[Adventure] Time Stones Demo (Not currently available)

[Gear]

The Time Stones is a character-driven adventure title. For more information on the game itself, check out the WIP Thread.

I say it's an Alpha version because not all of the artwork is included or finalized. I still need Backgrounds and CGs, and I'm hoping to show off the seriousness of the project, and garner enough interest to attract some artists to help put this project together, as well as receive constructive criticism on the story and sprite art. Two of the routes are blocked off because of missing art, and some gaps had to be filled in order for any IndieGoGo backers to have samples, so they can make a decision.

Taken down demo temporarily as retooling commences.

Let me know what you think of the demo! I look forward to hearing your feedback.

You can see the full credits in-game.

[Obscura]

Posting some initial stream of consciousness impressions as I play this game. Not holding anything back, so I apologize if some of it's critical. I want to give you my full impression because of how much work it looks like you put into this, and you deserve nothing less.

- Wow. This looks like it was a TON of work. (Dammit, I was supposed to work on my own game tonight...curse you guys!)
- Awesome that the characters have so many poses, and very animated ones at that.
- Music is nice. I don't looooove it but I turn off the music in all the games I play anyways, so the fact I'm leaving it on must mean something. You were able to make it not intrusive, which is great.
- Characters already seem nicely fleshed out.
- Oooh. Nice target animation.
- GUI help needed to make this look pro, different choices in text and color scheme would go a looong way in improving the look of the game.
- Aside from Damian, the characters look like they're in college (probably because of how they're dressed).
- Ok, LOL Damian. "Whips it out whenever possible" kinda guy.
-***I am disturbed...not sure why Damian is narrating and why I'm hearing his thoughts, if I picked Ethan as my character?***
- Character sprites: look decent enough. I find myself wishing desperately for two things: (1) there were lines underneath the characters' noses (why is there a blank spot?) (2) The whites of their eyes were colored. Those two things will really help the character art look more polished, IMHO.

Basically this looks like a pretty impressive, substantive game. So substantive that I feel like the art at the moment does not match up to the content. The sprites's are decent and in a shorter game I think I would say, "meh, it's fine, looks good!" but I really do find myself hoping some of the art's upgraded (see above).

I'll be playing this on and off as I finish up my own game, so I won't be able to give you a full review for some time, but just letting you know it looks like a quality production. Major applause, guys.

Also, nothing bothers me as much as the POV situation I starred three times above.

[kersplode]

error right off the bat in linux version! I chose to begin raven's prolouge, and when it zoomed into the earth, I got this. sorry it's so big, I forgot what the show/hide tag is D:

I'm sorry, but an uncaught exception occurred.

While running game code:
File "game/prologue.rpy", line 161, in script
Exception: Surface alphas do not match.

-- Full Traceback ------------------------------------------------------------

Full traceback:
File "/home/kcda/Games/The Time Stones Demo-linux-x86/renpy/execution.py", line 265, in run
node.execute()
File "/home/kcda/Games/The Time Stones Demo-linux-x86/renpy/ast.py", line 1008, in execute
renpy.exports.with_statement(trans, paired)
File "/home/kcda/Games/The Time Stones Demo-linux-x86/renpy/exports.py", line 887, in with_statement
return renpy.game.interface.do_with(trans, paired, clear=clear)
File "/home/kcda/Games/The Time Stones Demo-linux-x86/renpy/display/core.py", line 1502, in do_with
clear=clear)
File "/home/kcda/Games/The Time Stones Demo-linux-x86/renpy/display/core.py", line 1803, in interact
repeat, rv = self.interact_core(preloads=preloads, **kwargs)
File "/home/kcda/Games/The Time Stones Demo-linux-x86/renpy/display/core.py", line 2108, in interact_core
self.draw_screen(root_widget, fullscreen_video)
File "/home/kcda/Games/The Time Stones Demo-linux-x86/renpy/display/core.py", line 1395, in draw_screen
renpy.display.draw.draw_screen(surftree, fullscreen_video)
File "/home/kcda/Games/The Time Stones Demo-linux-x86/renpy/display/swdraw.py", line 946, in draw_screen
damage = do_draw_screen(surftree, self.full_redraw, self)
File "/home/kcda/Games/The Time Stones Demo-linux-x86/renpy/display/swdraw.py", line 659, in do_draw_screen
draw(dest, None, screen_render, -x, -y, True)
File "/home/kcda/Games/The Time Stones Demo-linux-x86/renpy/display/swdraw.py", line 489, in draw
draw(dest, clip, child, xo + cxo, yo + cyo, screen)
File "/home/kcda/Games/The Time Stones Demo-linux-x86/renpy/display/swdraw.py", line 427, in draw
draw_special(what, newdest, newx, newy)
File "/home/kcda/Games/The Time Stones Demo-linux-x86/renpy/display/swdraw.py", line 334, in draw_special
px, px, px, px)
File "/home/kcda/Games/The Time Stones Demo-linux-x86/renpy/display/module.py", line 86, in pixellate
outwidth, outheight)
File "/home/kcda/Games/The Time Stones Demo-linux-x86/renpy/display/module.py", line 63, in convert_and_call
raise Exception("Surface alphas do not match.")
Exception: Surface alphas do not match.

