Content Complete
Oct 06, 2016
It's been a busy last few weeks. The stress is really starting to get to me. I don't handle stress well. I tend to become hyper-focused on the cause of stress, which often makes it worse. There is nothing more or less stressful about finishing Thimbleweed Park than any other game I've done. It always happens.
When it gets to this point, I always say "I'll never do this again", then I do.
On October 15th, we're scheduled to hit "content complete". Every project and company has a different definition for content complete, mine is: every piece of art, animation, sound, music and puzzle is in the game. If not for bugs, you could ship the game.
Content complete is important, because up to that point, you're probably creating more bugs then you're fixing. After content complete, it should be about fixing bugs. The list should always be getting smaller, not bigger.
I also think content complete is an important milestone because it forces you to finish the damn game. I come across so many indie developers that don't know how to finish, they keep adding and changing. Having a firm date you drive towards is important, you won't ever finish without it.
We could work on Thimbleweed Park for two more years. It would make the game different, but probably not better. Just finish your damn game.
October 15th: Content complete. Oh shit, that's 5 days away. We're screwed.
No, we're fine. We always are.
I extracted all the text a few weeks ago and was shocked.
There are over 16,000 recordable lines in the game. That's twice what I expected. It was a "oh shit" moment.
Since then we've gone through the game and found a lot of places where all 5 characters are saying something, but realized that only one of them will ever actually say it. We've also found several places where it's easy (and makes sense from a game/story standpoint) to block a character from a small section of the world. This has also saved a lot of dialog. We were also letting all 5 characters do stuff that is "official binsness" that only the agents should be doing. That has also saved dialog.
It's still going to end up being 50% more dialog than I expected, and that's going to put budget pressure on us, but it should be fine.
In hindsight, I should have realized this. In hindsight, I should have been extracting the dialog on a monthly basis and keeping a better eye on it. Writing is fun. We used to say "dialog is free", but that's no longer the case.
- Ron
On the plus side, if you do decide to get on the merry go round again, and need some crowd source funds, count me in ;)
Someday, I hope to be as good at game dev as you.
Take care of yourself, you'll make it through this last stretch.
Remember, your health is priority. The game is important, but so are you!
Are you this strict or don't you also change stuff like polish graphics here, add tiny stuff there whilst hunting down bugs?
For some reason i like crunch phases but i also need the emptiness afterwards when you're in a weird disconnected state to your work and refill yourself with other impressions and stuff.
Anyway, good luck and keep on making sport.
Whatever horror awaits you: enjoy! I do envy you
In the future, do you think that you'd weigh the flexibility that unrecorded dialog being "free" offers you over the benefits of good voice acting? Or do you think that you're permanently in the opinion that good voice acting is overall a plus?
It is worth remembering that Sierra and even Origin would record dialog using whoever was hanging around the office in the 90s. (Let's try not remember King's Quest V's Cedric. *shudder*) At that time, LucasArts already had amazing voice acting... But ten years later Phoenix Wright had no voice acting at all...
So are you sure that the age of printed text only is over?
Even convert straw into gold, if he wanted... (what it was? D-E-D-E if I remember correctly...)
(Although the codes might be different for every playthrough... mmm...)
I'm impressed and inspired by your rigor in herding the many cats that is this game, and finding a way to finish it, Ron. Your experience shines through at times like this, and I am (and I am sure we are all) very appreciative of the hard work of you and the rest of TWP team And on top of all that, you continue to do interesting and engaging blog posts and podcasts. Thank you so much for connecting with your supporters so well during this whole process.
I imaging the whole TWP development team as running a marathon, and you are at around mile 21, hitting the infamous "wall". All of us supporters are standing at the sidelines, cheering you on, and we'll be waiting for you at the finish line, with high fives and cold beverages of your choice. :)
I wonder what such blog post would look like in 1990, before monkey island
By the way, the demo video is only 48 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX_K387EKoI
"I am going to miss Gary", now that's a line you could totally misread. Ha ha. But I meant the verb 'miss', not the noun :)
You don't crank out games like this like it's a toy factory I suppose. In any case, if you do crowdfunding again, count me in. If you don't do any crowdfunding for ... those ideas that most certainly keep getting washed up ashore sketchbook island, while working on something that has no room for new ideas any longer - I hope you don't keep it all a secret for too long. <3
I hope you keep chugging along with the blog long after content lock.
Perhaps we can get some insight on (maybe a few more videos):
Music composition and sound design (we hadn't seen too much on this so far),
debugging. Maybe with some code. Or pseudocode? I miss code.
the voice recording sessions,
curating/reviewing/importing all the crowd-sourced content,
translation/localization,
additional marketing/advertising/promotions (how do you find opportunities and make the deals?),
advertising/marketing art (U.S. and international?),
porting the game (wooing investors, hiring devs to do the port),
going "gold"-physical production and distribution (physical and digital),
the design of the physical copy- art/box design, manufacturing/production, ideas and design/production of the "feelie". If you want to keep the "feelie" a surprise- if you think it's exceptionally cool- that'd be fine by me.
