Courier - Brand new trailer!

Wow really like the art style, it's perfect! Ever consider doing freelance designing to help with funds? I am sure lots of people would love to employ your skills.

Also during gameplay, and this could just be my poor laptop, but the character seems a bet jerky when moving and especially when running. I noticed this during the main menu to, the buttons jerked around once they were clicked and the zoom in animation began. Didn't really notice this with the npcs or trees, so it seems just to be the player.

Wow really like the art style, it's perfect! Ever consider doing freelance designing to help with funds? I am sure lots of people would love to employ your skills.

Also during gameplay, and this could just be my poor laptop, but the character seems a bet jerky when moving and especially when running. I noticed this during the main menu to, the buttons jerked around once they were clicked and the zoom in animation began. Didn't really notice this with the npcs or trees, so it seems just to be the player.

I honestly hadn't really considered it. I've just developed the skills that I've needed for my own projects and never really thought of myself as an artist outside of music.

The jerkiness is strange--especially if it is localized to just certain things. I've gotten strange things like that on non-hardware-accelerated situations. Like if windows aero stops working, for instance. A restart solved those problems. I have an old laptop I try the game on periodically and I haven't had non-uniform jerkiness on it. Just uniform framerate drops (very weak laptop from 8 years ago). On my 7-year-old desktop, though, I get no such issues. Would you mind posting your specs and, if possible, let me know if a simple restart helps? Thanks for playing, though!

I really like the art, especially the trees I think you have some good talent there!

as far as my specs go, for my poor laptop that I was on its; Windows 7 32 bit. 4 gigs of Ram. Intel core 2 Duo 2.o ghs. Played on Chrome too of course.

I tried the game again, simple reset didn't solve it but I did notice a new bug. During the intro if you press escape it cuts past all the explosions and goes to the park where the guys tells you that you need to deliver the news and go to the inn, for a brief second a screen flashes that says "test" and none of the people except your character are visible.

As far as the jerkiness I think better way to describe it is it seems like an issue with the background scrolling, as in the background scrolls slower than my character and then he kind of jerks backwards to catch up. This laptop is very poor performance though, so it could just a be a localized issue with something lacking on it, I will try the game on my PC later and see .

Just a quick shot of some waves: <img src="http://www.adamprack.com/materials/waves.jpg" border="0" />

Which were surprisingly difficult to set up while preserving the integrity of the sky reflections and such.

Great work , that is nice and great. I like the Graphics , Style of the game, and I think everything else is nice and good.<img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Wow that's very nice! I like the title screen, and the effects you use throughout the game. You're menu/inventory screen is also quite awesome! Good job!

Good god this is impressive.. the graphics remind me of "A faery Tale Adventure" form the days on Sega genesis but better).. I love the feel!

Thank you very much! It's been a ton of fun so far making this and finding ways to efficiently pull off as much as possible. I have some exciting news coming later this week for Courier, but I'm glad people are interested in my game!

I really like how you pay attention to detail. The aesthetics is fantastic too. Frankly, at first I thought 'no way this is done with C2'.

My only concern is whether it is possible to pull off a long and captivating story with this type of character. Warriors and mages are an overused cliche for a reason - people love them and they automatically 'click' with our need for adventure.

But a courier? Oh well, we'll see. <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

There have been some quite substantial changes to Courier, and, as a result, I've had some forum silence on it while I got things reworked to my liking. Firstly, Courier will no longer be free-to-play or in a browser. This is the #1 request everywhere and comes, as I see it, a result of a game industry that has abused the f2p model. People don't trust f2p games unless they're from an established studio and I lack the marketing budget to overcome that hurdle. It is now a standalone, one-time purchase game targeting digital distribution.

Things that change:

• It will not be a constantly-updating game in your browser, but a completed package later on.
• Warp points and extra storage will be in-game unlockables instead of inexpensive optional add-ons.
• I can develop the game non-linearly now, so things won't be showing up in story-order any more!
• Since I'm shooting for standalone, I've decided to up the game to 1280x720 as the standard, improve the lighting and details, and give things a few more effects to give it that extra touch.

<img src="http://www.couriergame.com/screens/port01.jpg" border="0" />

The game won't be IAP-based any longer, so I plan on launching a Kickstarter in a few months once it is further along to help secure this longer haul before release. The game is progressing nicely, and I really don't think I'll miss my personal goals, but it will be that much better if I can offload some hours from the day job to hours at the night job.

I've more recently made some nice developments on my own to interactive music in C2 (it interacted before, but only in some limited ways), so I am fully implementing that to the soundtrack. This allows the music to avoid repetitive loops AND change based on player interaction.

<img src="http://www.couriergame.com/screens/port02.jpg" border="0" />

And, in response to people not sure about playing as a mail person, I ask for just a touch of trust--you'll quite enjoy it. Combat isn't the only way to make a neat RPG.

I just finished implementing the dodge/hop mechanic in the game. You can hold down your right mouse button to aim which way you'll do a quick, short hope then release the mouse button to do it. In the towns and overworld, this is used for hopping across small gaps--nothing big, this isn't a platformer. In adventurous areas and dungeons, it is used for that as well as dodging obstacles and hazards. It's pretty fun! I hope to show it soon.

Just a quick update showing water splashes:

<img src="http://www.couriergame.com/screens/splashing.jpg" border="0" />

Just a brief shot showing what it looks like just before you a jump--a targeting cone fades in and points toward your mouse when you hold down the right mouse button. When you let go, the player hops in that direction a short distance quickly. This mechanic is used for simple terrain traversal like in the screenshot and for dodging obstacles.

<img src="http://www.couriergame.com/screens/rockhop.jpg" border="0" />

I've taken a pass through the game and improved the lighting at night to make it more interesting. Neat stuff, I think!

So I was testing water spray effects for water jet/spray things in environments. I was happy with the results and wanted to see what it would look like in-game. So I took the last screenshot I posted and ran the water stuff over top of it. It looked awesome! I've now implemented it in the game and it runs pretty nicely, too! Here's what it looks like (note: there won't be water-spraying lanterns and there won't be a water sprayer in that area of the game):

It is made with two 32x32 sprites spawned at a location and a bunch of screwing around done to them (essentially a particle emitter, but I wanted more freedom/control) and then the end result is pasted onto a canvas with a single webgl effect. It runs great, even with multiple emitters spraying in different directions and overlapping. Cool stuff!