State Of The Game #3
May 04, 2016
It's been a while since I wrote a state of the game post. It was supposed to be done back in Jan, but then things happened.
I'm finding it harder and harder to write blog posts because the most interesting things happening right now on the project would be profound spoilers, but we shall forge forward, none-the-less, and-all-that.
On to the state-of-the-game.
How We Got Here
It's been a long road. We started working on this little game we call Thimbleweed Park a year and three months ago and I feel we've grown to be a nice little family, not just the team, but also everyone on the blog. The project progressed pretty peachy until October, then the holidays showed up and it felt like we hit a snag. We had a lot of drive coming out of our first sprint, but then we puttered along after that.
Not sure exactly the cause, maybe a little burn out, accompanied with feeling a little overwhelmed with the monster of a game we'd created, but persevere we will and did.
Just about the time were were getting over post-holiday focus back, GDC showed up. Our original plan was to have an open-to-the-public party where people would get to play the game, but as we started making plans, we realized we just weren't to a place where we'd be happy with the game we had to show. On top of that, everyone was very busy, and organizing something like that was just too much work. We gave it a good try.
So we opted to do a press only showing of the game. When you're demoing to the press, it's a lot easier to do hand waving and divert attention from areas of the game that aren't finished or even slightly broken. The press are used to seeing games in this state and generally know how to interpret and project what they are seeing. This is fine for a first look, but not for a preview or a review, but that's all we were doing.
Prepping for the press demo took a lot more work than we anticipated. It hijacked the sprint we should have been doing as we instead entered a phase of polishing. None of it was lost work, it all had to be done anyway, it was just done out of order and distracted our focus.
Polishing included adding special case animations that we often leave until the end (in case the puzzle changes and it's not needed anymore), touch-ups on art, making sure all the verbs that make sense don't respond with "that doesn't seem to work." We also added a lot of ambient background animation, like waving flags and twinkling stars, so the rooms had a static life to them.
For the demo, we decided to show an abbreviated opening to the game and then jump to the place where the Ransome flashback happens and began polishing and testing those areas.
Around this time, we also decided to switch our backer system to PledgeManager so backers could upgrade their pledges. What started out as a quick few-day project had spanned into weeks, all the while we were trying to get ready for GDC.
And... in the middle of all this, we decide to attend PAX East. Yet another distraction to endure. We briefly thought about showing one of the other flashbacks, but sanity prevailed and we took the GDC demo and continued to polish and harden it.
The GDC demos to the press were "guided" demos. They had the option of playing, but we were always by their side to help and warn. The PAX demos would be unguided. Players were left to their own devices to poke and prod wherever they pleased. We needed to make sure we plugged every hole. We needed to test as if it was a shipping project and this takes a lot more time. To the ThimbleTesting team's credit, no major bugs were found at PAX East, everything was rock solid.
Jenn's job on the project is the programming the Hotel and Franklin, since we weren't going to be showing her area, she was free to help set up our PAX booth and all the merch. As the pictures show, she did an amazing job with a very small budget. One of the smartest things she did was put two stools at each station so a friend could play. Adventure game are always better when shared.
Getting the demo ready for PAX took another 3 weeks out of our schedule. Again, none of it was wasted work, it was just distracting and felt like we weren't making any real forward progress on the game.
I was getting severely distracted with managing the project and struggled to find time to do programming that wasn't just fire-fighting bugs.
The role I've always wished we had was a producer, someone to manage all the schedules and sprints, and keeping an eye on the big picture while we forge ahead with puzzles and art. It's a role I'd been taking on and the burden was starting to show. I was spending more time working on spreadsheets then doing programming, design and writing.
After some budget analysis, we decided to bring on Chase Martin as our producer, a role I wish we could have filled months ago. We didn't really have the budget for a producer for the whole project, but coming on at this stage was doable. With Chase on board, I'm hoping to have more time to focus on my other three jobs. Hopefully it will make things better for the rest of the team as well.
The UI was starting to bug me. I love the C64 font, but seeing it on the screen really pigeonholed the game as a retro-game, despite it being much more than that. As more and more people looked at the game, we realized the font was becoming a limiting factor, much more than the verb UI.
Our goal has always been to capture the charm of the classic adventure games, but also to introduce them to a new audience without compromising what the game was. The C64 font was a hard thing for people to get around.
In the weeks leading up to PAX we tried a lot of fonts. Our tester builds had a new font every few days and none of them were clicking. We tried nice smooth truetype fonts, we tried pixelated truetype fonts, we tried crazy bitmap fonts and boring fonts. Nothing felt right. With the help of an outside designer we came across the font you see below. It is a hand-drawn pixel font. It's sharp and clear and you can see the pixels. It's a font we could have used back at Lucasfilm and it felt right.
The plan was, and still is, to retain the C64 font and allow players to switch with the press of a key. If you like it better, then please play with it. It's a good font and we don't treat it as second class.
