ANN: Azada: Ancient Magic

[Emmanuel]

Dear all,

I am very, very happy to announce the launch of Azada: Ancient Magic, the second episode in the Azada game series.

Download for Windows .
Download for Mac .

Screenshot here.

The same production team returned for Ancient Magic, with the notable addition of Nick Newhard (of Bookworm fame) who helped out a lot with gameplay and game design and imagined 6 of the 22 puzzle books in the game. We also recruited the Deutsche Film Orchestra for the game's soundtrack, almost 30 minutes of original audio; and 3dBrigade, Inc. provided some excellent art for the game as well.

The game is in 1024x768x32, D3D9 if possible, and aspect corrected on widescreen.

It was a blast to make this game. I hope you like it!

Best regards,
Emmanuel

[codeminion]

Hi Emmanuel!

Congratulations on finally releasing the game. I’m sure it will be a total best-seller for BFG for the coming months.

The amount of content that went into this game is simply amazing, but I’m not sure how well it translates into amount of gameplay hours. We managed to complete 7 books during the 1 hour demo. Could you tell me how many hours of gameplay you were aiming at?

If I was to complain about anything it would definitely be graphics as in our opinion the level of detail is quite varied, especially when it comes to the characters. I guess this is the result of the immense amount of graphics as well as high resolution where it’s difficult to make every detail superb.

I think this games shows exactly where the core downloadable market is heading – both content and gameplay-wise. It would be great if you could share any kind of production details about the game, like the schedules or the budget. Anything would be great.

Once again congratulations on all the hard work you’ve done and good luck on your next projects – Azada 3 perahps?

[sound app]

I am very, very happy to announce the launch of Azada: Ancient Magic, the second episode in the Azada game series.

Go Titus, Go GO !!!

[hicham]

HEllo emmanuelle, I'm sp glad about the new release, i've played the trial, it's really the best mystery hidden object ever created, thanks again

[Grey Alien]

Congrats my friend! It's really top notch. Enjoying it right now. All the best with the sales. Can't wait to see what you do next!

[Jack Norton]

Congrats!
Now I really want to see if my sales projection based on the alpha on early april is accurate

[BrutoMemo]

Looking great Emmanuel! Do you know if this game does run fine on a monitor that has maximum support to 800x600?

[Emmanuel]

Thanks!

BrutoMemo, the game should auto-scale down to 800x600 in that case. (the same tech as what's used for aspect correction, only the other way around!)

Best regards,
Emmanuel

[BrutoMemo]

Interesting... thanks Emmanuel, and all the best with this project (and upcoming projects too).

[Grey Alien]

I didn't realise you had aspect correction in widescreen. What happens, does it have black borders or a non-functional filler background image? Perhaps you can share you algorithm with me at some point as I need to do it for my next game ;-) I already have some other ideas I'd like to try, but it would be interesting to compare to yours.

Btw, just had great fun playing this with my son, it's top notch.

[SteveZ]

Ditto what Jake said. I'm halfway through the game and it's been a blast. I wasn't too big on the mini-puzzles requirement per chapter in Azada, but Ancient Magic did an excellent job blending the scenes with the mini-puzzles.

I'm suppose to turn in a build for BFG today, so must do that first before finishing the other half of the game

-Steve Z.

[mooktown]

Fantastic game guys, you really went all out on the presentation and it paid off, I fully enjoyed the demo.

Expert use of Vue btw too

[svero]

It's a really nice game. I think maybe a few people might avoid playing it thinking it's another hidden object, but it actually has a lot more in common with something like Myst so even if you're bored with the whole HO thing try this one. The puzzles are quite fun.

[JGOware]

GreyAlien: Nothing complicated here. They're just adding vertical pillars on the side when running in widescreen mode.

Incredible game. wow...

[Emmanuel]

Yup.. In widescreen mode we rescale the viewport to keep a 4:3 aspect, center it, and fill the rest with black. Nothing fancy but stretched graphics on some monitors with bad hardware scalers (including mine..) are really terrible. Popcap use an alternate method where they render to a backbuffer and then scale those pixels up to the size of the screen, but the way they do it using GDI, on a lot of systems, it's horribly pixelated (no bicubic scaling like the hardware does). The downside of the viewport method is that your texture atlases need to have at least one pixel of transparent border around each asset because when scaling, the card will spill into that pixel and source it.

Best regards,
Emmanuel

[sound app]

Already numero uno on the BFG's top ten downloads !
Looks like another hit, Titus!

[JGOware]

Yup.. In widescreen mode we rescale the viewport to keep a 4:3 aspect, center it, and fill the rest with black.

Exactly how I'm doing it as well. Except my native game res is wide screen to begin with.

wow...again..one of the few games I'm buying this year. It's like "playing a book"! My wife will love this one.

[chanon]

I'd love to play it but my Notebook won't activate any Big Fish Games games (something with the DRM thing).. I'll have to find some time to play it on another PC.

Anyways, from the response here looks like this could be even bigger than the first Azada ... congrats!!!

[Maupin]

Great game. I like how the puzzles integrate well into the individual books. Makes the game flow rather than seem like just a collection of minigames (which was an impression I got from Azada 1).

[me_36]

Hi Emmanuel,

GREAT GAME!
Will buy it right after posting this!
Just here to ask if you aim for translation since this
would be ideal to open up markets in non-native-english speaking
countries.

Best regards from

M.E.

[Grey Alien]

Thanks for the viewport info Emmanuel, same method I have planned so good to see we are singing from the same hymn sheet. I always leave a 1 pixel border round art assets because I often scale them in-game anyway for special effects/transitions etc.

Just to clarify, do you always scale the viewport so that the vertical fits perfectly so you only need black bars on the side?

[amaranth]

I just beat it!!! The genie had no chance against my wrath. *evil grin*

A beautiful, interesting game, no doubt. I hope to see more like it in the future since this is the type of game I love!

[jcottier]

Amazing game Emmanuel. I really like it as you already know.
My kids can't wait for the French version I hope it will come soon.

JC

[snooky]

Great sequel. I bought the first one and I am looking to buy this sequel too.

[Grey Alien]

I'm trying to stretch it out to last a few days, you lot are like little kids with a bag of sweets i.e. gobbling them up all at once! ;-p

[chanon]

Just had the chance to play it today. Love the storybook concept! The illustrations in each book are very nice too. 40 minutes passed by as if it were 10

[Jack Norton]

woot azada 2 #1 and azada 1 #10 on BFG today... c'est un miracle!

[Nobugames]

This game is very interesting. 5 stars game!

[Emmanuel]

Azada: Ancient Magic is now available for Mac. As usual, it's a universal binary; MacOSX 10.3.2 (Panther) or better is supported.

Get it here !

Best regards,
Emmanuel

[JGOware]

My wife is going nuts with the timer, is there a way to get rid of the timer or play in a more relaxed (no timer) mode? Thanks!

Edit: We must have had an old version? We uninstalled, downloaded again and now there is a relaxed mode available.