The Crimson Diamond - inspired by The Colonel's Bequest

[eviltentacle]

She’s finished the game, it’s in the testing phase now and finishing off the intro art (yes that is a placeholder ). It should be released this year.
The demo is easy but there are things in there you can miss. There are also at least 2 deaths in the demo I can think of. Apparently the game has a Laura Bow 2 style questionnaire at the end so while finishing it I guess will be easy, hopefully getting everything right and finding all the secrets will be harder.

 

[Modron]

Well it does seem like it's coming out this year, but probably after the second quarter since she is retiring the prologue in May: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1242790/view/4145072064645876759

The Crimson Diamond: Chapter 1 is retiring May 13, 2024!
Full game is releasing this year!

I'm excited to announce that the full game of The Crimson Diamond is launching this year! To minimize confusion, I will be retiring The Crimson Diamond: Chapter 1 from the Steam store on May 13, 2024. The demo will still be available on The Crimson Diamond's Steam store page!



Thank you for all of your reviews and feedback. I've read all of it and appreciate it very much. I hope you'll enjoy the full game (all seven chapters of it!) when it launches in 2024!

To keep up with developer updates, you can subscribe to my mailing list here: https://www.thecrimsondiamond.com/subscribe.html

To give feedback about The Crimson Diamond, contact: feedback@thecrimsondiamond.com

I also livestream game art development (no spoilers) on Twitch at 8pm Eastern on Tuesdays: www.twitch.tv/a_maplemystery and post the VODs on my Youtube channel: www.youtube.com/c/JuliaMinamata

I'm also on Twitter: twitter.com/JuliaMinamata

A big thanks to everyone, and best wishes!

-- Julia

 

[Rincewind]

The art is brilliant in this game, and maximum respect for sticking with authentic EGA limitations.

Oh, and text parser!

 

[Darkozric]

The art is brilliant in this game, and maximum respect for sticking with authentic EGA limitations.

Oh, and text parser!

Yes but what about gameplay and length? I see you're eager to take the visual bait, maximum respect only if the game turns out to be actually good.

 

[Rincewind]

The art is brilliant in this game, and maximum respect for sticking with authentic EGA limitations.

Oh, and text parser!

Yes but what about gameplay and length? I see you're eager to take the visual bait, maximum respect only if the game turns out to be actually good.

Yeah, I guess we'll have to try and see. But the graphics are spot-on, and that's like 30-50% of a good Sierra-style graphical adventure.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

The art is brilliant in this game, and maximum respect for sticking with authentic EGA limitations.

Oh, and text parser!

Yes but what about gameplay and length? I see you're eager to take the visual bait, maximum respect only if the game turns out to be actually good.

Based on the author streaming some EGA games and seemingly sticking to walkthroughs a ton there, something tells me that the game is going to be lacking in that respect.

 

[Darkozric]

Based on the author streaming some EGA games and seemingly sticking to walkthroughs a ton there, something tells me that the game is going to be lacking in that respect.

Yeah I've got the same impression, having a 30% or whatever percent of a sierra game is something that I'm not interested in.

 

[El Presidente]

The art is brilliant in this game, and maximum respect for sticking with authentic EGA limitations.

Oh, and text parser!

Yes but what about gameplay and length? I see you're eager to take the visual bait, maximum respect only if the game turns out to be actually good.

Based on the author streaming some EGA games and seemingly sticking to walkthroughs a ton there, something tells me that the game is going to be lacking in that respect.

Didn't know that, oh welp I still want to believe.

 

[Darth Roxor]

IIRC the demo doesn't have a single puzzle.

 

[eviltentacle]

The demo gives you a to-do list in your notebook which is EZ stuff, but there are a few things I know of that you can do beyond that - one is quite sneaky and a lot of people will miss. I noticed one or two other things have also been snuck in since the earlier demo that are missable. It gives me some hope that there will be a few puzzles in there besides the beautiful art.

 

[HorribleHombre]

“The author used walkthroughs when playing other games so that means her game is probably very easy” sure is a take.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

IIRC the demo doesn't have a single puzzle.

To be fair, Colonel’s Bequest doesn’t have that many traditional point and click puzzles compared to its contemporaries, and almost all of the ones it does have are optional.

 

[Ludwig von Eisenthal]

The art is brilliant in this game, and maximum respect for sticking with authentic EGA limitations.

It is, no doubt about that. Only one thing: EGA games back in the day didn't use to show us the mixed surfaces (the dotted ones) as they were blurred into another shade of the main color they consisted of. It was a brillant trick used by graphic programers back then to give the player the impression of more colors than there actually were there (and more than were technically possible with EGA). CRT-screens did the magic and gave the games that blurred image which created these fake colors (Scummvm lets you actually emulate this effect with a special setting). By mimicking the dotted surfaces in a modern game this is missed. The games of the era were not intended to appear this way on the screen. I'd love if at least there was some kind of CRT-filter to play the game as it would have appeared back then.