For the opening scene of the demo, we wanted a full screen shot of the agents at the body. Mark extended the screen just around the body to full screen. Once the opening was over, we'd switch on the verbs and be back to the black cropped verbs.
While installing the new font, I accidentally left some code commented out and the verbs were drawn over the background, without a black background, and it was stunning to see. The game had a whole different feel. It took me around 10 seconds of walking around to realize that the whole game needed to be like this.
We had one week until PAX and our demo included over 15 rooms, all of which needed to be extended.
Oh... and Mark was gone for two weeks!
Octavi to the rescue as he took on the job of extending all the rooms in record time. Nothing playable happens below the interface, so it didn't need to be that interesting, and it actually wants to be uninteresting.
It really changes the feeling of the game significantly, but still retains the charm of the verb UI, something I didn't want to lose.
For those of you who want a more retro experience, not only can you switch back to the C64 font, you can also turn on the black verb background. But that's not all! Don't order yet! You can set the opacity of the black background to anything you want.
PAX went well. We had a great booth (thanks Jenn) and had hundreds of people playing the game. Almost everyone who sat down to play finished the 20+ minute demo and no one rage quit. I'll take this all as a good sign.
Where We're Going
Now it's back to work. We don't have any shows coming up in the next few months, so we can get back to focusing on the game.
As our projected summer release date got closer, I was starting to get really worried. Back in Sept, we had a lot of steam and it felt like we'd be done the following Sept or Oct, just a few months out from the Kickstarter date. But, as we hit April it just didn't look like that was feasible.
Well, not feasible unless we all went into crunch mode.
I don't like crunch mode. I've done a lot of crunch mode in my career and made people do crunch mode over the many years of running projects and it's just not something we want to do. We don't have an oppressive publisher looking over us and we have the flexibility to make the game anything we want (thank you backers!).
When Chase came on as producer, we did a complete relook of the schedule to see how much work we had left to do and how long it was going to take us. If we don't crunch, the workload puts us out to mid October, but we also have to go through the Microsoft cert process for Xbox, which can take one to two months. That would put us out in Nov or Dec and that isn't a time we want to launch. It's important that the AAA games have their day in the sun, and we didn't want to distract from that.
The other option was to start cutting. I feel good about the scope and size of the game, I don't want to cut it down just to make a ship date.
In the course of making a game, you make a lot of cuts for design reasons, and those are good cuts that make the game better, but when you cut for schedule and budget, you run the risk of cutting meat and not fat. That said, it's often hard to tell the difference, sometimes you think you're cutting meat, when in fact you're cutting fat and you're better off. It's often hard to tell the difference when you're in the kitchen.
But in the end, I decided I didn't want to hack large sections of the game away just to make an Oct date. We continue to make small cuts and refinements, but all those are to make the game better.
So we've made the decision to move the release of the game to January, mostly likely the middle to end of the month.
The budget is looking OK. With the addition of a few new and needed people, plus the extra time, things are getting tight, but we should still be good.
We raised a little bit of extra money through some angel investors for marketing and PR, two things that can be as important as making a good game. I feel good about using the Kickstarter money exclusively to build the game and the additional money to market it. It feels like a nice line, but it's also a little misleading. Marketing and PR is as much a part of building a successful game as music, art, and programming and they should be part of any budget.
In terms of the game, I think we're all feeling pretty good about it. It really feels like a good solid adventure game, just like we would have built back at Lucasfilm.
The one area that I'm worried about happens halfway through the first act. You unlock a large portion of the world and it's a great moment, filled with excitement and reward but players lose direction. It's a problem we'll probably solve with some good dialog and maybe a couple of new pinch points so there aren't too many new places to go. It's important to always give players focus. Player should always know what they need to be doing, but not always how they need do it. Being confused and lost is not a puzzle.
We started outside playtesting with testers culled from the readers of this blog. We did two people in Seattle and will now open it up to San Francisco and London. We have (literally) hundreds of people who signed up, so I don't know if we'll get to everyone.
As I've said many times on this very blog, doing playtesting is critical, but it can be time consuming. You have to organize people to come in, set up the location, spend several hours watching them, and on top of all that, you have to make sure the latest build works and is crash-bug free. It's a lot of prep and it's easy to keep putting it off, but resist the urge. Playtest! Playest! Playtest!
We have three bug testers on the project. Robert (lead tester) is full time and the other two are part time. We're looking to hire a fourth and that should round out the bug testing team until the end of the project. Our testers are amazing, some of the best I've worked with. Bug testing a game isn't fun and games. You're not being paid to play a game, you're being paid to break a game, then document it and figure out exactly how you broke it. It takes a special person to do this well, and they are gold when you find them.
What Scares Me
One thing that scares me at this point is the amount of work that needs to be done. It's a big game, but it needs to be. It's about the size of Monkey Island, 2 and to fulfill our promise of a "new classic adventure game", I feel it needs to be that size. I don't want to cut anything unless it makes the game better to do so.
