Schedule
May 18, 2016
In the State Of The Game #3 post, I mentioned the schedule we were working on to ship the game in Jan, and someone in the comments asked if I would show the schedule.
So without further delay... our schedule...
I'm a visual person. I need to see a schedule as colored lines depicting time's relentless march forward. I know some people like a list of dates and have no problem understanding that, but for me I need to see time. I want to sit back and squint and feel an overview of how long each task is going to take. Seeing dates like "May 29 - June 3" gives me no sense of the time involved.
If I had some fancy gantt chart software, I'd do my schedules in that, but I also get sucked into fancy software and tend to waste too much time explore features and settings, so I prefer to do my visual schedule in a spreadsheet. It's simple and does what I need.
OK, so let's talk about the schedule...
First row is the ship date for the Mac, Windows, Linux and Xbox versions. Sometime in Jan 2017. I start with this since it's the the immovable date.
We're going to start the Linux port this week and given we use SDL for Mac and Windows, I don't expect it to be a huge problem. We have top people working on it. Top. People. The iOS and Android versions won't ship in mid-Jan, they will likely be delayed by a month or two. If things go well and I have more time than expected in Nov and Dec, they might ship sooner. If we had more money, we could hire people to do those, but we don't and it will probably fall on Malcolm (shh... I haven't asked him yet) or myself.
I tend to work backwards when doing a schedule, so the next thing we don't have a lot of control over is the Microsoft cert process. It can take anywhere from one to two months, depending on how many issues are found. We decided to plan for the worst and put it down as two months. There is a small milestone on Oct 1 for pre-cert, to see if there are any issues, but we don't have to submit a final build. We might move that up a month or two and do it as soon as we have a stable xbox build with close to final ui.
Working back from there, text lock will be Oct 1. At this point, all the text needs to be final and a locked script can be given to the translators. We will also prep a recording script and we'll begin recording. I am delaying this as late as possible and honestly, it should really be happening one or two months before this, but I've be spending a lot of time on the dialog. I'm not completely happy with how the dialogs are working and we need time to play with them. We don't have enough time for pickup lines and testing. This is going to be a stressful time.
In the middle of October we'll start translation art. Our plan is to translate any art in the game that has text in it. We'll compile a list and get them translated first, then make the art changes. I'll soon have a system in place in our engine what makes this pretty simple and should require no code changes, assume it was all set up correctly.
Next we come to the areas of the game and when each of those needs to be done. The game is divided into Act 1, Act 2, Act 3 and Epilogues After those are done, we enter a stage of game-wide polish where we franticly try and fix all the little crap we find and or didn't have time to fix during the sprints. This is the point where you look at something and say "no one will notice" and drop it off the fix list. 99% of the time, you're right and no one notices.
All the art will be done by mid July and then we go back and polish.
Music should all be done by July 1 and seems on track. There will be small fixes after that, but nothing major.
The game should be 100% done by Oct 1. Anything that changes after that needs to be "critical."
And it goes without saying that testing is a non-stop process.
So, that's the plan. What are the chances everything will go as planned? Zero percent, but that's what makes game dev so much fun.
- Ron
So I guessed that focusing on the beginning had to be a wanted bias. I think that when the budget gets higher the player should feel it less (as it is, ie, in MI2). But, as I'm trying to say, it's not all that bad: later on in the game you want to focus more on puzzles and on art, and less on storytelling. Act III in MI is much more rough than the first: small rooms in a big world, no face close-ups, nearly no human interactions. But that's its beauty. Life (and adventures too) is made of fast periods, in which you meet lots of people and do a lot of things, and slow periods, in which you experience silence and reflection.
I've always felt that this need has been perfectly balanced in MI1 to match storytelling and technical design needs.
Did you work on this aspect, or is it unintentional? Anyway the final effct has been great. I hope the same, and even better for Thimbleweed Park.
What other events do you have scheduled, if any?
And, when do we need our answering machine messages submitted by? I need to get on that.
