy".

1. The Plumberboy Theme Song (0:49)

2. Levels 1-9 (2:00)
3. Levels 11-19 (2:05)
4. Levels 21-29 (2:08)
5. Levels 31-39 (2:14)
6. Levels 41-49 (2:11)

7. Death (0:03)
8. The Boss (1:58)
9. Victory tune (0:03)
10. Endgame - Last level (1:13)
11. Ending - The Plumberboy Theme (1:09)

Twist Thursday

noreply@blogger.com (TwinMoon) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:38:00 +0000

New life into old, over-used, why-didn't-anyone-bury-them? plotideas:

You wake up, not knowing who you are... and discover you're a robot! Let the quest for your memory chip begin.
A very bad man has kidnapped your girlfriend and is keeping her in his draughty castle... but you really only went out with her to get close to her sister, who now needs a shoulder to cry on because her sister is missing...
But how to keep up this deceit? Intercept the mail, forge the newspapers and more sneakiness in this morally bankrupt tale!
The world's about to end! Get the public interested in the space program again and colonize Mars!
You're an ubercool spy! But everywhere you go people recognise that in reality you are a nerd! (Ok, that's not a game idea, it's reality.)
You're a burglar trapped inside the house he wanted to burgle! And it's haunted! But the fridge is loaded with food... Invite the incorporeal guys over for dinner!
You're a wizard's apprentice! Kill the old fool so you can nick his wand and conjur up more candy than you could possibly eat!
You're a crook, but you've seen the light! Return your loot, apologize, and more!!! in this heartwarming game.
Zombies have taken over the earth! And you're one of 'em. Try getting through daily life whilst coping with being dead.

Most of these don't really make much sense as a plot, but see how every one of them starts out trite, but ends ~~original~~ ~~insane~~ unorthodox? Clichés can become original ideas by twisting one of the elements.
So, if you're a writer and stuck in a rut, get cracking: take your favorite cliché which you never dared to use and change one of the details.

Done? Ok.

Now, isn't that a novel idea you just came up with?

Back to business

noreply@blogger.com (TwinMoon) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 17:56:00 +0000

Well, my mags june game is finished. A lot of the backgrounds used will also be used in the third act of Ken & Adam 0, so an extended deLuxe version of "My Evil Magsgame" will be made somewhere in time as well.

While my backgrounds are far from good, I've gotten some experience in doing them, and am already busy with the backgrounds for first act of K&A (which will be put out as a demo/teaser).

Finished Evil

noreply@blogger.com (TwinMoon) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 16:36:00 +0000

My MAGS game was finished - four hours too late. But it's still accepted, so that's ok. Well it's not ok, but still - accepted.
And when I say finished, I mean I have a rough buggy beta version with all the nice bits left out.

If you really want to play it: get it here or from my fileden mirror.

Deadline coming closer

noreply@blogger.com (TwinMoon) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 13:48:00 +0000

Tonight's the deadline for MAGS, and I'm nearly finished (because I scrapped a few things). The game would already be finished if it wasn't for Pharyngula, and my time spent on Conservapedia, which is the christian alternative for Wikipedia. I'm not even going to post a link, it's just too sad, and ASchlafly should be banned from the internet.
I don't care if you believe in a god, but if you see the bible as a cosmological chronicle of what really happened, don't be surprised if I think you're not worth reasoning with.

Anyway, adventure games. Haven't played a lot lately, but I managed to finish Ben Jordan 6 after half a year. And now I'm playing A Tale of Two Kingdoms, having already solved one puzzle. If all goes well I might finish it in two years. As you may have noticed, I'm in a bad mood.
But the good news is that the spare time I'm not spending playing games, I'm writing them. There's a demo I'd like to announce which might come out in a week or two. I think I got the hang of drawing backgrounds.