At this point, it's about making smart decisions about the little things we can cut or rework to save time without compromising the game.
I actually enjoy that process. It's always been the fun part of a project for me. You need to make quick decisions about what is and isn't important. It really focuses you.
But it's also very stressful. It's one of the reasons I don't want to work crunch. Staying sharp can make all the difference.
Moving the game to January puts a lot of pressure on the budget. We had slop if anything went wrong, and although I wouldn't call moving the date "going wrong", it does eat up our budget slop. There is no more runway.
That worries me, but I feel like we have it under control. I don't think I've ever worked on a project that didn't feel like this towards the end.
The last thing is the amount of playtesting the end game will get. We've done a lot of testing of the early game, but we're still putting the end together and it's not in a outside player playable state, plus it's hard to jump new testers to the end of the game, so we need to pull groups back in for a 2nd or 3rd round.
Thank you to our backers and supporters for making all this possible.
- Ron
I like the new change to the UI, the fact that the black background has been removed and the actions are layered on top of the game makes it a lot more immersive.
Why keeping a solid background behind each object in the inventory ? Wouldn't a global dark shadow for the whole inventory makes it better and again more immersive ?
Really looking forward to play with the game :)
Not crunching is a great move if you're in a position to make it. Very excited to play this!
Have those who've been selected for play testing been informed yet? I signed up for London but have yet to hear. Just want to know if I'm still in with a chance...!
What is couple months, in respect to eternity? Take your time, and give us players a great adventure game, that's all we want !
I wish there would be a possibility to get a demo of the game a couple of months before the release. This would fulfill the tradition of a classic adventure game.
...however I don't want to cause you additionl distraction either.
Thank you for all the hard work. Love your posts and podcasts.
Good Night!
I have one question. There seem to be a lot of options in the game (voice, resolution, font, verb background etc...). Will you tell us what the recommended way to play TWP is as the makers intended it? I have my own way to play the game (no voice, "old-style" resolution, new font, no background), but I'd like to know what you suggest what the most enjoyable way is.
- "Remeber-when-you-were-a-child" profile
- "Old Verbs but New Pixels" profile
- "Old Pixels but New Verbs" profile"
Thanks for the answer.
This is just going to make for a perfect late Christmas present!
I find it more immediate and practical then the Wheel-UI.
Things aren't gonna change no matter if I like this postponement or not, so all I wanna conclude is this: please make sure this is that last postponement and really publish no later than January 2017!
Pushing because you "designed too much game" for example is a very stupid reason.
Pushing because you tweaked the game's formula for the better is a good reason.
Pushing because the game needs polish to be great instead of average is a very good reason.
So while I wont ever write something like "take as much time as you need" (constraints like time are a GOOD thing!! And taking 'as much time' only leads to loosing focus) I would also never ask to publish the game no matter what...
That all said: Thanks to Rons transparency (he warned us right from the bat about the various perils the end game might hold!) and the grear work and progress we have seen so far I for my part am super happy with the current state and am OK with the delay.
Oooh! It also means more podcasts and blog entries! I will surely miss those after the game's done.
Thanks Thimle Team for the great journey up until now!
Those five months derive from a chain of factors, and the choice makes sense: I don't want the blog to get black because the team is in constant crunsh mode for the next four months, I don't want the game to get shorter just to hit a deadline, I don't want the well deserved buzz of this release to get muted by some surprising Left For Dead III or Half Life crashing into the christmas market.
There is not unfounded Schaferish optimism, instead Ron seems to be very aware of all the limiting factors on the road. This is one of those occasions not having a publisher might really be an advantage for the final product and the project diary could turn out to be the must-read for future crowdfunding developers.
However, there are usually no delays between parting with the money and getting a preordered products when it comes to conventionally published games. And if they occur (or a game gets published in early beta stage, leaving everything to be fixed in the next months, or servers are not set up yet for multiplayer experience or even worse copy protection, which both means essentially the same as a delay), it most likely results in an instant shitstorm. In the case of crowdfunding, it all depends on the reasoning: if an overpromised deadline is the result of an underpromised game, delays are accepted. So delay is an option rather than just a failure.
I think a lot of people who aren't in software development really don't understand how freaking hard it is. You're never writing the same product twice, so you never know what kinds of roadblocks you're going to encounter. Asking a developer to give a precise schedule is like asking somebody how long it's going to take them to hike from Maryland to Oregon without giving them a map. Sure, they know roughly how far they'll have to hike, but they have no idea what kinds of things they'll encounter on the way!
So it's really meaningless to ask a developer to "please make sure that this is the last delay". If they had the ability to make sure that there are no delays, surely they would have used that ability right from the beginning!
