Troubling Teleportation (Point and Click Adventure)

This is not a 3dmm movie! This is a point and click adventure game made with Adventure Game Studio, so no 3dmm required to play it. All the assets are from 3dmm though: images, sound effects, and music. I made this as a practice game to develop a workflow and learn how to approach this sort of project before attempting something more ambitious with original assets. Windows only, unfortunately.

Because this is a practice game, I’m very interested in any feedback you guys might be able to provide, for sure how long it took to beat and if/when you needed to consult the in-game walkthrough.

Instructions: Right-click to examine, left-click to interact, and move the cursor to the top of the screen to access the inventory.

[Rabid Dinosaur]

damn, I'm swamped for the next few days but I'm excited to check this out! will report back.

[Bobby Swisha]

Very excited to check it out, however, it does give me a sort of 'virus' warning when I try to download it.

Try uploading it elsewhere. (Or send to me directly on steam.)

[Compcat]

Hmmm, maybe because it's an executable? I've gotten that warning when I've downloaded executables straight-up, but never when they're already in a zip file. But I can send it to you on steam if you want, not sure how that works though. I'm pretty confident there's nothing wrong with mediafire though.

[Dustin Guest]

This is pretty fucking cool. I finished it already, but it's a really cool idea.

[Compcat]

Thanks man. Yeah, it might be a bit on the easy side, but I figured better err on the side of too easy than too hard for a game like this.

[Skittlebrau]

Got stuck when I played last night, wasnt sure how to access the inventory or trigger interactions with objects I picked up.

[Dustin Guest]

Definitely don’t take that as a dig, I never would have come up with this in a million years. This is really well done

[Bobby Swisha]

Haha the stack of DVDs.

[Compcat]

Originally Posted by Skittlebrau

Got stuck when I played last night, wasnt sure how to access the inventory or trigger interactions with objects I picked up.

Oh damn. There was a brief instructions message at the beginning which addressed this, but I was wondering if I should've somehow made the instructions accessible throughout. At the very least I should've mentioned it when posting the game. What you got to do to access the inventory (and save, load, exit) is just move the cursor to the top of the screen and it should appear. Also worth mentioning since it might not be readily apparent: in addition to left-click being for interaction, right-click is for examination.

[Bob Toasted]

Very nice! I really enjoyed it. The puzzles were well thought out and straightforward. The dialogue options were great and felt varied. It made me want to interact with more characters. The shop keeper giving prices for everything was a great bit. Cool characters, cool idea, fun story.

My only criticism is that once you input to go to a teleporter (or any object you use), you can't cancel the action while walking to it. I know it's minor but canceling an action during the walk is just a nicer feeling with point n clicks.
Oh and maybe have some way to tell the player about the inventory bar? Either having it appear when you pick something up or when you press 'I'. That way the player understands where the inventory is.

Good stuff

[Compcat]

Thank you very much!

Originally Posted by Bob Toasted

My only criticism is that once you input to go to a teleporter (or any object you use), you can't cancel the action while walking to it. I know it's minor but canceling an action during the walk is just a nicer feeling with point n clicks.

I definitely agree with this. I wondered whether it would bother players or whether that was just me from testing it a bunch. I did look into canceling an action mid-walk, but it was more complicated than I expected so ultimately decided it wasn't worth the effort. But I appreciate you mentioning it because now I know to trust my instincts with those sorts of details.

Oh and maybe have some way to tell the player about the inventory bar? Either having it appear when you pick something up or when you press 'I'. That way the player understands where the inventory is.

It's such a common interface for AGS games that I just sort of unconsciously assumed it would be immediately intuitive. But going forward I'll definitely keep in mind that the interface should always be clearly indicated without assumed knowledge.

I appreciate this sort of feedback a lot, thanks.

[Old Rivers]

Haha this is great!

Stuck at the moment. I got the weird invention, the book, and the tide pod, but I'm not sure where to go from here. I seem to have lost the pen somehow, even though I can't remember having used it. I'm gonna still struggle for a while before checking the walkthrough.

Also, lol @ the DVD's. "one cent."

[Dave Miles]

Sounds pretty awesome, wish I could try it.

[Compcat]

I'm guessing you're on Mac? Yeah, getting AGS games working for Mac seems like a nightmare and hardly anyone does it. If you're on Linux, I think AGS can spit out a build for that automatically so I could upload that.

Originally Posted by Old Rivers

Haha this is great!

Stuck at the moment. I got the weird invention, the book, and the tide pod, but I'm not sure where to go from here. I seem to have lost the pen somehow, even though I can't remember having used it. I'm gonna still struggle for a while before checking the walkthrough.

Also, lol @ the DVD's. "one cent."

