Topics

61

Banter and Chit-Chat! / Film Kickstarter by a friend of mine

« on: March 27, 2013, 11:28:46 AM »

Chris Bruce is one of my oldest friends from back in the old neighborhood.  He was my younger brother's age, and the three of us used to hang out together all of the time.  In fact, we used to play crazy amounts of games on his Macintosh, which was a mucher rarer machine in the 1990's than it is today!

I've had many good times with Chris, and over the years - he's done many different things, and become a professional mascot - he's also been into acting and performing, and now he's helping to produce a film.

It's entitled "Spring Awakening" and it's got a very interesting plot, based in reality!  It takes place in the 1890's... it looks really interesting, and I'd be remiss if I didn't put it out here.  Chris has supported me over the years, and always been there - even when times were dark.  I love the guy like he's my own brother. 

So, if you're looking to help produce a film, check it out over here.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/springawakeningmovie/spring-awakening-the-movie-the-story-that-shocked


Bt

<a href="http://youtu.be/pbgl2X_ygFI" target="_blank" class="aeva_link bbc_link new_win">http://youtu.be/pbgl2X_ygFI</a>

62

IQ Chat / Congratulations To Mr. & Mrs. Kitchen!

« on: March 19, 2013, 08:29:12 AM »

I'd like to extend our congratulations to Mr. Jeremy Kitchen, and his new bride!  Jeremy got married over the weekend, and is now honeymooning it up with his new wife!

Jerm, we love ya, we're so happy for ya and we hope you have a great time!!!  See ya soon!



Bt

63

IQ Chat / GoG.com Affiliate!

« on: March 19, 2013, 08:20:04 AM »

Hey Guys!

We're now a GoG.com affliate!  If you're ever so inclined to purchase some games from GoG, if you click on the link/image here - or on our website's front page - you'll be helping us out too!

So, if the hankering for some good old games of yore strikes your fancy, consider clicking our link and helping us out too, so we can keep bringing you more NEW good old games, heh!  Thanks.


Click Here to go to GoG.com!!!


Bt

64

Banter and Chit-Chat! / The Guild

« on: March 18, 2013, 09:47:05 AM »

Well, crap!  I didn't realize season six of "The Guild" was out!

If you haven't seen this show yet, you should!

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTd2fCqulKM" target="_blank" class="aeva_link bbc_link new_win">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTd2fCqulKM</a>

Bt

65

Banter and Chit-Chat! / Favorite Fantasy Movies

« on: March 13, 2013, 09:27:36 AM »

Well, I grew up in the early 80's, when there was a big resurgance in Fantasy movies - of all kinds, from sword and sandals to sci-fi.  Some of my favorites?

The Beastmaster

Dune (1984)

The Last Starfighter

Tron

Heavy Metal

and what I'm currently watching at the moment, Conan The Barbarian (1982).


I was definitly a big fan of that late 70's/early 80's Fantasy and SciFi ride... it was an interesting time in movie technology.  Though when viewed today, the special effects are primative, they were making massive leaps back then.

So, what are some of your favorite fantasy/sci-fi films?

66

Banter and Chit-Chat! / Torment

« on: March 06, 2013, 03:27:15 PM »

Holy. Crap! 

Torment made it's goal of $900,000 in SIX hours!   Hot damn!


Heh - wow. That is seriously amazing. 


Bt

67

Quest for Infamy / Background Development Series (SPOILERS) - Fizzii's Work

« on: February 27, 2013, 09:24:45 AM »

So, here is a little development of a background by our artist, Fizzii - she started her work on this screen based off of a SteveSketch™, so you can see how our wonderful artists take my scribbles, and produce a work of art out of them.

So - here is a screen that is in the "South Woods" section of the Valley.  The South woods is below Volksville, and it is bordered by rivers, mountains and the ocean at the south.  This screen is where the woods start to meet the beaches of Lonaria.

Now, Jeremy and I had discussed the look of the area - and he'd done several other fully completed sketches for these areas, except for this last one.  By the time Fizzii had gotten here, she'd already had several other similar areas completed, so she had a good handle on the design and art style of the area.  So I drew up a simple SteveSketch™.  She took it from there.