Oh. And also, afterwards, a retrospective.
How's that stress? ;)
You know...Why does "crunch time" even exist? Why is it that it's always a given that programmers/devs will have to put in a ridiculous amount of hours during the last stage/stages of development? Why don't we just allot more time to finish up the game? Or enforce slightly shorter/stricter deadlines of earlier milestones? One of the things that kept me from pursuing a career in game development was the idea of crunch time being a standard.
http://venturebeat.com/2016/03/20/why-crunch-time-is-still-a-problem-in-the-video-game-industry/
People do. They actually honest-to-goodness do. It just never works out that way.
As I've heard said before, development effort is like a noble gas: it will expand to fill all the space and contours of its temporal container. For some reason this was true back when Fredricks Brooks managed development work for IBM mainframes back in the 1960s, it was true at the turn of the Century when Microsoft was pushing for the next version of Windows after XP, and it is true today when Ron Gilbert is wrapping up building a brand new 1980s style classic adventure game.
The weird thing about software development projects, the thing about writing software code, is that it's equal parts widget-building, abstract art form, arcane wizardry, and mathematical purity. It's unique in the pantheon of human endeavors in that it is very close to actual thought and pure creation, but requires an insane amount of effort and discipline to shape it into a usable form. It's during that transformation from pure thought to physical expression that it changes from universal mathematical truth to mundane human craft work -- and it is there where the bugs creep in.
In almost 60 years of the industry, we haven't figured out a way how to make it work effectively. We've tried everything and each methodology seems to be The One That Works... until it doesn't; and then we're back to the drawing board.
It seems like programming should be formulaic and predictable like engineering, that it should be measurable and quantifiable like mathematics, and yet it keeps proving itself closer to the whims of a temperamental artisan.
I wonder if this is how we discovered other mechanical, industrial, and creative arts, such as masonry and engineering? Perhaps the trade is too young. Perhaps in one hundred years we'll crack this nut and learn how to plan software development properly. Or perhaps robots will do it for us and we won't care any more.
Anyway, I'll let Messrs. Fredrick Brooks and Donald Knuth describe it with my favourite thoughts on programming:
"...computer programming is an art, because it applies accumulated knowledge to the world, because it requires skill and ingenuity, and especially because it produces objects of beauty." - D. Knuth
"The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds castles in the air, from air, creating by
exertion of the imagination... Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures... Yet the program construct, unlike the poet's words, is real in the sense that it moves and works, producing visible outputs separate from the construct itself. […] The magic of myth and legend has come true in our time. One types the correct incantation on a keyboard, and a display screen comes to life, showing things that never were nor could be. " - F. Brooks
And more to the point of this post, as Mr. Brooks stated in his book The Mythical Man-Month, which was impressively prescient almost 50 years ago:
"How does a project get to be a year late? … One day at a time." - F. Brooks.
Just like the art and craft of engineering applies equally to the shaping of a screwdriver as it does to the majesty of a bridge; those thoughts apply the same to a vast operating system project or a lowly video game.
-dZ.
I'm often asked "You are an artist, why do you do programming?". I usually reply "Because I'm an artist." For some reason programming is not recognised as creative work, which couldn't (usually) be further from the truth.
You wouldn't happen to have any recommended reading for me- about development, project planning, crunch time, or the history thereof?
We players have to excange our impressions, feeelings, critics... isn't it?
I wish to get in touch with nice people met on this blog, too.
And, seeing the kickstarter campaign and this blog, I would say that this is already more than just a game.
It would also be very nice if they run a blog for their next game, too. Since it would probably be no crowd-funded game, they would not need to inform us as frequently as they have done on this blog, of course, so they could write blog entries only whenever they wanted. For example, when it comes to needing hundreds of book titles. Or, when they would like to get some feedback or inspiration.
- Ransome and the elevator with no walls
- The door on the vista
- Bookstore Construction Kit (with auto-roof adjustment feature)
Ooops, I couldn't help it ! ;-)
(sorry!)
I feel like those times I clicked the last click in one of your adventure games, went through the end sequence, and then stayed mute, staring at the screen for half an hour on the last line of the credits.
Rats. This time I still have to play the game.
http://img5.fotos-hochladen.net/uploads/20160926124636keid75ut0p.jpg
Pudding Creek Trestle
I can't wait for TP™!!
That's kind of a bit of a bummer. Honestly, I can easily go back to play adventure games of old which had no audio dialogs, just the text to read. Classic Monkey Island -- quite honestly? The voice work in the remastered version doesn't add quite as much to it as I thought it would. And that's strange.
