Juli 2005

Nytt på webben
Två nya äventyrsspelssiter har just sett dagens ljus:
AGON: Lost Sword Of Toledo
Fenimore Fillmore's Revenge

Façade
Façade är ett gratisspel som lanseras som ett testprojekt för hur man kan göra en form av AI-baserat elektroniskt berättande spel. Man styr sin karaktär med tangentbordet, manipulerar objekt med musen och skriver in vad man vill säga till huvudkaraktärerna.
Så här beskriver de själva sitt spel:

Façade is an artificial intelligence-based art/research experiment in electronic narrative – an attempt to move beyond traditional branching or hyper-linked narrative to create a fully-realized, one-act interactive drama. Integrating an interdisciplinary set of artistic practices and artificial intelligence technologies, we have completed a five year collaboration to engineer a novel architecture for supporting emotional, interactive character behavior and drama-managed plot. Within this architecture we have built a dramatically interesting, real-time 3D virtual world inhabited by computer-controlled characters, in which the player experiences a story from a first-person perspective. Façade was publicly released as a freeware download / cd-rom in July 2005.
You, the player, using your own name and gender, play the character of a longtime friend of Grace and Trip, an attractive and materially successful couple in their early thirties. During an evening get-together at their apartment that quickly turns ugly, you become entangled in the high-conflict dissolution of Grace and Trip’s marriage. No one is safe as the accusations fly, sides are taken and irreversible decisions are forced to be made. By the end of this intense one-act play you will have changed the course of Grace and Trip’s lives – motivating you to re-play the drama to find out how your interaction could make things turn out differently the next time.
This work is unlike hypertext narrative or interactive fiction to date in that the computer characters actively perform the story without waiting for you to click on a link or enter a command. Interaction is seamless as you converse in natural language and move and gesture freely within the first-person 3D world of Grace and Trip’s apartment. AI controls Grace and Trip’s personality and behavior, including emotive facial expressions, spoken voice and full-body animation. Furthermore, the AI intelligently chooses the next story “beat” based on your moment-by-moment interaction, what story beats have happened so far, and the need to satisfy an overall dramatic arc. An innovative text parser allows the system to avoid the “I don’t understand” response all too common in text-adventure interactive fiction.
The process of building Façade has involved three major research efforts: designing ways to deconstruct a dramatic narrative into a hierarchy of story and behavior pieces; engineering an AI system to reconstruct a real-time dramatic performance from those pieces that integrates the player's moment-by-moment interactions; and understanding how to write an engaging, compelling story within this new organizational framework. Along the way we have learned hard lessons about what works and what doesn't in the design and engineering of interactive stories, and developed a deeper understanding of what it will require to create even more generative story systems in the future.

Ladda hem och prova spelet här (OBS! 800MB)
En recension av spelet kan läsas här.

Wake up. Time to die!
Ännu en ny recensent spiller ut sitt hjärtas åsikt över ett spel. Denna gång välkomnar vi Incognito som skriver om ett av de mest variationsrika och egensinniga äventyrsspelen som släppts hittills. Läs recensionen och sätt sedan ditt eget betyg på spelet på vårt forum.

Malätna koftor och gråmelerad pubmat
Hjortdödaren uttrycker i sin senaste recension sitt förhållande till våra brittiska vänners kulturella skildringar. Läs recensionen av det spel som får Hjortis att explodera i en tirad om pensionärer i malätna koftor ätandes gråmelerad pubmat. Sätt sedan ditt eget betyg på spelet på vårt forum.

En snögubbe med attitydproblem
Marks är tillbaka! Läs hans recension om talande maskar med smak för teak och en snögubbe med attitydproblem. Betygssätt sedan spelet och diskutera recensionen på vårt forum.

Bone trailer
Telltale Games har nu färdigställt en trailer från spelet Bone som har beräknat utgivning i vinter (spelet alltså). Du hittar trailern här.

Echo Night: Beyond
Digital Jesters har just gått ut med den glädjande nyheten att de kommer att publicera äventyrsspelet Echo Night: Beyond för PS2 i Storbritannien. Planerad release är 26 augusti 2005.

And Then There Were None
Adventure Gamers har publicerat ett gäng med bilder ur det kommande Agatha Cristie-spelet "And Then There Were None". Kika på dem här.

Dilemma
Dilemma är ett kommande sci-fi äventyr från de ryska spelutvecklarna 4Reign Studios. Så här lyder ett nyligen utsänt pressmeddelande:

The place where you stand is the inhospitable world of future. The Earth where the action takes place suffers the aftermath of the devastating Cataclysm. It was not the result of a military conflict, nor was it a consequence of the environmental pollution. It was something… different. One thing is known for sure, that the Cataclysm had something to do with the artifacts scavenged from the surface of Mars. As a result, Earth’s population was decimated, and the survivors became an easy prey for bandits and malignant religious leaders, such as the founders of the Transcendental Sight Cult; besides, the communication link between the Martian colony and the mother planet was broken.
This is your home. You will have to travel from sewers and junkyards to hi-tech Martian settlements, from dirty shacks to luxurious palaces, from dusty streets of hamlets to monorail roads surrounding big cities. To move further, you will have to solve various puzzles and play mini-games, which will become increasingly complicated. As you proceed, you will encounter the traces of some alien mind that is hard to comprehend and decipher. Your purpose will be to survive all this and to find out why the Cataclysm happened and how it can be redeemed. Just remember that every choice you make may drastically change the fate of the world, as well as yours.
Dilemma is a 3D adventure game with a non-linear Sci-Fi/cyberpunk plot and the new groundbreaking graphical engine. The game has something in common with such masterpieces of the genre as Siberia 1&2, Deus Ex 1&2 and Blade Runner. The most peculiar aspect of the game is the multi-approach gameplay. You may use ether brute force (a purely ‘material’ approach), or your little gray cells and communicating skills (a more ‘spiritual’ approach). There are several endings, and your style of playing is going to affect what sort of end you will finally come to.

Bilder av spelet kan du se hos Adventure Europe och hos våra tyska kollegor Adventure-Corner finns en trailer att ladda hem.

Seriemord med god eftersmak
Jag är stolt över att presentera ett nytt stjärnskott på Deltér Adventures recensenthimmel. Möt Hjortdödaren i hans analys av ett spel med ett blodigt tema som ger god eftersmak. Diskutera sedan recensionen på vårt forum.

Independent Adventuring
Ett nytt nummer av Independent Adventuring är ute. Läs det här. (Tack Trumgottist)

Something in the water
Det kom ett pressmeddelande från folket bakom onlineäventyret Gumshoe:

Gumshoe Online's latest mystery "Something in the water", will be hitting the streets of Wheaton City on the 8th of July 2005.
"Something in the water" is the most enthralling and captivating Gumshoe Online mystery to date. It's a story of big business, blackmail and murder, an adventure that will live with you forever and a challenge that will keep you playing for days.

Over 180 clues to discover
More than 140 rooms to explore, spread across 11 locations
The chance to interrogate 23 new characters
Over 1,300 objects to interact with
16 new brain twisting puzzles to solve

Gumshoe Online, everyone has something to hide.

Ankh trailer
Nu har det släppts en trailer på det kommande spelet Ankh. Ladda hem och titta här.