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DaiShuryou · Joined: 13 May 2008 Posts: 14

I finally got a reply from the Boss of Homegrowngames and his new informations were exciting. Last year he established the company Homegrowngames, which was full with Cthulhu Fans. They tried to make a game and they used the free FPSC Engine to create their game. The result turned out so good, that their game became the very first commercial FPSC engine game ever. To be honest, I really liked that game. Sure, the graphics were outdated, the gameplay not the best, but the cutscenes (with real actors) and the storyline was so awesome and you felt their love for Lovecraft in the entire game. The game was crushed by many critics (of course, it was just a fangame after all) and Homegrowngames released a Patch which erased all issues and problems with the game.
After they released the Patch, they announced a Addon, which should be free for everyone who brought "Robert D. Anderson & The Legacy of Cthulhu". That was 1 year ago and since then everything became silent. But finally the Boss answered me and told me that they are still working on the Addon. They just want to make the Addon really good and they try to improve the graphics of the terrible FPSC engine drastically. He even mentioned Anderson 2 and said that they will not announce Anderson 2, before they don't have anything about the game which they can show to the public. When you ask me, this is already a confirmation.
Seems that Cthulhu games are still coming. After the announcement of "Darkness Within 2 - The Dark Lineage" this is another great announcement for the Cthulhu community. And then there is even Frictional games new game "Lux Tenebras" on the horizont, but no one knows yet if this will be Lovecraftian or even a Horror-Game.
I guess that most people here never tried "Robert D. Anderson & The Legacy of Cthulhu". I can just tell you, give the game a try. The gameplay and graphic may suck at the beginning, but after you played the game for a while you will enjoy the game and you will definitely LOVE the storyline of that game. The developers were amateurs when they created that game and since then they try to improve. I think the Cthulhu community should show this guys some love, because they work really hard to become better game developers.
So if you want to give the game a try, here is a download link for the english demo (BTW, Anderson have the voice of MAX PAYNE!)

http://www.gamershell.com/download_20383.shtml

After that install the Patch for the Demo, which will improve the game drastically, even graphic wise

http://www.gamershell.com/download_20443.shtml

And if you want to have some Bloom effecs for the old looking game, just download this Bloom Patch, copy it into every chapter folder of the game and you can activate and unactivate it with the "+" button

http://www.gamershell.com/download_22809.shtml

I hope that you guys will enjoy the game and will even maybe purchase the game afterwards. This guys need every love they can get.

As soon as I get any new informations about the free Addon and the Sequel I will post them in this thread. So stay tuned for more Cthulhu news soon Smile

allicorn · Joined: 14 Apr 2006 Posts: 1115 Location: SW, UK

Hey man! Interesting news.

You're right that I didn't get around to playing that one, although I do recall watching some clips on YouTube and I think it was very obvious that the folks behind it had really put a lot of effort and love into it.

FPSC is certainly a useful little resource for helping folks get started on their first project but, again you're right, the visual quality of the results is generally not good enough to catch many great reviews, despite how nifty the other aspects of the game may be. I'm not too bothered though - I enjoyed Smallfish's Tales of Cthulhu series which were FPSC games and I'm still hanging on for another sequel there Wink

Will try to check Homegrown's game out.

Alli
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The king, with beak and talons. The king, in the form of man. Nothing escapes those eyes. He sees everything.

DaiShuryou · Joined: 13 May 2008 Posts: 14

Hey man, that's really cool that you will try out the game. Would be great if you could post your thoughts about the Demo here. If you like the game and may even purchase the game I would be happy if I could send the Homegrowngames your thoughts. Every critic from a Cthulhufan can make the next game better. So I can't wait to read your thoughts ^^

Oh yes, the Tales of Cthulhu series was really good, I really loved the third chapter with all that Old Ones in that temple. I'm also waiting for a sequel, but somehow I don't believe that smallfisch will ever return to his series Crying or Very sad

But let's hope he will continue the series...

I think it's a real shame that most Cthulhu and Lovecraft communities are so "arrogant" when it comes to new games. Most act like if "Call of Cthulhu - Dark Corners of the Earth" was the holy grail and everything that will be released afterwards will be shit. Sure, the game was awesome, but I hate this thinking. Just look at games like the Tales of Cthulhu series or the Intern's Story Series. The developers psot them in big forums like callofcthulhu or yog-sothoth.com and only receive bad comments or no comments at all. That is so awful.
They always complain that no new Cthulhu games are coming out, but since the release of "Call of Cthulhu - Dark Corner's of the Earth" we have more new Cthulhu games as ever, but this people are just too arrogant and blind.
Just take a look at what we have. We have games like the Penumbra series (I read a article lately were it was said that it IS based in the Cthulhu mythos, just with new ideas and creatures like in "Eternal Darkness"), Robert D. Anderson & The Legacy of Cthulhu, Darkness Within - In Pursuit of Loath Nolder and even free games like The Intern's Story Part 1 + 2, Tales of Cthulhu series, The Crysis of Cthulhu etc. And we even have announcements like "Darkness Within 2 - The Dark Lineage", "Robert D. Anderson Addon + Part 2" and even "Eternal Darkness 2". So I ask myself why everyone is complaining.
So I'm REALLY happy that I found this forum here, because here are people who are always really interrested in new Cthulhu games and always try the new games out. I think it's a nice place, that's why I always try to post every new Cthulhu game news here I can find.

