Tracking Talkies
Mar 11, 2017
With over 16,000 record lines of dialog, someone on Twitter asked for a blog entry how how we keep it all organized. "Ha ha, we don't", Ron said laughing.
OK, not really, but kind of.
A quick refresher on how we enter and extract dialog from the Thimbleweed Park.
During early stages of development, we embed the dialog in the source code.
Every time I bring this up, someone pipes in and says it's stupid to keep text in source code and I should have my game dev license suspended. I don't disagree. Keeping text embedded in source code is a crazy, dangerous and a rookie move. And we don't. Hear me out.
All the text in the game stays embedded in the source code for a good 3/4 of the project. It's just easier that way.
I've seen game dev code that looks like this
And that's fine if you have a few dozen lines of text, but becomes a creative nightmare when you have a tens of thousands and you're trying to write and iterate. Remember, our source code isn't just programming, it's also our script and the implementation of the game's expression.
We need to iterate and iterate fast. Having to look up, or enter lines of text in a "text table" would slow things down, so we just stick it in the source code.
About 5 months ago, I ran a fancy python tool over all the source code and it was turned into this...
...and emitted a spreadsheet that looked like this...
The spreadsheet served a secondary function, and that was to do the translations. The translators would go though and add a new column for their translation. The original English was saved as ThimbleweedText_en.tsv and the Spanish was ThimbleweedText_es.tsv. We can keep adding translation files as we add translations. When we open the game up to fan translation, this is how it will work.
Anytime we changed a line, we changed it in the source code and then re-ran the python tool and it would update the spreadsheet. The spreadsheets were readonly. We never edited them directly.
This went on for several months, then it came time to record.
Each line of text got tagged with these MACROS that told us who had to say each line.
DELORES if only Delores said it, RAY if only Ray said it, or AGENT if both Ray and Reyes said the line.
Then it got a little trickier.
PLAYER_AD if the Agents and Delores said the line, or PLAYER_DR if Delores and Ransome said the line, etc, etc.
The preceding line needed to be recorded by Delores, Ray, Reyes and Ransome.
The preprocessor macro looked like this...
The actual text string is compiled out of the final code, leaving just the line ID. See, there is no text is the code.
<insert smilie face here>
Ultimately, this was needed to emit the scripts for the actors. If there was no voice, we could have used one tag (PLAYER) and be done with it.
When it came time to print the script for Reyes, we need to grab all the lines he needed to record (REYES) and the lines both he and Ray said (AGENT), plus any lines he, Ray and Delores, and Ransome needed to record (PLAYER_ADR).
It was tricky business to make sure all the lines were correctly tagged and we made a few mistakes. Some lines didn't get recorded and when that happened, we'd have to find another line that worked as well, or did some clever wav file editing.
We could have done a pick-up session, but so few lines were missed, that it wasn't worth the cost.
OK, so once the script was exported, we would go into the studio, record the dialog and then it would be cut up into .wav files.
You'll notice when the script is exported for Delores, lines tagged with PLAYER_AD get shown as DELORES, this is so when the editor cuts up the dialog, it gets save as DELORES_28938.wav, not PLAYER_AD_28938.wav. From that one line, we're get 3 .wav files (DELORES_28938.wav, RAY_28938.wav and REYES_28938.wav). It one line of text that's read by three different actors and needs to appear in the game assets three different times. They all have the same text ID because, as you recall, the text is striped and all that is left is the ID. When an character in the game says a line, the engine knows to prepend the name (RAY/REYES/DELORES/etc) to look up the .wav file.
The marks you see in the third column are the take-marks I did while recording to indicate the take I wanted. The /1 was the first take and I liked the A read, not the b read (the actor read each line twice). The fs means the actor had a false start and didn't read the whole line. The /4 means after they read one section of the script, we went back and did a fourth take.
When the recording was done, we had 16,000 .wav files and each was put into a folder named for the character.
DELORES/DELORES_28938.wav
RAY/RAY_28938.wav
REYES/REYES_28938.wav
It's around 6GB of .wav files and we needed to compress them for inclusion in the game. We used .ogg files due to it being free of the patent and licensing issues that .mp3 has, although either would have worked.
