Announcing The Silver Lining

Today on July 10 2010, Phoenix Online Studios is proud to present The Silver Lining - Episode 1: What is Decreed Must Be, the first in a series of five episodes to be released throughout the rest of the year! The game is available as a free(!) download at www.tsl-game.com.

The Silver Lining is a fan-made, unofficial sequel to Roberta Williams' King's Quest series. It has been given official approval from Activision, owners of the King's Quest franchaise, and has received a tremendous amount of attention by mainstream gaming media. It has also received the blessing of Ken and Roberta Williams, founders and creators of Sierra On-Line and the King's Quest series.

Some recent links about the game:
1UP video interview, featuring some gameplay footage: gamevideos.1up.com/video/id/30266
PC Gamer article: www.pcgamer.com/2010/07/09/thanks-to-fans-kings-quest-rises-on-july-10/
CNN article about TSL and episodic gaming: edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/gaming.gadgets/07/02/episodic.games.steinberg/?fbid=WD...
Gamasutra interview: www.gamasutra.com/view/news/29291/Interview_Phoenix_Online_Studios_Talks_Kings_Q...

The full game contains about 50 scenes and 100 characters, all professionally voice-acted and with hours and hours of dialogue. The soundtrack features over two hours of original music. Once all five episodes are completed, the entire game will be playable as one continuous experience.

The Silver Lining was implemented using Torque Game Engine 1.4, featuring the Torque Lighting Kit expansion pack (later integrated into TGE 1.5 and TGEA) and features many exciting additions and improvements developed by the team. Originally based on the FPS Starter Kit, we have transformed it beyond recognition and turned it into a full 3D point-and-click adventure game that feels familiar to fans of the genre, but updated to modern standards in game storytelling, with sounds and visuals that we believe is at an unprecedented level for a fan-made adventure game. Here are some of the things we have implemened on top of stock Torque technology to make it happen:

• A scripting system for the game logic keeping track of game progress, inventory, score and saving/loading.
• Dynamic scene loading/unloading to keep only what is necessary loaded in memory and keep loading times to a minimum at all times.
• Point-and-click collision detection with scriptable callbacks, advanced character path-finding and positional triggers.
• A sequence handler for scripting everything from simple animation calls to complex cutscenes with precise timing in every event.
• A conversation system and editor capable of handling large dialogue trees with voice acting and subtitles, played back with full lipsync on the character models in the game.
• An advanced camera system supporting object-tracking, object-following and path-following cameras using precise camera settings exported directly from Maya with our own tools.
• Visual improvements to achive high graphical standards despite the lack of shader support, including character-mounted rim lights, detailed shadows, reflective surfaces and combined particle/light effects.

After over eight years of development, involving hundreds of volunteers and no budget for anything more than the purchase of software licenses and running our website, it has been a long and challenging journey that is now coming to its end. Thanks to Torque technology and excellent help from the GarageGames development community many times along the road, we have been able to turn our dream into reality: A game that plays like a classic King's Quest adventure but truly competes with modern commercial titles in every area!

Over the coming months, we hope to give something back to this community by sharing information about our experiences from developing this game and helping others who are working on similar projects in Torque. But for now, Go check out the game at www.tsl-game.com and tell us what you think!

Petter Holmberg, lead programmer on The Silver Lining