Everyone is freaking out. Fortunately our team isn't, we were feature complete two months ago and we just spent these months fixing bugs. It's quite boring now, since we can't do anything, but it was extremely satisfying when we began fixing the big bugs, and then the medium bugs, and then we had time to fix some of those "yeah right I'll fix it next century" bugs.
Now I want a raise.
To solve this, change your QA testing focus from testing the application as written, to testing the expected behaviour from the user perspective. That is, put the BA or FA in charge, not the Lead Engineer. This puts the QA team in opposite to the development team, and will surely antagonise them, but it's the only way.
-dZ.
Like I said, as long as you continue testing the application "as developed," rather than "as defined by requirements," your tests will mostly succeed, but the application will not fulfill the user's needs.
-dZ.
Thank you for all the effort you have put into this project, and particularly, in making the process itself as transparent and engaging to your fans and followers as possible. I know it has been a lot of hard work to do both, the core development work and the sharing and blogging, and I hope it has been worth it to you and your team as I'm sure it has been to all of us.
I look forward to the finished product and wish you a successful launch and a well-deserved restful holiday.
My best and warmest regards,
-dZ.
It's only just hit me that this will have an end, and I'm a little sad! The abundance of pukey gifs is helping though. I might have to make a tiled desktop background of them. Is that weird? I think it's weird.
Dialogue enrichens the game world, makes it more real, more immersive, and characters define their personality.
Thanks for coming to argentina. It was incredible. You changed my life when i was a kid.
If I remember correctly, year and a half ago you were pondering if the game should have dialog at all...
This means you can finally concentrate on the configuration system for enabling and disabling features! Finally!
Door on the Vista ..... OPEN
Rainbow puke.... OFF
Light temperature in Edmund Hotel lamps... WARM
opening direction of the doors of the radio station.... OUTSIDE
plumage thickness of the pigeons.... MEDIUM
self-updating sign delay... FAST
Pixelating decay.... SLOW
Ransome's balloon content .... HELIUM
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Enable options toggling .... OFF
;-)
Music style... POP
Music substyle... POP-ROCK
Preferred scratching body part for idle character animation... NOSE
Characters ears size... MEDIUM
Allow in-game pets... NO
Achievements animation... CROSS-FADE
Title Cards... ON
Title Cards Style... PRIMATES LAND SURROUNDED BY WATER
Year of the Game... 1987
Preferred Attorney for Franky's Trial... PHOENIX WRIGHT
Preferred Pizza for Pizza Man... MARGHERITA
Pizza to avoid for Pizza Man... PINEAPPLE
Mic... ON
Voice command for 'Pick Up'... OBJECTION!
...
... sorry, I'm playing a different game, during these day! :-D
Simulation of color aberration due to unshielded loudspeakers...GREEN/PURPLE
Vocal alert every 60 minutes of play... "TURN OFF THAT COMPUTER AND DO YOUR HOMEWORK, OR YOU WON'T GET YOUR ALLOWANCE FOR TWO MONTHS!"
this will go further and Terrible Toybox will invent the next level of PnC Games, called SnD Games: "Say and Do". with Microphone Commands "Open Door" , "Pull Corpse" or "Use Gas with Chainsaw"
Or with no sign of suffering, just an evil grin....
Well, I assume that they wouldn't even like to release a 'mainstream' physical copy, because online stores are a much easier way to offer the game (and more profitable, even though the tax for the online stores is pretty expensive). Moreover, Ron must have become tired of signing MM and MI boxes for fans.
Yes and no. In germany there are serveral publishers who are still selling indie-games in a box (in most cases a DVD box). Speaking of adventures, i.e. Daedalic is selling their games in a box. Another example is Nelly Cootalot, another Indie-Kickstarter adventure: Application System Heidelberg did the german voice recordings and is still selling a "Collector's Edition-Box". Just have a look at Amazon to see more examples.
At least in germany there is a demand for such boxes. So the TWP team could find easily a partner in germany that is doing the german voice recordings and producing a box (without any financial risk for the TWP team). :)
But, as I said, I would prefer the "TWP collectors box" to be backer exclusive.
I remember Broken Sword 5 being distributed by Deep Silver, which is also a German company.
Also, I never saw the point in making things unavailable or too exclusive. This should be limited to the amount of people who're willing to spend good money on it.
We need more boxes on our game shelves, people! <3 I want this to stand right next to Monkey Island.
Don't get me wrong: It's Ok for me if others can buy a box. But the box for the backers should be something special. It could be much bigger or include a little/small "feelie". .) I think of a pin or badge with the words "Ask me about TWP" or a detective notebook or something like this (these things are cheap to produce but they say "thanks" to all backers). I think the guys from The Book Of Unwritten Tals 2 did that right: Backers got a very nice big-box and some other exclusive things. :)
But, in my opinion they should wait with the release of a 'stock box', so that they would first sell the game digitally only, and later, on a second beat, physically in a non-backers box.
