Chtonic (working title)

[m1k3]

Chtonic

Story:
In the first half of the 19th century, geographical communities are founded all over the world, explorers rushed into uncharted lands, and trade between continents grew. In the depths of the wildlands, an isolated huge partially underwater cave complex was accidentally discovered. The exploration mission begins with great enthusiasm, but eventually faces unexpected challenges and turns into survival. Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft (especially "At the Mountains of Madness").

Features:
- Set in the first half of 19th century, authenic caplock guns, black powder.
- 640 x 360 pixel graphics
- 7 characters to choose from
- RPG elements: health, sanity, stamina, load
- Auto battle with some options

Screenshots:
(Click on the thumbnails to open a tab with the image in the original size.)




Expected completion date: 2023

Progress:
- graphics: 60%
- scripting: 70%
- story: 70%
- music/sound: 10%

[js]

Nice gfx.

On the right screen, did you managed to make a scrolling map ? Or is it a room ? (may be a big room with scrolling camera )

[Matti]

This looks interesting, reminds me of Curious Expedition.

Looking forward to it!

[m1k3]

Nice gfx.

On the right screen, did you managed to make a scrolling map ? Or is it a room ? (may be a big room with scrolling camera )

Thanks a lot, trying to improve my gfx skills. Yes, on the right screen it is a large room, they will have different sizes, because caves are often not very spacious)

[m1k3]

This looks interesting, reminds me of Curious Expedition.

Looking forward to it!

Thanks, Curious Expedition is a cute game, which gave some ideas for mine project)

[m1k3]

Hello all! It was decided to add some lighting to the navigation screen using normal maps, this is what came out in the end:

If you want to look under the hood (download demo project where lighting is applied) and go deeper, welcome to this topic:
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=60259.0

[m1k3]

Hi all. This update was long overdue. Due to extraordinary circumstances, the name of which is a military invasion, the game is being developed as much as possible. The blackout was especially hard as a consequence of massive rocket attacks on our home cities in the frontline zone, then the development stopped for months. But life goes on and creation activity helps us get through tough times.

During this long time, the project was rethought, went through optimization and verification of ideas for implementation.
Most notable change is that the character top view screen has disappeared, and all its functionality has been moved
to the cave map screen, most of the graphics have been redrawn. Now the characters explore the game world alone, and the
main game interface looks like this:

(Click on the thumbnails to open a tab with the image in the original size.)

There is still a lot of work to be done, but most of it has already been done. The development completion date is the
current year. In future posts i will brag about our main pride - the screen where the characters are being equipped

[m1k3]

Greetings to all. The time has come to upgrade the topic 

Here we had to try hard to implement our idea of an equipment interface, because the standard AGS tools were not enough for such a "dashboard". Cave interface (the one in the screenshot of the previous post) uses the standard AGS inventory, but here a kind of alternative inventory was created out of buttons and shortcuts. It pays (from the abundance of headings in GlobalScript i have ripples in the eyes  ) but we achieved our goal and dare to think that such a character inventory system would be more convenient and interesting for the player. Here you can still see the "cheat" debug buttons, which won't make it into the final version.

At the top part of the interface players choose a character to equip on a mission. Each of the characters has its own characteristics: parameters, a set of equipment and weapons. In the info window you can read the biography, descriptions and characteristics of items and weapons. Each item has its own weight that must be taken into account not to overload the character. Also, a number of items are not free, they need to spend some progresson points earned during the game. For the same points you can unlock new weapons. Some - pickaxes and shovels - are are equipped in one number, so you have to choose one of the three.

Next we will have a lot of level design work, thanks to everyone who follows!

[Creamy]

Impressive. This looks like a fully-fledged RPG.

[m1k3]

Impressive. This looks like a fully-fledged RPG.

Thank you very much)

[Nahuel]

Amazing    it looks amazing, really good job on that RPG!

[m1k3]

Hi everyone! New update, after a long time unfortunately, but so are insurmountable circumstances. The name of the game has been approved, here are the logo and some screenshots. Preparing the demo version we encountered a number of errors in the combat system, with the dodge and critical attack chances, as well as the initialization of levels, as the game is not strictly linear: characters can be changed, lost during the game, and levels can be visited more than once till the task is not done.

The project is in development for quite a long time, the way the player interacts with the game has changed twice, which affected the overall architecture. Therefore, some elements were rewritten and debugged from the very beginning. Some were transferred with the help of crutches to the new version of the program (for example, battles created at the very beginning and went through several revisions). We had to face difficulties in combining different modules, but by trial and error we are getting closer to the demo version.

Currently, the programmer finds that we should not have used hotspots for events in levels, but instead should have encoded them in arrays. It is questionable whether it is reasonable to use global String variables to pass signals from the room to the global script and back, which was used in the beginning, when it seemed to be the best solution. But as the complexity and the number of different signals grew, it became clear that this method is not the most appropriate.

It is also doubtful moving combat to a separate room, ways of working with long lines, custom interface design that we strived to make convenient and simple, which requires a lot of skill. But experience is gained in the process of work, you learn from mistakes, and this is the most complex project we have ever worked on. Initially not a complicated concept, over time it has grown a significant amount of code.

We hope to release the demo soon, during september or october. Thanks to everyone who follows 

(Click on the thumbnails to open a tab with the image in the original size.)

[m1k3]

Amazing    it looks amazing, really good job on that RPG!

To be honest, we have a difficulty in defining the genre. Most likely it is a small adventure game with elements of rpg, board game and some more. But simply put it's an indie game