What exactly is the MS certification process? Is it something like their bug-testing quality control or more content-approval related?
I don't know how, but you managed it to be an interesting read. Thanks!
It seems possible to propose the direction of a future blogpost, so how about a nerdy programming one, it has been a while :)
Maybe about an overly complicated shader effect no one will notice. Or a bug in the engine which took ages and complicated measures to fix. Something you are proud of and something you will share no code because its a steaming pile of *BEEP*.
Still (and always be) happy to be able to follow this project so close.
The most interesting and emotionally i've backed so far.
(and my english isn't getting better ;) )
Yet why do developers STILL insist on prioritizing IOS development over Android????? /rant
Thanks for the honest reply though lol
Remember you are not talking about a "game". You are talking about "the return of point and click" (aka Thimbleweed Park).
Most of ex pointers&clickers are now Android users: can be painful, but that's true.
I'm on Android and I'm gonna buy it.
If you made a "puppet app" to buy and finance you, I'll already bought it.
1/2 cent from android_user #IT98u430952
Don't copy that floppy :)
It's nice to see how much effort you put in this game. It's not only "your job", it's really like a child to grow up well...
Do you have a "regression'" script that maybe runs nightly or weekly, that makes sure that changes that get introduced on a regular basis don't break various configurations of the game, By "break" I guess I mean crash, or hang. By configurations, I mean - different OS ports, different user GUI settings, etc. Is that sort of thing in your camp, Ron - since you are the "engine" expert, or would that be something Robert would do? It's kind of an extension of Testertron3000 (are you still using that?). Sorry for the slew of questions - automation and regression testing is just my thing.
Any flavors of Linux you recommend- maybe good for older laptops but can easily handle a game like Thimbleweed?
Though, the difference between Ubuntu and Linux Mint seems to be marginal. Both are very open to beginners.
If you're looking for a stable and efficient Linux, maybe you should give Linux Mint MATE a try. Cinnamon has some more features instead.
By the way, I found the following tips to be quite useful: https://sites.google.com/site/easylinuxtipsproject/mint-cinnamon-first
The story is about a town in the USA so a sign reading "Zirkus" instead of "Circus" would feel weirdly out of place...
So long as the story makes sense, especially the jokes, my brain doesn't raise any flag.
Most of the time if I don't understand something, due to lost in translation, as long as it's not too important, I just forget about it and move on with the adventure and the next puzzle.
As usual, I expect the English to be much better (and not just because the lips of the actors are not in sync).
I think the track may be initially imported that way, then parts could later be tweaked if the devs think something didn't look right and needed adjusting. Maybe Ron could confirm/clarify this?
On the flipside, I had a few opportunities to play a very well localized game (even the fonts and the textures that depicted signs and messages were localized). For the first time in my life, I felt as if everything was happening in MY city, even the blandest mundane lines and the insincere emotions felt more profound and more honest and more emotional.
On the other hand, this feeling of immersion was similar to the Oculus Rift or the Wii - yeah, localization feels like a nice gimmick, but I wouldn't put it as a top priority.
As for me, I have always played every Lucas adventure in english: I think most of the fun could only be understood in the native language.
Only when available, I have replayed every adventure in italian.
I remeber having played Maniac Mansion in italian, for the first time, when I played DOTT...
All the movies and all the TV series, from the 30es on, come very well dubbed. Italian dubbers are very good actors, and people love their voice, and some of them are real "faceless celebrities".
So we are very used to see american people speaking in Italian in movies and it feels perfectly natural, while a translated art could be awkward, in my personal opinion.
.
.
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..."I will make it an option."
If the puzzle text contains words that can be easily translated (e.g.: right, left, up, down, after, before...) there is no problem, too. The text art should be translated with the correspondent word.
If the puzzle text contains puns where the meaning is understandable only in english (for example: "TAKE A FLY", has double meaning only in english), this could be a problem. The correct translation depends on what logic is in the game. If the character should take an airplane, or an insect, there will be a different translation for each case.