About Fizzii's sketch, based off the SteveSketch™

I base the sketch off whatever is existing already. For instance, the room to the right has a bit of an extra ridge above the main cliff face, so I have copied that feature. To make a woods area seem more woody, there needs to be a variety of trees - not just foreground trees, but trees placed towards the background. The other trick to making landscapes more natural is to place trees and bushes etc in clusters. Too often people try to place things randomly, and in doing so they end up placing everything perfectly evenly, with same sized gaps between objects, and defeat the actual intent they set out to have. True randomness involves clusters, various areas which are more empty than others.

For now the sketch is very rough, so things will be moved around as it fits the background.



About the first colouring
The sketch forms the base layer in Photoshop. To block some colours in, but retain the lines, I make a new layer, and change the Layer's setting to Multiply. This multiplies your colours over the base black and white layer, and even shades of grey are retained. It is possible to have all the detail defined in the base black and white (and gray scale) layer, and simply use multiply on top of that, though I don't use that technique.



Next

Because I'm very lazy, I often copy segments from other backgrounds and use that for part of the detailing. To merge it all in, I go over with a 1 px brush. This is a very rough version and will need some more tidy up as we go along.



Next:

In a new layer, I brush over the trees to define them a bit better and also cover over all that black I had used in the messy sketch. This is done with a three pixel hard round brush. Shadows aren't done properly (e.g. shadows from the canopy or from other branches or other trees) yet, neither is the shadowed colours properly set - this will be refined later.





Next

Some very quick work to the foreground rocks. Again, I've cut out some rocks from another background, and then painted to merge it in. While it is taking shortcuts, it also does help to maintain some consistency between screens.

So, there's the first installment!  More will be up soon as she works on the background!


Bt

68

Banter and Chit-Chat! / Oculus Rift

« on: February 20, 2013, 06:31:46 PM »

So, if you haven't heard about this, the Occulus Rift is a set of Virtual Reality "glasses" or headset that was funded in a very successful Kickstarter Last year.  (Goal=$250,000 - final take $2.5 million +)

Check out their website here, and see the video for more detailed information. http://www.oculusvr.com/


Now, this appears popular due to the money raised, but me - I couldn't give a crap, really.  In fact, I've documented my preference for the disconnect between man and machine, especially in gaming, but I hear people cry all the time "Immersion, Immersion, Immersion...." about their games.

For me, one of the things I liked about gaming was knowing it was a fantasy - I don't like to believe things that happen in video games are real.  I do like to have an emotional connect to the content, but I like to have my feet firmly planted in reality.  Devices like the Occulus Rift, to me, just seem to promote more isolation and immersion into a world that is not real - people often seem to have a problem making a disconnect with the way things are now. 

Plus, Virtual Reality seemed so interesting over 20 years ago.... I mean, remember that movie "The Lawnmower Man"?  Hahah....  even though the technology is better now, just because you can doesn't mean you should. 

Though I grew up with video games being the Arcade experience.  Playing video games in an arcade, especially in the early 80's, was an experience - and only 10% of it was actually playing the games.


Anyway, we have some people here I know have opinions?  Thoughts?


Bt

69

IQ Chat / Article on Slate.com about QFI and Voice Acting

« on: February 16, 2013, 04:40:51 AM »

Cyrus Nemati, who voices "Jerrod Smyrna" in Quest For Infamy, has written an article about his foray into the world of voice-acting!  Check out his article at Slate.com right here - lots of coverage about our little project!


Check it out!


Bt

70

Banter and Chit-Chat! / Slow Day.

« on: February 15, 2013, 02:36:03 PM »

I think that asteroid that passed by the planet sucked all the life outta people today.



Bt

71

Quest for Infamy / Test/Concept Animations from Battle Engine

« on: February 15, 2013, 09:53:15 AM »

Attached here are some concept and test animations from the new combat engine.  These, obviously, have to do with spell-casting.  Thought I'd share some teasers with ya.