I have a bash script that takes all the .wav files and compresses them into .ogg files, ready for the game to load.
Any editing we do is always done on the high quality .wav files so we can compress into any format we need. For example, we might need to compress the voice more for mobile and it's just an automated process.
We also have a script that runs each line though the lip-sync tool and produces .lip files, which are small text files with timing and mouth data. This process takes around 16 hours to run.
Of course, it gets more complex with Ransome and his foul mouth.
When the actor playing Ransome recorded his lines, he swore, then each of those .wav files had to be beeped. We kept all the original lines for two reasons. The first is we want to release an uncensored pack at some point and the second is Ransome needed to be lip-synced against the non-beeped lines, so when the lip-sync process was run, we need to point it at the original Ransome lines, not the beeped ones.
In the case where we had to hand edit a Ransome line, we had to edit the original, then edit the beeped version then make sure each got to the correct folder. It was nerve racking.
There you have it. Making games is easy.
- Ron
In the past, I was using and later updating this great tool! It exports text and also make audio lines for recorded voices.
http://www.jestarjokin.net/apps/scummspeaks
That way I made voice overs and translations for all Lucasfilm point&click games. Great stuff and easy to use.
But I have no problem paying for this kind of DLC.
Also I don't see so much of a problem paying for something like remastered versions (depending on the case, but they put enough work into MI/FD/DOTT Remastered etc. IMHO).
Side-note: yes I did purchase the special editions of MI, despite owning the originals which still ran fine on my PC. Hell, I even had to buy another PC, as my OS was too old and refused to launch the Special editions. Talk about a macro-transaction...
I agree but I can also see this is economically not easy possible. I'm sure having the game even more complete and also all (mobile!) ports ready at first launch would be much more preferable but oh well...
Btw. Sushi is finally back!
(But you could also pay base game + DLC at once at lauch (=from the start) if available :-)
But your gravatar picture is working again!
Month CommentCount AuthorCount NewAuthorCount
2015-01 845 407 407
2015-02 465 195 123
2015-03 684 246 126
2015-04 482 164 66
2015-05 424 147 57
2015-06 708 227 108
2015-07 2025 740 476
2015-08 822 287 102
2015-09 904 272 92
2015-10 921 251 68
2015-11 665 262 93
2015-12 781 281 94
2016-01 445 147 29
2016-02 777 284 109
2016-03 936 277 99
2016-04 745 208 69
2016-05 906 236 71
2016-06 1586 681 378
2016-07 513 154 27
2016-08 1143 324 104
2016-09 724 212 51
2016-10 739 159 39
2016-11 590 152 43
2016-12 400 121 34
2017-01 1071 288 93
2017-02 1129 269 90
2017-03 825 214 68
- NewAuthorCount are people posting the first time since ever (e.g. in first month everyone was new).
- Yes, there is quite a steady influx of new people every month.
- Depth limit was always there.
Of course, there may be people who have commented so seldom that they forgot their previous nickname and chose a new one.
Well, I wouldn't say that the number of new authors had increased during the recent months.
- commentary track (second play-through)
- Gear VR version with true depth perception of characters/parallaxing backgrounds.
- bonus 2-3 hour mini-adventure with tangential characters (Dave and Sandy? Zak comes to Thimbleweed?) scripted by David Fox using existing art assets. No voice-over.
Yeah I'm probably dreaming in technicolor about those.
Sometimes I'm even happy about such additional contents. For example, if they extend a great game which may not be followed by a sequel (e.g. Alien: Isolation).
Though I dislike games which appear to be designed exclusively for DLCs - for example: Whenever I buy a racing game, I don't want to have to buy an additional car package or additional race tracks just to have some fun. I would expect a satisfying basis for what I payed. But in terms of TWP, I don't worry about this at all.