Quinjet · Joined: 14 Apr 2006 Posts: 1371 Location: UK

Have to admit that I agree with some of your feelings. Putting our efforts on forums and receiving such a small response is kinda frustrating and disappointing. Sad

But I have to reflect on all the games and mods that I have thought might be interesting but have never gotten around to trying. Real life often gets in the way. On a personal note I have been wondering about my presentation of TIS on those forums. Maybe the lack of a build up and just plonking it down as a finished product has something to do with it. Ray's work on DCotE forums gets a lot of attention even though a completed product is yet to appear. So perhaps you just have to tease the audience a bit to keep them interested. Wink

Played the Anderson demo and as Alli said it is a work of true love for the genre. I thought the story was starting to go somewhere interesting by the end of the demo and I thought the cut scenes were well done, considering. How on earth did they get James_McCaffrey (Max Payne) to do the voice over!? Some sort of Mythos spell? Laughing

. Sadly though, I am sorry to say that the game engine spoils any thought of me paying to see the story go any further. It is just too crude for such a good idea and this is a darn shame. If they could have used something like the Quake 3 engine that is now licence free, the end product could have been something far more pleasant to play. I'm betting though, that another, better finished project will emerge from them soon.
Q.
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All alone or on a cracker

allicorn · Joined: 14 Apr 2006 Posts: 1115 Location: SW, UK

Played through the 3 demo chapters last night and yep, I'd pretty much echo what Quin said. The voiceover narration is absolutely brilliant and I loved the live-action video sequence at the end. I did feel that, by the end of the third part, there was starting to be some feel of an interesting story unfolding.

The levels, textures and sound were mostly better than I would expect to see in an FPSC game - although I did fall through the floor and out of the level once and there were several places where room features intersected strangely or textures were split. The level load art was really nice and there'd clearly been some very effective trawling done to source images to go on the various paintings and posters around the place (loved the classic flying-saucer-on-a-flatbed photo).

Gameplay in general was - well - its FPSC, so it was as expected. Really really ferociously deadly and kinda basic.

If I had a fat wallet at the mo, I'd probably consider spending a few quid on this just (as DaiShuryou says) to give the developers a pat on the back and encourage future efforts. Sadly my wallet is more of an emaciated undead horror at the mo, so hey.

Alli
_________________
The king, with beak and talons. The king, in the form of man. Nothing escapes those eyes. He sees everything.

IvanErtlov · Joined: 30 Oct 2008 Posts: 12

Hi fellowers of the Myth,

here`s Ivan Ertlov, the Boss of Homegrown games. We`ve been quite silent the last months, but we have put some efforts into thinking about and working on the future Adventures of Robert D. Anderson.

First of all, we`ll use a hybrid technology that allows us working with the FPSC Editor while having our own A.I. and Gameplay routines running. The Rendering Engine will be based upon the EFX Mod and enhanced with some of our own stuff. (Full Screen Parallax mapping will be there, Bloom or HDR and some other nice gimmicks)

Gameplay will be far more adventure and less shooter, however, as Robert comes back to the world of mortal beings, he will be more powerful (and insane) than an average character stumbling around in the madness of the Great Old Ones.

But please give us time, it will be at least mid till late 2009 untill we have somthing that is worth the myth.

Perhaps even longer, because 3 Terrain / Level artists have been brought to a sanatory, screaming strange words and trying to rip their eyes out of their heads, after working on the difficult task to rebuild the non-euclidic geometry of R`yleh.

allicorn · Joined: 14 Apr 2006 Posts: 1115 Location: SW, UK

Sounds fascinating and ambitious Ivan. Thanks for the heads-up and I'm certain everyone here at Arkhamsoft wishes you and your team all success with the new Anderson game!

Cheers,
Alli
_________________
The king, with beak and talons. The king, in the form of man. Nothing escapes those eyes. He sees everything.

darthkiwi · Joined: 05 Oct 2007 Posts: 426

IvanErtlov · Joined: 30 Oct 2008 Posts: 12

There won`t be any audio from the FPSC files inside, everything is gonna be custom. In the end of Anderson 1, we ran out of Time because one of the guys who had joined the team in pre-production had to leave during the start of the production. Believe me, you won`t believe that some FPSC routines are still inside when playing it.

IvanErtlov · Joined: 30 Oct 2008 Posts: 12

IvanErtlov · Joined: 30 Oct 2008 Posts: 12

Here`s a little insight into what we are capable to bring to screen, however, this will be improved heavily for Anderson II:

Quinjet · Joined: 14 Apr 2006 Posts: 1371 Location: UK

Wow, thats darn pretty, I think... Laughing

I second what Alli says and look forward to the next demo. If you are going to customise it to such an extent as you suggest, I think that shows one hell of a commitment to the story. Good luck with this.

darthkiwi · Joined: 05 Oct 2007 Posts: 426

Ooh - very impressive! It sounds like you already have everything covered on the customisation side of things: good luck!

allicorn · Joined: 14 Apr 2006 Posts: 1115 Location: SW, UK

Woohoo - look at that! Very nice Ivan! Smile

Alli
_________________
The king, with beak and talons. The king, in the form of man. Nothing escapes those eyes. He sees everything.

IvanErtlov · Joined: 30 Oct 2008 Posts: 12

Our Artwork specialist, the known fantasy artist Peter Siedl

http://www.sp-art.at/

has delivered a first draw of the rising sunken city where Cthulhu lies in his eternal sleep. It`s not driving you insane, but at least you get a decent headache when looking at the details (yes, he tried on visualization of the non-euclidic geometry), so I guess we are on the right way. This will be brought into the game as close as possible.

Please tell me what you think about the design!