[Game] Death in Sakkara: An Egyptian Adventure

[Squize]

Yeah ihoss I also understand where you're coming from.

Although it's not as technically as impressive as other things I've done ( I think Passenger DBase and Heart Attack are a lot more, from a purely technical point of view, complicated ) it still is a hell of a project.

If you break it down into it's component parts it doesn't seem that big a deal. The journal is some animations, buttons and xml loaded in and displayed. The comic is basically a load of swf's loaded into some holders. The conversation engine is some well structured xml ( Very little code to run the conversations to be honest ). The games, well they're fairly straight forward ( The two games I did for the adventure both use my open source scroller class, nothing radical or new ).

It's getting all that to work together and keeping a track of it is the insanely difficult bit. For example, there are over 180 flags for turning on content in the journal, which are triggered over 4 episodes and 80 something cells. These flags have to be triggered at the right time. The journal has over 60 pages of content, it has links to different pages within it, the tab and bookmark page turning etc. There is a huge amount of music and sfx in there, and all this has to be as playable as possible on a 56k connection.

So, no, it's not as technically radical as say Fast Froots, but from a sheer volume of content it's still impressive imho. Also add in the actual storyline, the conversation scripts, the content of the journal and it soon adds up to a vast project.
All the learning also had to be compiled with the aid of a reknowned Egypt consultant. Everything had to be as accurate as possible as Jo vetted everything. We couldn't just slip into making it The Mummy 3.

It's one of those things ( And I don't mean this in an arsehole way ) that I think most people here think they could do fairly easily, but trust me it's really not. There's a lot under the hood of those pretty graphics to make it all work.

Just to bore you with stats ( And I'm kinda interested myself ), in the gold delivery there are 175 files, in 48 folders totaling over 16meg of data. All the captions and speech bubbles are dynamically sized and we use 82 xml files to store all the text within the adventure.

Yeah phreax, it wasn't quite 6 months of pure dev time for episode 1 I think in that time there was 3.5 - 4 months of coding in total ( For me )

Squize.

[ihoss.com]

It's one of those things ( And I don't mean this in an arsehole way ) that I think most people here think they could do fairly easily, but trust me it's really not. There's a lot under the hood of those pretty graphics to make it all work.

I know exactly what you mean and it takes a lot of experience for me not to blurt out something I shouldn't or start on something I shouldn't

[The Helmsman]

Do you know that you've got FWA - award for this game?
It's great success man!!! Congratulations!

http://www.favouritewebsiteawards.com/

Now you are among best internet web developers. Keep up a good work!

[Squize]

Sweet !

FWA do seem to love our stuff, which is pretty cool.

Thanks for posting that Helmsman. Here's hoping we can pick up an ultrashock award ( That one's always escaped me )

Squize.

[Super Adam]

That games incredible! much better then anything I could do

I cant open that safe, I've loked at the note a 1000 times and just can't disipher it.

Keep up the good work

[fil_razorback]

I love it
Besides, it learns me english ^^


BTW, I love the musics and sounds

[phreax]

Super Adam, I really shouldn't be the ONE TWO tell you what to look FOUR but good luck with it

[UnknownGuy]

Super Adam, I really shouldn't be the ONE TWO tell you what to look FOUR but good luck with it

[Squize]

Get your next fix

Continue the adventure...

Squize.

[Ostil]

That was creepy...

As soon as I looked at that picture, an email popped up saying that it was released...

I think someones watching me...

-Ostil-

PS. Awesome, I'm going to start playing this game. I've tried a bit of it and I love those kind of game play and puzzle type games. This is definatly a type of game that I would really enjoy playing!

I think I'll play it now actaully....

[The Helmsman]

Yes, i was waiting for it!

On sunday i've finished the previous part (thanks for your tip posted on this forum), and now... i'm going to play... next part.!!!!!

Hope it will be same quality

[ihoss.com]

Hmm, I played it too and completed it but I am only at 24%. is the final 2 games imensly huge or?

And the cup game, is it fixed or skills, because it went incredibly fast, I got the info I needed and I can't play it in the Games section.

[Squize]

Cool, nice to see people panting for the next installment

Helmsman, it's more of the same quality mate don't worry ( Don't think I'm giving too much away, but ep4 is the big one. It's like the last episode of 24, everything just falls into place. Rocks big time ).

Ostil, we're watching everything mate. Everything. Think about that next time you're in the bath and feeling a little bit "lonely" :P

ihoss, really glad you're sticking with it blue. I'm guessing your score is low 'cause of your knowledge score. I don't know if anyone's worked out how that works yet or if it's part of the FAQ, so I'll just hold that info back for a little while yet.
As to hat & balls, I didn't actually code that. Initially it was going to be rigged, but I dug my heels in over that ( You'll have to wait til ep3 to see a major story development which I really dug my heels in over as well ) because if it were rigged it would no longer have any sort of gaming element to it, it'd be nothing more than a clicky interactive toy, rather than a game.

It's not un-lockable / replayable because we felt it wouldn't be strong enough as a game in it's own right. It's too much part of the story to be played outside of it, and would have caused continuity issues.

Squize.

[phreax]

Ihos, look in your journal...a bit diappointing though, as there weren't much to do...or think about Graphics rock, though

[tonypa]

You can play the cup game again if you play through the adventure. You can also play it again if you lose the map.

[ihoss.com]

Ok, I started again to see if I could get a higher score. But now all the info from the prevous try is already there. I also have blood splatter on 2 of the pages in the book. Is that a bug?

[Squize]

Sorry you didn't enjoy this episode as much as the first phreax. Think of it as more of a "build up" episode. Quite a few things are revealed story wise though.

ihoss, the journal builds as you play. By the end you should have a very full journal, which covers not just the story but has a lot of interesting info about ancient Egypt.
Don't want to post a spoiler, but think what happens to our hero near the end of the episode, the blood should make more sense then.

Squize.

[SergeantK]

Wow, amazing. Great job, greta GFX!

[alillm]

Well it continues to look good . As has already been said, i dont think its as good as the first one. Its shorter, a lot less chalenging and it doesnt have a propper game (the chase game in the first was the best bit). But i still enjoyed it. The graphics are just as good of course and i liked the map scene bit. Basicly, great for an inbetween, but doesnt match the first one game wise.

Looking forward to the next one . I hope there will be more minigames like the chase game, but if not then im sure it will still be awesome.

Ali

[Squize]

Thanks Sergy & alillm.

Episode 3 starts off with a bang, trust me

Squize.