You get an extra thumbs-up for using Ogg Vorbis. Ever since its release I have been a fan of this format/codec, and my entire personal music library is encoded in Ogg. Thanks :-)
Whatever, as for the audio codec: Did you use the old Ogg Vorbis or the new Ogg Opus? Opus is also completely free and much more efficient, especially when encoding speech. As example you can look at https://auphonic.com/blog/2012/09/26/opus-revolutionary-open-audio-codec-podcasts-and-internet-audio/ 24kBit/s still sounds good for speech. You may want to give it a try.
Were other codecs taken into consideration? Apparently OPUS is super versatile and it compresses speech great, as well as high bitrate audio.
Two and a half weeks!!!
I'm a bit fascinated by the lip-sync tool. When you say you "run each line though the lip-sync tool and produce .lip files", is this a tool that analyses the recorded audio input or the written text dialogue? In the example output, shown above, is the letter code a reference to the letter the character appears to be speaking at that particular time sample? I could only imagine this would lead to a huge amount of variation if you had to then take this output and send it to your animators.... (e.g. Okay, at 0.03s animate her saying 'F', at 0.10s animate her saying 'B'...) Is this a tool you guys designed yourselves, or if not what third party tool did you use?
Questions questions questions... Love your work, all.
You will find all your ansers here: https://github.com/DanielSWolf/rhubarb-lip-sync
Can't blame him. I've heard that training a three-headed monkey is fairly involved.
Thanks for the info about lip-sync tools. That's interesting.
... 2 weeks later...
also, great to hear about these tricks you have done to keep the code and text both readable and maintainable. always a big challenge in all software (for me anyways).. maybe i should go through these years of posts to see what others i missed..
sayLine(PLAYER_ADR(29971,"There are no drawers to close."))
How does the engine know which character should speak?
In that example, the only parameter is the line (the macro is just for indexing), so the engine will always take the current player :)
#macro PLAYER_ADR($a,$b) "$a:"
In the code remains only the ID. As Ron said above: "The actual text string is compiled out of the final code, leaving just the line ID."
I guess "line" will now be treated depending on its type (string -> use as text or number -> lookup text by ID).
DELORES 27243 George the postman will never pick it up without stamps on it.
... you'll find the name.
sayLine(29971)
So the 29971 has to be the same in the table for the translations and in the table for the voice recordings ...
But you can have multiple voice files of the same ID when this text is said by multiple actors, e.g. DELORES_29971.wav and RANSOME_29971.wav etc.
"There is only one table per language mapping IDs to text with every ID being unique in there (e.g. ThimbleweedText_en.tsv). But you can have multiple voice files of the same ID when this text is said by multiple actors, ..."
If we assume that the final code in the game is:
sayLine(29971)
How should the game choose the correct sentence in the ThimbleweedText_en.tsv and the correct wav file? The IDs have to be consistent.
It's a relative file path but that's not what I meant. Just search on this page for its origin, someone hasn't fixed it yet.
And take a closer look at the name(s)...
ad sayLine:
In ThimbleweedText_en.tsv there is only one entry with ID 29971, i.e. only one sentence the system has to choose from.
With sayLine(29971) (no specific actor specified) the current actor will say the line. If one line can be said by different playable characters it can still be the same ID, i.e. the same text will be shown.
BUT what will be different is for instance in which colour it will be shown and which audio file will be looked up. Both will depend on the currently selected character.
Then try to use it - especially on Linux. ;-)
"REYES/RAYES_28938.wav" is at least on Linux a relative file path as Nor said. I thought that he meant a single filename and not the path.
Nor wrote: "With sayLine(29971) (no specific actor specified) the current actor will say the line."
Yes, that was another possibility. :) But Ron didn't mentioned in this blog post that PLAYER_AD referenced to the current character (or I've misread something). Beside that, Ron said: "... leaving just the line ID". So I thought this was the case for all "say-lines".
/Volumes/LaBig/svn/ThimbleweedAudio/Talkies/Language-en/Talkies/REYES/REYES_28938.wav
But what's the point of that. It's a relative path.
