Boïnihi: The K'i Codex

[Simon]

Hi everyone!

I take a few minutes to come and say hello to my friends Reneuend and Vengeance (and everyone else!), I hope you're going well!

Please allow me to slip a word about my new project. I decided to take one month of my time to create a new game with Adventure Maker (yes, again!). It is currently in development.
After ASA and Myha created with AM, please welcome Boïnihi!
I plan to release it on itch.io in April or March. I will keep you updated for the Beta Tests.

Here a very good article by Adventure Gamers announcing my 3 new Black Cube games:
http://www.adventuregamers.com/news/view/32529


Now about Boïnihi:

Game Homepage:
http://www.theblackcube.fr/boinihi



Project history:
As explained on the official page of the game, after the release of Catyph in May 2016, I had decided to stop working on ambitious Myst games on my own, and thus for an indefinite period. I explained it in a long message to my followers (simply, I was exhausted). However I had left a door opened, and I said that I would sometimes work on shorter games in the Myst genre, for the fun. Just like I did in the past during the Myst Game Jam, which gave birth to Myha last year.
That is how I came to create Boïnihi: The K'I Codex. I took one month to create this 4th ASA-like in this series. Shorter, easier than the previous games, yet challenging enough and exotic: discover a new journey in a far away land!

The game:
Boïnihi is a First Person Adventure (ASA-like, or Myst-like) in 2D point and click (pre-rendered 3D) where you play in 360° panoramic views. It is being made with my usual tools (3dsmax and After Effects) and engine (Adventure Maker), but I wanted to take this opportunity to learn new techniques too, in order to slowly migrate to realtime 3D in the future. That is why some of the models in the game backgrounds could appear in lowpoly sometimes, even if I will try to make it not visible.

Story:
In 2062, the people of Terra discovered the Blue Matter System. With the help of this new technology, they decided to explore the galaxy in search for signs of intelligent life... One of these astronauts has been wandering through space during 4 years, and finally landed on a moon with no name, where a mysterious man used to live alone. Boïnihi was his name, and he was a solitary Talifan who had luckily survived to the terrible events of Day Zero, long, long ago...

Will you be able to translate the mysterious K'i manuscript? :study:

Key features:

• 4 different regions to explore, inspired by Asian countries and mythologies
• prerendered 3D graphics (2D, point and click) with 360° views
• 3+ hours of gameplay
• an original soundtrack by Yazorius
• the story of a Talifan survivor, who lived the events of 'Day 0' (see Anterran)
• a mysterious K'i codex to translate, inspired by the famous Voynich manuscript
• most pages of the codex, font and illustrations were created by hand with pencils and watercolor
• challenging logical puzzles, yet easier of access than my previous games in the series

Dev Team:
I will develop the game on my own as Simon Says: Play! as always.
Yazorius, who enjoyed my other Black Cube games, will work on the soundtrack.

Announcement teaser:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wc8kn9_ ... e=youtu.be

Screenshots:
(mainly WIP concept arts)

[Vengeance66]

Hey Simon,

I just logged in and saw new thread by you. It's great that you are making games! I am following you on Facebook.

Keep up the great work!

[Simon]

Hey! Yes I know that you're following on FB and it's really nice! Thanks
It would seem that there aren't so many people left on these forums... I miss the good old time when I created ASA. There were so many users of AM!

[reneuend]

Nice to hear from you Simon!
I've been putting in a few hours per week on my own AM projects, but it has been a very slow process. As usual, your graphics are very impressive. let me know if I can help in any way.
I don't use Facebook anymore, so I hope V66 is maintaining the AM page.
No word from GM. If he was actively keeping AM up-to-date, these forums would be very busy.
Glad you came back.

[Simon]

Thanks reneuend! I would like to be able to come more often here, to talk of my projects or just to say hi, but as you know, with my activity of game dev, the Icehouse collective and all, I'm very busy But it's a good thing

I'm always happy to come back to use AM again for a project. It's still my favorite engine for the easyness of use, and there is everything I need inside. My only regret is (and will always be) that there is no HD feature. It's a shame to work on beautiful 360 panoramas if they run in a small resolution of 1024x576 or something like that...

Honestly I have been looking for other engines with 360 panoramas but the one in AM is still the easiest to use and the most convenient. But on the other hand you can find more beautiful results even for web integration nowadays!

Here's a list of the things I found:
- Easypano Tourweaver is a nice software, providing a nice result. It allows to navigate through several panoramas, to add hotspots, sound, etc. It could be great to use it for a game, but there is no save system, no inventory system. So I gave up...
- Dagon is the engine that was created for the game Asylum by Sensecape. It is the best game engine for 360° views that I know, and I'd love to use it, but there is no user interface, you have to do everything by hand with LUA code and the provided templates. It takes a lot of time, I'm not used to work like this...
- Nowadays 360° views are everywhere, even on the internet! And they are more beautiful than what we can find in AM 360 videos can be played in youtube directly, it is crazy. Even on art sites, you can now include 360° views, and the result is clean and cool. AM cannot compete anymore even with web in terms of quality!!
- I see that Unity software has several plugins that allow to use 360° views in games. The problem is that you still need to know Unity to use these plugins, so in the end I find it useless. Because if I can use Unity, I will just do full 3D graphics instead of the 360 views!

And as a result I came back again to use AM. Which is not a big problem, because as I said above, I like it a lot. I only miss a clean HD render for the graphics, which are often too pixelated and too limited. The rest of the engine is perfect.

[Vairon]

Hi there!

As Simon, I take a few minutes to see the AM forum... It's wonderful to see that it is still active!

Boïnihi looks awesome, great work Simon!

And of course, I take this opportunity to say hello to everybody (in special to V66 and Bob)!

[Simon]

Recently I shared this picture from the opening movie.