Two examples (made with Scummvm):

Spoiler

 

[Rincewind]

Only one thing: EGA games back in the day didn't use to show us the mixed surfaces (the dotted ones) as they were blurred into another shade of the main color they consisted of. It was a brillant trick used by graphic programers back then to give the player the impression of more colors than there actually were there (and more than were technically possible with EGA).

Sorry but not true. I've researched this extensively when creating my authentic PC monitor emulation shaders for DOSBox Staging.

EGA monitors (and even CGA but to a lesser extent) were *tack sharp* as IBM PC monitors were designed for business applications first and foremost. The primary use case was staring at 80-column text and spreadsheets all day, and if you make 80-column text sharp at 640 pixels of horizontal resolution, pixels in 320 pixel wide modes will appear as quite distinct little blocks.

Consequently, checkerboard dither on EGA art was clearly visible, there was no blurring and blending going on. I can back this up with a collection of photos of real EGA monitors and you can check out my EGA shader examples on our website which are pretty good approximations of the EGA monitor look.

https://dosbox-staging.github.io/

If you think about it, 80-column text on 80s CRT TVs and lesser home computer monitors (which were basically small higher-quality TVs) was very hard to read and quite blurry. Such TVs blurred 320x200 checkerboard dither somewhat, especially via composite or RF input, but still not perfectly.

That's the reason why practically all home computers defaulted or only supported 40-column text. IBM's EGA monitors were digital (yeah, more than a decade before DVI!) and quite expensive, all in the interest of sharp 80-column text. An EGA monitor could cost more than your typical home computer.

I assure you that ScummVM feature is a fantasy setting and it's nothing how EGA games looked back in the day. Even my Philips CM8833-II (basically the same as the iconic Commodore 1084S) I used with my Amiga 500, which was less sharp than EGA monitors, displayed checkboard dither as distinct checkerboard patterns in Sierra ports. I did spend considerable time in Deluxe Paint pixeling, and on Amiga monitors you could indeed make dithering almost "melt away", but you had to use colours close to each other for that. That did not work with the very contrasty, by-the-numbers 16-colour CGA/low-res EGA palette.

 

[Ludwig von Eisenthal]

Only one thing: EGA games back in the day didn't use to show us the mixed surfaces (the dotted ones) as they were blurred into another shade of the main color they consisted of. It was a brillant trick used by graphic programers back then to give the player the impression of more colors than there actually were there (and more than were technically possible with EGA).

Sorry but not true. I've researched this extensively when creating my authentic PC monitor emulation shaders for DOSBox Staging.

EGA monitors (and even CGA but to a lesser extent) were *tack sharp* as IBM PC monitors were designed for business applications first and foremost. The primary use case was staring at 80-column text and spreadsheets all day, and if you make 80-column text sharp at 640 pixels of horizontal resolution, pixels in 320 pixel wide modes will appear as quite distinct little blocks.

Consequently, checkerboard dither on EGA art was clearly visible, there was no blurring and blending going on. I can back this up with a collection of photos of real EGA monitors and you can check out my EGA shader examples on our website which are pretty good approximations of the EGA monitor look.

https://dosbox-staging.github.io/

If you think about it, 80-column text on 80s CRT TVs and lesser home computer monitors (which were basically small higher-quality TVs) was very hard to read and quite blurry. Such TVs blurred 320x200 checkerboard dither somewhat, especially via composite or RF input, but still not perfectly.

That's the reason why practically all home computers defaulted or only supported 40-column text. IBM's EGA monitors were digital (yeah, more than a decade before DVI!) and quite expensive, all in the interest of sharp 80-column text. An EGA monitor could cost more than your typical home computer.

I assure you that ScummVM feature is a fantasy setting and it's nothing how EGA games looked back in the day. Even my Philips CM8833-II (basically the same as the iconic Commodore 1084S) I used with my Amiga 500, which was less sharp than EGA monitors, displayed checkboard dither as distinct checkerboard patterns in Sierra ports. I did spend considerable time in Deluxe Paint pixeling, and on Amiga monitors you could indeed make dithering almost "melt away", but you had to use colours close to each other for that. That did not work with the very contrasty, by-the-numbers 16-colour CGA/low-res EGA palette.

No need for sorry! I always eager to learn and correct my rather halfbaked knowledge on these things. Thank you for taking the time to explain it indepth!

 

[Rincewind]

For reference, actual photos of an EGA monitor in action. Zoom in to 100% magnification.

Colonel's Bequest

Larry 2

Sharp 80-column text (and quite visible scanlines)

 

[AndyS]

Yeah, I was going to say that I played all those Sierra games and the dithering was really obvious on my monitor. They were doing it to create extra shading in their images, but it certainly didn't get blurred into a solid image. If it had, I would have worried something was wrong with my monitor.