And I thought Nor meant that this: "REYES/REYES_28938.wav" is (only) the filename and not the relative path. That was my fault (it's sunday ;)).
sayLine(currentActor, PLAYER_ADR(29971,"There are no drawers to close."))
Yes, a lot of nitpickers here :-)
:-)
Also, as this game is already Twinpeakish, I think the backward thing would work.
See, game development IS easy.
sayLine(delores, "(angry)I'm so sick of you two fighting"). The (angry) is stripped out when the text is displayed. We didn't do enough of it, but fortunately I was there for all the recording sessions. We did record a few wrong, and in the future, we'll add a lot more of them.
And specifically these comments regarding your question: https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/text_lock#581249457dce7c371cb235d2
- Ransome the clown
So, what's your position regarding alicorns?
Yes, this is true for me as well, but that's not the case.
Fact is, it's unlikely anyone will even notice the lines we would have done pickups on.
Is $10'000 the defined minimum contract sum these days?
Thank you very much for clarifying! All looking good for the release day?
Sorry to bother you but since it looks so good: Did you / do you have time to implement GOG Galaxy (achievements)?
You won't. I don't even notice them anymore. We just found a new line out of the 16,000 recorded that worked just as well and we changed the text to match.
You can place it anywhere, they are two HTML lines: one for the countdown and one for the demo-cover panel.
I mean, in the earlier stages of development (when the swear jar was introduced for backers) it would have been fantastic to introduce a $10 pledge (just to say a number) for getting the possibility of unlocking the uncensored version.
You know.... something exclusive... Just for the guys of the blog.
It would have had a different flavour, compared to a DLC every noob can get for one buck..... :-(
Anyway, I'll get it, too, when it'll come out. :-)
But I am generally against such exclusive special content unless it's only for a certain period of time or very minor (like a special backers bow for Ransome :-).
It should be possible for everyone to get the best version of a game even at a later point in time.
You know, swearing, when it's too much, gets annoying, too.
And after some bad words, it quits being funny.
Beeping is fun because you can IMAGINE, and wonder "what the BEEP is he swearing right now??"
I think I'd prefer the uncensored version, but I don't think people would prefer it.
Although it wouldn't be an economic decision since those are mostly people who will pay even more for TWP without a second though.
It's not uncommon to hear an actor saying "Oh shit" even though their mouth clearly reads "Oh fuck".
Dyslexics find it difficult to follow subtitles.
If so, it could be more difficult to draw the verb images.
Oh, well, unless we have discovered everything...
But this is an advantage of text-rendered verbs, you can more easily swap them out for jokes etc. (Buy, Sell, Drown...)
The SCUMM engine when though years of small refinements. Each and every version had tradeoffs and features we didn't get to do.
I was just recently reminded of Simon the Sorcerer and its UI (they used verbs in a non-grid layout):
English: http://image.dosgamesarchive.com/screenshots/simon4.gif
Spanish: http://www.ellosnuncaloharian.com/imagenes/pantallas/big/simon_2.png
Italian: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/VDsPNXDxQZ4/maxresdefault.jpg
Hebrew (easy): http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/730638-simon-the-sorcerer-dos-screenshot-here-you-can-see-the-translated.png
German (snugly fit): http://105.imagebam.com/temporarylink/TS4BdvTJdw86AXrrzf7liQ/1489361333/22554/225535561/1.jpg
French (OMG!): http://img.squakenet.com/snapshot/658/62564-SimontheSorcerer.jpg
Indy4 devs made their life harder by clearly enforcing a grid layout with buttons (but using a simple font):
English: https://mixnmojo.com/galleries/full/full20100912101100.png
German: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/2JT98R9eGKs/maxresdefault.jpg
French: http://image.jeuxvideo.com/images/pc/i/n/indiana-jones-and-the-fate-of-atlantis-pc-1299763488-053.jpg
Surely there are some French magicians out there bending time and space with their words. Especially space.
Hm... Is this really a non-grid layout?
In Indy4 this would have looked awkward because the button-look wouldn't line-up anymore.
