The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll [Concept Thread]

[Venetia]

The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll

Brought to you by Team CoxBox
(a joint venture of PixelCocktail Productions and Soapbox Saints)
Members: Venetia, Sophist, etheon, Brewmeister



Synopsis
Rose Zimmerman, an up-and-coming Kings County District Attorney, has decided to get in touch with the days of her childhood, and has taken a vacation. She embarks in a taxi to visit the place in which she grew up as a child: Desolation Row. Little does Rose know, however, that in this little-known and seldom-trod borough of Baltimore, Maryland -- something terrible has happened.

Hattie Carroll, Rose's aunt and dear friend, has been slain, in the very hotel Rose has just checked into. In the middle of the turmoil raging the area during the turbulent civil rights era of the early 1960's, Rose has found herself in a boiling cauldron of racial boundaries and supremacist intrigue. With the white police uninterested in pursuing the law over this matter, it's up to Rose to figure out who did this to her family, how, and why.



Gameplay
Gameplay will consist of a point-and-click interface, akin to adventure games of old, with some updated modifications. The maps will be isometric and completely custom. Gameplay will consist of finding clues, interviewing suspects, witnesses, and the enigmatic local culture of Desolation Row. It will finish in a court case, ala Phoenix Wright, and feature 3 possible endings. Most everything involved in the gameplay, from items, to citizens, will revolve around the life and songs of Bob Dylan.



Main Characters
◙ Rose Zimmerman: The playable character.
◙ Hattie Carroll: The unfortunate victim.
◙ Reuben Carter: The police's prime suspect.
◙ Jack Frost: A mysterious vagrant.
◙ William Zanzinger: A true vestige of southern aristocracy.
◙ Mr. Jones: Uptight arts and entertainment critic for the Baltimore Sun.
◙ Queen Jane: Wealthy plantation widow surrounded by sycophants and suitors.
◙ Joseph "Diamond Joe" Tulane: Owner of Maggie's Farm.

Supporting Characters (thus far; more to come)
◙ The Joker and the Thief: A duo of vagrants bearing prophecy.
◙ The Jack of Hearts: A crafty casanova.
◙ Lily: Working girl at the Rising Sun.
◙ Big Jim: Big tobacco magnate.
◙ Rosemary: Bored, aristocratic wife of Big Jim.
◙ Dr. Henry Filth: Cynical Mortician and Coroner of Desolation Row.
◙ Miss Ophelia: Young professional woman with high aspirations, but a secret repressed longing.
◙ Gerald Einstein: Old has-been caught in revelry of better times.
◙ Arthur McBride: Owner and superintendent of the Flophouse.
◙ Hollis Brown: Poor farmer looking for work.
◙ Cindy "Cinderella" Rella: Owner and operator of a local diner.



Artwork
Take a look at some of the complete artwork we've compiled thus far for the game.

Spoiler: Rose Zimmerman Character Concept

The fat paintbrush look is intentional. It's a way of saving time on coloring

The sprite; to save time, it's done in vectors.
The environment will be done in a similar way.

Spoiler: Character Portraits (will appear in-game, during talking scenes)

Jack Frost

Hattie Carroll

Help Wanted!
We now have scripting help; if you know how to play the harmonica, or if you can synth a really convincing one, PM Venetia ;o

 

[Venetia]

Added some artwork

 

[mawk]

ugh, I'm all intimidated now. allstar team, you guys.

love the art direction and the whole pointanclick thing. the concept of using Dylan songs is pretty rad, too. I suspect that actually playing it would involve a lot of neat "heh, I remember this from the song!" moments.

the fatbrush look works in Rose's case, but in Jack's portrait it looks a bit weird around the jawline. that's a minor thing, though. if you're doing character sprites and environments in that handdrawn style, it's gonna be fucking gorgeous.

 

[Sir]

Venetia, the whole of it is excellent, i to like the design of the characters, and the artwork is.. i don't know i love it! Great job!

 

[Petros]

So much for my shot at winning this thing... Oh well...

Wait what am I saying? BRRRIINNGGG IITTTT OONNNN!!!!!!
(I just had some crack)

 

[Venetia]

Thanks guys <3
I agree that the coloring is a little sloppy but it's just so much faster. After the preliminary blacklines I can knock out one of these bad boys in minutes rather than hours.