This may be not very consumer-friendly, because many people would feel forced to buy the game twice, but all of us would like to see more Terrible Toybox games, which of course cannot be developed or promoted for free.
@Nor: Ah, you are right. I forgot the shirt.
@Big Red Button: I backed the game to support the production, the game and this really, really, really great blog. So I won't cry if the box with the whole content wouldn't be backer exclusive. But Ron clarified it already. :)
Even though, I dislike Christmas trade, I actually think that such a box would be a nice Christmas present. Therefore, even though the game won't be released until next Christmas, you could nevertheless release the box in late November 2017.
By the way, if you own a digital copy, you can even keep the box unopened... provided that you are able to resist.
The Broken Sword 5 big box was (or is?) available in germany in several retail stores. Here in my city you could still buy BS5 in a DVD box. And the Revolution anthology. :-)
(b) We got the internet. You could easly download a patch.
(c) No, you don't need a different copy for each platform. You can ship the Windows, Mac and Linux versions on one DVD. That was even common back in the 90s. Even in the 80s there were floppy discs with a Atari and C64 versions on one disc (or cassette :)).
1. Official content count(Oct-15) Music clips 90, Rooms 120, Dialog lines 1600, books 926, Voice mails 1100
2. Interview with Steve Kirk(TWP's music composer)
3. Budget #2
4. Meet the voice actors (Ray/Rayes/Delores/Delores/Ransome)
Here's Rons timeline
https://storage.googleapis.com/images.thimbleweedpark.com/twp_schedule_1.png
It's translation time, now!
Also there was never meant to be a Budget #2, after Budget (#1) comes No-Budget (#1).
But it's a non-issue since the invention of the Internet (and its broad availability).
It's the first time I've seen it!
(yes, yes, I know about the MI3 joke, but that's not in canon)
- can anyone explain me the END-TIP-POINT insult+answer?
- why is the Sword Master doing circles on herself out of her house?
Thank you!
Because it looked dumb is she was just standing there and we didn't have enough to time to do an animation.
If you don't know what song it is, you can take a look here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUvf6aqvxYc
I started playing The Secret Of Monkey Island again two weeks ago on my trusty old Amiga 500. I kept looking at the Sword Master and wondered why she kept doing circles :-)
- "This is the END for you, you gutter crawling cur!"
- "And I've got a little TIP for you, get the POINT?"
That is, in italian:
- "Questa è la FINE per te, topo di fogna!"
- "Ed anch'io ho una piccola PUNTA per te. Capito?"
TIP = the end of the sword (or since the sword is a sharp object... its very end is a point).
In italian, as you can see, it's translated quite well.
- During the various playtest sessions, did you meet young people playing Thimbleweed Park? I mean, people born after the year 2000, who probably have never played a D.O.C. (=italian acronym for very high quality products) adventure game before. If yes, what feeling did you have? I am curious because children and tweens I know of that age, seem too used to games where the brain usage is small. Or, in other words, where it is not required to think, use logic, elaborate.
I'm pretty sure I speak for quite a few others, when I say we're older adventure gamers, and we've been living our adult lives like most others -- seeking those nuggets of joy in between life's ups and downs. For me, this blog has been a steady stream of joyous nuggets, where I vicariously live the life of a game developer, instead of a programmer analyst at a corporate entity. While the TP team was working on this project, and while we all anticipate its final release, we've all been thrilled just to have a ticket to ride. Your work has directly translated to joy, and I can say this because I'm happy as a clam, and the game hasn't even been released.
Ron, Gary, David, Octavi, Mark, and Jenn (and anyone else I may have missed) all have made us feel welcome and a part of the project. The input you asked for was a joy to provide and really helped made us feel like we were a part of something bigger.
Thanks to everyone!
But if you gonna record voices then this dialog costs more money. And twice as much dialog costs twice as much money to record.
That's what they used to do back in the 90s.
Fans get it faster!
In a couple of weeks I menaged to substitute it with an original CD version.
The CD version had full spoken dialogues with italian subtitles, while the floppy version didn't. It had speech only in the intro.
It was with english voice and italian text.
I did the same with S&M, the difference was that the floppy version had english dialogues in the intro only, while the CD versione featured full italian voice for the whole game.
The CD-ROM version being delayed could have other reasons (maybe pressing the CDs for the non-English market just took some more time).
Wikipedia claims "concurrently released on CD-ROM and floppy disk", but I didn't find specific dates.
I didn't know there was a floppy version of Sam&Max. That must have been 8 disks or so!