MORDY 2 README


CONTENTS:


1. Details
2. Features
3. Story
4. Some of the Characters
5. How to Play
6. Getting Started
7. The Theory
8. The Future
9. Other Games by Me
10. The Fun Facts
11. Credits
12. Final Word


1. Details



Thanks for downloading Mordy 2: The Mirror of Truth. I really hope you enjoy the game, since I would be pretty mad if I downloaded such a big game and then I didn't like it. Hehe.
This is a freeware 2D adventure game with pre-rendered 3D backgrounds and characters. The game is the sequel to Mordy On Holiday.
I used this game as a learning tool to help me get familiar with all aspects of 3D. My first ever background was made for this game (woods). I had some big plans for animation, but due to my lack of animation experience I decided to keep things simple, and try bigger things in the future, once I've had some more practise. I'm very pleased with the music, and I really think it is of professional standard. (look in the credits to see who did the music.)

I am Mordalles on the AGS forums, and if you would like to contact me, my e-mail is Mordalles@webmail.co.za. You could always just send me a pm me on the forums.


2. Features


- Original music by 2 brilliant musicians, made just for the game! 18+ songs.
- 640x400 resulotion with 32 bit colours.
- 3D pre-rendered characters and backgrounds.
- 2 Different endings
- One secret locations (not that hard to find)
- No more eating mushrooms.
- A mixture of Inventory-based, Dialogue-based and Myst-like puzzles.
- Meet over 24 characters.
- Visit around 21 Unique Locations.
- Play golf, do some archery, have a nice duel.


3. Story


Download Mordy 1 here: Download
I would advise playing 'Mordy 1: On Holiday' first. Mordy was the royal protector of the princess in the fortress in which they lived. The thing about this fortress is that it is probably the safest place on earth for a princess to be. No army has ever been able to occupy this fortress. It was impregnable. So, this meant that Mordy was redundant. The princess was safe with or without him. What's more, no one really like Mordy. He was pretty annoying. That's why the royal protector and the king hatched ( :) ) a plan to get rid of Mordy. It was an elaborated plan of deception and betrayel. And it worked. They tricked Mordy into leaving on holiday to some far off planet. But what they were really doing was sending Mordy away so far that he would in all probability never return. And so, Mordy arrived at a planet called Xen, ready to enjoy his holiday, and waiting for someone to take his luggage to his room. This is where you start playing Mordy 1.



If you haven't finished or played Mordy 1 yet, don't read this SPOILER:

[SPOILER]
Mordy soon, after killing an evil e-mail sending demon, found out that he was not there on holiday. And thus, his primary goal became to find his way back home. And so, after doing all sorts of silly things, which included some very disturbing mushrooms, signing up for prisoner duty and reading all sorts of stupid gravestone messages, Mordy found his way through a portal.

Where this portal was to take him, was anyone's guess.
[END OF SPOILER]

This is where Mordy 2: The Mirror of Truth continues the story.


4. Some of the Characters


a) Mordy
Mordy is the main character of this game. He is the guy you get to move around in this adventure game.
Mordy belongs to a specific race who is known for their red cat-like eyes and yellowish skin. In the first game we saw Mordy look very similar to the race known as 'Humans'. However, as Mordy's race gets older, they start to evolve. Some of the distinct physical changes they undergo are: Ears get pointier and they're hearing improve tenfold; They're hands increase in size relative to their body, they also lose two fingers, and at later ages they grow sharp claws;
If you compare Mordy 1 to Mordy 2, you will see that Mordy has evolved a bit. His ears are pointier, and this means Mordy can also hear much better now. (Mordy now has a 'Listen' icon.)

b) Death and Life
Death and Life are on the opposite side of the spectrum. Whilst it is Death's job to take souls away from they're physical bodies, it is Life's job to care for life. She uses her motherly instincts to nurture souls and help it reach it's potential. Of course, you can't have one without the other. In this game, I casted a certain well known game's character as Death. The normal grim reaper death just didn't have all the qualities to fill the role of Death in an adventure game. The Lady of Life is also based on MissyChelle, one of the AGS members. [SPOILER] Death was also in Mordy 1. If you found the secret location. [/SPOILER]

c) The Martians
The Martians are a small race with big goals. They are on a conquest. They want to control the world. However, up till now, they have only managed to occupy a few mushrooms in front of a large building. Yet, they vow to take over the world, even though the wife wants to know nothing of it.


5. How to Play


Playing Mordy 2 is really easy. Mordy has 6 different actions, and you can just right-click to scroll through the actions. Left click to perform the action. These actions are: 'Look', 'Walk to', 'Use', 'Listen', 'Talk' and 'Use an Inventory Item'.

