F.A.Q.
It is a puzzle/adventure/mystery game. If you have ever played 7th Guest, 11th Hour, Zork Nemesis, Zork Grand Inquisitor, Myst, Riven, Amerzone, most of the DreamCatcher games, StarShip Titantic, amongst others, then you know what style of game this will be. You play as yourself, seeing out your own eyes.
Visual C++ 6.0, DirextX 9 with an adapted CDX wrapper.
It is first person, but it isn't really 3D like, say, Quake or Mario64 were 3D. You don't move through your environment like that. You move to and from fixed points. The environment consists of still images that you can interact with to move, like hotspots in an HTML image map. Except that some transitions and cutscenes will be done with mpeg movies. There will be an inventory system, so it diverges from 7th Guest, 11th Hour, and Myst at this point. You can pick up things and use them in other places to acheive an effect, like solving a puzzle. Some area's will require you to solve a complex puzzle to pass, much like 7th Guest/11th Hour. Some may be AI based, some may simple brainteasers. You will not be able to progress further through the game until these puzzles are solved, and usually the puzzle will be an abstract representation of your main task at that point in the game, and the solving will reveal more about your goals and history. The transitions from point to point will, for the most part, will be simple direct cuts. More interesting and important transitions will use movies. Although, we have been toying around with having very short fast-move-blur movies from place to place like Starship Titantic did.
That's a secret :) Actually, it's still being fleshed out.
Short answer: No, with a but... Long answer: Yes, with an if...
Well, the storyline is being fleshed out internally, but eventually I might be needing 'actors' for the live action movies, and I'll definitely be needing stock images of people and such for various non-movie people of interest in the game. People have already expressed interest in being in the game in this capacity... think of my NPC exchange idea way back when working on MazeRPG
hehe, it's not that kind of game. Imagine Duke Nukem 3D, but no enemies, no weapons, you can only move to and from discreet points in the world, and it's nothing but keycard, button and combination button puzzles. Okay, you're probably thinking "but it would look sucky, because all that action distracted from the decor, and those puzzles sucked ass, god damn I hated that one in the atomic edition where you had to launch the rockets and used the combo code on the chair, jesus christ, those bastards..." and so on. Well, indeed, the puzzles won't be like that, but there will be suitable puzzles in the different areas. Some might be flat out puzzles, like, what is the access number to open this door... others might just involve you figuring out exactly where to stick that flashlight. As for the scenery, as it is all prerendered, it can be as nice as I can possibly make it, and it's still only taking the space and drawing time of a Jpeg (or whatever file format I end up using)
I've been asked this a lot, and it's usually a sign that the person has no idea how this game engine works. The environments are prerended, and can be as complex as I want them to be, because in the end, they are just pictures. If this was to work like a 3d engine, I would be severely limited in the model complexity and what I could do. Imagine Quake, looks good, good enough to kill things in, but if the entire point of the game were to explore and look around, it's not terribly effective, though the transitions would be far smaller. Or Warcraft 3, most of their movies are done in the engine, except the major transitional ones between compaigns, which are done as rendered movies, because they are cinematic, and they wanted them to look nice.