Messages

And Like a Raisin in the Sun is featured quite prominently at the very top of RockPaperShotgun, with some great comments too:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/10/20/live-free-play-hard-hang-out-with-mice-forever/

Completely off-topic (I don't know where to post that info or who to PM about it), but I get a virus alert coming from, I believe, AprilSkies' avatar (which doesn't show up, I guess because it's blocked by avast!). Maybe something should be done about it?


[EDIT] The alert doesn't show up anymore, so it must have worked. Thank you!

UPDATE: Too late! To the one who got the games: have fun.

Not Steam-related, but I have an entire bundle to give away, the latest from Indie Royale: http://www.indieroyale.com/

There are six games, and one of them is a point'n'click adventure (The Ballads of Reemus: When the Bed Bites).

Send me a PM if interested!

[rickious:]

rickious: Thank you!

When I first made that post, I did think about including the percentage, but it would have been something like 5% everywhere, which might be more demoralizing than anything else really!

We are supposed to reach an important milestone next month, so I'll make an update then. It's also tricky to think of a percentage when we are not sure of the level of polish we want the game to have (will we put in more talking animations? more background animations? more dialog branching? one or two additional cutscenes?).

As for a demo, I don't know yet, but if we ever finish the game, there sure will be trailers... but let's not get ahead of ourselves!

Is this going to be a commercial release?

We'd like for it to be a commercial release, yes. I didn't notice that this bit of information wasn't on the page, so I updated it accordingly; it would feel a bit dishonest not mentioning it anywhere. My apologies!

That's useful advice. However, a limiting factor is that our games are freeware, which means that this is not a paid job for the translator either.

My bad! I knew your past games were freeware, but I thought you asked for a potential future commercial game or for a paid special edition of your already existing free games.

If the translator isn't paid, then I don't see why you wouldn't consider posting in the Recruitment forum; I'm sure you'll have at least a few answers from people that are willing to get some localization experience by translating games, or simply from people who want to help. But then, you would probably need to recruit at least one proofreader for each language too just in case the translation ends up amateurish.
And if nobody serious answers, well... at least you tried!

I would say there are three "viable" ways of doing that kind of translation:

-Using a cheap translation website; Stupot+ suggests Gengo.com, which I only know by name, but I, for one, have worked for OneHourTranslation.com for a few years. I would, however, strongly suggest against posting different small projects instead of the whole game script as a whole; the lack of consistency you will definitely experience in your translation is not worth it (it would only allow you to get your translation done sooner, which would only be interesting if you need a job done urgently).
These translation services are cheap indeed, but the quality is very hit-or-miss, and your translators will not test the game to make adjustments in the translation. Small mobile games that don't rely too much on text often have their translations done by that kind of website.

-Using a high-quality translation website specialized in video gaming: Keywords International is one of them (they translated Halo, Fable, Assassin's Creed...). The quality will definitely be there, because I believe they do test their translations in-game to make sure everything is perfect. However, if they accept to translate your game, it will be rather expensive. I've worked for them for a short time, and they seemed very professional.

-Surfing the Web for professional translators specialized in video game localization (maybe you could indeed ask in the request service forum here; I'm sure there are professional translators within the AGS community; I'm a professional English-to-French translator, so feel free to PM me if you're interested), and pick one for each language. You have to carefully choose who you work with, which might take a bit of time, but once you've got someone that does a great job on your game, you will know who to go to if you want your next game translated. It should also be less expensive than Keywords International (but quite a bit more than Gengo/OHT).

I would definitely choose that third option for my game. And although I could consider the first option for a book, doing such a thing for a video game seems suicidal to me because of the lack of context usually found in video game scripts.

Good luck!

I just want to react to kconan:

I agree with Maddox: Sexism in Gaming

Maddox writes: "Some feminists think that if only more video games were designed by women, that it would solve this problem. Except there already are a lot of games designed by women and nobody is playing them."