At the position of "Pick up" ...
http://www.abandonia.com/files/games/20/Monkey%20Island%202%20-%20LeChucks%20Revenge_6.png
... is in the german version "Benutze" (= "use"):
http://www.pcgames.de/screenshots/original/2015/09/Monkey_Island_Replay_02-pc-games_b2article_artwork.jpg
is English only.
If new speech models (http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/) are mature enough this may (or may not) change?!!
For non-English languages it would be better to only pass the Wave files and maybe the results won't be that bad even without modifications? That's something we could test by just passing German, Italian etc. sound files to it and checking the results.
Regarding Sphinx there are models for a lot of languages:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/cmusphinx/files/Acoustic%20and%20Language%20Models/
But the quality varies from language to language (the the note in this news about spanish):
http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/2016/09/new-27k-words-70h-german-model-released/
Some weeks ago, I wrote a detailed list of things that are currently preventing full multi-language support. If anybody's interested, you can find it here: https://github.com/DanielSWolf/rhubarb-lip-sync/issues/5#issuecomment-272287356
That being said, there may be ways of achieving minimal lip-sync in other languages. Here are two ideas:
* As Nor Treblig says, we could simply feed a German recording to Rhubarb, pretending it's English. I actually never tried it, but I suppose a line like "Der frühe Vogel fängt den Wurm" might be recognized as something like "Dear friar fougere fang den woodrum", resulting in sufficiently similar mouth animation. Might be worth trying.
* In the early days of Rhubarb, the speech recognition wasn't word-based, but phone-based. I dropped that approach because the results were pretty unreliable. Still, it might yield good-enough results for other languages. If there is demand, I might add that back as an option.
http://dannad.de/xchg/permanent/rhubarb/deutsch.mp4
It's certainly not perfect, but much better than I had thought!
Das Hauptproblem scheint mir aber sowieso Personen zu finden, SO viel Text zu lesen (ohne mit der Zeit gelangweilt zu wirken).
Unabhängig davon: tolle Arbeit mit Rhubarb und danke dafür!
:-)
Italian should be very easier to decode, because every character is pronunced "as is", with a very few exceptions.
95% of italian words are "as is". The remaining 5% are diphthongs (ch = " tʃ " or "k" depending on which vowel follows; gn = "ɲ"; sc = " ʃ "; gl = "ʎ").
So, basically:
APRI = "a p r i" [open]
CHIUDI = "k j u d i" [close]
DAI = "d a i" [give]
RACCOGLI = "r a k k o ʎ i" [pick up]
ESAMINA = "e z a m i n a" [look at]
PARLA = "p a r l a" [talk to]
PREMI = "p r e m i" [push]
TIRA = "t i r a" [pull]
USA = "u z a" [use]
... so, Daniel, do you think it could work better for italian language?
I don't think so, I'm afraid. Without any language-specific code, Rhubarb is simply trying to recognize English words in the Italian recording. If you say "chiudi", it will understand "cutie" or something similar. It doesn't matter to Rhubarb how the Italian word is spelled; after all, Rhubarb isn't even aware it's Italian.
My guess is that the quality of the result will depend on how similar a given language sounds to English.
Instead, it tries to understand the english language, and only after that it translates into letters?
To my ear there's nothing wrong with your German.
;-)
And in the end this would probably work better with every language out there than not having any synchronised mouth movements at all.
By the way, back in Day of the Tentacle there was no lip-sync at all.
i mean the intonation could be diffrent, like "(angry)OK" and "(sad)OK)"
Of course making US wait an additional few days for a stupid day, would NOT be a very Ron Gilberty thing to do. So, nevermind. :)
FAN VOICE DUBS.
The question is now: how many different voices are there?
I'm calling all the Italians here :P we NEED to provide the Italian voices. We need to know if we're enough people.
And I am REALLY good at swearing... :D
But I'm sure in our beloved 'boot' we all think we are REALLY good at swearing, no matter where we are from :)
...immagino voglia dire che dovrò installarmi telegram :)
He will include you in the Thimbleweed Park group.
this is a new link to join the group: https://t.me/joinchat/AAAAAEE5YBcL4BwYpUTbSQ
https://t.me/joinchat/AAAAAAqdhF9rOmtlxauhHw
However, you would have to voice-act 16,000 lines! Translating the subtitles would certainly be feasible, but fan-made voice-acting would cost weeks of spare time!