Anyway, Zak's translation is far more literal and relevant to the original. Maybe is not as grammarly correct as yours in english, but it makes sense: a new yorker is more familiar with english than an Italian, an Italian is more familiar with latin than a new yorker.
Everyone can argument that a particular thing is [adjective you want], but for another person, tha same thing could be [another adjective you want].
It's useless to dispute/argument/fight on tastes, because it's not nice what is beautiful, but it's nice what you like.
But yeah, I’m loving the new UI also:) That 64 font is neat and suits well for retro feeling but eventually I found it kind of annoying whereas that new font looked first bit odd but now that I’m used to it I think it’s really soothing and an excellent choice.
Been following this blog since the beginning and thought I'd say hi! I've got to say that this is the most professionally run kickstarter campaign I have been involved in so thanks for that. The blogs have been fun to read and offer plenty of insight. Also to hear/read developers enjoying themselves and with a cool community behind the developers is rare these days. Truly this is an old-school game.
I like all the graphical improvements, but now I'm getting worried about hardware requirements. Will a 5 years old entry-level computer be ok for running this game? I hope so! Thanks
Right?
Generally, --if you're not on very old hardware like me-- even with older Intel HD 3000 for example (pre-Haswell) and generally concerning Mesa3D on Linux OpenGL 3.3 is done and really working for all drivers. Double Fine used to require OpenGL 3.3 for their recent titles on Linux like Grim Remastered.
If you want to look into the situation on Linux (very helpful and frequently updated site:) https://mesamatrix.net/
(OpenGL 3.3 done for all, OpenGLES 3.0 for all, OpenGLES 3.1 only for intel and radeonsi so far, it's developing *very slowly* on the other drivers. OpenGL 4.0/4.1 developing for under a Christmas tree release, I guess, until it's really upstream in the distributions)
Hope this might help!
Godspeed, Captain Gilbert!
Why not create a "demo", but one without any relevant content (like just one room, or demo graphic, or simply show a shader, some sound and one place to walk) and release it to bakers just to learn whether it crashes anywhere?
BTW: Best kickstarter ever!!
if you feel the game needs more time than expected that's fine. You are doing a great job here and from what I saw and heard so far I am all the way excited for the final result!!
The extended screen with the fonts and icons on top looks fantastic, I'll still be using the old fonts though :-)
thanks for the update. Take the time you need to finish the game and don't cut the storyline only for the release date. I am so happy that you are making this game and can't await to play it :-)
Congratulations on rejuvenating the UI.
Also, as a backer, I really appreciate that you are managing the budget professionally and will be delivering the game you promised without having to kickstart for more funds or otherwise turn to episodic distribution.
Would back again :)
Great update!
I'm not in the business of making games and maybe I misunderstood the concept of crunch mode. In every line of work comes a time where you just have to roll up your sleeves and put in some overtime. But turning a few extra hours into something close to 16 hours a day, six to seven days a week for several weeks or even months - it's outrageous! And that it seems to be so widely accpeted as a normal way of doing things in game development (when it really should be regarded as mismanagement) seems - to me - absurd!
So don't let anyone go all manager on you and tell you "oh my, you are delaying the release date by a whopping 25%. I will let it pass this tine, but don't let it happen again."
We. Don't. Really. Care.
For the majority of people here; that's just 25% extra podcasts, blogs and forum fun!
As stated very clearly in the kickstarter, Ron and Gary know what they're doing, they don't want to promise things they cannot deliver. You can trust them...
Before the budget is gone, the game will be out.
A thought here: had the kickstarter been less successful (i.e. if none of the stretch goals like voice acting, translations or mobile port been met), that might also spared a few months. So if one want sto blame, or even worse, threaten Ron to not postpone any further than January 2017, one perhaps shouldn't have backed.
I am impressed about the progress and the current state of the game. Since you gave us broad insights into your considerations concerning the UI (new font, picture size etc.), a very nerdy retro thing came to my mind: Will Timbleweed Park include a scaler or "tube TV emulator"?
Ian Bogost discusses, for example, these kind of features which have become a part of the "Stella" emulator: http://bogost.com/games/a_television_simulator/
I mean, people will play the game on very large screens compared to the size of TVs we used back in the Maniac Mansion days and, maybe, appreciate a cool CRT television emulation instead of merely palm-sized pixels.
Are we going to see something similar in Thimbleweed Park? Or is this "fat" which has been cut out of the project?
Sebastian
"While installing the new font, I accidentally left some code commented out and the verbs were drawn over the background.... It took me around 10 seconds of walking around to realize that the whole game needed to be like this."
Seeing as I'm enjoying so much being along for this ride and that ride has now been extended, I've just thown some more dollars into Ransome's Swear Jar. This game thoroughly deserves it.
It's been some time I did not comment on the blog: I love how everything is turning out. Now worries if it will need some postponing!
And here it comes the controversial question mark: if budget is under stress and the game requires still plenty of playtesting, what about evaluating an early access reserved to only a fraction of pledgers or to a brand new tier of backers?