There are a lot of games designed by women indeed, but they represent only a small part of all games. If you pick up a game, chances are it's going to be made by a man, so it's no wonder less people are playing women's games.

He also says: "That's because the types of games that women design largely have one thing in common: they're boring."

I don't know how this statement could possibly be anything else than sexist: why wouldn't women be able to make games that are as interesting as the ones made by men?

He then goes on to talk about games that fit his definition of "boring" such as Christine Love's don't take it personally, babe, it just ain't your story or Dys4ia (and let's not talk about King's Quest!) when those games are/were actually pretty popular (and thus, not considered boring by at least a good number of people).

Finally, there is this whole argument of "don't complain, make games instead," as if complaining wasn't a valid way to challenge the status quo, and as if every critic had the talent, skills and/or time to make video games. You don't need to make video games in order to have an impact on the evolution of the medium.

This, and a myriad of small things in that page (Dys4ia is a game, not a "game" with quotations marks; don't take it personally babe's main plot point is not about "high school students coming out of the closet" but about the evolution of the relationship we have with technology and privacy in the future, etc.) make me disagree with the guy on nearly everything he says.

Seeing all the media coverage (great videos, by the way) along with the creator of the game posting in various forums or websites, I thought these $25,000 would be reached in no time.

I pledged a few hours ago; I hope Dropsy won't cry, because the character and the world built around him looks intriguing, to say the least!

[san.daniele:]

I just wanted to thank you all for your comments. Progress on the game is steady and actually quite fast, although, well, it can never be fast enough!

For those who might be interested, Honza, our character artist, has made a thread asking for your comments and advice on the character art:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=48347.0

I'm sure he'll appreciate any help he can get!

san.daniele: I do hope that the game itself will draw you in; it'd be a pity if the game was barely more than eye candy. In any case, thank you very much for sharing your enthusiasm. It's truly appreciated.

Hi everyone!

I'm a 27-year-old Frenchman named Patrice and I'm an English-Japanese-French translator. I've discovered AGS and registered on the forums back in 2007 after having played 5 Days a Stranger. I remember spending hours sitting in my tiny room, looking at the Background Blitz and the AGS Games in Production threads. I never posted anything anywhere because I never felt I had anything worthwhile to contribute.

Now that I've made my first posts (announcing A Poison Green on the Games in Production forum), I thought it'd be time to post in here!

I look forward to talk with some fellow AGS users and I hope I, like so many others before me, will contribute ever so slightly in making AGS an even more lovely place than it already is!

Thank you all so much for the feedback! That's very nice of you; this kind of motivation boost is very welcome.

Mr.Dream:
In French (I hope it's OK, Darth, if I write in French as long as I provide an English translation):

Spoiler

Ton message m'a vraiment fait plaisir, merci ! J'espère que l'univers du jeu et l'histoire seront à  la hauteur de tes attentes, mais étant donné le développement encore peu avancé, nos journées sont faites d'incertitude autant que d'espoir, donc difficile à  dire. Quant au doublage, des doublages en d'autres langues que l'anglais me semble improbable ; je ne pense pas qu'on aura de quoi se payer des doublages de bonne qualité pour plusieurs langues. Mais je ne peux pas complètement l'écarter, notamment en ce qui concerne les doublages français. Il est encore trop tôt pour le dire !

[close]

Your message made my day. Thank you! I hope that the game's world and the story won't disappoint, but this early in development, days are filled with as much uncertainty as hope. As for voice acting, anything other than English voice acting seems improbable, because I don't think we'll be able to afford good-quality voice acting for several languages. But I can't completely rule out French voice acting and other languages. In any case, it's still too early to tell!

[Story]

Story

Washington D.C., 2070.

Environmental diseases are now the norm due to an ever-decreasing air quality that forces people to wear gas masks at all times. When all legitimate plans to make a difference failed and with a passive government that dared not listen, eco-terrorism became the only way to make one's voice heard.

Such is the world in which three people's paths cross.