On the other hand in Italy we have a strong and capable school of voice actors. Every movie, every series, everything comes from another country is dubbed. Everything. There are great actors that play on stage, in movies and tv series, and also make voice over.
So it would be very very very appreciated by the gamers if there will be a decent voice over.
Poor her! She doesn't know what amount of work she just accepted!
That's why right now the Italian TWP community is looking forward to the voice-overs :P we're highly used to dubbed movies and TV series in Italy, and while this is actually a problem and we recognize it as such, we still love it that way.
Since we cannot change the puzzles or the art/animation, there are limitations to how much of a different story can be told. It will inevitably still have to involve a creepy clown, at least one dead body, scary pigeons and vomiting
I had tried both of them, I suggest you to use AGS (Adventure Game Studio) to start.
It's quite easy. I don't know about you, but it's easy also for people who don't know anything about programming stuff.
Either way, it seems to be a fun and quick(er) thing to do using the fan translation capabilities in TP. Not a full adventure game; but e.g. some dialog tree that reveals the real secret of MI.
as I said months ago, I'm definitely in.
I have amateur experience in acting and directing.
But I'm very busy at the moment, please apologise me if I won't subscribe telegram for a while... just wait for me, I'll come.
Ciao
Did you prepare some additional scripts or comments about the game scenes for the voice actors?
How did they know how to put the text lines into the right emotional context? They need to know how to pronounce/emphasize words...Shout or whisper, cry or laugh....or did they have a screen in front of them with you playing the scenes live ;-)
Have you pre-sorted the/some lines for each actor (by hand) so that the lines were in a more "logical" respective "better" sequential order? Or wasn't that necessary?
"Based on branches the player might take, the lines appear in odd orders."
The actor could read one of those paths and then all other texts. But that would be a lot of preparation work and could be more confusing when reading the "other lines". (In the voice recordings I attended, the actors read only whole paragraphs.)
(I'm new to this blog)
We have many users.
But if you are new to this blog, I am Mickey Mouse.
I have to put two big black circles on my ears.
Well played, Sir.
Here is the movie scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiZ8D9akdV4
Look at the name of the poster..... I think Lord Clarence is mocking at you ;-) He knows more than he says...
With the ability for everyone to make his own translation, or to dub the whole game.... I imagine that one day, the big D will ask Terrible Toybox to sell the trademark and the rights of Thimbleweed Park.
What will Ron answer? Let's continue with the imagination...
- "Let's make a deal. You can have the Thimbleweed Park rights, if I have the Monkey Island rights (back). Deal?"
.
... (to be continued)
I do worship Ron, Gary, and David as developers/creative-beings but I don't think it's their ambition, either (rather than creating a solid and memorable game).
But in the end what really counts is that the creative powers behind TP are the more or less the same behind MI, MI2, DotT...
So when TP is a success AND the same powers want to go on with a new game in the same genre, do we really need a MI5?
Yes, that would be awesome, but why not a TP2? Why not a new adventure in an entirely different universe?
I would be as thrilled as with a new MI instalment, to be honest :)
Everyone is left asking what the hell was going on at the end of MI2 - and no answers have been given, at least no convincing answers, in the next chapter.
MI3 is just a nice adventure game set in the MI universe, but it doesn't feel at all as the follow-up to MI2.
...But I am very far from those creative powers, so maybe they know what was to happen next / if there was anything to happen next.
Yes, MI3 feels very disjointed from MI2, but that did not prevent me from enjoying it. As you say, a nice adventure game in itself :)
In the third installment he becomes a goofy and fearful husband to be. From a "bildungsroman" point of view the character totally ceases to be what he once was, without any reason. It's like he struggled against a cerebral aneurysm in the meantime. I still remember the PC Gamer review in the first months of 1998 that, if on a hand praises the good game, on the other hand says something like: Guybrush will be no more the one he used to be, now shy and gangly.
