Working title : Trugbild

[Sascha Willems]

Small status update (from @work) : Half-Time is approaching, and I've been pushing really hard. Currently I spent 8 hours in front of my PC @work and up to 7 additional hours in front of my PC @home to get this done in one month's timeframe. Dunno about you guys, but that's really exhausting, and my coffee consumption is going through the roof

But what drives my is the result and the desire to reach the goals I set myself. I usually try to set myself a certain target for my coding sessions after work (or on the weekends), like getting a certain scene or feature done and usually stay pretty focused until I get it done.

With that way of working I'm almost done with the game's features. Yesterday I (almost fully) implemented the main menu, the days before I finished the "death scene", the scene that'll fade in shortly before you die and added a lot of stuff to the gameplay. So if your time on answering a question is running out, you get lots of additional effects, answers will become blurred, film grain will get stronger, screen becomes darker and at some point the game will have you fade back to your sickbed where you're in the process of dying as a white light statrs to take up the whole screen.

I hope to have all gameplay features and the game's logic completed by this weekend (and I'm hellbent on hitting that target ), so that I can start doing all the sound stuff next week and then start to implement the game's final content.

[Sascha Willems]

I'm pushing pretty hard to get this done in time. Lots of stuff to do at work, and with a business trip starting tomorrow, this week won't see much progress

But I got a lot of stuff done nonetheless. You can actually "play" it now from beginning to the end, with several chapters, different questions and visual types and so on. The game now has a main menu, an about screen and an ending screen that's displayed when you die. How do you die? By simply not answering a question. For that I added even more shaders, and the longer you stare at a decision, the blurrier it gets and at some point reality starts to fade in with many people standing around your death bed. If you won't answer in time then, your journey will end. I also added music (found a nice and very fitting track over at opengameart.org) and (though not necessary, but helpfull) logging.

The game now also has three different visual styles for the decisions, it's either long corridors, holes or "flying" doors (I guess you can see the tribute to a certain mystery series from a mile away ). I have mockups and plans for more visual styles, though I don't think they'll make it into the initial release.

The game now also records your answers and tracks your bias towards life that'll then be displayed in the ending screen.

So yes, I'm pretty much on track, though this week will set me back a bit and the final version may be a bit rough around the edges.

Oh, and no post without new screenshots :

[SilverWarior]

WOW!
Great work Sascha

[Sascha Willems]

Hey there guys, could you please test the first alpha of the game for me?

You can grab it here : http://www.saschawillems.de/download..._alphatest.zip (~5 MBytes)

The gameplay is in there, and the game itself is fully functional. The content (chapters, answers) are mostly placeholders though, so next on my list is to create content and dialogue for the final releease. The ending screen is also not completly done, something I'm currently working on.

I just wanted to have others test the game before releasing it, so I can see if it works on different hardware configurations.

Note that the game needs at least OpenGL 2.0 compatible hardware (for the shaders), and you should play it on a widescreen display (it may look distorted on other aspect ratios). Currently it's windows only.

As for the progress, I haven't gotten much done this week. I integrated my virtual file system, did some bugfixing, changed the game's data XML structure (making it easier for me to create content), but due to a business trip to the other side of germany and lot's of other work assignments, my time to work on Trugbild was pretty limited.

But I hope to get the missing things done today and tomorrow, so I can concentrate on creating content throughout the next week, before the final date approaches

[SilverWarior]

I gave it a try.
It works fine on Windows 7 64 bit with AMD Mobility Radeon HD 3650 with Level 3 Shader support.
Few noticable glitches:
- sometimes when clicking on side choices you can see sharp edges of "white fading color". I gues this is due to the maximum size of the shader is too smal.
- you should sah that "he is in final monets" and not "in final moment".
- on last naration just before the end screen you can still see renmants of text from previous naration screen which was shown before the choice screen.

While I haven't tested all the posibilities (went trhough 3 times) I always come to good ending. So it might be a bug or I just chose such paths.

Other than that I must say that it is quite uniqe idea. I haven't played anything like this so far.

[pstudio]

Works fine on my laptop though I noticed some tearing once in a while. Is VSync an option?
Windows 8 Pro 64bit, nVidia Geforce GTX 660M.

I'm liking though I also get the good ending all the time. I guess you haven't added other endings so far?

[Sascha Willems]

Thanks for your feedback. I'm happy that the game is working in your system. Together with my development PC and my Lenovo Yoga this makes four different configurations that run it fun

As for the ending :
To get the "bad" ending you have to die, which means not selecting an answer in time. If you wait long enough, the player starts to die, and if you wait too long the game ends premature. That's when you get the "bad" ending.

But yes, the ending screen and the mechanic on what ending is selected is not finishsed yet. The game already records the bias of the answers you select (positive or negative), and I plan on changing the ending depending on your bias, and on wether you answer all questions.

I'm glad you like the "game", and thanks again for testing!