The Demo is released!

[Zink]

Hello all LBA and Prequel fans.

The time has come to reveal everything and end everything.
As you know, for the last few years we have been working on the LBA Prequel demo, to show you a glimpse of what the full game could become.

The demo is now finished! You can download it from the Download page (EDIT: The page is no longer available. Download links are at the bottom of this post). This is the good news.

The bad news is that the project is now officially cancelled. Yes, the Prequel will not be made. Before you start hating us, please read below about why it has to be this way.

The idea of a fan-made LBA game has been conceived by me and Alexfont about 8 years ago, in 2005. The plan was to use the original engine (+LBAWin), original character models (plus some more created by us), and most of the original map elements (bricks). Then we decided that more people are needed, so we have gathered the Team, and it has started its life. We were discussing the story elements and Double-J wrote a wonderful script, Jesse made some great pieces of music, Lewi-G and Bot13 made some awesome concept sketches, and we were working on the tools. Later more people came that have put their work and ideas to the game. Everyone was doing their job, and everything was fine.

At some point we got ideas for improvements of the game. The ideas were quite good - completely new engine, new models, new environment graphics, everything made from scratch - a completely new quality (but with aim to save the LBA 1 mood). The ideas were noble and we were charmed with the vision of the eternal glory if we succeed this. OGRE has been chosen for the engine, and someone even made a test program with it (map rendering), that looked very promising. But then everything stopped - no more news, no more new work was being shown. The engine guy disappeared, and no one knew anything. Most people of the team were busy with their jobs, schools, and lives. I was working on the LBArchitect and some other supporting software, hoping that the lack of tools is what holds the development still. I worked on the software for over a year, and in that time nothing else was moving. After I finished it I realised that something was wrong there. No one had any time any more (for me too it was really hard to find some), we had some great content already made, but not connected and with important pieces missing. The Prequel was almost dead.

Then the concept artists had an idea to make a comic book out of its story. I was strongly against it, because I still believed it could be made. I then decided (encouraged by a former member of the team) that we should forget about different engines and come down to Earth (or rather Twinsun) and return to the first concepts we had, that is using LBAWin and keeping some (much) of the original content. I struggled very hard to find time to work on the LBArchitect, because it still lacked some features that were absolutely necessary. They took me another year. After I made them, I started trying to gather the team again to revive the project, but without luck. Still no one else (besides alexfont) had time for this. Then I made probably the most important decision in the Prequel's history. I decided to make the demo and close the project. I decided to make it even if no one can help me. Having watched the Prequel history through the recent years, this was the best solution that had a chance of success.

Why haven't I cancelled it without making the demo? There are few reasons for that. First, I didn't want the project to vanish, and all the great work to be for nothing. I wanted to make at least something useful. Maybe the guys were right when they proposed to make the comic book. I don't know. It's too late now. They will probably not have time for this any more. Second, I really hate to disappoint people, especially by giving up promises I made. We have promised you the game and we failed. I wanted to give you the demo as a consolation. It is not the (full) game, but it is as close to it as it can be. We cannot make the full game. This fact is more depressing for me than it is for you, believe me.

So why not the full game? Most simply: because it will not work. It took us 8 years to make the demo only! And it's like 1/20 of the full game. None of us really wants to be bound to this for the next 20 years, sorry guys. Even if we had a dedicated team, it's a tremendous amount of work. It could be possible if we had a team of dedicated people working 8 hours per day on this project, but that will never happen.

For these reasons I decided to give you the best experience you can get for the short story like this. The demo has got over 20 maps (grids), most of the maps have at least one NPC. There are two music tunes composed especially for the Prequel. There is a good amount of hidden features, jokes, and easter-eggs that I'm sure will be much fun to discover. One of them is a special thing. There is a credits list sequence that I took special care for. The list credits all the people who contributed to the demo, regardless whether or not they were in the team (I hope I did not forget anyone). It is not like anything you have seen in LBA 1 or 2, and absolutely worth seeing. But to make it even more fun - it is very well hidden. If you find it, please don't tell others (at least for some time) - they should have the fun of discovering it by themselves.