These three characters and their shattered moral compasses are at the center of a story of espionage in a city of perpetual rain, sickness and misunderstanding.

Screenshots (Work-in-Progress):

(Click on each screenshot to see them in higher resolution!)


Any interaction with the outside world is a struggle for Mia.



William visits a long-time friend.



Depends on the kind of stuff, I suppose.



Mia waits on a stranger who would "like a word or two."



Elijah's best friend, Hafiz, shares the same beliefs and ideals as our dear history teacher.



If this looks bad for William, be reassured that it will only get worse.

How about some music?

I'm glad you asked!
http://www.youtube.com/embed/VcY5uoP9vNU?feature=player_detailpage

Featuring:

-Three playable characters,
-Everything you make your characters say or do slightly alters their behavior, allowing them to make choices that wouldn't have been available to them otherwise,
-Over 50 backgrounds in 1024à—768,
-Difficult (a)moral choices,
-Full English voice-acting,

Credits:

Story (90%) by FlyingMandarine
Scripting (50%) by geork and FlyingMandarine with help from Crimson Wizard
Background art (80%) by SookieSock and Nick Canton
Character art (40%) by Ilyich and Honza
Sound/Music (20%) by Johan Tardif

Development progress:

March 2020:

We've finished work on a first version of Chapter 2 a couple months early, and are now about 20% into the last chapter! The aim is to have the game playable from start to finish by the end of August, although that's a tad optimistic. Then it'll be time to get the last art assets in, rewrite/re-code scenes that don't work as well as they should, and more generally having a quality pass on the whole game.

Also, we now have a nice website! Check it out here: http://www.apoisongreen.com

If you use Twitter, please feel free to follow us at https://twitter.com/FarawayInd !

[FINAL UPDATE (December 31, 2012):]

FINAL UPDATE (December 31, 2012):
We have found our background artist, our character artist and our programmer.
However, if you are a background artist or a character artist and are interested in the project, you can still contact us. We have a lot of art assets to produce, so we may recruit other artists.


Project:
Untitled Project (WiP title: A Poison Green)

Details:
Washington D.C., 2070.

Environmental diseases are the norm due to an ever-decreasing air quality that forces people to wear a mask at all times. When all legitimate plans to make a difference failed, eco-terrorism became the only way to make one's voice heard amidst the many lobbies dominating a passive government. Such is the world in which three people's paths cross.

William is a journalist with a dwindling interest in the news that will lead him to take truly drastic measures in order to cover the upcoming 20th anniversary of the Washington Bombings.

Jadon is an unemployed man aimlessly wandering through life, stuck behind ideals that never translate into acts.

Elijah is a history teacher who, when not proselytizing to his students, works toward making sure history will take a sharp, unexpected turn toward a brighter, greener future.

These three characters and their shattered moral compasses are at the center of a story of espionage in a city of perpetual rain, suffering and misunderstanding.

Positions Available:
We are a new independent team of highly qualified individuals working on our first commercial title, a full-length point'n'click adventure game with a heavy emphasis on storytelling.

We are looking for one or several background artists, character artists and programmers. We are only looking for serious people who are willing to invest the time and energy necessary to make our game a success. Since you would be part of our team, we would prefer that you earn a part of the profits based on the amount of time you have invested in the project, but up-front payment might be an option.

The visual style of the game should be realistic: think more Gemini Rue / Resonance and less Day of the Tentacle / Deponia.

Deadline:
The project being in preproduction, there is no deadline set in stone yet.

Comments:
I have worked on several commercial and freeware titles, including Xbox 360, Android and iPhone games, albeit as a translator (I will gladly send you my resum� on request). As a writer, I have been regularly published in the popular French video game magazine Joystick.
Our musician has worked on several freeware titles and has a SoundCloud profile that might interest you: https://soundcloud.com/sgt-hartman

You can either send me a private message here or send me an e-mail at hermenaultpatrice (at) gmail.com

I look forward to hearing from you,

Patrice Hermenault AKA FlyingMandarine