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AG Community Playthrough #36: ASA: A Space Adventure

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Joined 2012-03-09

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Ok everyone!!! Waiting time is over (yes, I know that you started earlier Advie, but I forgive you. Just wait for my call in the next chapters. Tongue )!

You have until the 26th of October to explore your first steps on the spaceship and familiarize yourselves with the game. Stop when you open the safe in the greenhouse. I expect the grand majority to finish this well before the set deadline, but it will also be an early test of how fast a pace we should have.

And always remember: Your notebook is your best friend! Wink

     
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Joined 2012-10-03

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Good luck everyone!

     
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Joined 2014-05-05

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Another player checking in. Many thanks to Simon for the Steam Key. I am installed on Mac and everything is working fine. See you in the greenhouse.

     

These days I go everywhere with a carpetbag containing a crowbar, a flashlight, a screwdriver, an oilcan, a ladder, a zipper tab, and a chihuahua.

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Joined 2004-07-12

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Quick question to Simon: You commented about the game being DRM-free, and that we could move the game from its installation file in the Steam folder to any folder we wanted. And thus could open the game without opening the Steam client.

That’s well and good. But what happens if we should happen to want to (horrors) uninstall the game. What would tell Windows Control Panel/Uninstall where to find the game?

     

For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.

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Joined 2011-10-21

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I’ve opened the safe. Only took me a good hour.

If this all we have to do in 10 days, this playthrough is going to be slooooow… Tongue
No problem, really. It’ll give me the time necessary to participate in the casual CPT as well as the Autumn AG Challenge. Cool

I initially missed the objects in the broken transport pod (right next to where we started), but I managed to open the first door anyway (the lay-out of the numbers is obvious, even if you only know the equivalents to 1-2-3).

Exploration of all the available rooms gave me the ‘March’ and ‘April’ diaries of Forté. I went through March, but quit the April one after accidentally launching an entry twice and hearing the voice-over overlapped twice (bug?). After this, I couldn’t get the diary reopened (the icon in the inventory bar didn’t respond)... Meh

A little bit of experimentation with the airco machine then crashed my game right after the cutscene with the green fireflies… Meh

Fortunately, after restarting, I could access the diary again. Now I’m saving more often, but I haven’t experienced any other crashes. I’m hopeful it’ll stay that way.


Now that I found the January and February diary entries, I’ll listen to them all in order. I’ll do that later. The 26th is still a while off. Tongue


Thoughts on the game so far:
Sefir’s OP made me paranoid about the difficulty of the game, so I’m writing down everything that might be a clue. I have a full page of notes already, and I write *very* small.
The diary sounds interesting so far (despite only reading the first two entries of January, all the March entries and the first two of April - I’ll get to the rest later). It’ll probably be where we’ll get most of our exposition about the events in the game from.
Graphics are very photorealistic. How did you achieve this, Simon? There seems to be more to it than just being a good animator…
The music is giving me a very definite Mass Effect vibe. And the fact that the protagonist’s outfit somewhat resembles Commander Shepard’s (it’s the red stripe that does it) doesn’t help. Tongue

I’m really glad I have the Remastered version, though. I have a feeling this game would be hell for me without all the visual markers. Navigation and exploration would probably be a chore without them…

Simon_ASA - 13 October 2015 10:16 AM

From this book I have created a short animation film named 2011: A Space Adventure (it was in 2011). This film was more of an experiment, and a tribute to Kubrick’s famous movie. It had a wonderful success on Vimeo with over 70k views in no time, and it became obvious that I should continue to develop this project. Several months later, I decided to work on ASA.

I’ve watched it. Interesting. Cool
The 2001: A Space Odyssey influence is VERY obvious. Will the Black Cube make us a Star Child then? Tongue

Is it just me, or did you change very little for the opening video of the game?

I also noticed that the short animation film also got used as a Klaypex music video. How’d that come to happen?

     

The truth can’t hurt you, it’s just like the dark: it scares you witless but in time you see things clear and stark. - Elvis Costello
Maybe this time I can be strong, but since I know who I am, I’m probably wrong. Maybe this time I can go far, but thinking about where I’ve been ain’t helping me start. - Michael Kiwanuka

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Cool it my pal, the other Tim.

I just posted the AGSotD. We have a declared winner for the CCPT which I will try to get up and running by Monday. I have yet to start this playthrough, so I am hoping it is as easy to complete stage one as you say it is.

I would hate to fall behind before the PT even started.

I am having dinner guests tomorrow for a long process cassoulet. Pinot Noir is the wine of choice.

Am hoping to finally get at the game on Sunday.

     

For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.

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Ok, I will be more open minded of Steam in the future - I prefer GOG myself. So far I really like the game and have to say it is another “I can’t believe it’s an indie game” - it is beautiful and plays smoothly.

And I have to agree, it has a 2001 A Space Oddessy feel to it, but because I liked that movie this works for me.

