Hi,

I would like to announce a game im working on right now with Quest 5.5.1.

It's in the good old victorian crime tradition of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, but with new cases and interesting scenarios and locations.
As Player you can investigate the cases you're way and solve them alone or get help if you like.
The focus is on nice entertaining gameplay, storytelling and supports you to deduce and solve the cases rather than ask you to unravel hard puzzles. The victorian mood is emphasised by matching graphics and sounds of the victorian age. Here's something from the Intro as a teaser:



So far the game features:

+ Graphics: At least one picture for each location/room and additional Art to support the story.

+ Sound: Ambient sounds (like rain or wind, looped), Music, and soundeffects (like crackling fireplace)

+ Mouse-control only, no typing: except for entering some special Input, you dont need to type. All possible and required interactions can be done by clicking on the availalbe Objects and locations.:



+ Unburdened Gameplay: You can't cant die or loose in the game. If you draw wrong conclusions, you will be told why, and get help to find the right ones.

+ Different ways to solve tasks.

More features may be added. Any support, cooperation or help from this community is welcome for this project. Feel free to contact me.

The Game will be in German language...as you might have noticed I'm not a native english speaker.
If there are any german-speakers beta-testers out there: youre help would be appreciated.

Thats it so far, I'll keep you updated.


Vollkrasser

Unfortunately I don't speak Deutsch. Looks interesting though.

The first chapter is fully playable and uploaded:
http://textadventures.co.uk/games/view/ko8mzafcceyfshar4lpujw/die-konigin-von-saba

Have fun and please give feedback!

Update on progress as of 13th February:

The graphics will be improved, work is in progress. For the main locations I plan to build 3d scenes, render them and put them in the game as roompics. You see the first unfinished version of the Baker Street Appartment enclosed. You see, it will be larger and more luxurious as in other visualisations, but hey, thats my touch to it. The lightning is not ready there and some graphic glitches also need to be resolved, but its a first peek for you to see what will come.

Update of my graphical work for the roompics...what u think? Any suggestions?

It looks wonderful. It reminds me a bit of the early graphical adventures but with higher res obviously. I really really wish I could speak Deutsch so I could play it. Is there no way of getting a translated version together?

Well, thanks.
And sure we can have an english version...but we need one or more people to translate the final game then. You wanna try to organize that?

I'd be more than happy to try to help on that front. Between me and google translate I'm sure I could perhaps do it. Google translate is good. I can change awkward phrasing. But then how would I know if I'm veering from translating to presenting an incorrect picture? That's the difficulty I think.

Vollkrasser, you seem to be an English-speaker yourself (judging from your posts here), so why not handle the translation yourself?

@davidw: I would say its a question of quality and quantity, why I won't do a translation by myself:

Regarding the quality,
my english is not good enough, as I'm german native speaking and learnt english only in school. So the best result I could get would be maybe a "understandable" version in English, but not a correct or even good one. Nobody wants a Sherlock Holmes story with a german accent or german phrasing, not even germans Tisss is rrrreservet alllredddy for the villains in brrritish movies.
It really sounds strange for example, when I watch an original english movie like BBC's "Foyle's war" or "Poirot" and they use actors for german characters that dont even speak german! So the "german" words of these characters are spoken by e.g. an english person who does not even speak german a bit. I don't know why they cant at least record the foreign audio passages with really foreign native speakers in such a high-quality movies...but I don't want this bad quality in my game. Doyle was british/irish, Holmes an English gentleman! That's the standard set!

It its also completely out of the question that any automated computer-translation could do the job.

So we would need an native enlish speaker with an at least medium german knowledge: For details I can explain the german meaning to him, but he then could do a good english translation, maybe even a bit in the 1900reds style of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Maybe we look for some support in british writer/author communities/websites?