I want to thank you all for being here for all these years and supporting us. We know that it is not what you were expecting, and be sure that it is also not what we were expecting, until recent time. This was a great and (little) big adventure, and we have learned very much through it.

Enjoy the Demo and keep the good memories.

Kazimierz Król (Zink)

P.S. I wanted to sign this post "This Prequel Team", but I realised that I cannot do that. Although this would be better in context of the demo, which summarizes the work of all the people, but in this article I summarized mostly my own thoughts, which the rest of the Team may or may not agree with.

P.P.S. We have not decided yet what we will do with the concept art and other content we have made for the Prequel. I would like to publish it somehow, because it is a great piece of art, but I cannot speak for the whole team in this area. We will discuss this and let you know.

UPDATE: The Prequel blog seems to be down now, so if you want to download the demo, here are the direct links:
Installer: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ltk5fbg1cf...setup.exe?dl=1
ZIP: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5s9t6096i4...o_1.0.zip?dl=1 (no installer, requires manual copying files into various places, instructions included).

[Streg]

Great to hear progress from you guys!
*Reads better*
Fuck.
*Downloading anyway*

Sorry to hear that, but everyone should understand how hard it is to work on a project like this when you work/study pretty hard... Cheers guys

[Carajo]

Well I don't mind the full prequel will not be made, I now how much work you put into this and is perfectly understandable.

Anyway congratulations on releasing the demo. Downloading.

[Kroll]

Oh my god, thats a great demo!
I've found some minor bugs, but also I found a lot of things to laugh very loud! Posters in Lighthouse, dialog in pharmacy... I was almost rolling on the floor laughing

Too bad the game will never be released, but this demo is awesome!

[Darkflame]

Completely understandable.

Still cant wait to try...

[Kobold]

Currently correcting my Linux midi setup in order to get LBA fully running again. Must be the first time I get everything working in years.

Note to self:

$ timidity -iA

won't do the trick to play Midi music through ALSA. You need

$ timidity -OO -iA

Looking forward to it!

Edit: Is CD music supposed to be playing in the main menu? It doesn't for me.

[Polaris]

It doesn' for me either, so I guess not

Daaamn is that beautiful. New models ! New music ! New tiles ! thugs... OMG, BLUE BALLLLLL !!!! Wanted ever since the green !!

Well, sad that it ends... We really have to get ourselves moving at LID... Beginning by me...

[Zink]

Thank you guys for the good words. They really warm my heart

Originally Posted by Kobold

Edit: Is CD music supposed to be playing in the main menu? It doesn't for me.

No. This is something I don't understand. The game should just pick the first track and play it, but for some reason it doesn't.

[Nonomo]

I've just downloaded it. I'm really excited. Anyway it was a great fun working with you guys, and I hope my and my bro's grids hit the quality levels of the game.

[Zink]

Your grids have set new standards of quality, and we had to work very hard to get at least close to that with ours

[Renesans]

I downloaded and played the demo. Amazing work guys! Thank you so much for making this game. The atmosphere is superb, the music is beautiful (though it stopped when I changed behaviour - this happened only in LbaWin). The dialogs are the best part of this game. While there aren't many, they're all well-written and some made me laugh out loud.
Spoiler:

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The posters at the lighthouse are my favourite. I guess it wasn't a problem that my brother (Nonomo) put a little too many posters and signs then. The newspaper is also hilarious with Albus Dumbledore and all that stuff.
The farmhouse and the horse-riding parts are also awesome, along with the "special part". Oh, and the toy shop too. I jumped when I heard the teleportation sound. All the maps and the character models are fantastic. Jacques is very well-done, and Jules is really cute.

Originally Posted by Zink

Your grids have set new standards of quality, and we had to work very hard to get at least close to that with ours

Really? I thought they were too crowded compared to the rest and also the original LBA grids. I felt we put too many unneccesary details meant for nothing. Spoiler:

toggle spoiler

And I really should've made the ceiling in the near the lighthouse scene disappear, it can be hard to tell where exactly Hegesippe is.

