The Wonderland Board

MoFI/PoTZ SPOILERS ABOUND, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK IF YOU HAVEN'T FINISHED THEM

EDIT APR. 23rd, 2014: Long overdue, but NEW PROGRESS THREAD HERE

So, okay, I told myself I'd stay quiet about this until I was more confident that I'd actually get it finished, but... I dunno, I guess I feel satisfied enough with my current progress that I feel comfortable talking about it now.

So, here is my current project - Wonderland Adventures: Hidden Realms!

This project is essentially WSW's story, if it took place after the events of the WA trilogy (and WSW hadn't happened beforehand). I would say "remake", but that wouldn't be entirely accurate (the basic story is the same, that's about it), and "retelling"... well, I guess it's accurate... Saying that, however, the story is going to be a bit more expansive than WSW's.

This is going to basically be a full-on mod, running on the Adventures 3 engine.

By "mod", I don't mean that this is just an adventure/hub package - the GUI has gotten a visual alteration (and cleanup), as have various in-game visuals (model textures, level-textures, items, etc.). Let me put this out there: The reason for the graphical alterations is to set HR apart from WA1/the original WA trilogy, or (in some cases) to eliminate artifacts clinging to textures where they don't belong (these are surprisingly common on the GUI, and I think the in-game buttons). Another thing I've done is change the colours of blue/indigo/purple objects, to be a bit closer to the "real" colour (as opposed to cyan/dark blue/pink).

This project will take full advantage of the WA Engine's graphical and gameplay features (well, I'd say so at any rate).

I don't have any predictions for how many adventures this project will have by the end, or how long it'll be gameplay-wise. Having said that, at the current moment (end of November 2013), it's sitting at 65 Adventures, and clocks in at around 3 hours or so (for me - bearing in mind that I know where everything is and such).

ROUGH PROGRESS GUIDE (ALL PERCENTAGES ARE ESTIMATES):

• CHAPTER 1: |||||||||- (Core chapter finished, side areas unfinished - Overall: 90%)
  CHAPTER 2: ||||||||-- (Core chapter finished, side areas unfinished - Overall: 80%)
  CHAPTER 3: |||||||||- (Core chapter finished, side areas unfinished - Overall: 90%)
  CHAPTER 4: |||||||--- (Core chapter, side areas unfinished (CURRENT FOCUS) - Overall: 70%)
  CHAPTER 5: |--------- (Core chapter unfinished, side areas not started on - Overall: 5%)
  CHAPTER 6: ---------- (Core chapter, side areas not started on)
  CHAPTER 7: ---------- (Core chapter, side areas not started on)
  POSTGAME: ---------- (Not started on)
  
  OVERALL PROGRESS: ||||------ - 40%

I likely won't be releasing a demo of this anytime soon, so don't get your hopes up, please - Packaging an incomplete demo would take time and effort that I'd rather spend on working on the project as a whole.

For that matter, please, do not ask me about testing or helping on this. I appreciate the (well, potential) offer, I really do, but:

The reason I'm designing this solo is because I find it much easier to work on my own. That way, I don't find myself left hanging waiting for someone else's work, or vice versa.

As for testing, I haven't fully laid out the plans for that yet. However, instead of a public beta, I'd rather start off with something a bit more controlled where I can get more focused criticism/bug reports.

Anyways, enough waffling - Picture time! I'll likely bump this thread up every week or every two weeks with a progress update and pictures of some sort, provided I've gotten work done.

These pictures cover the first few adventures in the game, by the way.



The start of the game. Here you can also see (though I've shown pictures of this before, I think) what the altered Hills texture looks like. The arrow and dirt spot in the top-right corner are for testing purposes.



The start of the first adventure - This is very early on compared to where the first adventure is in MoFI, PoTZ, or WA1, as it's meant to introduce some of the more basic elements (I expect just about all of the interest, if any, will be coming from the boards here, who already know how to play WA, but I'm approaching this from the viewpoint of this being a standalone Adventures game, meaning tutorials included). Also shows off the new gem/teleporter textures (you can also see two of the new buttons a bit).



The second adventure, rescuing Wee Stinkers in the forest - Yes, the story is based off of WSW, as in the whole "Wee Stinkers carried away by Storm" thing, but like I said - it'll be expanded on. The first chapter of the game (which does cover quite a few adventures) is the buildup, the main story thread doesn't kick in until the start of Chapter 2. This is intentional, as opposed to a pacing screw-up on my part.



