Although this is a revisiting of my old project Dark Age, which was supposed to be a Morrowind+Gothic mix, it also is a premiere.

Why is that you might ask, well: I never released a demo or beta or techdemo. Ever. But since this project is pretty much on ice in it's current form, there's no harm in letting you play what some of you might have been waiting for back in the day.

But first a little history. Dark Age I (or DAI) was my first attempt at an RPG. When I was still making it, I wasn't even as experienced as I am today and therefor a lot of the scripting sucked as soon as I started to move away from the templates. The textures were stolen from Gothic, then Gothic 2 but eventually I found an texture artists who made new textures, that were basically the same as the Gothic textures but on a second look were totally different so I could keep them where they were, without having to re-adjust them.

The very first time I started the Project the world was quite different. You would start out alone, in a home close to a neutral traders camp up in the mountains. The level design then was very crude, simple blocks with no shaping whatsoever. But then my harddisk crashed, unrecoverable, and I started over. I found this wonderful Block level design tutorial by [If someone remembers his name, please tell me]. And so the "new world" started. Which is basically also why there is a curve right at the start of the game. I was just following the tutorial.

Over time this basic "starting" area got improved upon. More detailed surroundings, nicer mountains surrounding the forest, and eventually even the rest of the world between Louis' Farm and the capital city of Ostlon, "Feelin". Now the problem here was, A6 really wasn't laid out for big, open, block terrains, so even today with my modern machine, as soon as I get out of the little valley of the farm and into the big open plains, the framerate drops to a slideshow. But back in the day, I accounted most of it to my bad, bad system. Funny that I basically get the same framerate now.

But enough talk now, you are here to play and mock, so here we go:

This is the very first demo, it was still with the Gothic 1 textures and basically just the tiny starting area and the forest. Pick up things by right clicking. Be sure to pick up the "blue sparkling hand" before you pick up the mana and hp bottles. No inventory system here yet, so there is no managing of things you picked up. If you speak German, you can try yourself on a crude first try of the dialog system with the serious looking guy that is looking over the not-animated farmers. If I remember right, there was also a Goblin in the forest you can fight.


More screens: http://7a-media.com/files/DAI_Screens1/

And the download: http://7a-media.com/files/DAI_Demo1.zip (24.9 MB, don't ask me how it got that big)

Then I started making a small techdemo to release to the community, but I never really got around to it and so this is what it amounted to. It was after I implemented the Inventory system (so feel free to pickup the mana before the hand) which you can activate with "I" and dont forget to press "M" to activate the mouse cursor. You also have a handful of baddies here which you can fight, and the first implementation of the weather & wind system (watch the fires). If it doesn't start raining while you are playing (or it doesn't stop), restart the game or open the console with the TAB key and type "time_factor=20" that should help to speed things up.


More screens: http://7a-media.com/files/DAI_Screens2/

And the download: http://7a-media.com/files/DAI_Demo2.zip (33.1 MB, smaller world and the file size got even bigger)

Now here is the final demo I could find which practically resembles the world in it's almost final stage before I froze the project, there are some things missing but we'll get to that later. You can accept the first quest from Luis and explore the dungeon in the forest, but good luck coming back up with the bugged jumping, I suggest you go there as the final thing you do. You can also go to the city and go buy the bread (I haven't really tried if in this version I already implemented the part where you can also bring the bread back to Luis) and some milk if you like. There is a lot to explore in the city (See if you can find all the "hidden" gold pouches), that is, if you can get over the totally screwed up camera/movement system. Also the inventory system got changed after that so you don't start out with all the items present, but got added when you picked them up. But that was a newer version of which I couldn't find the fully pieced together thing.

Oh, and depending on your system, it might take from 10 seconds to well beyond 5 minutes to load the "world". So don't press the reset button, you computer is just loading a lot of info, it's not frozen.



More screens: http://7a-media.com/files/DAI_Screens3/

And the download: http://7a-media.com/files/DAI_Demo3.zip (92.8 MB, beware, NOT a typo!)

I said earlier I would show you how the world looked in the end (and the GUI, which is horrible in all 3 shown versions). Well here it is:

All 78 Screenshots: http://7a-media.com/files/DAI_Screens0/

I also did some tests before, to create a Gothic like scene.
A wonderful Game sill. (especially The very first)

Wow. Wow. Wow.
I will have a try on the third demo now...
The screenshots you & the idea of stealing Gothic-textures and use them in a GS project remind me on some experiments I have done in the past.
The whole thing looks really great.

Could we keep the language the same as the initial post? Thanks!
Same happened in Damocles's thread, I cant understand shit in it anymore (And I know a bit of german... imagine this for everyone that doesnt know German at all).

This is a Forum rule, dont switch languages halfway, but keep the language the same as the first post... (or atleast provide a translation).

nonetheless I take an ON TOPIC comment anyday over someone complaining about someone else talking in another language

I love nostalgia-threads
Makes me think of the good ol' times what with all those incredible RPGs everyone did!

I still remember your project from back then. And I also believe I know the tutorial you're speaking of (although the authors name escapes me as well). Gothic really was an inspiration to a lot of us, it seems.

Unfortunately, I cannot playtest your game right now, but the screenshots are a weird mixture of more impressive (the hand and its magiceffect (which, while totally exaggerated and probably annoying ingame looks kinda nice in stills)) and less impressive (some of the landscape shots).

But after all, the real interesting parts are your accompying comments. I just love reading about code and hacks and the often peculiar reasons why things in our games turned out the way it did. Now add a few "what-I've-learned"-sentences and you've got a nice little post-mortem there

I've actually made a "my-humble-beginnings"-thread a few months (...years?) ago, which seems to have been deleted. So theres only the semi-funny Pokemon-game I've made.
Although now that Geocities is dead, I believe the screenshots are not accessible right now. Or maybe a better word would be deleted forever.

Eh, its not about my game anyway!

Well, I haven't been too successfull with this engine, have I? At least compared with some of you guys.
Well, lots of lessons learned...

i remember that game. funny. its nice to see how times change.

remind me of my old A5 Projekt, really cool that you put up this old game didn't know it until now

Well it's an old game, but great potential.
Lot of thinsg looks squarry caus it's BSP based and lot of textures brigthness or colors don't mix.


In fact you could redo your game to today standards by
choosing a non realistic look : lot less work than doing big realistic textures.

Some photoshop filter to bring a cartoon look like in the last
PRince of Persia game for example.



Or plain colors with a pencil drawing shader like on the game Valkyrie Chronicles on PS3 :