My adventures in drawing

noreply@blogger.com (TwinMoon) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:19:00 +0000

(Adventure) games are story, drawing and programming. And sound.
I have some knowledge about how to write, how to program and how to compose.
Drawing however is my weak point. But I'm very interested in how to draw. How a few lines become a person and all that.

Like René Magritte put it : This is not a pipe.
And he's right, it's not a pipe, it's a bit of paint on a canvas. No, wait, these are a lot of pixels on a screen representing some paint on a canvas representing a pipe.

Or more practical: look at the way that white line on the pipe represents the light falling on the pipe. How the lightbrown stain on the left side juxtaposed with the black areas make it look round. While in reality it's slightly bend (or flat, if you have a flatscreen).

What I wanted to show is a sketch I've made. I scanned it and resized it to 320 by200 pixels.
The second pic is the image retraced in the indispensable Paint Shop Pro.

Well, this third pic looks all nice and Disneyish, doesn't it?
The fence and hedge in the distance have a little less colour, which looks pretty good. I've added a tree to give it more depth. That's a pretty big leaf, actually. What was I thinking?
If I wasn't on a deadline, I might add more detail, but this is probably what will be used in my Untitled Evil MAGS Game Project.

Hm, looking at those sketches and stuff almost makes my ego think I'm a real artist. Thank Naught there's always MashPotato to put me in my place.

MyMAGS lags

noreply@blogger.com (TwinMoon) — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 12:30:00 +0000

I have announced to participate in another MAGS competition. To be honest, I have little time but I am working on something.

The last time I entered my main goal was to get practice my puzzle-building-skills, this time I'm practicing designing some code puzzles - you know, where you have to figurate what those symbols on that piece of paper mean and what buttons to push.

Code puzzles I'm working on are

a rebus;
a 'normal' push the keypad (hopefully with twist) and
a wire puzzle like in PQ2.

Chances are I won't make the deadline (I'd knock on wood if I thought I would make a significant statistical difference); there's about ten days left and I haven't started drawing the backgrounds yet.
Main problem was that writing a script took considerably longer than I would have liked. So if I enter, it'll be with a short-short game.

Hot and slow

noreply@blogger.com (TwinMoon) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 18:59:00 +0000

In Holland it's sweat weather (I mean it's hot) which isn't a good incentive to spend my free time on gamemaking.

So what's going on? My positive experience with getting the story done first on UD has proven itself: the first part of Ken&Adam 0 was coded in two days, with the bulk of that time consisting of putting the dialog in the right format.

The first part will be released as a demo first, and it's playable now - only it doesn't have graphics. My character art is coming along nicely. I'm sketching it on paper, then scan and resize and clean it up and it looks pretty nice. Here's some sneak previews (still work-in-progress):

While these are, IMHO, nothing to be ashamed of, backgrounds are a little bit more cumbersome. I'm still working out how to do that.

Stressed out!

noreply@blogger.com (TwinMoon) — Tue, 13 May 2008 22:47:00 +0000

As an addition to my last post: there's also the story where by your own actions you change the course of the story (since adventure games are usually constructed to allow you one path, this is atypical). But then there also an incentive missing to play out the scenario multiple times.
Anyway, this is useless, since it's all academic.

I've gotten very worked up about wanting to make something original but doubting every bit of the plot so far. So I've decided to chuck my ambitions overboard and make Ken & Adam 0 a 'normal' funny game. And it feels great!
When I look at myself, I find that I mostly tend to construct original, wild, imaginative, novel ideas, and then eventually never get it done. So I'm just taking the easy road and write some funny stuff. (I know this sounds difficult to some, but it's second nature to me.)

So, a little status update seems in order:
Plot - I've plotted the first two parts of the game and wrote the majority of the dialog for part 1 (each part will be a standalone, I'm planning to release part 1 when it's a done).
Art - I'm trying out a new way to do this: first sketching everything on paper, scanning it, downsizing it and doing the colouring & animations on the computer. It's too early yet to show something, but I'm blown away by how well this works for me.
Music - I'm trying to keep my personal stuff out of this blog, but I play the guitar and am always writing music. I will probably pillage some tunes which I've got lying around.
One thing I do have is a KICK-ASS theme tune which is the best thing I've ever written! I'm very tempted to post it now, but I'm not going to :p
But writing music for this game is my lowest priority, especially since I'm still writing NES music for a fellow AGS'er, about which I hope to tell you more in the not-too-distant future.