Thanks. Scrolling through mods in the database, I immediately knew I'd have to throw in the DVD somewhere. Here's the link to the mod, because I can't take credit for that, it's by Eukos: https://3dmm.com/showthread.php?t=44657

About the pen: If you have the weird device, you definitely used the pen. You used it to change the date on Willy's mugshot, and showed that to his brother to "prove" he's still alive.

About where you're currently stuck, here's a hint, but feel free to not read it if you want to keep trying on your own: The book might contain helpful information, if only you could read the backwards writing...

[Bobby Swisha]

Release dis shit for da iPhone, fam

[Gorosaurus]

This is really, really cool! Well done!

[Compcat]

Thanks!

[Gorosaurus]

The textures were really fun and brought back that classic "3dmm" feel!

This brought back a lot of the feelings from the late 90s and discovering new 3dmm movies that were doing something brand new that we didn't know existed (until we saw Pozin unleash some new technique, etc etc)

[Rabid Dinosaur]

this was really cool. there were a few things I wasn't able to figure out on my own (using the pen on the photograph, lighting the trash on fire), but that might just be because I don't have a lot of experience with this type of game. it was a lot of fun to play.

[Compcat]

I'm glad you liked it. Thanks for letting me know the puzzles that stumped you. Those probably should've been hinted at a bit more, again kind of assuming familiarity with adventure game logic which I don't want to do.

[Slime]

pretty cool, good job, i laughed at willy's kung fu at the end. i see old rivers accidentally used the pen, i did too, and then i accidentally skipped the text explaining what happened, so i loaded my Shadowplay recording to see what i'd just done. not even sure that thats a problem with the game though.

[Compcat]

I appreciate that. Interesting that both you guys solved the pen puzzle accidentally, but I think I have a good idea why. Thanks for playing!

[Phil Williamson]

Oh man, not sure why it took me so long to get around to trying this, it was great! Can you give us a brief rundown of how you made it? Were the animations done with frame-by-frame screenshots or what?

I also lhhed at the kung fu and the Gnomes DVDs, and also appreciated all the currencies in the store (but screw you for misdirecting us with a huge inventory of items there, none of which you can use at all!). I was really impressed with how fleshed out it was, adding a walkthrough and even a save function to a game like this is pretty beyond the call of duty. I totally feel like this could appeal even to people who don't know anything about 3dmm, like others have pointed out it really captures the feel of 90s point-and-click games and 3dmm art fits right in.

I managed to beat it without using the walkthrough but I had to literally just try every item on every object in every room to "figure out" the book and mirror trick. I feel like that one was a bit of a stretch since all we're told is that the writing is "gibberish," not that it's backward. But maybe it would have been too obvious otherwise...I dunno. That was the only place where I kinda felt "cheated." The pen and mugshot and lighting the trash can on fire also took me a while, but they felt like things I "should" have gotten and I appreciated the cleverness behind them.

Great work! I'm giving it an extremely belated place in the spotlight

[Compcat]

Originally Posted by Phil Williamson

Oh man, not sure why it took me so long to get around to trying this, it was great! Can you give us a brief rundown of how you made it? Were the animations done with frame-by-frame screenshots or what?

Sure. Yeah, not sure if there's an easier way it could've been done, but frame-by-frame screenshots is how I did it. I sort of used a green screen within 3dmm and then just set that green color to be transparent. Was pretty time-consuming, but something easy to do mindlessly while watching youtube videos or whatever in the background. Here's the folder for the "karate kick" animation, with the raw screenshots and the final cropped sprites:

I was really impressed with how fleshed out it was, adding a walkthrough and even a save function to a game like this is pretty beyond the call of duty. I totally feel like this could appeal even to people who don't know anything about 3dmm, like others have pointed out it really captures the feel of 90s point-and-click games and 3dmm art fits right in.

I did post it to the AGS community, and a few people commented saying they liked it, but otherwise did not seem all that interested. I think they just have too many games/creators and not enough players so I wasn't too surprised by that, in fact I actually predicted that beforehand which is why I made a game more with you guys in mind as an audience than them. But at the end of the day I was really making it for myself as a learning experience, which is why I felt the need to include saving and a built-in walkthrough despite it being a short silly game because I think those elements are kind of necessary for a finished adventure game, and so those are elements I felt were important to learn about in this sort of practice game.

I managed to beat it without using the walkthrough but I had to literally just try every item on every object in every room to "figure out" the book and mirror trick. I feel like that one was a bit of a stretch since all we're told is that the writing is "gibberish," not that it's backward.

I'm absolutely sure I did have Jerzy say it was backwards writing, I believe when right-clicking on the book to examine it. It was only Wally who said it was gibberish, not realizing it was just backwards.

Great work! I'm giving it an extremely belated place in the spotlight

It's cool that it's still getting attention even after the initial release, I appreciate that, and the detailed feedback. Thanks a lot!