(However, when did we stop translating names? Queen Elizabeth is still known as Elisabetta in Italy, as well as "principe Carlo" but her grandson and wife aren't "Guglielmo e Caterina")
Since the end of the 90's, almost every movie had the original title also in italian.
But it was a common habit, once. Think of Giovanni Calvino or Francesco Bacone... for Jehan Calvin and Francis Bacon.
And it happened also backwards: think of Christopher Columbus, aka Cristobal Colon, whose real name was Cristoforo Colombo.
In ancient times it was very common to translate the name. Important people used often on the papers their name translated in latin.
A peculiar case is that one of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He has a german name, a latin one, and the surname.
The interesting thing is that on his papers he is called (Joannes Chrysostomus) Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart: the german name is somehow "latinized", while the latin name is literally translated in... greek!
Anyway, if I obviously think that translating birth names doesn't make sense, I have to tell you that I don't like the habit, from the 90es on, of avoiding any translation of the movie titles.
Sometimes the literal translation is not so powerful as the original. Italian translators has always used a lot of fantasy in creating bizzarre new titles. Sometimes better than the original, even if I have to admit that in most of cases they simply suck.
In my opinion, when the italian literal translation doesn't sound good, the localization should provide a new title with, aside, the original. Sometimes happen.
What I don't like, as I said, is when simply nobody translates the title, when the corresponding italian would have been nice and well-sounding, and sense-making.
The world-famouse italian movie "La vita è bella" is known abroad as "life is beautiful". And I think it is perfectly lecit.
Why should they keep it in italian?
Ciao
Ema
The translation of "mom, I lost my fly" is quite bizarre too, since it means "Mamma, ho smarrito la mia mosca"
:-D
"I don't like the habit, from the 90es on, of avoiding any translation of the movie titles."
I have to tell you that there is one example of Finnish movie translations, where the original title would have been better. I understand that "Shawshank Redemption" would have been way too difficult title for Finnish audience, but the "translation" for that title "Rita Hayworth - avain pakoon" was the most idiotic thing to do for any movie title ever, in any language. That Finnish title translated to English is "Rita Hayworth - the key for escape" which gives away the plot.
Proper nouns and common nouns.
The general rule should be: a proper noun is not translated, in the "text in art" as well as in the text. Exception: the proper noun contains a pun, a puzzle, or a suggestion to solve a puzzle, e. g. the empty aluminium can of "Shining Fin Tuna" brand, which is written on the can itself, could be used to reflect the sunlight in a puzzle.
A common noun is translated, in the "text in art" as well as in the text, with the exception of the most recognised english words like Circus, Hotel, Bank, or when the common noun goes together with the proper noun in a toponym e.g. Wall Street, Finchley Road... But I have to say that professional translators are well trained on these differences so I'd expect them to distinguish common nouns as I did it.
If there's a closeup of an English newspaper, I picture the camera panning down the paper as the player reads through subtitles (possibly paced by the player tapping a button to read the next couple lines; or without need of button presses and a player could change the speed of subtitles).
- the sheriff does not wear a cowboy outfit but a green and beige uniform
- the post office is yellow themed with a black post horn logo
- the town sign is orange, not green
- the American diner is replaced by a Bratwurst stand or a döner kebap shop
- the Quickie Pal is replaced by a Späti
- Ray and Reyes are not FBI agents but Kripo-Kommissare (don't forget to change the badge icon!)
- Reyes is not Hispanic. He is of Turkish descent. His name is Yilmaz.
- the name of the town is "Krähwinkel an der Wipper", not "Thimbleweed Park"
- Ransome's mistress is not in Aspen but in St. Moritz
...
Not funny repeating joke aside, translation of art is a good thing, but there may be a few exceptions. For the german translation you should send the list to Boris as well.