A truly great game that has me wondering how it will end already. Love the CGI cutscenes too.

Heart

     

I enjoy playing adventure games on my Alienware M17 r4 and my Nintendo Switch OLED.

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I opened the safe in the greenhouse. I think I played for 2 hours but I did mess around in other parts of the ship. So much note taking! Everything looks really good and I really like how the cutscenes mesh with the gameplay part. Lovely soundtrack so far.

In a slightly unrelated note, Steam Link and Controller arrived yesterday and this is the first game I’m using them. The gorgeous looks gorgeous playing it on the big TV and the Steam controller seems very good for this (and probably point and click games) since there’s a touch pad that mimics mouse movements fast. Only problem I’ve seen so far is that the font looks very small on the TV and can be a bit hard to read but since most has voice acting its not a big problem so far. And wireless network has been a bit dodgy… But seems like a good deal for comfy couch PC gaming!

     
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Total Posts: 487

Joined 2012-10-03

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Hi everyone!

@rtrooney
Indeed if you cut the game folder from the Steam folders, you can’t uninstall it anymore from the control panel. So the best thing to do is to copy the ASA folder somewhere else, then uninstall the game from the control panel. The folder that you copied will not be removed, and will still be playable.
Or you can just make a shortcut of the game EXE from inside the Steam folders, and launch the game with it.

@timovieman
I had never heard of these bugs before. There are sometimes strange things that happen depending on the computer and windows versions. Happily it was not a true issue since the savegames were not broken.

Regarding the difficulty: I think that ASA has often been overestimated. A true Myst fan will find ASA easier than, let’s say Riven. On top of that, the reviews who say that the game is hard are based on the original edition without the hostpots cursors. It changes EVERYTHING Smile
I would like to suggest to those of you who progress faster to disable the hotspots (Escape, “visual aid” option).
What makes ASA not that hard is that most of the puzzles are logical, and usually don’t leave place for chance. If you make the good observations, you will always have the answer.

Regarding the “photorealistic” graphics: well thanks a lot, and of course I am very happy to read this. However I have to admit that ASA is far from being as realistic as Riven, which is still a game that impresses me. When I look at the quality of the environments in Riven (rock, light, etc) I still find it amazing, so long after its release. It is a bit wasted by the low resolution, but to think that they created it in 199x and with Mentalray is incredible. Even Myst III and IV are not as beautiful. They give the feeling to be more beautiful because there are more details, but the realism itself is not as great.
When I started working on ASA I really wanted to do a game very beautiful, in tribute to Riven and other Myst games, but I think that I didn’t reach my goal. You might think that I am hard with myself, but when you compare ASA with one of these games, obviously ASA could be better.

On the other hand it comes to another part of your comment Timovie, which is how I created the graphics. Indeed I think that the game could be better, but when I think of it, it could NOT be better haha. If I look back at the work I did alone, with no experience in indie video games, and just using my short film as a starting point, I think I did a good job. At the time I created ASA, the graphics resolution was 1024x432, which is a limitation of Adventure Maker. However I could not have done more, because my PC was not powerful enough. ASA was self-funded of course, and my computer (a laptop) was already 6 years old. The problem of photorealistic graphics is that you need a lot of power to render them. If I had decided to render the game in 1280 or even more, it is more likely that ASA would never have been finished. My laptop had a lot of troubles to render the animated sequences in 1024, because, you know, an animation contains 25 pics/second, which in the end can represent a very long calculation time. If you add all the animated sequences of ASA together, they reach around 20 or 25 minutes, which is really huge (the length of a TV anime). My old laptop needed between 1 and 10 minutes to render 1 single image (let’s say 4 minutes in average). 20 minutes of animation correspond to 30 000 single images, that is to say 2000 hours of render (80 days), which seems more or less realistic since my PC was running 24h/24, mainly at night for the rendering work, and during 6 months. The rest of the game is composed 900+ backgrounds that also needed to be rendered. Yet my poor laptop has survived and I am using it for internet things today, and writing to all of you right now using it! Grin

An animation is composed of 25 img/sec

So yeah, even if I think that ASA could be more beautiful and all, I’m still quite proud of the result. When I think of it that way, I realize that Catyph is going to be very different.

     
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Regarding the softwares themselves: ASA was created with 3dsmax, which I have been using for over 15 years now and could purchase for Catyph (5000€... huge!) and use it legally as a freelancer. I started as a 3dsmax self-taught at 15yo with my brother and my cousin. We had in mind to play in LAN together at home, but it transformed into “learning 3dsmax”. It was fun. We made an horrible short film together in 2 weeks named “The Big Movie”, which is sooo horrible that I don’t want to show it to anyone, but we really learned a lot, and our life changed. My brother along with me has founded The Icehouse collective, where we try to promote our indie games in our own way, with other developers that we support, and who support us. My cousin is a teacher in Special Effects, specialized with the Houdini software. In the end we all have a 3D related job now!