'LOOK': Look is represented by an eye icon. If you move the eye over a hotspot, the eye will blink, which means you can now look at that hotspot.
'WALK TO': This action is represented by a walking-legs icon. Just click anywhere you want to walk to, and Mordy wil walk there, or to the closest possible location to where you clicked. To exit locations, you just have to walk to the edge of the screen. All exit's are represented by hotspots. Sometimes you will have to use the hand cursor on a door to open it.
'USE': Use is represented by a hand icon. When you move the hand over a hotspot, the hand will do a grab action, which means you can either pick something up, or use it.
'LISTEN': This is a new action, which allows Mordy to listen to anything in the game world. It is represented by an ear icon. Sometimes it's necessary to listen when Mordy can't see, and at other times it's better to listen closer to sounds, they might be telling you something.
'TALK': The talk action is represented by a mouth. When you move the talk cursor over another character, it will start to move, which means you can talk to that person. Just click left mouse button.
'USE INVENTORY': In order to use an inventory item, you have to move the mouse to the top of the screen. An iconbar will appear. Click on the word 'Inventory'. An inventory box will open. Now you can either look at an inventory item, or click on it with the pointer cursor to select it. Once selected, you can click the item on another item, or you can close the inventory and click the item on a hotspot to use the item with that hotspot.


For Saving, Loading or Quiting, move your mouse to the top of the screen and click on the corresponding word. ('Save', 'Load', or 'Quit'.)

NOTE: In the watertower, you need to 'Use' the steps to go up or down.

Shortcuts:
"l" : Look at
"w" : walk to
"u" : Use/Interact
"h" : Hear/Listen
"t" : talk to
"i" : Open Inventory
"Ctrl-q" : Quit game
"s" : Save game
"r" : Restore game
"f9" : Restart game
"f12" : Save screenshot


6. Getting Started


I tried making Mordy 2 logical. However, I doubt sometimes if I myself know what logical is. This game consists mostly of item and inventory based puzzles. However, there is a dialogue puzzle and about 3 Myst-like puzzles in the game. There are even archery, fighting and golf puzzles. So, hopefully the game won't feel monotonous. So, here are some hints to help you:

Myst-like puzzles (answer to Gate-Lock-Puzzle):
[SPOILERS] One of the first puzzles in the game is a puzzle that could go directly into a Myst game. A low budget Myst game for that matter. It is a lock puzzle, and you basically have to unlock the lock. There is a specicfic way to do this. If you really have problems with this puzzle, I put the answer in the game. Just click on the 'Back of Lock' hotspot, and the combination for the lock will be there in front of your eyes. I did this, because then you wont have to exit the game to go search for a walkthrough, but rather keep the 'immersion factor'. If you want to try and figure it out yourself, here is a hint: every one of the 6 little locks are opened by a certain button. That's the easy part. However, some of the 6 little locks are also closed by another button. The button closing one little lock could be the button that opens another lock. (pencil and paper will help a lot here.)


The other two myst like puzzles will require you find clues in your surroundings. It could be in the same room, or on the other side of the planet. :)

[END OF SPOILERS]

Other Secrets:
[SPOILERS]
- There is a secret location in the game. However, it's not that hard to find this time. It will change one ending a little.
- There are 2 different endings.
- When you are in the aquarium, look out for a certain familiar figure which might drop from above. You might have to wait a bit. But he will show up.
[END OF SPOILERS]


I have tried to make all the puzzles unique, and so I hope they make sense.


7. The Theory


What theory? The inventory theory. You're probably wondering where and how Mordy is carrying all his items. Well, here is the explanation:
When Mordy picks up an item, he doesn't really pick it up. What he does is he memorises where he found the item. Then, when he has a place to put it or use it, he quickly runs (we don't see this part) to where he saw the item, gets it, and runs back to the spot where he wants to use it. Due to time reasons, we edited out these 'fetching of items' moments to hopefully make the playing experience more enjoyable. :)


8. The Future


A lot of Mordy's future relies on how Mordy 2 is received. I would want to make a 3rd one in the series, but production on that will probably only start in over a year's time when I'm must better at 3D, and I have a team to help me. I already know the people, and I've talked to them about it. Of course, it will be made without AGS and try to compete with todays commercial games. So, it's just big plans right now.

Let's say Mordy 2 was a practise run for bigger things.

In the meantime, I'm going try to make some 2D games in AGS (like the ones below) and maybe compete in a MAGS competition. I have a few ideas for shortish games. But please let me know if you want to see Mordy turned into a trilogy. Or, if you don't want to see Mordy ever again, let me know that too. I'll give him the bad news.