It's just very unusual in movies to have more than a translation subtitle for assets. So the character in the movie would take a look at a newspaper with an English headline and the subtitle would provide a translation. This is often simply fixed by letting the person read out the headline. So having German voice but original art wouldn't feel weird at all. We are all used to it. :)
If I had to choose, I'd rather like to see more special animation and polished art than translated art that has the potential to harm the game if something goes wrong.
omg... I just imagined an Oktoberfest version of Thimbleweed Park in Germany. :D
In Italy, we are totally accostumed to see US characters in US stories speaking Italian in a US world.
I would suggest to actually go so far as to make it possible to separately select the languages for the three item groups
- text / subtitles
- artwork
- speech audio
For example, a player might be willing to have English audio with subtitles in his own language just to improve his language skills (I have fond childhood memories of when I, living by in Germany, would be watching Star Trek: Next Generation on Dutch TV in our cable - in English, but with Dutch subtitles!) Etc.
Speaking of Shining: I've heard that Kubrick arranged for re-translations to be done, in order to check whether the translations were felicitous.
Unlike Zak, MM had translated art, though there was very few "text in art" in MM. In the german version there was written "gehaimlabor" in the prison, for instance. They even translated the spelling mistake there.
Though, not everything would need to be translated for the german version. For instance, you can say "Bank" or "News" in German as well - even the above mentioned word "Circus". Furthermore, every german child knows the english labeled (often illuminated) "open" signs at stores and snack bars. The proper names don't need to be translated either.
By the way, in the german version of Indy 3 the Nazi symbols were cut out for legal reasons (I never missed them).
But wooden houses are common in Scandinavia, too.
Translating the game language does not move the location of the town 'Thimbleweed Park' to a different country, so especially translated art has to be done really carefully. (I have no doubt that Boris Schneider Johne will do a good job and find the right balance.)
No, not in the C64 version.
That's also the reason why the German version of DOTT contained MM v2 in contrast to the English version which had MM v1.
My copy is not pirated, by the way! :)
Whenever I watch a Pixar movie where they actually take the time to re-render stuff with on-screen text, it completely throws me, particularly if I watch it with the english audio track. The only time German text in English movies makes sense is if the movie takes place during WW2, and they're looking at a German newspaper :-)
Moreover, in The Force Awakens the english subtitles are part of the video stream whenever an alien is talking, so the translated subtitles are displayed at the top. Though, it better to watch it in the original language version anyway.
Different time...
The latest Star Wars movies kept the original names.
This sounds a little bit like Spaceballs (guess what year it came out...)! What names were used there?
(Pssst: He is called Darth Vader, but you couldn't know.)
Listen carefully, the following is the STAR WARS IV in italian, dubbed in italian. Here is the point where the militars are discussing about the utilization of the Death Star or not, arguing with Darth Vader about the power of the Force...
https://youtu.be/1EV6G4LCcTk?t=36m39s
(until 37.18)
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3bwj4q/til_darth_vaders_name_was_changed_to_lord_fener/
Now I now what Vader sounds like in Italian :-)
TOILET in italian it's written "WATER", but pronunced "VATER", like "VADER" but with a T.
So, in the 80s, you couldn't say "DART VATER", it sounded too hilarious.
LORD FENNER was more ... imperial!
If you don't know what I am talking about, click the link:
http://www.carlettofx.com/Ridoppiaggi.html
(*WARNING*: Parental Advisor - Explicit content)
*nobody likes smartasses* *smartass mode off*
And you would need to do an awful lot of localization to not have anything stick out. For example, in Germany, the police does not use badges and they don't even have decent IDs. So there will always be something that shows that the game takes place in an Anglo-Saxon setting and that is perfectly ok.
An example of the first case would be a legible billboard. You mouse-over it and it says "billboard" in whatever language. Then, the character reads it aloud when you "LOOK AT" it.
The second case may be a little weird- but you could test it out on some people to see if it isn't too unnatural. Have a special case where translated text is displayed in a different color when you mouse over it. For example, there's some words that read "floor 5" next to the door in a stairwell. When you mouse over it, it displays the text translation in a different color. The player realizes it's not a clickable/interactable object- s/he knows it's just a translation of the word that appear in English.
