Messages

Yay!  I offer myself up to be a guest at some point!  I AM FASCINATING!

Edit: I love The Dig.  I haven't played it for probably ten years because it will almost certainly ruin it for me.

[should]

In honor of me making what should be my very last edit to Resonance tonight, I'm releasing Resonance's stats for those who are into this kind of thing:



Some other stats:

Rooms: 77
# of Global .asc files (not including the room script files): 15
Lines of code (including white space and commented out lines because I can't be arsed to figure it out otherwise): 106368 (ish)
Lines of recorded speech: 5167
Non-speech Audio tracks (sound fx and music are all mixed up together): 304
Exhausted developers: all of them

I suppose I could release something around, say, the 19th of this month...

DKH, that space game looks amazing!

Finally got around updating the first post with the preorder link and trailer.  Holy crap you guys, it's almost out!  If all goes according to plan, the game should be gold by the end of this week!

Love the Fringe feel of this game. Or that's just my impression.

Definitely a Fringe vibe to the game!  Thanks!

[Bring it on 2012!]

Aww, I missed it this year!  Shoot!

Big congratulations to all the winners, especially TheJBurger for all the wins!  And special congrats to Kris and Baron for your well-deserved awards!

Bring it on 2012!

["XII and Wadjet Eye have a real gem here."]

Hey, just a quick note to say... Dave submitted Resonance to Steam yesterday, and within one day, they accepted!  No deliberations needed, baby!  Excited!

Also:

"XII and Wadjet Eye have a real gem here."
-Destructoid

"a smart, atmospheric sci-fi thriller"
-Mother Frickin' Forbes

Yes, sir!

If I were ever to buy an IP to make a game in someone else's universe, it would be The Space Bar.  Best (deeply flawed) game ever!

["I’ve just played a near-final preview sampler of the upcoming game, and can sum up my reaction in three simple words: When’s the rest?!"--Adventure Gamers"It’s hard enough for many adventure games to create one memorable hero, let alone four â€" Resonance has a gripping story with the cast to match."--Alternative Magazine Online]

Forgive the spam around here.  We'll have a proper trailer, release date and related announcements in the very near future, but for now, a couple more reviews:


"I’ve just played a near-final preview sampler of the upcoming game, and can sum up my reaction in three simple words: When’s the rest?!"
--Adventure Gamers

"It’s hard enough for many adventure games to create one memorable hero, let alone four â€" Resonance has a gripping story with the cast to match."
--Alternative Magazine Online

Yeah, sorry for that confusion fozi, only a handful of beta testers and press sites have seen the preview.  We'll have a public demo soon!

And Stu, that timing should work out juuuuuust about right for you!

J.H, I am a fan of Fringe!  And there is definitely some Fringe science in this game!  If you like Fringe, you'll love Resonance!  (Would somebody say that in a review so I can put it on the back of the box?  Or is it not in bad taste to quote myself on the box?  )

Oh, and if you don't like Fringe, you'll also love Resonance.  There.  That covers all my bases!

I will freely admit that a drawback of Resonance's system is that once you realize that something is important, like meeting a locksmith and then realizing that he could help you with that locked door (note: this does NOT happen in Resonance), you sometimes have to travel through a couple screens to go get that door, add it to your short-term memory, and then walk back to the locksmith and use it on him.  (In practice, though, you're never that far from the map screen which takes you anywhere in the game, so it's not a long backtrack.)

However, the alternative is having those items automatically pop up in your notebook/inventory, thus letting you know that it's important before you know why it's important.  This also makes choosing all the possibilities (brute forcing the solution) much easier.  You've already got your collection of important clues, you just have to guess which one applies to your current situation, or try all of them until you get it.

A better system of handling might be having some way of the player remembering all the places he's been and being able to choose any item from those places at any time without backtracking to them.  Like a photo album of all the room backgrounds you've seen, allowing you to choose any hotspot within those rooms as a topic of conversation with any character.  Same effect as Resonance, without the backtracking.  But a potentially overwhelming interface as you flip through all the places you've been.