More forest adventures, also showing off a bit more of the revamped cursors (all the ones that the game uses have been edited, I think there are two "dummy" icons in the file that aren't used in the final)



An AskAbout that I threw together mainly for the purpose of understanding how the silly things worked, but I ended up keeping it. As you can probably guess, the Windy Hills from WSW have become the Windy Valley.



An optional forest adventure that can be accessed after finishing the "rescue Wee Stinkers" adventures beforehand.

If you have ANY questions about this, then ask away - I will answer them to the best of my abilities. Same thing for any comments or (preferably constructive) criticisms, go for it!

(Note that even though I was a member of the QA team for PoTZ, I'm going to attempt to refrain from posting any major spoilers for either the game's story or the gameplay elements - Once people have reached the last section of the game, I might start being a bit more open about things)

EDIT NOV. 26th: Added rough progress guide thing, for the curious. Will update whenever I get around to a picture update.
EDIT DEC. 26th: Updated progress guide.

This is just... Wow. I mean like... It's just... Kinda awesome and... Wow, I need a cold shower.

Very impressive remake of the textures. Look very different from the original ones.

Keep up the good work!

The arrow looks really... "bad" is not the right word, "unfitting" is more like it.

For some reason (and I don't know why) it looks like an item that you can collect. It doesn't look like it's part of the floor, it looks like it's placed on top of the floor and you can take it.

The hard black outlines of the "brick roads" make them look like a pencil/pastel sketch. Is this intentional?

Everything else looks completely amazing. Secret Worlds in WA? Do want.

Muzozavr wrote:The arrow looks really... "bad" is not the right word, "unfitting" is more like it.

I think it's a testing arrow.

‎

another qloof hub thingy? hell yes

Sounds like... a lot of work. Good luck!

I wasn't even gone for half a day why are there 7 replies

In all seriousness, thanks for the comments!

Muzozavr wrote:The arrow looks really... "bad" is not the right word, "unfitting" is more like it.

For some reason (and I don't know why) it looks like an item that you can collect. It doesn't look like it's part of the floor, it looks like it's placed on top of the floor and you can take it.

I'm not sure I see what you mean, here, to be honest (don't get me wrong, though, I'm not ignoring what you're saying)...

Here's a shot of another arrow later on in the game (as in end of the first room):


The distance between the floor and the arrow is something that shows up in the official WA games as well, I don't think there's a way for me to really fix that to be honest.

Does it look unfitting because of the shading around the edges, by any chance? (I'd rather keep the monochrome arrows, I've got coloured versions for any potential maze levels or what-have-you later on)

Muzozavr wrote:The hard black outlines of the "brick roads" make them look like a pencil/pastel sketch. Is this intentional?

This is one of those things that falls into the "unintentional at the time but not anymore" category, heh. I like how the edges turned out, other than a few "connection" problems on some of the textures (one of which is really bad and I haven't gotten to fixing yet, but it's not one I've shown yet)

Muzozavr wrote:Everything else looks completely amazing. Secret Worlds in WA? Do want.

Thank you! I'll try and do my best to make this a satisfying experience.

As for the arrows, yes, it's probably the shading around the edges. I find that you've given it a more three-dimensional look, but that makes it kind of not work. It looks like a pickup or a Windows icon. The close-up actually looks way better, it's the "normal size from afar" that's bothering me.

Anyway, that was just a minor nitpick, it's not the most neccessary fix in the world. The level design is the heart of every puzzle adventure.

I'll remember to take a look at it later to see what I can do.

Minor update time - To go along with the gate/button/key colour changes for blue, indigo, and purple (which you can see in the gems in the previous pictures), I redid all the Wizard hats. Here's how they look now:



I might end up redoing some of the other NPC accessories to get a more "consistent" look across the game, that remains to be seen. One of the reasons I ended up just redoing the wizard hats is because the texture is a bit messy (jpeg artifacts everywhere), which made it hard to work with.

The arrow a wizard hats look rich in detail. I like it!

Again, thanks!

Addendum to the Wizard hats above:



I think I'll release the Stinker accessory textures as a separate add-on type thing of some sort, come to think of it.