As for your newspaper example, if I was watching a French movie and saw a scene with a closeup of a French newspaper, I would expect to see it subtitled (not a French newspaper written in English). Of course, if a character was reading the text aloud, the voice could be dubbed in English as well.
Only in that case, only that note should be left unchanged, IMHO.
On translations: even in English there might be an issue with the hotel floor numbering (as the first floor is something different in British vs American English.)
Do you make also some games with text in art, involved in puzzles?
Sometimes, there are common saying that have many translation, depending on their context.
If Ron has planned 1 month for the translation, that means that 3 weeks should be used for the pure work of translation, and the remaining week to test if the translation is meaningful.
I think that one would like the solution he is accustomed to. In Italy, we are accustomed to:
1st choice: the visual itself is not translated, but it comes with a subtitle with the translation when it is required for the understanding. This happens very often.
2nd choice: no translation of visuals at all. Sometimes, the dubbing introduces a sentence/word/exclamation with the translation, which is often clever.
3rd choice: the art is translated; it gives a strange feeling, it's pretty rare. They do it in Pixar movies, if I recall correctly, it's obviously well crafted, but still it feels strange.
And there is the silly 4th option as well: They put subtitles for EVERYTHING visual, no matter how obvious (for instance a place or a date) and/or unimportant (for instance a completely unrelated poster) they may be. In Germany, we call those "Deppenuntertitel" (= subtitles for lunatics). I've also seen examples were people talk in a foreign language with subtitles for the audience, and they DUBBED them to German anyway AND they put a German subtitle on top of it.
Good thing, we have Boris Schneider, thus I'm pretty sure, nothing that stupid will happen here. :)
So yeah, it's all about how we are accustomed to view things.
Furthermore, in a game where you have a "Look at" option, translation could be provided in a character dialog line. That would sound more natural (and it would save the time and budget of having to redraw art for each language).
Of course, it also depends on the nature of puzzle that involves text-in-art... But be very careful with any puzzle involving text, because it could be super tricky to translate (I still remember that infamous Gabriel Knight 2 tape splicing puzzle...).
Lastly, if you want an estimate of how long translation will take (or cost), just let me know. I've been doing this for a while now.
I think it would be not fair to not at all translate art for those players.
Whilst some untranslated purely decoration art may be acceptable (or even authentic in some special cases: a flashing "open"-sign, the term "circus", or the town and character names), puzzle-related art should of course be translated. How could a non-English speaking player otherwise solve the puzzle?
Then of course there are pieces of text-art which may be unrelated to a puzzle, but still contribute to the overall ambience which the player is expected to perceive: "closed forever" or "for sale" texts which increase a certain mood of despair, or a "call Ron 555-..." graffiti (a phone number which you can actually try to call). It would be a pity if players missed those parts of the game, so I think as much as possible should be translated in the first place. If the translation feels too awkward in some special cases, maybe a translation subtitle triggered by a "look at" (as suggested before) can help.
Of course we could compare this problem to the late 80ies & early 90ies adventure games, but I don't think it is fair to do so. I am not a native speaker, but back then - as a child - I played a couple of those games in English language, and most of the translated games had untranslated art anyway. I have great memories to those games (also how I learned some English via those games), but I certainly missed jokes as well as more subtle ambience-related stuff that was transported by in-game text-art. I realize this now when I revisit those games. - I don't want to make those memories more golden than they are, and I follow your announcement of TP being a modern game designed to match "how the early adventure games live on in our memories" (i.e. without tech. restrictions, with clever puzzle design etc.). In my "prettified memories", art is translated, and I hope to see an adventure game that has lots of translated art!
It is a good sign that there actually is puzzle-related text-art, because it tells me that the puzzles integrate the different media of the game. If text-art or some piece text/puzzle in general is difficult to translate, I would vote for translations that happily adapt and change meaning rather than keeping untranslated parts.