9. Other Games by me


I entered the MAGS competition for January 2006. My entry was a game based in the Vietnam war. It is called Infantry Division 1338, a very short game made in 5 days. Download Infantry Division 1338 here: Download

Currently I'm working on a 320x200 2D project, that should be out somewhere in the end of 2006. It's a very serious story-driven game.


10. The Fun Facts


- I really put a lot of effort into making the Mordy character look like a professional games character. He has a much more detailed skin texture, much more detail on his clothes, has around triple the amount of facial morph targets than what the other characters have (although, I rarely used them in the game), and his setup for animation is much better than the other characters, basically since he has to do so much more. This meant that I also spent A LOT more time on him. I used a slower modelling method for Mordy's face as well, and made his face much more detailed than any other character in the game.
- In the title screen, we can't see Mordy's face as he looks into the mirror. His face is actually one of fear, but I couldn't get the camera angle exactly right to show this. So, he is scared as he looks into the mirror, if you were wondering.
- The two figurines on the computer in Pete's room are actually two characters I modelled for a fan Diablo animation. They were cartoon shaded, so I had to re-texture them for this game. I never got round to that fan animation. The speech they give when you listen to them is actually directly out of the fan animation script. You guys should know by now that I was a Diablo 2: LOD addict.
- In the caverns under the water, I innitially wanted the caves to reflect Mordy. But, becuase of the rocky surface, I would have had to make a reflection frame for Mordy for each coordinate in the 3 rooms. That was something I was not going to do.
- The lawn at the gate entrance consists of about 80000 grass blades. I had to render this on somebody else's computer, since mine kept giving me the 'out of memory' message. I later found out that I accidently increased the polygon count of each blade. Which made it to much to calculate on my slow computer.
- Game Statistics: 1564 Sprites; 225 Views; 42 Inventory Items; 52 Characters (not all interactable); 72 Rooms; 83 Sounds; 20 Music Tracks.
- The texture I used for the dartboard in the inn is a photo of the dartboard in my dad's garage.
- This game was started in the first week of October 2005. And was finished in the last week of January 2006. Thus, around 4 months.


11. Credits


Game Design and Concepts: Erik Fourie (Mordalles)
Graphics: Everything was made by me, Erik Fourie. I modelled 99% of the graphics from scratch by myself.
The following was not modelled by me: Skeleton, head of Life, head of girl in purple dress. (although, i modified it a bit, and modelled the bodies and hair myself of these 2 characters.)
Paintings in Inn: Erik Fourie. These paintings were my 3 first real digital paintings. I didn't do them for the game specifically, but I needed pictures to put in the frames, so I decided to put my own stuff there. The paintings are titled: "Elf Archer"; "The Black Knight" (I did it to learn some painting techniques); "The Necromancer" (I did this picture for the Master and Servant CGTalk Challenge).
Music: Done by Francois Pretorius and Gerhard Pool. I was really lucky to get them onboard, since I know absulotely nothing about music myself. Francois is the guitarist for the heavy metal band, MindAssault (www.mindassault.com). So this game has all original music!
Individual songs: Francois did the following locations: Intro, World Map, Estate Map, Estate Entrance, Treasury, Gate Entrance, Mushroom Village, Office and Pete's Room, All the rooms of the Inn, Woods, Death's Throne, Theatre, Stables, Fountain and Archery Range,Gates of hell, Spaceship, Outtro/Credits.
Gerhard did the following songs: Caverns, Island of Death, Watertower, Song when you listen to guitarist in Inn.

All music in this game are not too be copied or reproduced in any way.
Sounds: From the internet, various free sources.
Scripting: Erik Fourie (with a lot of help from Buloght - look out for his game, Kludden, a classic RPG).
Documentation: Erik Fourie
In Game Font: Made by Buloght
Beta-Testing: Erik Fourie, Buloght.
Special thanks to: -Chris Jones for making AGS!
-Konami for making Suikoden (my favourite RPG, I stole their duel fighting idea)
-Squinky, Nikolas, LJubji for moral support. ;)
-MissyChelle for wanting to be in the game.

Cast of characters: Finish the game to see them.


12. Final Word


Thanks for downloading Mordy 2 and playing it. I hope you enjoyed playing it as much as I enjoyed making it. Please let me know what you think. Even if you hated this game with every bit of your being, let me know, and I will try to improve my future games. If there is something specific you didn't like, let me know. You can contact me via e-mail : Mordalles@webmail.co.za Or, just contact me at the AGS forums : www.bigbluecup.com

Who knows, you might one day see Mordy 3 . . .