But thank you for the kind words. I think the rest of the maps are beautiful too.

[Kyuubu]

Played it, at loong last, and I was thrilled. I loved the atmosphere, the new music, the funny characters, the easter-eggs, the special thing was awesome (how did you manage that??)... Had to play it a few times through to find everything (hope I did..)!

At the same time it's frustrating to see so much potential (mygosh piiirates!!) knowing you stopped Must be even worse for you I guess.

Anyway it was a pleasure, thank you for bringing the prequel so far. Playing the demo was a delight.

[Zink]

Originally Posted by Renesans

Really? I thought they were too crowded compared to the rest and also the original LBA grids. I felt we put too many unneccesary details meant for nothing.

The details are the value of your maps . However, in the near Lighthoouse area I had to remove some details because the game was crashing out of too many different elements used .

Originally Posted by Renesans

Spoiler:

toggle spoiler

And I really should've made the ceiling in the near the lighthouse scene disappear, it can be hard to tell where exactly Hegesippe is.

Don't worry, I would do that, but I decided that this way it is more challenging

Originally Posted by Kyuubu

(how did you manage that??)...

Well, that required some tricks with the engine

[LBAWinOwns]

I can't wait until I get hold off a computer where I can install this game and play! Congratulations for finishing the demo!

[TommyGun]

Nice, I need to check this out!

[Polaris]

Just found the lighthouse.

IT LOOKS FANTASTIC !!!!

But I can't find the
Spoiler:

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Tavern's basement. Jacques says "over here" or something then he just walks in circles
I want to train with my blue ball !

[Renesans]

Originally Posted by Polaris

But I can't find the
Spoiler:

toggle spoiler

Tavern's basement. Jacques says "over here" or something then he just walks in circles
I want to train with my blue ball !

Spoiler:

toggle spoiler

Try in the corner.

[Kyuubu]

If you still can find it, just a hint on a bug I stumbled upon during this "quest":
Spoiler:

toggle spoiler

I had trouble finding it, too, because depending on how you talk to the character (in my case, using the space bar to pass through dialogs) it can spoil the "passage opening" animation, making the latter stay closed... If in doubt, start a new game, get the key again, and while talking to the character use only enter to pass through dialogs... The animation goes, you hear the oh-so-good "key through lock" sound" and the hidden passage is open even though you can't see it! Worked for me.

[Polaris]

Spoiler:

toggle spoiler

Which one ?
I know about that other basement, the guy who thinks you want to hide, is that the one Jacques talks about ?
edit : Thaaanks Kyuubu, I found it

[Renesans]

Originally Posted by Polaris

Spoiler:

toggle spoiler

Which one ?
I know about that other basement, the guy who thinks you want to hide, is that the one Jacques talks about ?
edit : Thaaanks Kyuubu, I found it

No, not that one. The entrance is here:

[Polaris]

Yep I found it now, thanks
And was sad right after. That damn grobo took away my blue ball

[SpaceGuitarist]

Too bad my LBA 1 is not installed right now. Nice job though!

[Carajo]

Originally Posted by SpaceGuitarist

Too bad my LBA 1 is not installed right now. Nice job though!

I can't find mine and it sucks not having a credit card to purchase the gog version. Third world problems.


Anyone please make a lets play!

[Necdilzor]

Great and bad news. I would like to show you my appreciation for releasing the demo, new LBA content and of great quality I haven't been able to play it too much though, my netbook doesn't run some games on DosBox.
May I add a link to the download page on the LID blog? Thanks.

I would really like to see the project completed and I understand your decision, but I must say: Thank you so much for your work both on the Prequel and LBArchitect

[SpaceGuitarist]

Originally Posted by Carajo

it sucks not having a credit card to purchase the gog version. Third world problems.

Same here my friend.

LATRINA AMERICA !