It is all a question of the quality of the translation. If all the text(-art) has seen a sophisticated high-quality translation, I do not think it will break immersion at all.
The amount of time that you, Ron and team Thimbleweed, spend on the polishing on the dialogue, shows us the importance of the text - and thus of course the importance of a high-quality translation.
The topic reminds me of discussions about translations of Terry Pratchett novels (quite a free translation), the Harry Potter novels (translation of EVERYTHING, even street names), or the German dubbing of the Bud Spencer + Terence Hill movies (complete new jokes): There is always the discussion of "overdo" vs. "missing parts". There will always subtle differences between translation and original. A language translation will not move the location of the setting. However, it works fine if it is well done.
Translation may be awkward if it is generally frouzy or if it tries to mimic language-specific jokes instead of replacing them with a localized variant. A couple of the good-old-adventure games had quite lousy translations - deal-breakers basically. I do not have this fear for Thimbleweed Park.
"Mauve": Ron + kind of everyone else like Jenn and David
yellow: I guess not Malcolm but a person at Microsoft
"nearly red": art: Gary and Octavi and Mark
blue: music: Steve Kirk and "put name here" (The Team page should be updated)
green: Testing: Robert and the reckless bug hunters
and so on,
And this single red is the evil deadline
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Gnatt
I think my rationalization goes something like this: the game is the product of the culture the makers represent, be it the jokes, the types of scenery, architecture style, types of characters etc. If TP uses themes from X-Files, Twin Peaks and Stephen King, then one would probably classify the identity of the game as north american (even if the town would be Town1 and characters Character1, Character2...). Therefore it would feel a bit out of place if some street sign art or the convention sign art would be translated to my language/culture. Like it would try to persuade my imagination that those cultural concepts might exist in my country (for example a trekkie convention...maybe not but not totally impossible).
I don't know if the translated art thing is widely common practice or not but somehow it feels like taking the first step in a list of things to come. And the next ones would be localized character names, localized architecture, localized mood, localized jokes etc. etc.
So, I would much rather just experience the original art and then just click on it or have a timely subtitle pop out on my language if it is a passing moment. In the movies, hearing impaired people get their additional subtitles too and I don't know if they complain too much about them. But this is just me and let there be many flowers and so on.
Yes. I'd like it.
O'Timboluidd' sta'nfronte a te.
Guys, it would be great if we readers of the forum from all Italy do an amateur dubbing of the game. Zack is good, as he shows in the fake podcast, with his friend fake David Fox. I'm good too, I've also a little experience in voice acting. And since we come from different places we could distinguish the characters with slightly different accents. It would be an honor and a privilege.
If there are someone from Venice, Rome and Sardinia, we could make an italian translation with regional slangs :-)
Anyway, I'm not expecting much from the Italian translation. It's difficult to adapt humor and I've always seen jokes get lost instead of adapted... let's hope for the best!
Listening to the opening sequence, the voice of the female actress sounds to me without a strong inflection, like an educated american woman. And if it is so, it don't need an inflection in Italian too.
We could also do effects in voices to distinguish thoughts and spoken words.
I hope that, at the time the game will be completed and the proper instructions released thanks to Ron, we are still in contact. In any case you have mine.
I remeber well that every character had an accent from a specific region.
It was fantastic!
I agree in making a Thimbleweek Pard dubbing, with a character per region.
I think we could do a good job!
I well remember the game starting with a voice saying:
"...FRIENDS?!" :-)
It's stuck in my mind. Forever!!
My skype adress is
raggio.giallo
Anyway, I believe we could easily remain in contact.
Let's play all the game through.
Then we'll choose some lines of three or four characters.
Then we'll meet on a social network or on a mailing list. We'll do a casting. Everyone would give his interpretation of the chosen lines, so that we can evaluate which person is the most suitable for which character. Then we'll vote for it, and choose the actors.