For the quantity,
well, I really like to make a good game for this community here, but if there are such requests from the community as translation in language xy, I think i can ask for some support by the community in return.
To make such an atmospheric game with good graphics, sounds and so on it really consumes a lot of time even in one language.
Let me give you an example...if you want a character being in one of the location pics one needs to:

1) get or make a 3d model e.g. Dr. Watson figure in desert clothes for the trip to Siwa Oasis and build textures for it (clothes, skin)
2) learn a 3d program like blender to get the textures and materials on the figure correrctly
3) learn and use a 3d application to rig and skin it (manipulate the Dr. Watson figure to sit, walk, according to the scene)
4) build a scene for the figure to be placed in (all objects in the scene need the above processes 1-3 more or less for each piece. Of course i try to use as many already existing objects i can get, but even this takes time to find victorian stuff and make it useable)
5) get, learn and use a render application for the lighting of each location
6) use photoshop for the final touches of each pic

You see, this alone is a lot (quantity) of work for one person alone, and any help would be appreciated.
But I think the effort will be worth it, as the result will then be that you can literally "smell the tobacco in Baker Street", rather than a text-only description like "you are trapped in castle, and dont know who you are..." (no offense to other games).

So again, any constructive support or contribution is welcome, feel free to contact me.
You can also support the progress of the game by helping me with ongoing questions/tasks regarding Quest.

I dunno, Dick Van Dyke got away with a dodgy cockney accent in Mary Poppins.

What software are you using for the 3d modelling? I started learning Cinema 4D towards the end of last year. But then I'll never get this game completed if I add that as a roadblock.

@Silver: right now blender and sketchup. but im not happy with one of them.

Blender seems a very difficult way of working that ignores some obvious conventions so you've produced some pretty impressive stuff despite its pitfalls. It being free is the major attraction I guess.

So after the resent days of hard work, lets stroll over to Baker Street and have a quick peek in, to see how the two gentlemen are progressing...



Yes, the appartment is coming to live, they are really moving in....



Holmes has begun to set up his little lab for his experiments and analyses, and...



he also began working on his desk!

Yes, the graphical results so far are worth the effort!
But it's late at night now, and I will turn back to my own home for today.
Good night, gentlemen.

The gentlemen have arrived in Africa where the first case is set:






Unfortunately I have found no way so far to arrange such "large" graphics separate to the text-focused window of Quest.
I think best would be a separate browser window for that, so the Quest Window could remain for text.

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=5037

viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4822

Does anyone have a solution for that? Can't be too hard to trigger a .jpg display in a browser window via js?

Didn't Jay's thread show how to bring a window up using jquery?

If it's limited in size it'd probably because it's writing it to the game div, which (I'm making a guess here) is the area where the game text lives. But it's possible with jquery to ignore that and write to (guessing again) the game border instead. Have you looked at Alex's blog post regarding jquery? At the start of his game, Moquette, he brings up a graphic that is greater than the size of the div iirc. So it shows it's possible although it doesn't happen in a window.

Sorry, here's the thread on bringing up a window via jquery:

viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4822&p=32039&hilit=jquery+ui#p32039

And here's the blog post showing some code for effects using jquery:

http://blog.textadventures.co.uk/2013/1 ... with-text/

I've only got a very basic understanding and had to do a bit of playing about to get it to do what I wanted. But I reckon between the thread and the blog post you'll find the answer, unless anyone can give specific help.

Bear in mind though, if you're planning on putting up gigantic high-res images, that not everyone will have the same size monitor as what you have and so for some people the images might appear with scroll bars, which might not be what you want.

@silver: I think the quest window is fine and needs about 1000-1200 width and 1000 height for its standard menu and enough space for text to be displayed. I also see the vertical "portrait" arangement perfect for reading text, as its similar to a page of paper.
So if i want to use the quest window for telling the story in text form, then i only see space right or left next to it (if at all, depending on youre display) for graphics. This space, would be best used with an separte browser window i assume, as the player can then re-arrange and zoom the "graphic-window" to his individual possibilities (Monitor, resolution....), or leave it off completely.
That way, you dont have to mess round with the Quest window at all and possible alignings there next to other panels and so. I think that would be easiest and most practical solution to add graphics.
And regarding the resolution: the above examples in the posting are 1200 pix width and below 250 kb in Filesize. So thats not high-res in times where old 4:3 displays have 1200x1000 native and the standard displays have 1900x1080 and more.

For setting this optional graphic window up in quest games, i think of something like a function/script command...

- Show a Picture external.: pictureExt ("")

which would display the picture in the external graphic window, and if that is not activated have a fall-back option to display it within the quest window as the existing command "picture" does.