I'm thinking I'll post more "major" updates every week or so (like the in-game screenshots in the first post), and pepper in minor updates/status reports/whatever throughout the week.

Currently:

Overworld: .wlv x30, .dia x46
Adventures: 38 total, 31 directly accessible (1 incomplete)

... I'm at this weird stage where one part of my brain is saying "how have I made almost 40 adventures on my own this quickly", one part is saying "this is a lot of work", and another is saying "this is actually pretty easy, it's just a lot of work".

This looks pretty good, I'll be interested in trying this.
I love those GUI changes, as well as those revamped textures!

Those top hats are awesome.

I agree with everyone. Those are some pretty great graphics! Looking forward to see how this project evolves.

I'm at this weird stage where one part of my brain is saying "how have I made almost 40 adventures on my own this quickly", one part is saying "this is a lot of work", and another is saying "this is actually pretty easy, it's just a lot of work".

This is perfectly normal, just don't get scared of yourself and continue! This is shaping up to be a VERY good project. The hats are a visual stroke of genius simply because most people wouldn't even REMEMBER about the old hats being different from new gates. Your attention to detail is quite stunning.

EDIT: accidental double post and I don't know how to delete. actually, I don't think I can.

Muzozavr wrote:EDIT: accidental double post and I don't know how to delete. actually, I don't think I can.

You can't in this forum, but you can in some of the other forums (like the General Wonderland Discussion, I think).

md wrote:This looks pretty good, I'll be interested in trying this.
I love those GUI changes, as well as those revamped textures!

dig 222 wrote:Those top hats are awesome.

Lucky-Luc wrote:I agree with everyone. Those are some pretty great graphics! Looking forward to see how this project evolves.

Ahhhh, thanks everyone! I wasn't sure what kind of reaction I'd get from these. I mean, I wasn't expecting something negative, to be honest, but it's still nice to see that people are liking these.

Muzozavr wrote:

I'm at this weird stage where one part of my brain is saying "how have I made almost 40 adventures on my own this quickly", one part is saying "this is a lot of work", and another is saying "this is actually pretty easy, it's just a lot of work".

This is perfectly normal, just don't get scared of yourself and continue! This is shaping up to be a VERY good project. The hats are a visual stroke of genius simply because most people wouldn't even REMEMBER about the old hats being different from new gates. Your attention to detail is quite stunning.

Ahah, thanks again!

I don't know if I'd say it's attention to detail on its own, it's more that A) I'm a perfectionist, which makes productivity a bit of a pain, and B) I have a pretty bad tendency to let inconsistencies get under my skin a lot more than they should. Stuff like that is why I ended up doing that whole MoFI Redux texture thing, it's why I changed the GUI around (the default HUD isn't bad, but A) some of the icons are inconsistent - the white key has a really thick border as opposed to the thin ones everything else has, for instance, and B) there are artifacts everywhere, I don't know if they're .jpeg artifacts but it's something in the image itself), and... Yeah.

Having said all of that, I'm confident that I can finish this in one form or another. It'll definitely take a while, 'cause even now I'm still in the early stages (chapter 2 is almost done, and other than the main game I'd like to have some side areas and maybe a MoFI-style secret area), but when it comes down to it? It's not too difficult to do this.

I'll probably make a post expanding on the process later, but anyways, question time:

The hats seem to have gotten a quite positive response. I'm not going to scrap them, but here's what I'm thinking:

Either A) I'll release a hat-texture set separate from HR itself that can then be applied to HR, as well as the main WA trilogy, or B) There'll be a hat-set that can be used on the other games while HR includes them by default.

What do you guys think I should do? The level-textures I've changed are a bit more integrated into the game (I added spare tiles to quite a few of them), so I'm not sure about adding proper support for the default textures (that might be something I'll look into, we'll see), but the hats are really more secondary than anything else.

NICE HATS! They look a little metallic in my opinion, though.
then again i'm weird so

If you're talking about the top hats, yeah, I see what you mean. I'm open to any comments or criticism, like I said, so if you've got an idea on how to improve them, then don't hesitate to drop it here.

Current status report - Sitting at 39 adventures (including Indigo spell room that hasn't been done, but whatever), kinda hit a wall for 40/41 (which marks the end of Chapter 2's main quest). Until that stroke of genius hits, touching up previous adventures (adding scenery, making minor layout changes, etc.)

