My wife and I are not very far in the game, but the graphics and resolution of the objects are not the easiest things to make out. Usually in every puzzle, there is atleast a couple things that are hard to make out. It does make the game a little more challenging, but also is a little frustrating because when i see the object, it is still very hard to make out what it is because of the resolution. I look forward to that area improving, and i have no doubt it will.

My 2 cents,
Jeff
www.directive21.com

I suppose the scaled back graphics was to make the game more download friendly. I think if everything was too high resolution it would have hit the 1 Gigabyte mark. Plus, I think AC envisaged on developing a game that people with computers from 5 years ago could play with ease.

As a final pointer, given that the company is in its infancy, their budget may not have allowed for outstanding visuals as so much effort was put into the audio, acting and writing.

However, i'm sure as BFG develop more games with higher budgets, the "look" of the games will be a little richer.

I must say, i'm running the game on 1024X768 with Windows XP and an old Radeon card from about 4 years ago and it's looking good. The only visual issue I have is that sometimes it can be hard to discriminate a particular object. For instance, there was a bar of soap in one of the rooms that actualy looked like a baige coloured case, I didn't see it as soap until I used the hint system.

Thanks for your insights, especially about the soap.

Objects have to blend in to make it more challenging, but some objects were almost impossible to make out and i am only in chapter 2. I am not complaining about it, just giving some constructive criticism and look forward to purchasing the next game, or the squel.

Jeff
www.directive21.com

Objects should not be hard to identify...it makes me wonder if the game is running in the proper resolution.

In the next game, we will try to implement a system that will make it easier to run the game in the best possible resolution. For now, however, it may require manually changing your screen resolution, as we've discussed in other threads.

I hate to think that people are playing the game with a much lower graphic quality than necessary. As I said, I'm running it on my laptop at 1280x800 - it looks really good and is nearly full screen (not the cinematics - those always run in a relatively small window).

I'm running the game at 1680x1050. I had a hard time identifying a few of the objects, but I figured it out quickly.

I ran at 1024*768 on my projector (it's the native resolution anyway) and had some problems discerning some of the more pixellated objects. The emerald (in Celeste's old home) stuck out as one of the big ones. For many of the objects, I had to walk up to the screen and look at them more closely before I figured out what they were.

I believe the problem is in the scaling artifacts of some of the objects inserted into the images. They just get too pixellated to discern properly.

Seeing as you don't want objects to be truly hidden, I think one of the best ways to fix it (apart from using a better scaling algorithm) would be to add a button to highlight every object on the screen including the dummy ones at the same time. You already have the positions of the dummy objects coded in, given the way the miss system only penalises you on picking object-like things and not the background, etc. That would make it much easier to determine what things are special things. Only loss is the ability to hide letters in the walls and so on, I guess.

yes the emerald didn't look like a emerald at all maybe as it had be enlarged to see. The soap I thought looked like a sponge. Once again soap isn't that large but if it was a standard size no-one would see it.

I think I would like to ask about the crescent - the spelling is that correct as in australia it's a small street not a pastry.

Yummy and delicious. Either with two little smokies and maybe a little cheese wrapped on the inside, or with a smidgen of jam on the outside.

nom nom nom

An example of an artistic crescent — in this case a large circle with a smaller one removed.

A moon shaped object

For a reason that requires further explanation, pillsburry croissants are forever associated with The Rocketeer in my mind.

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Croissant

I think that having the names of objects appear above them when you move the pointer over would be a good edition. Otherwise the only thing I thought was below-par were the close-ups of Jess' head. Hair is, of course, notoriously hard to do properly in an animated game like this, especially of the type/length Jess had.

But aside from occasional thoughts of "Okay, this character looks a little too much like a mannequin." which is understandable, I enjoyed the whole thing. Except the ending I got. Gotta play a bit better next time. I skipped the 2nd rune puzzle after a while because I just couldn't figure out what I was misspelling because everything made sense except for ZIP, NIP, whatever and DARE.

Bring on the sequel!

I'm interested to see what direction (game play wise) the next game takes. Do you think Jess will depend on the cards again? For the sequel, i'd like to see them combine the more occult elements of the first game with some elements of traditional point and click adventures like interactive dialogue, exploration, item collection etc...

Well, now that Jess is conscious of her power she can use it to decide when and where she needs to go to to find out what she needs to know.

That would be a nice way to bring back the old Tex Travel feature with a new time-travely spin.

I envision her and Merryman working together to catch killers with Jess doing the temporal investigations, letting Merryman know who's involved, what they've done and what they might do and Merryman can do the investigative footwork in the present until they come together in the finale to battle whatever evil has beset itself upon the world.

I have a feeling as to where the story may be headed actually, I just want to say as I would be spoiling the ending, for those of you that have finished the game, read on.


EXTREME SPOILERS BELOW:















I think the next story may involve Adrian as he is still at large at the end of this game.