Also, Snarky, why haven't you made that game yet?!

Great topic, Andail!  After five years of futzing with such a system, I'm intimately familiar with the shortcomings of the "game records memories, player draws conclusions from those memories" format of mystery solving.  I do plenty of this in my game, where at times you have to realize that you need to bring up a certain memory in dialog.  I also have a lot of Phoenix Wright-inspired moments where the player is directly asked to figure out which memory connects x to y, like what Snarky was talking about.

A few ways I've found to improve this system:
-Make memories that aren't relevant to puzzles.  They also serve as a "the story so far" to remind players what's going on in the plot.  Granted this only serves to increase the number of memories that need to be randomly tried when the player is stuck.
-Obfuscate important information within the memories.  In my game you can click a memory to watch or replay the event surrounding the memory.  The memory might summarize an important part of the game, but have an important detail hidden in the background or in a seemingly innocent comment by a character.
-Punish the player for random choosing.  I actually don't do a lot of that, but you might be able to find a way to do so.
-Make every item in the game a potential memory.  That makes random combinations of everything in the game much harder!

However, I think what you're talking about, making the player demonstrate that he has made a mental connection or figured out a clue by just acting out that suspicion (by going to and searching a suspicious characters' home, or by slapping the cuffs on a person who you know to be lying about their alibi) is much more compelling from a gameplay standpoint.  Just take out all interface-driven mental work (or have an open note-taking system of some sort, but don't make this into a game-play element) and instead put extra work into broadening the number of ways the player can interact with the game world. 

Of course, giving the game the depth needed to make this work is a tall order.  And the tallest of the tall orders is getting dialog working in a way that doesn't telegraph answers to the player by having a small set of dialog options displayed to the player.  The Short-term memory system in Resonance where you can take any item in the game world, make it a short-term memory, and then use that in dialog with any character would help with this a lot.  In fact, I've realized that this system would have worked a lot better in a more intimate crime-scene investigation game rather than in an epic adventure.

I do agree with the notion that such a system takes away the designer's control over pacing and plot.  Having a system where the player can act out their suspicions could lead to a very short case for the observant player.  Such a game would be great if it could randomly generate cases, though!

Please padon the double post!  I'm starting the stream any minute now.  Join and watch or ask questions!  http://www.ustream.tv/channel/resonance-dev

Ooh, thanks errbody!  And happy birthdays to all the others I share it with!

In honor of my 30th birthday, I'm planning on u-streaming development tonight at 10PM US Central Time (ish).  I'll post a link here (and on twitter and facebook) when I'm starting up.  You can watch me work on the last mini-game of the game and I'll be answering questions and talking while working.

If you're into that, see you tonight!

I'll also record the session and share the link later if you want to watch.

I heard that it might be featured on a Gamespot video a week ago, but didn't know it would be live or exactly when it would take place until 16 minutes before it happened!  And then of course I was at work and got a phone call right when it started, so even I couldn't watch it live!   :'(

[Warning, the video contains some puzzle spoilers from early in the game. Do not watch if you don't like that kind of thing!Here's the video.]

Hey hey hey!  Resonance was demoed live on Gamespot's On The Spot today!  Heroic programmer Janet Gilbert (off screen) gave a run through of one scene of the game while Dave Gilbert talked to the Gamespot host about the game's development.  Fun was had by all!

Warning, the video contains some puzzle spoilers from early in the game.  Do not watch if you don't like that kind of thing!

Here's the video.

Yay!  It's great to be publicly talking about all the stuff that's been going on!  If you want to listen to the voices, including a few you may have heard in other Wadjet Eye titles plus Logan Cunningham a.k.a. the Narrator from Bastion: Make with the clicking!

Once Resonance is released I'll switch to my avatar for the 2010s...

Yeah, like that'll ever happen.