Sorry guys, I had to do it...
And the best part of this "delay":
Many more blogs and podcasts.
January 2017? That's closer to our own ETA for the new C64 adventure, hehe.
Let us know if you need/want something running on a C64 in TWP pleeease. Did I say please?
I hope the infamous 80% work for 20% of the game (or was it 90:10?) provide some fun for all of you as well nontheless!
Cheers, Martin
Nice idea enthusi, but I guess at this stage its more about getting done whats already planned :-/
Also the DOS executable thing isn't a bad thing: You could replace it with everything you like, including a C64 emulator of your choice. I'd like to see that possibility in TWP!
- Ray's cigarette advertisements
- Delores' Fortran one-liners
- Franklin's being spooky 101
- Reyes' something (I don't know anything about him...)
Keep up the awesome work! :)
2. On the budget: What about selling "merchandise articles" like posters on the website? Something like the beautiful landscape panorama on the PAX booth would be great!
3. About playtesting: Will the translated versions be playtested separately?
4. "The one area that I'm worried about happens halfway through the first act. You unlock a large portion of the world and it's a great moment (...). It's a problem we'll probably solve with some good dialog and maybe a couple of new pinch points so there aren't too many new places to go. It's important to always give players focus."
Some players on the other hand like exploration and open gameplay; we don't like handholding and love the process of finding "focus" on our own. But if you solve the "problem" with "good dialog": Nothing can be said against good dialog... :)
And the full screen thing also looks really, really good.
I like that the game is getting improvements that feel like natural extensions of things from the classic games...
So you're not ditching things that already work so well (like the verbs) just for the sake of changing things, but instead tweaking things where there is a genuine improvement (like the full screen).
The last stretch sounds like a challenge in terms of balancing resources, expectations, and sanity. But the only way out is through -- keep it up, you guys are killing it.
If you and your team are aiming for a new adventure in the size of Monkey2 I would gladly wait another year if needed and will be happy to participate in another round of Kickstarter.
You are making a game for us, the true fans of the genre and you are doing it in the best manner possible, going back to the classic era, the golden age of the adventure games.
Delays, budget, bugs, Mac crush, looks like its just part 1 of the new adventure.
M
I'd hate for your intellectual property to somehow get comprimised by a contract; specifically your game engine. With the work your doing with Thimbleweed park your're paving the way for other titles with under the Terrible Toybox brand and making a name for yourself.
The reason why I say this.. is because I saw the movie "Walt before Micky" and I saw his struggles with his own company and vision.
been following this wonderful and informative blog for some time. For me it is a journey from childhood C64 days with Maniac Mansion to today's developer days with an insight into game development. Impressive!
Please don't crunch, it isn't worth it. The posts show that you are all working hard. I'll happily read the blog and wait for the game to finish properly.
Transparency and the extended screens look great and I'm looking forward to playing around with the config file. No favourite font yet...
About voicemail: Some printed telephone books had a symbol if a number had an answering machine. It is Unicode U+2315 and looks like a mirrored "Q" or a magnifying glass. Maybe the symbol was used in 1987 in the US.
("size of Monkey Island 2" did it for me)
Thanks guys!!!
A really good UI is worth its effort and i prefer a 'right' one over a bunch of soso options (focused options can be nice though). The old font might look too simple but the Tron like version can look a little bit distracting and unbalanced in respect to the (wip?) inventory items.
A pattern i don't like in some (adventure) games is when they're structured like linear/explode/linear/explode/... Periodically you first step forward in tiny steps and then too much new content crashes on you, which forces you to Look at all the new stuff, Talk to all the new characters, grasp everything and try to get not stuck for too long (you might just not have payed enough attention to one piece in a conversation ). It can turn fun into work. Obviously you also don't want to progress in a linear streamlined bits too. So, it's about a good balancing and interesting rhythm.
One extreme case for example is Rubacava. It's quite awesome experiencing this whole town. But if you are stuck then there are a lot places to wander around aimlessly...
And it seems like it's a similar case Ron was talking about. Btw. his solution to manage this linearity issue (including other stuff like dead ends) are Puzzle Dependency Chartsâ„¢. If you are interested checkout the dependency chart of this game from one year ago: https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/final_puzzles (but don't look too closely if you want to avoid spoilers)
Offering a large town which you can explore, sounds good to me but i wouldn't want it to be like do your stuff in town a -> unlock town b, then do all your stuff again -> unlocks town c, and so on. Sadly many games work this way and i think that's boring.
Ideally everything (story/puzzles/rhythm) comes together in a nice way and that progression/exploration is more interesting. Kind of like the Pulp Fiction of adventure games.
Thanks for the link..
Take the time you need to make the game great and to keep y'all healthy and sane. Looking forward to playing Thimbleweed park. You peeps are amazing.
