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Doomsday Lost Echoes - Released and now with Physical Edition

Started by ||C|-|E||, 00:18, 31 July 15

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Rhino

It looks great and hope to have time to start playing seriously. I like the Mike character. Congratulations to everyone involved!

khaz

I'll add to the complaint of lacking "take", "look", "examine", these are staples of the genre. I couldn't pass the first screen because I wasn't paying attention in my first try and couldn't get the description back, or take any items.

||C|-|E||

#227
So yes, it is probably necessary to have a look at the PDF first and see how the parser works. To get something you use GET, to drop it DROP, to wear it WEAR and to remove it REMOVE. EX, EXAMINE, LOOK and X are all accepted and equivalent and, to describe a screen again, you just need to type R, REDES or REDESCRIBE. To get all the objects type GET ALL  :)   These are the standard commands for most PAWED adventures and all the actions you are used to see in many games are here as well (besides the famous AGAIN)  :) .


remax

I find it funny (and nice) to mix a real 3" disk with a virtual one from the HXC...

Kind of a modern/classic marriage.

I only started the game, but my first impression is it feels like a very well polished professionnal production from the older times... Not an amateurish production at all.
Brain Radioactivity

FloppySoftware

I suppose that now, once the game is finished, you are fully available to develop the PCW version. Or am I wrong?



;) :D


Don't be in a hurry, you know, but there is a potential gamer here: that's me.  :P




Congratulations for the game, it will be a big success for sure.


:)


floppysoftware.es < NEW URL!!!
cpm-connections.blogspot.com.es

alex76gr

You did an outstanding job guys!
There is plenty of well drawn graphics and the use of color is nice and clever.
The text and the descriptions are very good and help greatly creating an eerie atmosphere.
Finally the manual is a work of art!

Thank you guys for your effort.

These are glorious times to be a CPC fan! :)
I still believe that i got my myopia from the green GT-65 monitor, but i can't prove it! :)

Kerrick Sword

Hello to all,


Im a long time forum reader, but this time i feel obliged to write something.


First of all CONGRATULATIONS for the baby, i know it was a hard and long way until you reached this point.


Second,  i want to say that i am one of the testers of the game, and i can assure you that this is a very polished and enjoyable game, with a good progressive learning curve(or i think so).


Besides this, I also recommend to all of you, that you read the manual:
For people who don't have practice whit this kind of games, you will get the basics of playing, and for the rest, you will get some background of the story and funny/interesting facts and a lot of image art.

||C|-|E||

We are really really glad you are liking it!  :D

Quote from: remax on 20:48, 01 November 16
I find it funny (and nice) to mix a real 3" disk with a virtual one from the HXC...
Kind of a modern/classic marriage.
I only started the game, but my first impression is it feels like a very well polished professionnal production from the older times... Not an amateurish production at all.

This is how I play tested it with the 6128 Plus and it is actually the best choice  :D The HxC is completely silent and a great device to run the game. You can almost forget that the graphics are read in real time (well, except for the loading speed).

Quote from: FloppySoftware on 21:46, 01 November 16
I suppose that now, once the game is finished, you are fully available to develop the PCW version. Or am I wrong?
Don't be in a hurry, you know, but there is a potential gamer here: that's me. 
Congratulations for the game, it will be a big success for sure.

The PCW version was considered since the very first moment, as you know, and porting the game is almost trivial because somebody prepared a very nice font selector that can be used in both computers. Moreover, PAWS in PCW works great  :D . So, the idea was to release the CPC version first, check that there are no bugs and then, given the time, compile the PCW game using the final source code. This should very easy and the only tricky part will probably be the graphics conversion. Luckily, resolution is not a problem at all, only the choice of colors. So, when we are sure that the code of the game does not need further correction, we can see the best way to convert all the graphics and go for it  :D We would need to prepare a different loading screen, though, and maybe some of the graphics can be slightly changed. The PCW version should have its own manual too, with different loading instructions and a few changes here and there...

robcfg

Cool!


I'm still trying to power up the generator on CPC, but would like to play on PCW too.


If you need any help, just ask and the PCWWiki team will come to the rescue!

Targhan

Damn it, I'm stuck!! :)


I can't open the emergency door... I thought that typing 3xxx0 (with xxx being a combination of 1, 4, 9) on the phone or computer would work, but no... What did I miss?


Great design, well written texts. Some background music and FXs would have been an extra touch, but I can live without. Great job!
Targhan/Arkos

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||C|-|E||

Hehe! I am giving you a hint by private message  :D

Targhan

Thanks to your hint, I've progressed a bit more... To get stuck again in front of another keyboard, this time the one from "blue" container... Still a great game, but quite tough :).
Targhan/Arkos

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||C|-|E||

I gave you a second hint by pm  :D

Targhan

Gone much further yesterday evening. Lots of nice places to visit, and scary things to discover! Really a great game. The texts are very well written, and the graphics quite beautiful. There are even some "cutscenes" for important actions, adding a really nice touch to the whole. Now I need to play more to finish it!
Targhan/Arkos

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||C|-|E||

#239
That is really awesome  :D I am glad you are liking it! Let´s see if you manage to finish it or not  :laugh:

On the other hand, I have just added some basic info about the commands into the game´s home page. Some people is still telling me that they need to leave a room and enter again to obtain the description, when it is clearly written in the manual that there is a command (R, REDES, REDESCRIBE, DESCRIBE, DESC ) for that. Oh well... I know that in many classic games it was LOOK, but in here LOOK and EXAMINE are the same verb. It felt more natural to me to have a different verb and a shortcut to re-describe the room and use a common word, like LOOK, to say "LOOK at this" or "LOOK at that". I was assuming that all the players of a text adventure game would go through the manual first and this would be very easy to catch, but maybe I was wrong. In that case I reckon that many people will not know that typing Z or EXITS they can see all the possible exits from a location, and it is possible that they are losing quite a lot of other things (RAM SAVE, RAM LOAD...) that would allow them to focus in the puzzles and not to fight with the parser  :-X

khaz

#240
The parser doesn't allow a verb to have both a complement and no complement?
"Look (unknown word or nothing)" = gives the description of the room
"Look (known object)" = gives a description of the object
Get/take is different but would probably solved similarly.