Status report. Sitting at 41 adventures total, 31 hub areas, and 47 dialogue files. Haven't made much progress recently, to be honest... I don't really know why, just haven't been in the "groove" to work on it.

I'm not abandoning this project, by any means. I'm determined to finish this, even if it doesn't end up being exactly what I wanted it to.

Anyways, WEEKLY PICTURE UPDATE! (I am determined to make that a thing)

As a side-note, all images posted are WIP. Things might not actually change between what you see here and what you see in the beta/final releases, but nothing's exempt from being altered at this point (Except, like, really complicated NPC stuff that works properly, but there's nothing of the sort in here yet - keyword being "properly").



A sort of "Temple Outpost" thing in Stinker's Cove itself - Also, yes, name-change from Stinky's Cove to Stinker's, I feel it makes a bit more sense in the WA world like this.



The interior of the outpost itself - Considering that the variable water-height actually has support for it being above-ground-level, I'm surprised this effect isn't used more often in the games, I think it's quite nice (I remember it being in the Sewers and one Mushroom Grove adventure in WA1, can't remember if it was in MoFI though).



Magic! Which is to say, X/YAdjust and tile logic being used.



A shot from the first Windy Valley adventure, introducing FlipBridges (as stated above, all of these are WIP - this one's going to be touched up to look a bit nicer for the final)



Another Windy Valley adventure, taking advantage of the wading-through-water thing again. I had what I think would've been a really neat idea for the area around the FlipBridge here, but sadly, thanks to the engine's lighting limitations, getting it to work without looking unnatural wasn't going to happen.



Hub area, Windy Valley. I'm trying to think of a way to get more reasonable-looking bridge supports that don't involve having fifty fence-post objects with precise X/Y/Z-Adjustments all over the place.

(also, yes, particle adjustments all over the place - I'm aware that the ripple effect looks very strange, I haven't gotten around to editing that yet)

NINJA-EDIT: OH YEAH, also going to make the edge tiles on the Hills pathway blend better so they don't look so... abrupt

I still can't justify enough how amazing those graphics are!

The latest screenshots are also quite great. I'll be looking forward to playing this.
I hope you're just as good of a level designer as you are with graphics.

md wrote:I still can't justify enough how amazing those graphics are!
The latest screenshots are also quite great. I'll be looking forward to playing this.

Thanks again!

md wrote:I hope you're just as good of a level designer as you are with graphics.

To be honest, this is one of my main concerns. I'd like to have this project be at a sort of mid-way point between WA1 and MoFI's difficulty levels (not too easy, but not psychotically hard), but... I'm better at solving puzzles than I am at coming up with them. I've got a few in here that I'm pretty pleased with, and I'm sure that all of PoTZ's new toys will be helpful to that end as well, but...

Well, what I'm planning on doing anyways is - when either the WA3 editor itself, or a set of conversion .wop-files for WA3's elements, comes out, I'll get the major adventures in the game out of the way (start/end of chapters, possibly element introduction levels) - that way, I won't feel quite as stressed to come up with a "grand finale" for each chapter after having already expended puzzle ideas in the other levels.

All of this looks fabulous!

Your "classic" tileset submerged under water... excuse me while I pick up my jaw.

I know the water is the game engine's work, but it still makes your tileset look even more fabulous, which I didn't believe possible.

I like what you did with the fence posts/MOFI bridges, no one has done that before.

dig 222 wrote:I like what you did with the fence posts/MOFI bridges, no one has done that before.

I already did the exact same thing with the MOFI Bridges long ago.
All you need to do it set the model to Obstacle46 (which represents the MOFI Bridge).

Qloof234 wrote:

md wrote:I hope you're just as good of a level designer as you are with graphics.

To be honest, this is one of my main concerns. I'd like to have this project be at a sort of mid-way point between WA1 and MoFI's difficulty levels (not too easy, but not psychotically hard), but... I'm better at solving puzzles than I am at coming up with them. I've got a few in here that I'm pretty pleased with, and I'm sure that all of PoTZ's new toys will be helpful to that end as well, but...

Why don't you join forces with Lucky-Luc? You two would be unstoppable!
Luc's adventure making skills with your graphic designing skills; you two would dominate the Wonderland community!
In case you did not realise, that was just a joke.

No I meant him putting the fence posts under the bridges. Did you mean that?