Goes to show he did read *every* comment of that UI blog storm .
I like the future. It has (real) Star Wars sequels and new old school Gilbert adventure games. (This includes all the great work so far from the TWP team)
But today I came up with an idea to preserve my sanity. I'm going to bring TWP to my Dad's retirement home, put it up on their big screen, and have group sessions where we all try to solve the mystery. I believe they'll find it very stimulating and I'll have an excuse to limit my obsessive behavior. Nah, it won't work--as with Monkey Islands, I'll be a TWP hermit until it's solved.
First of all thanks for creating such a project that follows the step of so famous 90's point & clisk games. The videos I saw are great but I have only ONE question: why didn't you use midi music with sfx as you did in the 90's ? Since you went back to vintage graphics, I believe you should do the same with sounds
anyway, this is a game I will buy !
thanks again
cyril
-dZ.
Here is a related Kickstarter update: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thimbleweedpark/thimbleweed-park-a-new-classic-point-and-click-adv/posts/1074236
Keep up with your great work! Crunch mode isn't the solution. We all love you :-)
I'm playing Broken Age. The game, automatically, chose italian as default language for texts and graphic (yes, there are graphic parts in the backgrounds or items which are translated).
They did a great job in translations: even measures are translated (inches in centimeters, for instance).
But.
They failed in the logic of a puzzle, because of a too literal translation. I want to report here as an example to help testers and future translaters of Thimbleweed Park not to stumble in the same error.
In short, the puzzle in english is:
- a boy aged 6 wears *size 7 shoes* (the number is visible in a picture)
- in a medical report of the boy aged 6, user can read that he had a growth spurt and *grew 3 sizes* in one year.
The puzzle is to guess what size shoes was the boy at age 5. (the answer is 4, of course).
How it was translated in italian:
- a boy aged 6 wears *size 24 shoes* (the number is visible in a picture, is the literal translations
- in a medical report of the boy aged 6, user can reat the he had a growth spurt and *grew 3 sizes* in one year (literal translation from english)
What size shoes was the boy at age 5? User can say: 21 (24 - 3 = 21) !
Wrong!
The correct answer is 19, that is the literal translation of english size 4 for shoes!
So, my advice is: after a translation is completed, test the game in its normal play-flow, to check the "puzzle logic integrity" even in the translated language.
Are you planning on doing Gamescom this year?
http://choryuken.com/2015/08/la-nostalgia-malinterpretada-de-thimbleweed-park/
Its in spanish but... basically says that you made the game in pixels cause you dont have much money to make a 3d game.
Have to read it!
I suggest to tell the author to visit the TP blog...
Everything he wrote in that article is well explained here.
It most likely was taken out of context because that comment wasn't intended to imply that the choice of 2D was a budgetary one.
-dZ.
Here's an expert, translated:
"¿Saben cuánto pidieron Ron y Gary para hacer Thimbleweed Park? Únicamente 350 mil dólares. Actualmente han reunido casi 700 mil, pero ellos calcularon poder hacer lo básico con 350 mil. Diablos, Yu Suzuki querÃa 2 millones (y luego 10) para Shenmue III y a Tim Schafer no le alcanzaron 3.45 millones de dólares para Broken Age, y es completamente comprensible: el desarrollo actual es mucho más caro que el desarrollo en la era de Maniac Mansion. Los equipos de desarrollo actuales no son comparables con los de la era de Zack McKracken. Por tanto, lo de Thimbleweed Park no es nostalgia; es economÃa. ¿Suena menos épico decir que harás un juego al estilo 1987 porque es para lo que te alcanza, en lugar de culpar a la nostalgia? SÃ, sin lugar a dudas. ¿Es más comprensible para un cÃnico que ya no cree en la nostalgia? Yo dirÃa que sÃ."
--
"Do you know how much Ron and Gary asked for to make Thimbleweed Park? Only 350 thousand dollars. Actually, they have amassed almost 700 thousand, but they calculated they could get the basics done with 350 thousand. Hell, Yu Suzuki wanted 2 Million (and then 10) for Shenmue III, and 3.45 Million dollars were not enough for Tim Schafer for Broken Age; and that's completely understandable: modern development is much more expensive than it was during the era of Maniac Mansion. Today's development kits are not comparable to those in the era of Zack McKracken. Therefore, the thing with Thimbleweed Park is not nostalgia; it's economics. Would it sound less epic to say that you will make a game in the style of 1987 because that's what you can afford, instead of blaming nostalgia? Yes, without a doubt. Is it more understandable to a cynic who doesn't believe in nostalgia any more? I would say yes."
Pity that some people cannot see beyond their own personal biases.
-dZ.