Linux-3.3.7-1.fc16.x86_64-x86_64-with-fedora-16-Verne
Ren'Py 6.13.12.1728
The Time Stones 2.0

when I hold ctrl to skip over that bit though, I'm able to keep playing. it'd be good to get it fixed, though~ this game is pretty awesome so far! :D

[Gear]

@Obscura: Thanks for your help! The reason for the POV issue is that when you select a character for the prologue, that choice lasts for ONLY that chapter. Chapter 1 is always narrated by Damian, Chapter 2 is dependent on route. So you only get to pick your prologue character. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

- Wow. This looks like it was a TON of work. (Dammit, I was supposed to work on my own game tonight...curse you guys!)
Haha. Well, it HAS been 14 years since I first started writing this story...

- Awesome that the characters have so many poses, and very animated ones at that.
Thanks! The sprites were tedious to make, but I insisted they not just be transplanted faces on all of the different ones.

- Music is nice. I don't looooove it but I turn off the music in all the games I play anyways, so the fact I'm leaving it on must mean something. You were able to make it not intrusive, which is great.
Almost all the music came from Incompetech. I spent hours picking out which music was best for what scene, and tried to keep it from being intrusive. I'm glad it worked.

- Characters already seem nicely fleshed out.
THAT was the most time-intensive part. Merq and I built these characters from the ground up to make them believable, and in some cases, likeable.

- Oooh. Nice target animation.
I assume you mean the map at the start of the prologue? That one was fun to make.

- GUI help needed to make this look pro, different choices in text and color scheme would go a looong way in improving the look of the game.
I've got someone working on that, actually. Mr. Hijiri has agreed to update my UI!

- Aside from Damian, the characters look like they're in college (probably because of how they're dressed).
Augh, I've been trying to fix this problem over and over again. Maybe I'm just old? I dressed the way Ethan does when I was in HS. The others are largely wearing jeans + t-shirt, so I'm not sure what to do...

- Ok, LOL Damian. "Whips it out whenever possible" kinda guy.
Hahaha!

-***I am disturbed...not sure why Damian is narrating and why I'm hearing his thoughts, if I picked Ethan as my character?***
See above. I'll try to clarify that better.

- Character sprites: look decent enough. I find myself wishing desperately for two things: (1) there were lines underneath the characters' noses (why is there a blank spot?) (2) The whites of their eyes were colored. Those two things will really help the character art look more polished, IMHO.
Lines under the noses? Like the nostrils? I tried given the characters scleras, but with the drawing style, I thought the simpler eyes looked better.

@kersplode: Dammit, I wish I had a linux machine to test it on. I'll see if anyone in Polymorphic can help me with this issue. Thanks for pointing it out!

[Crocosquirrel]

Update: We're looking at is collectively now.

[Obscura]

Ah, I understand now about the prologue. I totally missed that, my bed.

Oh, what I mean by the line under the nose is that in terms of defining facial features, one would think the line under the nose would be pretty distinct. I guess what I mean I'm used to seeing the bottom of the nose, and the noses seem to have no bottom.

I tried to draw what I was talking about here (with apologies to the artist):

I guess it's just a matter of personal preference though.

(Whoops, reloaded the photo...for some reason the other one didn't merge the layers properly.)