I haven't acted for some 15 years, but.... Why not? :-)
We could prepare and practice every line by ourselves, then we could meet. I bet we can do everything in a weekend working hard... So that we can save on the rental of the studio recording just a couple of days, and we won't get fired on our real jobs...
But please, no regional characterization. Or at least, let's keep it to a minimum. Remember S&M...
They did a very funny voices.
Look at this part, in Lucre Island, where a guy selling perfumes has the voice of a native of Bergamo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuuQOA_LdZU&t=4m55s
Unforgettable!
Is it any good?
Tank controls FTW! (btw. you can also change it to screen-relative)
I will definitely play it, but i guess not now. I still have some lifetime left...
When running into a wall it makes you automatically turn which makes it sometimes hard to hit a narrow passage (especially when running).
p.s. Maybe you played resident evil a lot and developed a resistance :)
I wasn't really into Resident Evil (though I completed the first one at least once), but I did play the Alone in the Dark series.
Even to get the character to start running was a challenge :-)
But then it also helped getting you scared like sh*t when you cannot move away from the things which want to kill you.
I also played a lot of FPS which made me especially hate this turning-away-from-wall feature.
Not sure what you mean with slow. You have faster modes of running and turning. You can browse through the inventory quite fast and also use hotkeys to select items. Maybe you mean the case when you have to cycle through hotspots in reach or have to reposition to have the correct one in reach.
I never really analysed the puzzles in GF too much, but when I will play it next time I try to think like a game developer and apply the things I learned in this blog :-) (something I wouldn't like to do when playing games the first time, this would be one curse of being a game developer I guess)
But when I did play it the first time I enjoyed it very much and also the subsequent times. So I can live with a good (delivered) story even with weak puzzles.
I also like Broken Age. Here I noticed that the puzzles are more on the simple side (one-click-interface also contributes), but story was enjoyable. It's an adventure game inexperienced gamers and even non-gamers can easily have fun with.
You are right, i also played Alone in the Dark (I+II), and the tank controls helped to get immersed and scare people.
In GF you are dead anyway and the tank control is the only thing that scares you :)
In such way that i never attempted to replay it.
You pretty much summed up what i meant with "slow". Yes, you can run, but then you often crash into a bounding box. For object interaction you need to align correctly, so clumsy.
It gets tiresome when you are stuck and actively need to go long distances by "hand", this effort adds up to the feeling of a slow pace. I stuck at least 3 times, and i remember it totally sucked. Fortunately the story was rewarding.
Btw. regarding system requirements: You can also play the original version with ResidualVM + mouse mod (which actually inspired Double Fine when they made the remastered version).
However, as Darth Vader would say, "the Sardinian accent is strong with this one". Not at "groundskeeper Willie" level, and I can do my best to minimize it, but still one would notice I'm Sardinian :P
(For those wondering, in case it isn't clear: in the Italian version of The Simpsons, Willie's character was depicted as Sardinian)
In the German versions the voice of Max was the one of Bart Simpson! (very strange at first but hey, you get used to it)
While playing Full Throttle, I never once thought: "hey, that"s Luke Skywalker!"
did you know that the good actress who played Elaine in MI3 was the same actress who performed the orgasm in "Essere donna oggi" by Elio e le Storie Tese?
But I didn't know she was involed in Elio E Le Storie Tese songs, ahahah!!!
This is the reason everybody is a game developer. I just don't get one thing: who is the guy driving my bus home then?
Man, i was as kid so happy, my english was non existent, and already there i felt he did an amazing job.
Also he just didn't translated it, he adapted it to our way of Humor. And to top this, he didn't used jokes like for an example there would be a T.V. on with Sheldon Cooper, translate it to our awful GZSZ, who would not fit in the same way. Boris Schneider is a genius and i thank him even 30 years? later, that i was able to play Monkey Island. Made a brillant game a Masterpiece! Not to forget the Music, who also is never reached again.