Can't rule out he isn't right (that nostalgia blinded our sight and Ron tricked us), but he should have waited for the release (instead of asking his crystal ball).
disclaimer: I hope his true intention was just lost in translation and i got it wrong :)
(dZ, thanks for the translation, it was much better than the automatic google thingy. Maybe with Parsey McParseface it will do better :)
- http://arxiv.org/pdf/1603.06042v1.pdf
---------
"THE MISINTERPRETED NOSTALGIA OF THIMBLEWEED PARK"
http://choryuken.com/2015/08/la-nostalgia-malinterpretada-de-thimbleweed-park/
"Nostalgia is not a good counselor. You can tell when you watch a chapter of Thundercats, Here Comes The Grump, M.A.S.K., G.I. Joe, or any other program that you thought was perfect during your childhood; that the standards of your youth are not the same as your current ones. Sure, there are exceptions (Clash of the Titans, The Terminator, The Jungle Book, you will always be perfect), but it's something that must happen. It happens to me. Hell, it happened to Rod Fergusson with Gilligan's Island! What else is there to say?
"That said, I confess that I love Maniac Mansion, even if I had to use a walk-through guide to complete it. I love Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, even if I was lost most of the time when I played it (it's unnecessary to say I never completed it). As a thirty-something video-game player, I view with nostalgia the times when I collected hundreds of floppy disks that I copied on my Commodore 64 (or Commodore 128 or, later on and with less floppy disks, Amiga) following that unforgettable LOAD "*",8,1. Like any other video-gamer, I love the video-games from my childhood.
"However, Thimbleweed Park, Ron Gilbert's most recent game -- which was shown at the XBox conference in GamesCom -- confuses me.
"According to a post in Ron Gilbert's blog, Thimbleweed Park started precisely due to nostalgia. Ron Gilbert was chatting with Gary Winnick one day about how wonderful their years at Lucasfilm Games were, and said: "What if we did one of those games again?". But he meant it seriously. "One of those games" meant not only a graphical adventure like Maniac Mansion, but a graphical adventure with the same processing limitations, constraints, and game-play mechanics as Maniac Mansion. Oh boy!
"I have mixed feelings about this. One the one hand, my nostalgia is in perfect synchronicity with Ron's when he tells me: "Don't you miss those times in which you flopped on a green couch all afternoon and you stuffed a hamster in the microwave, and you played until your parents forced you to turn it off or your head ached?". On the other hand, I analyse everything that has happened in video-games since then. Is it really necessary to play something that imposes so many restrictions in an ostensibly voluntary way? Would subscribing to a graphical style and mechanics from almost 30 years ago, really bring out the best of Thimbleweed Park? It's evident to anybody -- including Ron, I suppose -- that the answer is no. But then you notice Kickstarter...
"Do you know how much Ron and Gary asked for to make Thimbleweed Park? Only 350 thousand dollars. Actually, they have amassed almost 700 thousand, but they calculated they could get the basics done with 350 thousand. Hell, Yu Suzuki wanted 2 Million (and then 10) for Shenmue III, and 3.45 Million dollars were not enough for Tim Schafer for Broken Age; and that's completely understandable: modern development is much more expensive than it was during the era of Maniac Mansion. Today's development kits are not comparable to those in the era of Zack McKracken. Therefore, the thing with Thimbleweed Park is not nostalgia; it's economics. Would it sound less epic to say that you will make a game in the style of 1987 because that's what you can afford, instead of blaming nostalgia? Yes, without a doubt. Is it more understandable to a cynic who doesn't believe in nostalgia any more? I would say yes."
---------
It's indeed an impassioned and nuanced commentary, however misguided. Like longuist said, the author could be right and Mr. Gilbert is unable or unwilling to make a "real" modern game and therefore is trying to pander to our nostalgic sensibilities in order to convince us to throw money at him for a cheap production. It certainly is a possibility.
However, I choose to believe otherwise, and to trust Mr. Gilbert's words and motivations that the game is a sincere tribute to a genre which is imprinted in our brains, represents a rather large part of our formative youth, and fuels our own passions.
That said, I can see how others, more jaded than I, can take a decidedly different and cynical view of the same.
The author said he is confused, that his feelings are mixed. Perhaps its an invitation (or an opportunity) to convince him that 8-bit art is a stylistic sensibility, that the game-mechanics and format is "inspired by" -- but not "constrained as" -- 1980s adventure games.
Mr. Gilbert, if you would like to respond to the author, I can serve as translator. :)
-dZ.
Thanks for your response. I love 8-bit art as well, and I think you're doing a marvelous job with this game. At first (well, until very recently), I was concerned that you were changing the game style as originally envisioned precisely because you got more money than you expected (e.g., switching the art style, adding lots of fancy colours and lighting, etc.); but then you talked about the difference between the fond memories we have of the old games vs. how they actually were in reality.
I believe it was Mr. Ferrari in a session on 8-bit art at GDC, who made the same point using the analogy of the Renaissance Fair: It's like wanting to go to the Renaissance Fair, and instead being transported to the actual Renaissance; you know, with sewage on the street, deformed people, rotten meat, and the actual smell of humans that do not bathe regularly. That's not really what we want! We want to go to the Renaissance Fair! with the fancy dresses and the clean and safe environments.