By the by: if your writing hand is itching, check out the Fortnightly Writing Competition on the AGS forum.

Storytelling

noreply@blogger.com (TwinMoon) — Sat, 10 May 2008 14:24:00 +0000

I think I'll brainstorm a little about innovative storytelling ways.

At first I thought my comment system was great - an adventure game which is told by a storyteller who sometimes makes mistakes which you can correct by commenting upon those mistakes - but having writting two-thirds of the plot I'm not sure what really is the difference with a regular game. Also, it's more difficult to implement than I initially thought.

My inspiration was Spider and Web by Andrew Plotkin where the same scene is played over and over, the difference being that the player remembers why he failed the last time. This effectively gives you hints or a new item. The idea was to extend this to a 'normal' game.
The problem you'd have to make multiple games at once to give the player maximum freedom. I simply don't want to do that, I want to tell one story. This is an annoying conflict.
The solution of course lies in guiding the player towards a goal, without having him know he's guided. Like a magician forcing you to pick up the card he wants you to pick up.
Rashomon has been on my mind. It's the same story, told four times by different people, who have different angles on it. How you could apply this to a game, I don't know.

A better idea would be to have a reconstruction. You have a story which you - the player - want to reconstruct. You'd have a "reconstruct" button in which you try to play the game, but if you don't have all the information you'll become stuck. So you exit "reconstruct" mode and go explore some more.
This sound exciting to me, but it's also pretty ambitious. And it's unsuitable for the lighthearted comedy I intended.

Ken & Adam 0

noreply@blogger.com (TwinMoon) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 22:15:00 +0000

Apart from writing NES music (see the last post) and reading Chaos by James Gleick, which is an interesting introduction to chaos theory, I was busy brainstorming and having monologues intérieur (a fancy word for talking to yourself) about my game starring Ken & Adam.
Well, games actually, as it turned out.

As it is now, this is what I have for Ken&Adam 0 (it will be comprised of three parts):

Part 1: Adam uses the public transport in which Adam tries to return a lost wallet
Part 2: Ken, the Dogsitter in which Ken tries to look after a dog
Part 3: Still in brainstorming state, but it will feature puzzles requiring teamwork.

As a special gesture to all you faithful readers of The Grey Zone, and to put some pressure on me, here are the titles of game 1 & 3 (let's see if they survive the creative process, shall we?)

Ken & Adam 1: Holiday in Scotland
in which they go to Scotland to buy pants and visit an authentic haunted castle.

Ken & Adam 3: Romantic Rivalry
in which a girl drives a wedge between the two friends. Will they still be friends at the end?

Please note: From now on, you can see the game status of the current project in the topleft corner.

No, it's not dead!

noreply@blogger.com (TwinMoon) — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 10:25:00 +0000

It's been a while since my last post. That's not because I forgot to post, but because there wasn't anything to post (yet).

So what am I doing?

1. Writing music for an AGS platform game still in production. The music uses the NES 8-bit chipset, so it'll sound just like Mario 3 or Legend of Zelda.

2. Trying to get the story for the first Ken&Adam game right. I've got some puzzles and the GUI design ready.

3. Taking part in some competitions. Most notably the chain writing competition. And the animation competition (this time themed "Kill the Bunny") of which you can see my result to the left.

NES Quest

noreply@blogger.com (TwinMoon) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 23:12:00 +0000

I've been busy playtesting a game called 'Nes Quest'. It's a great adventure game where your cousins have broken your NES and you have to go get it fixed. Look at their thread on the AGS forum, where you can also download it for free!