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Godfather?  Bleh.  I bought it, because I enjoyed Mafia and heard it was along the same lines.  Technically, I suppose it was better, but it got pretty boring very fast.  The major problem I had with it was that all the missions looked the same, and the driving was a chore.  The cars might have been slow in Mafia, but at least you could drive off the roads.   The driving in Godfather was limited to very rigid paths, and you often had to go waayyy out of your way in order to reach your destination.  I suppose it's because they based it on real NYC geography, which is not very fun to drive in.

The one cool thing about Godfather was that I got to drive up to my address and go "Hey!  That's my building!"

Thanks for the recs, everybody!  My sites are back up now, so I can relax for the time being.  Switching everything over to another provider will be a bigger undertaking than I thought, so I might hold off for now.  I'll look into these.

I got Mafia for the PC in 2004 or so.  I hadn't played any of the GTAs, so I had nothing to compare it to.  I enjoyed it, actually.  I enjoyed the characters and the storyline was excellent.  Driving around the city was never fun, but the individual missions were great.

I've had 5 years of perfect service with Ipowerweb, and suddenly they start sucking big time.  THe last few months or so have been met with downtimes and crashes and all sorts of evil things.  I was willing to deal with it for awhile, because of the 5 years of fine service and the fact that switching is more of a hassle than it's worth.  But I'm kind of sick of it.

Any recommendations?

Hi all,

I love the "make translation source" button, but is there a way to output all the dialog/text and include the character names?  Right now I have a list of all the dialog, but it doesn't tell me which character says the line.   An italian company is translating the game for me, and going to record italian voice speech as well, so this would be useful.

Hi all,

Thanks for the great edits!  The reason for the black space at the top is that this is an advertisement, and it needs to grab your attention while you are looking at other stuff on the screen..  When the words are placed on the image itself, my eyes just ignore it.  With the bright white text on a black background, it gets itself noticed a bit more.

Did you use a special font for that, GG?  Or did you do some photoshop fudgery?

-Dave

I've been designing a web ad for Blackwell, and after going back and forth with several marketing people i've finally come up with a design i like.  However, the jury's out on the font.  Which is your preference?

 

One on the left is nicer, but the one on the right is a bit  easier to read.

Thomas!  Didn't know you were an AGS member.  Hi there. :p

Thanks for the feedback, everyone!  I'm having great fun making this game and working with Ivy's been a blast. 

vertigoaddict: Go to the wadjet eye site, go to the Unbound section, then check under "downloads" to listen to a sample of the music.  It might not be used in the game, but it's a good example of the style.

Oops.  Try it now.

Um... actually, this is a mystery to me as well.  The file has totally disappeared. 

Fortunately I managed to find the game file and I am reuploading now...

Whats up with the team change? :-/
Old team members to busy?
Or do you just want to try something new? .

There's a "real" sequel in production, called Blackwell Convergence, but since it won't be released for a while I thought it would be nice to release something to tide people over.  I had the plot for Unbound designed awhile ago, so I decided to work on that too.

It's slightly smaller and simpler in style in order to facilitate it being released sooner (albeit with a slight change in price to reflect that).  I started another team (i.e. Ivy) working on this while the main team works on the other game.

Rui: Yes, Sande won't be voice acting in this game because Rosa isn't in it.  

Hammerine: This is my real job.  For now, anyway.

Erenan: Another unbound?  Eep.  Me so sorry.

[Coming in July/August 2007, from Wadjet Eye Games!The year is 1971. The sound of a lone, ethereal saxophone drifts over the Roosevelt Island promenade, while a series of accidents plague a midtown construction site. The citizens of Manhattan take no notice of these events, let alone think they are connected. Embittered medium Lauren Blackwell and her spirit guide Joey Mallone are the only ones who believe that there is anything strange going on, and they are the only ones who can stop an enigmatic killer from striking again…]

At long last, we can finally announce our next project:

Coming in July/August 2007, from Wadjet Eye Games!

The year is 1971.  The sound of a lone, ethereal saxophone drifts over the Roosevelt Island promenade, while a series of accidents plague a midtown construction site.  The citizens of Manhattan take no notice of these events, let alone think they are connected.

Embittered medium Lauren Blackwell and her spirit guide Joey Mallone are the only ones who believe that there is anything strange going on, and they are the only ones who can stop an enigmatic killer from striking again… 

Screenshots:

Yet another confused, lost spirit.  What's a medium to do?


Lauren's reputation procedes her.


Lauren takes a smoking break.


Trolling the local businesses for information.


Once more, looking at photographs will provide clues.


