The Website is Down Adventure Game

What’s this?
A comedy journey sport the place you resolve issues utilizing retro know-how and take care of the timeless shenanigans of human to pc to human interplay!

Visit my GameJolt web page with a tech demo: The Website is Down

Background
My identify is Josh Weinberg and a very long time in the past I made a web-series referred to as The Website is Down (see Sales Guy vs Web Dude). This venture began out as an “interactive episode” of the web-series and over time morphed into an journey sport. At the second there isn’t a “game” on this sport nevertheless, it’s largely only a huge proof-of-concept!

Photographic realism!

The Prelude
Currently I’m engaged on finishing the prelude – the primary brief phase of the sport which can even perform as a playable demo. In it you end up locked in your dad and mom’ basement of their unhappy try at some sort of intervention. “We’ll let you out when you get off drugs and get a job!” they yell via the door. “I’m not on drugs!” you yell again. “Well just find a job then!” Your mom is sweet sufficient to slide a fruit-roll-up underneath the door. So caring! But how are you purported to discover a job locked in a basement? Too unhealthy you don’t have a cellphone. It’s 1983, keep in mind! You discover your dad’s IBM XT pc and handle to place it collectively and boot it. You additionally uncover a modem and your outdated listing of BBS numbers. SKRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE AIYEEEOHHHNNCHEEEE. Now for the job half!

Bubble Cam
You can see that whereas the interface is 3D first-person, the surroundings is constructed with panoramic pictures. I name this the “Bubble Cam” and it principally consists of exhibiting the participant an image of my father or mother’s precise basement from wherever they will go. I’ll make a separate devblog put up on how that is achieved.

Collisions with the background. Like if you stroll right into a wall drunk.

Ye Olde IBM 5160
Since I wished the actual really feel of the 80’s in fact we’d like a giant ol honkin’ desktop pc to work with. Here you see the IBM PC 5160 “XT” which was the Cadillac mannequin of the day. I really discovered one in all these (working!) and used it as a reference to make the fashions and the textual content mode simulation as correct as doable.

Let’s put this unhealthy boy collectively.

It’s referred to as “Online”
Well now that we have got our pc assembled let’s take this unhealthy boy out on the freeway. I made up some terminal software program and referred to as it Brocomm I do not know why however that is your ticket to the world of dial-up networking. Have enjoyable and be careful for these long-distance prices!

Luckily we have now a hacked model!

Current Status or “What comes before Alpha?”
The sport at present is in a really early tech-demo state. Some issues you may see within the movies above:

• The “Bubble Cam” panoramic 3D visuals.
• Object occlusion and shadows on panoramic background.
• Basic sport stuff – pickup, drop, examine.
• Compose components to construct pc.
• IBM XT textual content mode simulator.
• Turn on pc – boot to BROCOMM.
• See the BALZE hack web page!

Some different issues that are working however you may’t see are:

• VT100 terminal emulation
• Telnet and SSH to web BBSes by way of in-game pc
• QEmu integration – run digital PC by way of in-game pc

And this can be accomplished when?
Probably by no means! I’ve been engaged on this factor in my spare time for just a few years now. Will it ever be accomplished? No thought. As I discussed, it is all a significant work in progress and there’s no actual “game” half but however I wished to get the present state up on the weblog so I can share what there may be to share. I’ll put up extra about among the above technical stuff later. Thanks for studying!

-josh