[edit] Don't expect a player to read the manual. It's the last thing they will do :D

||C|-|E||

#241
Nope, they are separate commands. DESCRIBE/R/DESC/REDESC, that are all the same, and LOOK/EXAMINE + object. There are a few reasons behind that, though.

The first is to make the behavior of the parser consistent. If you keep the description of the room as a separate command you avoid using a common word that will be regularly employed for something else and mislead the parser. This can be seen in many quality productions and it does not look nice, but is a problem that all the parsers for classic computers have (as far as I know). In our case PAWS works the following way:

- If you type a verb that is in the game´s database plus a another word that is also in the database and there is an entry written for those words in the current location (or is a combination that does not need a location to work) the game will do something. Either tell you a description, or execute a command. For example: LOOK COCKPIT when you are in the Doomsday -- It is full of knots and buttons.
- If you type a verb that is in the game´s database plus another word that is not in the database (or is in the database but not expected in the current location) the game will tell you something generic. For example: LOOK ELF -- I better focus in the mission right now. The problem is that, for PAWS, it is the same if the second word is not in the database or if there is no second word at all. So, if I was implementing a condact to do as you say, writing LOOK ELF (or LOOK plus whatever word) would just re-describe the location. This is not coherent, since the parser is doing something completely unrelated to your command, and could be annoying as well. However, it happens in TONS of games.

So, the answer could be to keep EXAMINE and LOOK as separate words, but I feel that it is more correct to maintain obvious synonyms as such, because it would be weird that Mike understands something like EXAMINE COCKPIT but not LOOK COCKPIT.

- Another reason is that by keeping a few special commands separate and somehow shielded (we only have very few: RAMSAVE/RS, RAMLOAD/RL, SAVE, LOAD, DESCRIBE/R/DESC/REDESC and EXITS/Z) I saved a lot of RAM that  was used for something else (more descriptions, more flexibility when the player needs to type something to solve a real puzzle, richer texts...). I also found that many people like to have the presence of this one-letter shortcuts when playing, since it is much faster to type Z or R than a whole word.

Regarding reading the manual... well, what can I say! This is a text adventure after all! :) It seems quite logic to do it and we put a lot of care trying to make it attractive, hehe. I wish I would have had a manual like that in the old days, when in same cases they where telling you "just type whatever feels natural and, if it does not work, try something else"  :D :D .

Targhan

#242
I actually never use "look" but "X". X ceiling, x floor... Very quick and handy, since descriptions are so important. I didn't know about "R", I was using "DESC". Great!
Targhan/Arkos

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khaz

#243
What about "look around"? I like that one.
Or "look room"? Not quite English, but "Look at the room" should be.

Maybe I misread you, but you didn't address "look" without any object. Is it the same as not being in the database, or can it be treated differently? The lack of an object being an object (in this case, the room).

||C|-|E||

#244
Quote from: khaz on 20:46, 06 November 16
What about "look around"? I like that one.
Or "look room"? Not quite English, but "Look at the room" should be.

Maybe I misread you, but you didn't address "look" without any object. Is it the same as not being in the database, or can it be treated differently? The lack of an object being an object (in this case, the room).

It would be the same as not being in the database, I probably did not explain it well :)

Quote from: Targhan on 20:29, 06 November 16
I actually never use "look" but "X". X ceiling, x floor... Very quick and handy, since descriptions are so important. I didn't know about "R", I was using "DESC". Great!

Yes, X, Z, and R are the shortcuts to remember :D

khaz

So I suppose there is no object for "the room you are currently in" to join to "look".

||C|-|E||

#246
There is, you can say: EXAMINE ROOM or LOOK AT ROOM but it will not describe the location again. You will read a more detailed description of where you are instead, this was another reason to keep the two commands separate  :)

Targhan

WOOOOOHOOO! I finished it! I finished it!!


After a 2-hour session, I finally finished it! I mean, I reached the first ending :). There are still some little stuff I left behind, some computer left unhacked... I feel the toughest part has yet to come.
It was a really great experience, thanks a lot for your hard work! Lots of well-written texts, beautiful and numerous graphics. And even if there is no sound, I admit being quite stressed when discovering new places!


Well, time to sleep now :).
Targhan/Arkos

Arkos Tracker 2.0.1 now released! - Follow the news on Twitter!
Disark - A cross-platform Z80 disassembler/source converter
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Orion Prime

||C|-|E||

#248
You finished it and i was so focused with my things in the lab that I did not notice!!  :picard2:   Congratulations and thank you so much for playing!! Which ending did you get? number one, right? how many side quests did you complete? it could be that you still did not see a decent chunk of the game! (the nicest part, in my opinion  :) ).  The most difficult stuff is probably awaiting for you, hehe, but that was the original intention. There are lots of hidden things!  :D

Targhan

Well, I finished the "normal" ending, I guess (escaping as soon as I could).
Still the phone number enigma to find, and I guess the doctor's computer is not hacked (another password to find...). I admit I don't know how to find them, but I'll give another try before crying for help :).
Targhan/Arkos

Arkos Tracker 2.0.1 now released! - Follow the news on Twitter!
Disark - A cross-platform Z80 disassembler/source converter
FDC Tool 1.1 - Read Amsdos files without the system

Imperial Mahjong
Orion Prime

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