Or, more concisely and properly... "sly". ;)
There is this idiotic idea that all character should come back, but the great thing about a new game, film or book is that it allows new content. Why do creators ignore that big advantage and instead cook some thin soup out of the ingredients already cooked twice?
In fact, I'm pretty happy with how Day of the Tentacle reinterpreted the Maniac Mansion setup.
In the meantime I did my homework and found out about Ron's idea (http://grumpygamer.com/if_i_made_another_monkeyisland).
Which means that now I am now officially on board and would gladly pay to see MI3a done :)
We have never finished to learn.
Please, watch this video (in italian), where everything about Monkey Island will be revealed.
The video was made by Matteo Bini.
Once I had created also subtitles in english for this video, to be helpful for non-italian users, but he never uploaded them on youtube.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw-PyZuFHog
Pretty much all of his other dreams for MI3A, he's fulfilling in Thimbleweed Park. So, Congrats Ron!
Though, it would have been even better if the boxed edition contained a code wheel.
I've set up a telegram group chat (copying our Italian buddies). Join in if you want to participate!
https://t.me/joinchat/AAAAAEBAsO2aqiAfeQcmIg
At least make the uncensored version available from DAY ONE.
so you could do censored beeping version for e.g. 29 , and uncensored for 20 more like 49.
a dlc content would be a 10 USD max. but coz of the game release, and more hype based on the release, you could gain more margin from the start with the uncensored version.
just my thoughts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEg6wjcwZMQ
hrrhrrhhrr
So, it's the same as "T" rating for US.
"Mild" beacuse of the *beeps*, I suppose :-)
If Maniac Mansion were rated today, what PEGI would it have? 18?
But, the word "goddamn" is actually blasphemy.
Blasphemy, still sanctioned in Italy, is when, for instance, you put the word "God" together with something that sounds bad. For instance, in association with a dog or a pig. That is considered blasphemy, and still not tolerated for the italian common decency.
At a certain point, Woodruff falls down on an area managed by elders, che censors. They are ruling everything, they have the power of the censorship.
It's really curious, and funny, how Woodruff could escape from that sort of prison.
If you please, watch the game's longplay, starting from that point (it made me think and laugh at the same time):
https://youtu.be/i3yZM5DK5Uw?t=11m49s
Some of them are EXTREMELY laughable, like "yeah I want to make an open world game with realistic physics and I'll publish it in three months" and in the "Risks and challenges" section they write "I'm in high school so I have time and I don't see any risks".
Good luck with that!
Above you'll find a link to a group on telegram (you need to install the program, you'll find everything in the invite link, and you can use it on every device)
https://t.me/joinchat/AAAAAEE5YBcL4BwYpUTbSQ
You can join us on this Telegram group.
Click here: https://t.me/joinchat/AAAAAEE5YBcL4BwYpUTbSQ
You must be new here :-)
By the way... suck a lemon Ted dude!
The game is awesome, but spanish and latin people are tired of horrible translations
I believe the translator had to choose one variation, maybe he/she tried to do his/her best with that variation.
I'm italian, don't know Spanish so deeply, but both languages share the same root (Latin). I have translated one game and a few apps in italian, and it's not easy.
Anyway... it´s your money not mine.
Good luck!
Obviously Italian Italian will lose the fight, because you know Switzerland have all the money :D
We could start an insult fighting between languages.
I am pretty sure that Roman or Neapolitan could win the contest!
It´s like the toilet paper thing... there are people who wants the paper to roll toward a side and people who wants the paper to roll toward another side.
Language is complicated and a letter can change the entire sentence.
My intention was not to get people angry but to demonstrate that the translation is not complete.
I'm certain some people aren't going to like the Boris Schneider translation for some reason. There are *always* people out there who dislike translations. I don't even know, there are gazillions of Final Fantasy VI/3 translations out there! It's crazy.
