Eerievale
Lars Hannig reveals
all about his second Jaguar game project
Somewhere
in 2003 after building a mouse adaptor that
let me use an Atari ST mouse on the
Jaguar (Matthias Domin originally did this,
a few years ago) and using it in my
own program, an idea that I thought about often
in the past appeared
again. I thought about doing an adventure game
for the Jaguar.
In the past there
were always reasons to drop it again, but now
it was different. CD
bypass was there, mouse support was there and
I actually had a very clear idea
how an adventure game could be done on the Jag.
So I gave it a try and started
writing a graphic adventure game engine for
the Jaguar. At the same time I started
writing an editor for the PC that let me create
the data files for the adventure
engine on the PC to make it much easier to create
adventure games for the
Jag.
![[Screen-shot: Eerievale 1]](images/eerie1.jpg)
![[Sceen-shot: Eerievale 2]](images/eerie2.jpg)
![[Screen-shot: Eerievale 3]](images/eerie3.jpg)
The editor is
very flexible and makes it possible for both
people with little coding knowledge
of the Jaguar and also people who are experienced
Jaguar developers to
create adventure games quickly and as easily as possible.
Of course, experienced coders
always have advantages. The engine allows experienced
coders to actually
write their own code for certain events. Like
when you perform a certain action
with an item on-screen. That way any kind of
adventure game could be done
with the engine. All kinds of puzzles
that come to your mind are possible. Myst-like
puzzles, The 7th Guest-like
puzzles, Monkey Island-like puzzles and whatever
else.
When I wrote
the engine and editor I had no real project
yet, but then I got an idea. The whole story
behind Eerievale actually started a few years
ago. Back then I started
writing a little story, which grew bigger and
bigger as time passed.
The whole story is already very long, but
is not finished yet, by far.
To sum it up
very shortly, Eerievale is the story of a small
village in the USA, founded
in the very beginning of the 20th century. This
village is what gave the name
to the story, it's called Eerievale. It appeared
almost out of nowhere and grew
very fast into a very lively town. Many people
moved there because of its
good reputation, to live a happy life in the
wealth that this new town offered.
But beneath the shiny surface, dark secrets are
hidden.
![[Screen-shot: Eerievale 4]](images/eerie4.jpg)
![[Screen-shot: Eerievale 5]](images/eerie5.jpg)
![[Screen-shot: Eerievale 6]](images/eerie6.jpg)
In September
2003 I remembered the Eerievale story, which
I started writing years ago, and decided
that I wanted to try to make an adventure game
out of it. So I started thinking
about what part of the story could be suitable
for an adventure game.
The whole story would be much too long for a
single game. So I decided to use
the "early times" of the Eerievale
story in the adventure game.
STOP PRESS!
Euro JagFest CD This new CD is fully
encrypted and runs on any normal Jaguar CD unit. It works on both PAL and
NTSC. The Cinepak player on the CD is a custom written one that I did. It
allows you to adjust the screen position properly and allows saving it on the
Memory Track card. The CD has over 30 minutes of video including early
Star Alliance footage, Caves of Fear footage, lots of festival footage and
lots more. It also features an exclusive trailer of Eerievale. The
CD is limited to only 40 copies and can be ordered on the Starcat Developments
page in
the products section.
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