Knight Rider: The Fan Game

[Deveo]

We don't want to spoil the whole storyline, and we're not that far to give you some cutscenes. Within some weeks we should start on making a promo/intro, which was belated already! When we wanted to make that intro around last Christmas, we suddenly walked into some troubles with gameplay. Also, we have changed to a whole new driving simulator (more arcade style but still realistic), the previous one was just too buggy and heavy on the processor.

For those who do not have the patience to go through all the forum pages of this thread the global storyline is as follows: Dr. Halston (SE3, Knight of the Drones), Cameron Zachary (SE2, A Good Knight's Work) and Marco Berio (SE4, Killer KITT) have escaped while being transferred to another prison. The evil mastermind behind this, of course, is Garthe Knight.
After this scene we switch to the actual beginning of the game. We start at the moment where the episode The Scent of Roses has ended. Many KR fans think that should have been the last episode, so we decided to move it to the end. Not really official, but it will satisfy most fans. Michael drives off in KITT, and, after being trained to use him you dive into the storyline.
The game follows a fictional season 5. We have made diffirent kinds of 'episodes': the ones that belong to the official storyline, and some side missions. For example some races, fighting motorgangs or corrupt cops, or being involved with 80s cameos.
We have numerous hints to Knight Rider 2000, Team Knight Rider and KR 2008 and some neat unlockables!

To not go into any detail, we want to keep the plot mainly a surprise, Garthe slowly starts to destruct FLAG almost destroying it. While you gather clues, FLAG is running into more trouble. It's a bit Batman/Dark Knight themed: Michael will be exhausted when he finally saves FLAG, but the whole adventure causes him to retire (as mentioned in KR2000)

Hope this helps you out, it's as much as Ken permits me to tell you guys

[msKEN]

Couldn't have said it better Daan, thank you! If everything goes smoothly as it has been, we will have a big announcement around the end of May for you guys!

[Avenger95]

Definitely looking forward to its release now! Love those little details.

Scanners Peeled!

[1batt4u]

I definitely can't wait either! Looks awesome!

Even the snow looks real awesome.

Ken you are working on this project?

[Michael Knight, KITT]

I know I have said this before but sense it seems no one saw me say it maybe you could have a short circuit easter egg and maybe you could choose your ending. A: you leave flag B: you stay at flag. These are just a couple of suggestions.

[AppleMacri1980]

i dio not know if that is a good idea

[msKEN]

I know I have said this before but sense it seems no one saw me say it maybe you could have a short circuit easter egg and maybe you could choose your ending. A: you leave flag B: you stay at flag. These are just a couple of suggestions.

Thank you for your suggestions. We will have many 80's Easter eggs and cameos in the game, I think everyone will be pleased with how we handle them as well as how we have fit them into the Knight Rider world.

Alternate endings? I don't think so. But not to put that idea down, we do have a few points in the game where you get to make choices that effect the out come of the story and the choices you make can branch different ways. Also our dialog system will allow the AI's to change its own opinion of you, they will remember how you talked to them, etc. Which will change rather or not they want to help you, or avoid you. Kind of like the walking dead game that came out last year. Now, the choice for Michael leaving at the end, that's not even a guarantee of how the game will end at this point. We scripted that part when I was obsessed with Chris Nolan movies and I wanted everything to end on a down note and I don't think it really fits well with Glen Larson's Knight Rider bible. I wanted a mature story because we've all grown up, but I don't think what I want is what the masses want. So we are leaning more towards ending the game like a typical Knight Rider episode, an open ending lets us continue the story and keep the game going for as long as we like. Basically I'm saying Michael's choice to leave could come in a sequel, which would of course be our fan take on a season 6.

[1batt4u]

All this sounds awesome!! Can't wait!!

And it's Free download when the game is ready??

[msKEN]

Oh its definitely free, we're just fans having fun with a hobby. It's all self financed, which was sadly my replica money LOL!

[Michael Knight, KITT]

Ken I have to say you're one of the nicest people I ever met and you listen so well to what the people say. I have to thank you for putting your time and effort into this. I have faith in you guys that you will end this in the best way possible. I also think that it is cool how you are kind of making the story like the walking dead game as in the way you can affect people by what you say. Keep up the good work

[jup]

Be careful with multiple routes of story plot. There have been big budget, commercial games that dreamed of doing that...only to go into permanent back burner placement, because the number of alternates became unmanageable.