Also nothing to be intimidated by; if we won we would pass the prize money down to the 2nd and 3rd place people. It's not super fair for a team of admins and psuedo-admins to win site money :P

Oh and speaking of which we added Brewmeister to the team. He'll be accompanying Sophist with some live acoustic recordings for the BGM. (vocal-less Dylan covers, of course)

 

[Kabuto202]

You know what I say to this project that obviously has potential? Let's DANCE! DDR, outside, 3:00PM, bring you A Game. Me and Petros are gonna bring smackdown upon thy ass!

 

[Perihelion]

Man, this game is gonna be awesome. I'm jealous of your obvious talent and inspiration!!! I'd offer to help, but I'm flaky, and you're not doing pixel art anyway. Haha, it's turning into the staff game that never happened, isn't it?

Uh, your sprite could use a little more contrast, I think. The details are hard to see at 1x. Then again, the flat look could work as a stylistic thing, but it works better at 2x. Also, is it just my imagination, or does it look sliiiiiightly off-balance? It might be the heels that are throwing me off, I dunno.

By the way, isometric? What engine are you making this in?

 

[Venetia]

Uh, your sprite could use a little more contrast, I think. The details are hard to see at 1x. Then again, the flat look could work as a stylistic thing, but it works better at 2x. Also, is it just my imagination, or does it look sliiiiiightly off-balance? It might be the heels that are throwing me off, I dunno.

By the way, isometric? What engine are you making this in?

im not really concerned with making the gfx perfect; im more concerned with making them quick. i can always revise later if i have time.

but the low contrast thing is intentional, it's also why i made her have a black outline. the world will probably have a lot of darks and higher contrast areas. if the sprites are low contrast and outlined they will stand out harder and thats my goal: to make people and items of interest very apparent. the sprite's obviously a person and looks rather like her char portrait so that's all im concerning myself with, structurally. there's no template, i'm just drawing these lil' guys as needed.

i wanted to do this in AGS, but unfortunately i dont quite have the time to pick up the learning curve. plus there are some second sun scripts we can use for this. so it'll be rmxp (with pixel+mouse movement).

 

[Perihelion]

Okay, that sounds good. I figured you might be doing that with the contrast, but I thought I'd mention it anyway since I think it is a tad hard to make out in a few places. But it's a minor nitpick; I mainly just wanted to say something besides "yoru game is awesom!!!! :D" :3

 

[Kiriashi]

:sad: I can't see the images. Can you post them on image shack or something?


This sounds like an awesome game! Too bad for all us other competitors....

May the best Game Maker win! :cheers:

 

[Venetia]

it's hosted on my domain--and it's not down at the moment. you might've just caught it during a little server hiccough.

 

[Kiriashi]

I can't see it now still.

 

[darkcieran]

wow! now that is a project. i like how you're proposing to do this. it's just a bit off the beaten path. makes mine look crappy. can't wait to see how this pans out.

 

[Kiriashi]

Vennie, please post the images in some other carrier.

I wanna see em'! :down:

 

[hima]

Gameplay will consist of finding clues, interviewing suspects, witnesses, and the enigmatic local culture of Desolation Row. It will finish in a court case, ala Phoenix Wright, and feature 3 possible endings.

I want this game now.

Also, Rose's sprite rocks. Her boots make her a :girl:

 

[BlueScope]

I think the Bob Dylan thing is a very interesting concept... let's hope you find yourself some good musicians.

Other than that, the graphics are completely awesome IMO... maybe that's because I like vector art endlessly and am used to simpler art concepts, but yeah - simpler often means better if well executed
The only thing I'd like to see changed at the ingame sprites is that the pendant's missing... I dunno if you scrapped that after the artwork's been drawn, but you shouldn't have her wear that in face images or whatever, while the sprite doesn't have it on!

Other than that, I'm not entirely convinced by the gameplay concept, but of course, I'll have to see it first, I guess...

Good luck to you guys anyways... though I don't know if you need it, considering you might have the most prominent-for-their-skills-cast among all the teams as far as I saw...

Keep up the good work.