If a user-allowance is required to open another brower window, fine, then lets implement something that asks the player at the beginning of the game about that: "You want to have graphics in a separate window? YES/NO". According to the user's choice, another window for the graphics is then opened or not.

You know what i mean?

I'm not sure. What I think you mean is that you want to bring up a floating window to house a graphic. Jay's thread explains how to do that. But you don't want it to be inside where the text is, you want it to be able to be wider than that. So with jquery you'd need to tell it to be inside the game border rather than the div (again, I might be wrong on this, my understanding is limited). But that doesn't mean it's just shown at the edge of the screen.

Did you look at the intro to Moquette?

http://textadventures.co.uk/games/view/ ... w/moquette

Actually looking at Jay's thread (which I see you have responded to) it seems it isn't a floating window, so I made an incorrect assumption.

There's something like this:

http://www.jqueryrain.com/2014/03/jspan ... ng-panels/

although it's a plug-in. I have no idea how or if plug-ins can be implemented.

Silver wrote:Actually looking at Jay's thread (which I see you have responded to) it seems it isn't a floating window, so I made an incorrect assumption.

I'm going bonkers here. Have you actually tried the window on Jay's thread?

@Silver, I have tried the mentioned things, but you can see from my responds in those topics that they dont work the way i need it. They overlap within the quest window which is a general space problem as explained here with the limited pixels for displays and the space required by Quest for the text and menu part.
I am no coder or programmer at all, but as far as i remember that java thingies were made to do website stuff like showing pics, even with automatic re-sizing of pictures to individual windowsizes.

Can you explain again what you want to happen? I assumed you wanted a floating window to display the graphic. I'm up for at least trying to get something to work as I want to broaden my knowledge of jquery. Although It'll be after this weekend.

@Silver, uhm, i never spoke of a floating window, I always said separate (browser) window.
2 browser windows open, one for the classical Quest content (Text, menupanels...) and one for the large graphics. next to each other.
-Quest- -jpg-

Ah ok, I've misunderstood. You do know that you can set a fixed graphic at the top of the text window that doesn't scroll with the text? Other than that or the floating window option I wouldn't know where to begin.

Actually I can sort of think of a way. Like you set the left border to zero and then divide the centre and right borders equally. Then show images in the right border.

@Silver, thanks for youre trials, but you dont seem to really understand my problem even tho the above explanaitions, nor do you know of a solution how to trigger another external browser window from within quest to display graphics there. So this leads to nothing and I suggest we end the discussion here.

Um, well I didn't know how to code at all six months ago and at this moment in time I suspect I know more than you but if ready answers is all you'll be satisfied with I suggest you pay someone to do it.

Well, I thought I had a solution with this (type "pop" to popup the window and then "addText <sometext>" to add text to the window):

<!--Saved by Quest 5.5.5328.26617-->
<asl version="550">
  <include ref="English.aslx" />
  <include ref="Core.aslx" />
  <game name="wintest">
    <gameid>812421f2-516e-46e1-8c1d-9d51826a43e3</gameid>
    <version>1.0</version>
    <firstpublished>2015</firstpublished>
    <js><![CDATA[
    	<script>
    	var newWin;
    	function popup() {
    		newWin = open('url','windowName','height=300,width=300');
    		newWin.document.write('This is a popup window');
    	}
    	function addText(s) {
    		newWin.document.write(s);
    	}
    	</script>
    
        ]]></js>
  </game>
  <object name="room">
    <inherit name="editor_room" />
    <object name="player">
      <inherit name="editor_object" />
      <inherit name="editor_player" />
    </object>
  </object>
  <command>
    <pattern>pop</pattern>
    <script>
      OutputTextNoBr (game.js)
      JS.popup ()
    </script>
  </command>
  <command>
    <pattern>add #text#</pattern>
    <script>
      JS.addText(text)
    </script>
  </command>
</asl>

but for some reason, Quest begins sending all output to that window. I'm only listing it in case someone else was considering this "solution".

BTW, this is the page I based the above experiment on:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2109 ... l-inserted

(When it comes to more exotic features, which go beyond Quest's built in exposed API, you'll probably have to dive down to Javascript and the like to create them, which means the Internet suddenly becomes a resource for answering questions.)

