Unofficial Tex Murphy

Hey all, it's been a while since I hit the board, but I am still alive. I will save the interesting details of my absence for a later post but this one I had to share. I saw this on the Space channel here in Canada and I thought it looked interesting. It's an online game that is video based. Now seeing as I am having and out of money experience I can't even check out the site myself but I figured someone on here might have a few extra pesos and could check out the site and review how it works.

Now the reason that I bring it up here is that if this is at all good why do we not try to produce something Tex related here on the board, I know that there are some very talented people here and I am sure we could work something out. . . . that is if we are legally allowed to do anything with the character that is. I dunno I am just tossing the idea out there. It is 5:30am here and I have been up all night so perhaps this is actually a stupid idea. Anyway here is the site for anyone interested in checking it out.

http://www.mysteryatmansfieldmanor.com/

It's called Mystery at Mansfield Manor. I noticed that it has a trailer to play to get people interested in it, so at the very least you can give that a whirl.

It'd probably be possible to do a basic video adventure using Flash. Flash 8 especially has new features for putting video online, as discussed here:
>click<

I didn't play that game you linked to, but since the site is in FLash its possible they used that. Aftereffects works well with Flash too and is used for video effects. I know of a kids TV series done entirely in Flash, After Effects etc.

Within Flash you'd just have the text options as buttons that lead down different paths. The problem with branching though is that it can get pretty huge, you could keep making more and more paths. But its best to keep things sample e.g. the Tex games only had about 3 main paths.

There are also visual novel games, which are basically text, pictures, music (and sometimes video) with different paths, and a engine some people use to make those is Ren'Py http://www.renpy.org/
Some free romance visual novel games:
http://www.renai.us/view/mechanic_VN.shtml
Its mostly something that originates from Japan, here's an example of an official one (text boxes seem to of been remvoed for this one):
http://youtube.com/watch?v=CQ6gdesJejQ
Here's one with the text boxes (its some weird fight scene though heh): http://youtube.com/watch?v=oy_JnWOiNPI

Not sure if it has much video support, maybe only for cutscenes... but you'd have to ask on their forums. Something like this would be simpler to make with just changing still images taken from the existing tex games, text, voice acting etc. When Aaron mentioned doing an audio story game instead of a full blown one I thought of these types of visual novel games.

The problem though is: Time and resources =\
The trouble is with doing free fan-based games is people have to do it otuside their work schedule (when they most likely would rather chill out instead). The game you linked, they're treating it as a paid job so its probably part of their usual career, or at least a profitable side job.

Wow I was surprised to find that even I responded to that other thread as I have no memory of it whatsoever. Anyway from what I learned about the game it's kind of a combination of a choose your own adventure book and the clue board game. What you do (from what I understand) is start the game by interviewing the members of the house once you get there. Each one gives you a detailed account of what they did that evening and it is up to you to watch for discrepancies in what the person is saying as they are either lying or have something to hide. To play it's like $7.99 CDN (not expensive but still a good way to make a buck) and from there you can solve the murder.

I was just curious if that flash interface or something like it with the embedded video would be good for telling a Tex adventure of some sort. I know that there is a few people on the board that know at least some level of 3D animation and I would be willing into the ring to perhaps bring something Tex related to light. Like backgrounds and whatnot if anyone else is interested in doing so. If it's just a pipe dream and no one really wants to do anything just lemme know.