Greetings
Diego
I really don't get the point, since, you know, commas exist also in English. For this reason, even if I know nothing about the game and the context, I understand that "George the postman" has a semantic which is quite different from "George, the postman".
So, not only you are being rude, but you're probably even wrong.
You know, in Italian we say you "climb on mirrors" whenever you're trying hard to defend an obviously wrong argument. Well, from all your comments I think I can hear the sound of your nails on the glass.
This angry guy is wrong.
Imagine you have a pack of cigs in the inventory, and every time you try to smoke, something absurd happens and stops you! Like a bat at the cemetery stealing it, people telling you to do that elsewhere, the wind blowing it out of your hand, or it just randomly explodes like a fake cigar ... endless possibilities, haha!
But i find the animation comforting, as it speaks volumes to the mood.
Maybe if Ransoms DLC ever gets released, that idle could make it's appearance again.
.. Or if weed becomes legal in more states
(*)TRD = The Release Date
Could you invite, in your next podcast, all the translators of TWP, or at least some of them?
I'd like to know how much effort they put in their work, if it was boring or even funny, how much time did they take... and other related questions.
Oh, yeah, and ask how's the weather, of course...
Thank you!
I will miss you all.
I really hope we will stay in touch at least through this blog, that hopefully will get a lot more updates from Ron (Yes I will miss you too),
but
I´m going to cancel my internet contract, my data plan, turn off my cellphone, unplug the phone and close the door as soon as I downloaded the game. As long as needed.
I WANT NO SPOILERS!
But they will sprout like mushrooms everywhere, starting march the 30th. I know it.
So hopefully we will "see" again after that.
:)
Or it might be the <Insert Title> blog for the next game. :) In any case, I'll be around.
Unless I've died. Then I'm dead. Then I'm probably a bit busy. ;D
- call every Phone Book number
- read every title in the Occult bookstore
- read every book in the Mansion Mansion library
Hmmm... interesting year...
If the answer is yes, it means that you have to rewrite Ransome's lines in the code with swearwords for the uncensored version.
Pupils all over the world could try to write a transcript of Ransome's dialog in their English classes. Then translate it and discuss it with their teachers, parents and grandparents.
Six years living in Switzerland, I can speak quite a good German, but I know NO INSULTS AT ALL.
But that's ok, since I swear in Italian or Sardinian when I'm angry.
I mean, everyone knows standard German here, but it's really just a second language, like Italian is in the most inner villages of Sardinia, where the population speaks mainly Sardinian.
But many (more nordish living) Germans would say it's to hard to understand and therefore it's a language of its own.
If you are interested in south-west German dialects have a look here: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Alemannic-Dialects-Map-German.png
You can see easily that the dialect of Swiss German is strong related to some dialects in Germany (the lake "Bodensee" is a border-triangle between Germany, Austria and Switzerland).
But I love its sound. Damn I hope my daughters will teach it to me when they get older.
But the dialect Schwitzerdütsch is strongly related to Alemanisch witch is spoken in the German state of Baden-Würtemberg as "home dialect". Both together have many rules and words for their own - but still are german languages, see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_German
Etymology and language history is really an interesting thing. Tells one a lot of how things have developed over time and vice versa how related things are even if one can't see it anymore.
However, it's fine you like the people and their kind to speak around you! :-)
To be honest I am not sure which will win 'the most hilarious lines of dialog ever' award, either Ransome's or the... other's: let the pupils decide!
how many times did you use python during game development?
Nice point of view!
Excerpt from an article at
http://www.insidethemagic.net/2017/03/preview-thimbleweed-park-breathes-new-life-retro-point-click-adventure-game-genre-hilarious-results/
It was seemingly introduced at PAX.
The article is very interesting, but actually I'm having a problem when launching the game that is related to this.
When I launch the game I get the following error: "Packed file ThimbleweedText_en.tsv not found.", which now I know is the spreadsheet you used for the dialog.
I already contacted GOG.com support to see if they can help me with this, because I made good progress in the game, but I'm smelling I will have to reinstall the game.
Just wanted yo let you guys now.
See ya!