Along with 3dsmax, I learned After Effects and realized that it was very powerful and could help me “save” some of the renders that had bugs, without recalculating them (usually renders are so long that we try to render them only once, so if there’s a bug…!). After Effects is great thanks to its many plugins that allow to work on beautiful colors, add particles, and so many special effects that will make the difference between a raw 3D render and the final pic. That is how I could reach a nice result in ASA, by adding an atmosphere, lens flares, particles, and all the small details that you might not always see but that make the difference.

@Mikekelly:
THank you very much. It always encourages me to read someone saying “I can’t believe it’s an indie game”. After reading the above text, you probably understand what it means for me, after a lot of troubles and efforts, and the will to do as good as Myst (which is really hard! haha).

I hope you will all like the game until the end. There are some more difficult/annoying puzzles, such as the “DOS-style” computer, which is in my opinion even worst in the Remastered, while we wanted to do better.

Quick note about the inventory:
it would seem that sometimes the top right button disapears (and comes back later). Please note that a right click also displays the inventory and can save you if the button is not here anymore.
This button was not in the Original edition and it seemed obvious to me that a right click displays the inventory (and it was said by MAID before the introduction in the first version). In the Remastered we decided with Andy to add this button because Visionaire allows to release games for Android and iOS, and we thought that maybe someday ASA could be brought to these systems, which will probably never happen.

     
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It seems that the end of my previous message is missing (I have troubles with the limitation of characters on the forums), but it is important:

Regarding the 2011:ASA short film:
SPOILERS INSIDE!!!
Please DON’T watch it because it will spoil the end of the game! You’re warned Wink Thanks!

     
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Simon_ASA - 17 October 2015 05:15 AM

Quick note about the inventory:
it would seem that sometimes the top right button disapears (and comes back later). Please note that a right click also displays the inventory and can save you if the button is not here anymore.
This button was not in the Original edition and it seemed obvious to me that a right click displays the inventory (and it was said by MAID before the introduction in the first version). In the Remastered we decided with Andy to add this button because Visionaire allows to release games for Android and iOS, and we thought that maybe someday ASA could be brought to these systems, which will probably never happen.

Yeah, I had that problem, and I had to reload multiple times before I figured it out by accident. I am playing on my Macbook (because I am travelling right now), and it did seem like a game stopping bug. I would advise, if you have the time or resources to fix it, because if someone didn’t know, they would think the game is completely broken.

As far as the game goes, I think it looks gorgeous and so far it seems very intriguing. I love the little puzzle with the door, and I am currently stuck in the greenhouse trying to open the safe and loving it Smile

EDIT: Andddd I opened the safe Smile I am ready for the next section whenever everyone else is.

     
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wilco - 17 October 2015 04:58 AM

In a slightly unrelated note, Steam Link and Controller arrived yesterday and this is the first game I’m using them. The gorgeous looks gorgeous playing it on the big TV and the Steam controller seems very good for this (and probably point and click games) since there’s a touch pad that mimics mouse movements fast. Only problem I’ve seen so far is that the font looks very small on the TV and can be a bit hard to read but since most has voice acting its not a big problem so far. And wireless network has been a bit dodgy… But seems like a good deal for comfy couch PC gaming!

I used to have my PC tied up to my TV to play games on the big beautiful LED screen, but I disconnected mainly for this reason. Everything in most of the games looks amazing, but then the text is illegible especially at 1080p resolution. I then decided having the text is too important and moved the PC back to my smaller monitor.

     
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Joined 2012-10-03

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SoccerDude28 - 17 October 2015 09:00 AM

Everything in most of the games look amazing, but then the text is illegible especially at 1080p resolution.

Yeah, it’s probably more or less the same problem than playing the PS3 on my old cathodic TV :p
Honestly I never thought ASA would be played on TV someday but the Steam controller might change everything in the future for adventure games. Not sure I will recreate the whole datalog in Catyph to increase the size of the font, because it’s a lot of work, but I will think of it seriously. And showing my game to my friends and family on TV would be so cool haha!

Regarding the inventory button issue, I am not sure it will be possible to fix it. I would like to work on Catyph as much as possible, and Andy who developped the Remastered ASA is really busy with their next game Bloodwood Reload which should release soon.
Well maybe later. I agree that it would be helpful to fix some of the known issues in ASA, and I’d love the game to be “clean” if possible.

     

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I bought this game a few weeks ago and I’m pretty far into it, so I guess I’m too late for the community playthrough. I really like it, I got pretty stuck a few times. Like Simon said, the DOS computer puzzle is kind of annoying at first.

Simon, I am just curious, but were you inspired at all by the book Rendezvous with Rama? It’s by Arthur C. Clarke (as was 2001).

EDIT: Oh yeah, I started playing without hotspots and got stuck for a while, then when I turned them on and looked around again I realized I missed something obvious and have kept hotspots on since then. Tongue

     

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