Nightmaiden (With full animation)

[BeeAr]

Hello everyone. Been working on a "small" project, wanted to see what you guys/gals think. The game does have a download, however it only has the beginning "cinematic" if you will

About the game:
The game is called "Nightmaiden".

It's story-driven, and player choices play a big part. It's fully animated using 3D graphics, well... as animated as I can possibly get in RPG Maker. The game features no battles, no complicated systems (i.e. stamina bars, day/night, etc.). If you've ever played any game by Telltale Games (specifically, The Walking Dead)... then you'll know what type of game this is.

The key highlight for this game is that instead of describing to you what is going on via text and message boxes, I endeavor to actually SHOW you what is going on via 3D animation so hopefully that makes it interesting. It's a lot of work but hopefully it pays off. The game has no scripts. It's 100% event driven.

Sorry if I don't divulge the story due to the fact the game is primarily story-driven and I haven't quite sorted out which parts of the plot I intend to provide upfront or which ones I want to deliver in bits and utilize as a driver.

Anyways, some screens:
http://www.mediafire.com/view/r0sg82c3iu26cu4/NightmaidenIntro2237.jpg
http://www.mediafire.com/view/p68km7q5cecxch6/Shop125.jpg

Download link:
Without RTP: http://www.mediafire.com/download/bfcso ... -NoRTP.rar
With full RTP included: http://www.mediafire.com/download/l48py ... maiden.rar

Enjoy, and please let me know what you think. Thanks.

 

[Ellie]

I saw the 3D and then saw that this is RPG Maker and did a double take. How is it working, Flash files?

Don't worry about not revealing your storyline. If anything, for a story game it's probably better if you don't, from a player's perspective.

Downloading now but my net's a bit slow.

Edit: I downloaded and played it through. It's a really interesting concept. I can see how it's done, but the animation is really fluid and the characters look great. I like the idea of a story based game, I guess that would be a visual novel rather than a game. Certainly interested in seeing more.

 

[BeeAr]

Thanks. The hardest part is lighting. I can make it realistic as possible, but the render times get longer and longer so I have to find that balance between speed and quality.

I might throw in some full quality renders using photometric lighting for the stills, but for the animations I utilize 3-point lighting for the sake of performance. Not as high quality 3D renders as I would like... but it does the job. :smile:

 

[Nathaniel3W]

It seems your pics are no longer available. I'm kind of interested in what you've been working on.

For rendering, I've found that Amazon Web Services is amazing. I seriously don't know how I ever got anything done without it. Here's what you do:

Create yourself a graphics spot instance, g2.8xlarge. It gives you 4 huge Nvidia GPUs (which you'll probably only use one of unless you know how to do some fancy CUDA parallel processing magic, but the extra processors at least have come in handy for me), 32 vCPUs, 60 gigs of RAM, and temporary storage on 2 x 120 GB SSDs. With a spot instance, you're paying about 45 cents per hour, but someone can kick you off if the market goes above your bid price. For a reserved instance, you're paying about $3/hour. And use one of the Nvidia AMIs. That way you won't have to install the graphics drivers yourself.

Using one of those instances, I can blast through production-quality lighting builds in a couple of minutes whereas I would have to leave my computer rendering overnight before if I wanted to do the rendering locally.

Seriously, try it out. Computing power on demand is a beautiful thing.