Team:
Writer/designer/coder: Dave Gilbert
Sprites/animation/Background: Erin Robinson (The Ivy)
Music: Thomas Regin
Poster art: Dan Lee

Confirmed voice cast:
Dani Marco
Abe Goldfarb
Francisco Gonzalez
Chen-Young Hsu
Mark Smythe


Release date:
July/August 2007

Price:
$9.99

For more details on the game (like character info, concept sketches, and other goodies),  please mosey over to the Wadjet Eye Games website.

Regarding the commercial viability of AGS games, think of it this way.

There are movies out there that cost several hundred million dollars to make.  They have the latest effects, the hottest stars, and immense marketing power.

There are also movies that cost a few thousand dollars to make.  They can only hire smalltime actors, and can only afford basic lighting and equipment. 

Is one film more commercially viable than the other?  Becaues the indie film costs less to make, and isn't as "professional" as the high-budget one, does that mean it is worth less?

You'll still pay the same $9 to see both movies.

Why should games be any different?  Just because my games cost around $5000 to make, versus the mega billion budgets of the high-end titles, does that mean I shouldn't bother?

I would never ask anyone to waste 1-2 years of the lives for free, while I won't have the ability to put pressure on (one of the bad things in freeware games).

Yes, this is the kicker.  Enthusiasm is GREAT, and can really move things along, but when the enthusiasm dies down there has to be something to take it's place.  Usually, that something is cash.  Offering a royalty/percentage of sales isn't the best idea (at least, not by itself), because there's no guarantee that the game will get done or that it will sell incredibly well.

Being amongst the terminally short of cash, offering huge amounts of money to my team members is something of an impossibility.  The main thing I have going for me is my reputation, but that's not always enough.  So, I usually have to make some concessions. 

1 - Low res graphics.  Costs less, quicker to make, and the right artist can make them look fantastic despite the pixels.  High res graphics take longer to make, require much more time and care, and are much harder and much more expensive.  If I had the luxery of time/money, I'd go high-res, but until that happy day arrives... low res it is.

2 - Short development time.  Enthusiasm wanes, and funds are limited. 
A short development time means that there's less of a chance of a flake out, since your team knows they will see the fruits of their labors much sooner.  Yes, the game will probably be on the short side, but it does make more financial sense to release a short game every 4-6 months instead of a massive epic every 2-3 years.  Who the heck has that kind of time?

It is understandable, yes, but at the same time, it just feels that commercial AGS games are treate unequally with the rest...

In some cases, yes.  I have the greatest respect for the AGS community, and consider it my foundation.  At first, it did kind of irk me that the only people to complain about the price were AGSers.  Nobody else seemed to mind.  But, for years this was a place to get free games.  That's starting to change.  There's bound to be some criticism.

I would hope that people who release commercial AGS games would prefer people to buy their games out of a love of their work and a desire to play, not out of charity.

When your living depends on sales, you'll be totally fine with charity!

Rule #1 about indie dev: never feel guilty about doing what you love, or about charging for it.   I felt that way myself, once.  If you read enough books about game dev, you'll see that "Indie Guilt" is a very common thing.

[buy]

Let's not jump to conclussions. As a sound designers in where I work, I buy the sfx from sounddogs.com . And then spent some time to make them my own. Cause otherwise they are too... common. Let's just not take lightly this kind of work...

Sound dogs is the BEST resource ever!  I purchased sfx from them, but unlike Nikolas I didn't futz with them.  And yes, they sound common and not-so-memorable as a result.  I've been experimenting with the sound effects now, adding things like echo and reverb and playing with the pitch, just to make the sounds a bit more interesting.

You're likely to make most of your sales of AGS games within the AGS community, I imagine because we're slightly more willing to pay a little extra for a game in order to 'support the community'.

You'd be surprised, SPC.  The AGS community makes up a small chunk of my sales, but the majority comes from folks who have never even heard of AGS.  The folks on this site are used to playing free games, so that was to be expected.  The first thing I noticed when I started selling my games is that fewer AGSers were playing them, but they got noticed by more "mainstream" gamers.  A commercial game generally attracts more attention than a freeware game would.  You'll get more press, but that doesn't necessarily mean more sales.

As with most things, it comes down to marketing.  It's not a matter of releasing the game and hoping for the best.  It's almost been a year since Shivah was released, and six months since Blackwell was released, but I still try to get them reviewed or mentioned on gaming sites.  The initial crazy buzz has died down somewhat, but it's important to keep getting the word out or people will forget you even exist.    It kind of sucks, actually, because while you are working on your current project you still have to support your previous projects. 

The important thing is to not be discouraged when people don't start buying your game right away, or start complaining that you are charging money.  These things take time.

One important thing is to talk to people.  Contact other indie developers, pick their brains, and ask their advice.  I've learned so much just from chatting with people in the game industry, and I'm always happy to pay the favor forward.  Feel free to PM me, if you like.