My understanding - it took me a while to understand they didn't want a pop-up because they initially asked on your jquery thread - is that they want a separate fixed window next to the text one. So the answer is probably to either widen the centre and build a table using css, or put one in the border, and attempt to show images in it.

In the meantime a little video preview for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGY4thv8wG0

Stop all thinking I just thought of using the existing hyperlink command to get what i need:

1) it opens a new browser windw (just once, not another brower for another pic, just another tab. the tabs accumulate up, but hey, better than nothing.)

2) i can create the website with website tools and display graphics there or copy text from word where it is also correctly re-formatted to the actual display size of the text frame.

3) I need webspace for that. i have that already, also with traffic flatrate.

4) i produce a small Quest file and the large graphic and sound content does not burden textadventures web-space.

What do you think? better than learning java script and re-inventing all the things website editors can do already for me.

If you insert a html link to an external image file/web page it'd open a browser/tab for it, yes. Unless you mean you'd be hosting the game on your own site, so then you'd need to convert the finished game using questjs to be able to host it I think.

So far the first tests work for displaying pictures, video and Textpanels via hyperlink in a separate browser.

But i get different results in different browsers. I use Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer for testing with different settings for security, multimedia and so on.
2 Problems so far:

1) prevent new browser windows
If the browser is set to open another tab instead of another window its, ok, but if not then another browser window is opened for each hyperlink. Does anybody know how to prevent this, so the one open browser tab is re-used every time a new hyperlink is called up from Quest?

2) audio (mp3)
In this test http://games.breitband-rl.de/games/siwatest/page5.html you should hear
a) a one time ding sound when the site has loaded
b) simultanely a firecrackling sound as a loop all the time
c) if you click on the loudspeaker box a one-time melody

what of the above works on youre system?

Windows 8.1 Firefox 35.0.1: no ding and no firecrackling at all, ich can see two grey boxes under the image. Klicking the loudspeaker starts sound but shows a black screen with a sound progress bar
Chrome plays the sounds without messages/questions.
IE plays sounds. IE asks if music should be played when klicking the loudspeaker, then it starts VLC to play music

Thanks, its similar with my settings. So i guess its best to limit the sounds to Quest and have only pics and text in the external browser.

I can answer question 2.

Quest doesn't support multiple audio tracks out of the box; playing a new sound will cancel out the last one.
You can however trigger audio using html5 in a message using this code:

msg ("<audio src=\"" + GetFileURL("Yoursound.mp3") + "\" autoplay></audio>")

However, Chromium (the Quest offline browser) doesn't support mp3. Since Quest 5.6 though it supports the .ogg file format, which I have been using to trigger the sounds using html5. You need to tell Quest to accept .ogg files and I found out how to do that today, coincidentally, on another thread with Alex saying:

Alex wrote:As of Quest 5.6 you can update the publishfileextensions attribute on the game element to set which file extensions are included, so you can just add *.ogg to this.

Edit: Um again, seems I got confused about what you were asking.

Stauts report: looking for a native English speaker to continue the game in english.
He/she should be able to write a bit in the style of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Any help to find one would be appreciated.

Eastereggs in the making:

Fitzcarraldo (Klaus Kinski) lookin for...?



Mysterious Symbols?



Really? Nah.

I thought 'Easter Eggs' in IF parlance meant that if you did something wrong, you'd get a response of acknowledgement that isn't a standard engine response of 'you can't do that' - although I suppose those images could be serving that purpose.

Well, to make it more easter-eggy, i could hide one of the 3 smaller Led Zep Symbols somewhere in the game. And if you bring em all together, you get a surprise.

Sorry, I was just being pedantic. I like your graphics, it's nice work.

Status: Game development paused as I'm still looking for a native English speaker to continue the game in proper english, so most of the community here can enjoy it and not only german speaking players.

He/she should be able to write a bit in the style of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I'm searching for sucha person on english writer forums, but no luck so far.

Any help to find one would be appreciated.

I won't host the game on any private site of mine, as i like to make the game playable by THIS COMMUNITY HERE!
Therefore I'm also trying to get a English version, not just a german for german players.
For the html content thats called up from the game i have webspace and traffic already which i will keep online.