An idea maybe to support players who would have problems with Signs etc.. Such names shouldn't be translated. Destroys the whole Atmosphere and there is not without any reason that Names, Cities etc., should not be translated. Best example was World of Warcraft. Even nowadays, people are feeling gross when you hear or read such name like Ironforge translated. :OD
Would it not be helpful, if you could push the "Alt" key for example and when you hover with your Mousecursor over an "Open-Sign" for example and it would be written at the cursor the translated text? *shoulder shrug*
Sry for my misstyping and english. Broken right arm and never had english in school. It is all just from reading english books, movies, games and a small dictionary book for travellers. *blush*
PS: I would like to thank all the bakers, who let made this project that special way possible. And Thimbleweed Team that are the only one who can make such game. Naja, maybe the Andromeda Guys would come close. And Mr. Schneider, what an extraordinary one in translations. Thank God he is in the boat! I would like to mention, that he topped the english jokes sometimes with his creative mind. <3
We Italians have a loooong long history of mistranslations and misadaptations. The most infamous example is the Italian version of The Big Bang Theory, the first N episodes (I think N == 8 but not sure) were awfully adapted and most of the humor got lost.
I sure hope we get a good translator this time. Otherwise I'll make my own.
Bobby pin sign = cartello di molletta
Remote control = telecommando
Not to mention the dialogue sentences. But I played it after having finished Zak in English, so it was Ok and dirle the fun!
Ehm... at that time there were only "trained" copies...
with no manuals at all!
if i were dev, i would keep it simple, english and thats it. you cant handle all languages on earth. if you cant read english then let it go. play chess. or check google.
in case you have a big production budget, then for sure you can go with translations of the main markets. but if you dont have such budget, like this TP project, i would keep it simple and in english. maybe the devs have another POV. maybe they could share their thoughts again what they think about translations and the effect of it. how big is the additional gross by doing it? or could it be even a loss? the ratio between localisation effort and margin gain is important.
Even non-English speaking developers now often develop their games in English first to have a better version for the large English speaking audience.
But I still want to have game translations, especially of such games which are suitable for a young audience (e.g. I don't care for Doom in German, but TWP, Broken Age, Nelly Cootalot are games I want in German too so I can easily play them with children).
Somehow, the devs are also teachers who educate the kids.....meanwhile... !!!
Is it all experience or do you have a system?
I am currently using:
1.) guess how long it takes
2.) multiply by 4
Madame Morena likes men with authority.. and cuffs
Actually I dont care if everything is translated or just conversations. Full localisation as well as partial one have advantages AND disadvantages. In full loc. one has a stronger focus on the quests. In partial loc. one has a better impression for the cultural background of the story.
But there is a third way: of course you have a pure english version. Then you could make a FULL foreign version with translated picture-texts as well. Additionally you could make a second version for the same language that only changes texts but no picture.
This way every user could decide for oneself....
Thanks for the update. It looks very aggressive, but it is clear you've had plenty of experience managing development projects before, so I trust it will all work out in the end. If not, there is always "panic crunch time," which tends to produce surprisingly acceptable results, at the cost of a rather large piece of the team's lifeblood. But what's a few decades of physical existence among friends? :)
In other news, your game has been mentioned in a recent article at Ars Technica. It is extremely flattering, and I'm sure you will enjoy it.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/05/thimbleweed-park-is-like-discovering-a-new-game-from-lucasarts-heyday/
Regards,
-dZ.
There are a bunch of italian guys here.
Please read this post, we are thinking about a nice idea, dubbing Thimbleweed Park with italian voices (just for fun).
Where region are you from?
Please, take note of my e-mail address and keep me posted on your project! I'm definitely in!
:-)
Is there any possibility to Thimbleweed be translated to Brazillian Portuguese?
Regards
First I tried to remember where this quote came from.
Then it hit me.
Then I lol'd.
But now I have an uneasy feeling: does this mean that this game will be the Holy Grail and the Ark of the Covenant of adventure games, all in one, but once it is finished, it will disappear in some secret government warehouse, never to be seen again? I hope not...