I am convinced that that is the most apt manner in which to pay tribute to the genre. Thanks for sticking to your vision.
-dZ.
Pixels are expensive and Ds even more so. But this game has an especially good pixel to dollar and D to dollar ratios, making it one of the most efficient games to date. And after all, that's what it's all about.
All I can tell you about it is that if this game was announced to be 3D, instead of 8-bitish pixel-art, I most likely wouldn't have co-funded it.
See a few posts above for my translation of the last paragraph. The core of the author's argument is that making games is hard and expensive, and that thanks to Kickstarter, people can just go ask for thousands of dollars to make games; but since they don't know how, are not good at it, do not wish to expend too much effort, or just don't want to worry about raising enough funds; they can just do a cheap ass game with self-imposed artificial constraints and claim the badge of "nostalgia" to get attention.
Very cynical and quite unfortunate that he feels so disenchanted. If he enjoys living in such a dark and sinister world with so much distrust of human nature, then more power to him.
Me? I look forward to playing an old-school game that invokes all the good things I remember about the era, without none (or very few) of the drawbacks that were washed away by nostalgia. :)
-dZ.
They simply raised "only" about 700 thousand dollars, because they had a rather modest goal - not vice versa. 700 thousand dollars are a reasonable amount for a retro game like TP. If Tim Schafer is able to raise 3.45 million dollars for an adventure game, they probably would have been able to raise the same amount of money for Thimbleweed Park. But if someone raised significantly more than a million dollars for such a nostalgic point & click adventure game, he would probably be looking hard for an excuse. Whatever budget you claim, the challenge is to make an appropriate product out of it!
LOL!
P.S. Thank you for the extensive UI optioning. I didn't expect it to be so luxurious.
Thoughts?
2. Furthermore Mighty No. 9 has five times more backers and more press coverage -> more jerks (who are also vocally louder than non-jerks).
3. On this blog are mostly die hard fans of the creators work or of adventure games in general. You are more likely to find jerks and haters everywhere else (e.g. like comments on press coverage) than here or on the Kickstarter page.
4. The delay of TWP is *less than one year* (presumably). Which means in Kickstarter terms: It's more or less on time.
5. As you said: It was pushed back multiple times, meanwhile Ron said quite early it will be before end of this year or after end of this year which was now fixed to the latter one.
2. true (not too many jerks around here- I counted perhaps 2 in total)
3-5.so true
P.S.: never heard of Mighty No. 9
I hope that you and the team have been able to get focus back and feel like you're moving in the kinds of directions you need to go. The more game development I've done, the more important maintaining morale and motivation feel (even when it means working less efficiently or missing timed opportunities).
Glad to hear that GDC and PAX East went well and that the game has had a positive reception so far!
No way to be an Android version backer?
I understand point and click philosophy but these days are good days to point n click with fingers.
Btw the video is impressive as usual, keep the -good- extraordinary work.
I'll wait for the Android version if it will come.
https://thimbleweedpark.com/
There is an icon which looks like an iconified android??
Ok, referring to the faq:
"Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android. The PC versions will release in late 2016, the iOS/Android versions a few months after that."
The release date is outdated though, early 2017 now. But there will be an android version of the game.
If i remember correctly, if you back the game you only get the PC versions, so you will have to wait for the release and buy it in the app store.
Actually a pointy haired boss behind your chair shouting: 'ship, ship, ship!' improves quality at late stages of the project.
Of course, if your character is different from that, pls ignore what I wrote.
I was 11 when Maniac Mansion first appeared and since the first day I saw it I've become a huge fan of Lucas' adventures. (I still remember that day! All the things I felt when I saw the verbs...) I've played several times all of Lucas' adventures through the years (still do!) and I strongly believe that they're the best computer games in the whole history of computer games.
So, imagine my feelings when I first saw the UI demo. I'm thrilled! It looks like an old Lucas' adventure, has that feeling and brings me happy memories of my childhood... But everything is new and fully improved!
I'm really blown away by the game. Can't wait to play it!
Cheers!
I hope this game turns out to be so successful you'd like to do another 8-bit adventure game after this one.
That's a very important issue. It actually stopped be from continuing "Syberia 2" at the middle.
Just popping on and breaking my personal code to never comment on a development blog to say that this is without a doubt THE most professionally run kickstarter campaign i've ever seen, let alone been part of. Thanks for all the great updates, take that extra time. The new UI is nothing short of amazing. You are all doing a fantastic job. Everything i've seen is such an improvement to the game and always stays within the scope of the kind of game your backers signed up for, which is getting rarer and rarer these days. I quickly browsed over the comments and they're solid proof of that. Looking forward to january ! Top Team ! Really !