[msKEN]

It's nothing complicated jup, the main story of the game is told in a linear fashion, you are just given options and choices that affect other characters around you, but don't change the main story drastically. Choice A may be very rewarding, while choice B may not be so rewarding. Just adds replay value to go back and try the other options.

[AppleMacri1980]

also what are the graphics going to be like?

[Deveo]

The latest pictures posted on this thread give a pretty good idea of what the final game will look like. This is not the highest graphics quality yet, but it's close to what you will see in the finished game. If you happen to have an older pc/mac you can lower the graphics for better performance, it won't change much of the visuals though!

[msKEN]

Deveo is correct, my only intention for a project this scale and limited budget we were only aiming for GTA3: SA style graphics. Bear in mind thousands of people worked on these GTA titles, we're just 3 guys doing the best we can with what we have. This game will feel very homebrew... because it is. Just don't want to raise hopes too high, we can't afford to do things like big game studios do like lipsynch for the entire game, (cut scenes will only have lip synch and Deveo is tasked to animate that all by hand) though there is a $899 plug in called FACEFX (http://facefx.com/game-titles" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;) that can handle it all for us automatically, but I've exhausted our budget for the time being. Perhaps later down the road when I can afford it I will redo everything with lip-synch and put out an update.

[DJGM]

I assume the system requirements on the hardware side should be fairly modest for this game then. My main PC
has a very modest spec by todays standards (Core2Quad 2.66GHz CPU - 3GB RAM - AMD Radeon HD4350 Gfx).

[jup]

Not sure how cheesy or professional it would look. But, it seems as if there should be a way to have the game sync the lips with a kind of digital audio meter. I mean, that's literally how KITT's voice modual works. Digital meter. The louder the words, the more the meter spiked. Seems to me if the program that runs the game can support such a trick, it should be very easy and hopefully effective to use.

Then again, I am reminded of the recent wave of Wheel of Fortune games that star Pat and Vanna. While budget, they still are professionally made and use a laughably bad approach. Pre-rendered lip movements that have no idea when or what is being said. It's so darn funny to see their lips flapping to silence and then spoken lines to bestilled lips. And, they cross platform designed and sold it like that.

There's also the old PS1/Dreamcast approach. No lip movement and stiff character, due to hardware limits. But, that's so outdated...

[Deveo]

The characters in the game will visually talk with their mouths in the cutscenes, we want a bit of cinematic quality. Otherwise it's really hard to go through the cutscenes to better understand the storyline.

We do have the possibility of automated lip syncing, but it's a process that takes incredibly long and doesn't look good. That's why I'll be doing the speech animations by myself. I don't know if any of you guys played Test Drive Unlimited or Test Drive Unlimited 2, but that is what you will have to think of in terms of cutscene animations and lipsync.

A bit cheesy/cheap but after all, that goes the same for the whole series compared to todays standards. I think a certain cheesyness is what gives the game the spirit of the series, after all nothing is perfect!

[msKEN]

I assume the system requirements on the hardware side should be fairly modest for this game then. My main PC
has a very modest spec by todays standards (Core2Quad 2.66GHz CPU - 3GB RAM - AMD Radeon HD4350 Gfx).

Your type of rig and hardware is actually our target audience.

[RicardoRibeiro2000]

Hey Ken and Deveo, you could use this software for the face animation and modeling http://www.facegen.com/ it has a free version of the software in the site.

[msKEN]

I've used this in the past not quite what we need but thanks for the recommendation!

[RicardoRibeiro2000]

Well if you think to add the game in to the Steam through Greenlight you could use the Face Poser that might work for what you need.

[AppleMacri1980]

what else is happening with the game second i would like the RPM and the MPH on the dash like a real car.

[Michael Knight, KITT]

Hey Ken could you maybe add a driveable 1982 ferrari 308 gts quattrovalvole as an easter egg to unlock it goes well with the 80's theme because of Magnum P.I. I think it would be very cool for it to be driveable And keep up the good work!

[jup]

Hey Ken could you maybe add a driveable 1982 ferrari 308 gts quattrovalvole as an easter egg to unlock it goes well with the 80's theme because of Magnum P.I. I think it would be very cool for it to be driveable And keep up the good work!

I could see that as being a totally after market option. Perhaps, some way of importing cars and people from some kind of creation program, like a patch that is recognized in the menu. Something that fans of the game could go about, creating on their own.

Although very outdated, one of my favorite drivers, Test Drive II, was totally built around the idea of having new cars and new scenes that could be installed into the core game's software. And, considering the time period, it really worked out well.