Bt

72

Banter and Chit-Chat! / MOVED: The Long History Of The Adventure Game Revival

« on: February 13, 2013, 01:25:59 PM »

This topic has been moved to The Volksville Times.

http://www.infamous-quests.com/forum/index.php?topic=518.0

73

Quest for Infamy / The very first Development Images of this project!

« on: February 13, 2013, 01:09:59 PM »

In October, 2011 - I got the idea in my head, as we were finishing SQ2 at IA, that I wanted to do Quest For Infamy as our first commercial project.  The ideas had been brewing in the ole noggin' forever - so I did some sketches and came up with some ideas, talked to Jerm about them - and then we went and finished SQ2!

Two months after that, we started up this current QFI project - and here are some of the lost first images of the game!

You can definitely see some differences - and see how we developed it from here!  The first image is the bad sketch I came up with to give Jerm an idea for what I wanted - the next is his version.  The 3rd version is Jerm's original vision of inside the town gates.


Bt

74

IQ Chat / The Long History Of The Adventure Game Revival

« on: February 12, 2013, 11:04:59 PM »

So, I'm sitting here, and the hour is growing later here on the East Coast of the United States.  This is when my mind starts to get away from me - as if it almost floats two feet to the left of my head, and takes a look back at the man sitting at the keyboard.

I spent a good amount of time this evening recovering information from my old hard-drive from a dead-desktop computer.  I found a lot of old IA/IQ materials -  almost 10 years worth.  I'd been transfering it from computer to computer for almost 10 years.... ideas, concepts... so much work that the public hasn't seen.  Anyone who's been a member of Infamous Adventures or Infamous Quests can testify to the vast amount of stuff that haunts our forums and servers.  It's a bit of living history, for me - tracking that time.

People have been talking about the re-birth of adventure games this year.  Which is true, in a way - but for people like us - people like me - this happened a long, long time ago... 10 years ago - when Tierra/AGDI, Hero 6, Phoenix Online and eventually IA were carrying the torch of the adventure game genre.  This was before "social media" took off, and our social media was our forums.  We lived in them - we communicated in almost real time in them.  We'd have threads with ungodly amounts of posts - and there was the usual cast of characters that haunted the forums.  Names I haven't seen in a long time used to be regulars - many of them very young at the time.  For instance, Broomie was merely 14 in the early days!  But we were tight knit, despite the occasional flamewar for no reason.... we loved these games.  And we loved that other people did too.  It was kind of like finding an oasis in the desert.  And we worked hard to foster that - the community was strong.  But, times change - people grow up, and away, and the world moved on in a way - yet new people came in to take up the mantles in fan forums, and we kept making games.  I definitely miss some of the regulars from the early days at the Tierra/AGDI forums, the AGS forums, The KQIX forums, the Hero6 forums.  It was a special time.... so when people talk about this resurgence like it subtly happened, there's part of me that cries "We were here the WHOLE time!!!"

I'm glad there's more new attention on the scene, and somehow it's managed to coax our old heros and mascots out of their comfort zones to return to making adventure games.  But I do miss some of the people who were there early on, and didn't hang on like some of us did.  Some came back for the Kickstarters - and I reconnected with a lot of people from the old days - which was awesome.

I guess this is just a sign of how much this community, and the people, have had an impact on me - no matter how small you think you are, or maybe you think no one's read your posts - I'm pretty sure I have.  Heh.

Anway... it's 2013, and I'm still here.  So are a lot of my mates - and we may be relative "newbies" compared to some designers, but I promise you - we're working our asses off to make a great new-old game for ya!

This is for the fans.  This is for the scene.  This is for all those crazy posts we used to pile on when we dared to dream.

This is Infamous Quests.


Bt

75

Quest for Infamy / The Library of Tyr

« on: February 12, 2013, 07:51:36 AM »

We're pleased to welcome Daniel Thomas, award winning artist and creator of The Journey of Iesir, to our team.  Daniel will be helping us with backgrounds - here is some of his work in the Port City of Tyr.  This is the "Great Library of Tyr" a vast building which holds many, many tomes of knowledge.  On the left is the production sketch by Jeremy Kitchen, and on the right is Daniel's finished version.  He's bringing a real sense of epic scale to the city, which will be a treat for you players!  Enjoy!


Bt