[Gear]

I see what you mean. I'll experiment with the sprites a little, see if I can find more minor improvements to help their quality.

[Merqurial]

Yay demo!

I feel posting a critique about it would be kind of pointless. So I'm just going to dance the dance of celebration.

[saguaro]

So this is cool.

Obviously this is a writer's project. The dialogue has good flow. The demo is a little sort for me to formulate an opinion of the story, but it did grab and keep my interest. I am generally not a fan of games with casts of teenage characters, but these were interesting and well-written. They actually feel a lot more like early college-age students in some respects. (Out of curiosity, are you two college-age?)

I found two missing images in the Windows demo: bg sky and cg split

I liked the music, it was really appropriate for the mood.

I found myself wanting to play through all the prologues first to get a better grasp of the characters. I did Raven's first and the jump to Damian's POV was jarring. I think playing as a character that's not Damian or Raven, and hitting that "beach" scene first-first thing in chapter 1 is unnecessarily confusing. I think an option to loop back and play through as many prologues as you like is ideal. Better visual indicators for the beach day-dream (?) scene might be good.

The range of poses is EXCELLENT. I remember reading that you have models and use a raster method. I think that style works for you and your models have done a great job on conveying a lot of emotion in their poses.

It looks like we get a preview of the cellphone journal you mentioned elsewhere. Hit up the Open Clip Art Library for some awesome public domain cellphone template graphics.

[Gear]

Kind of? Merq and I are both a bit older than standard college-age. We're still working on tracking down an artist for the CGs and some of the BGs.

We purposefully left out the option to play multiple prologues, since the decision on a prologue affects the story down the road, and we felt that even if the prologues were cut altogether, you'll have ample opportunity to come to understand the characters.

And I actually have someone working on cell phone images and journals and whatnot. But the journal system isn't ready for adaptation to this game yet, so none of it was implemented yet.

Thanks for your time! I'm glad you enjoyed the demo.

[Nuxill]

I havent gotten through the plot all the way yet, but I would like to comment on the art. The shading on the sprites don't seem to indicate a light source at all right now, and it's so soft and light that it probably wouldn't look much different without it. I think this kind of artwork could work really well with the type of rendering that's seen The Act, even thought that game has a cartoony style and this is based in realism. I hope you wouldn't be offended if I colored over one of the sprites to give an example! Also a few of the color choices and the lack of variety in the values makes it hard to see details, like when Ethan was holding his phone out. I couldn't tell what he was holding at first glance. I also feel like there could be more transitions when going from one pose to another because right now it feels a little... stark I guess? I would at least try out different speeds of dissolves and see if that looks okay.

Also the fact that Damian doesn't seem to have any borders on his text box seems a little out of place. I know his color is supposed to be 'black' but that doesn't stop you from giving the borders some white/gray highlights to indicate something's there.

Otherwise I like the writing so far and I while I didn't feel like jumping to the beach scene was that confusing I agree with Saguro that it could use some improved visual indications.

And the music is nice too. I was using one of the tunes in a practice game I was playing around with, so when it popped up i was taken aback a little. That's what happens when you use Incompetech though!

[Nuxill]

sorry for the double post, but I painted over one of the sprites as a demonstration of a style (at least a little better than the non descript lowered-opacity black airbrush look you've got on the sprites now) that would look good for the game. Also I apologize for the bad skin coloring because I'm pretty rusty and I didn't use any reference pics

It would be a lot of extra work but it would also look really cool.

[Gear]

Thanks for reviewing! The sprites are traced, and were only done as such because I lacked a sprite artist. But then I started to really like the way they turned out (not really a fan of the anime style) so I kept them. The edit you made looks really nice! However, I simply lack the skill to do such a thing. I am no artist, I am very much a writer.

I see what you mean on Damian's text boxes. When the new UI comes in, I'll make sure that's not the case.

I'll try to work on a slightly more forthcoming visual indicator of the current narrator. I don't want people getting confused. And I'll see if slowing down my dissolve transition looks better.

Thanks again, and let me know what you think of the plot when you finish!

[Merqurial]

Anyone else interested in playing this demo? We'd really appreciate any imput you can give us.

[Gear]

Oops, the links weren't pointing at the correct files. I fixed that now.