Chris Warren about 21 hours ago
Hey, thanks for being pro-active, you two! :D The conspiracy theorist in me almost believes that there's a segment of the gaming industry/fan-base who do NOT want to see our games published at any cost. While the realist says that it just comes down to clueless executives who don't know what the left/right hands are doing, and then end up making astoundingly arbitrary, inconsistent decisions -- or using our titles in some kind of guinea pig experiment. Either way, it's certainly not the quality of our games that's the issue.
I'd love to say that GOG gave us a concise, logical answer that we're not at liberty to talk about, but truth be told, we didn't even get that far into the discussions with them. Yes, they were that dismissive. This came as a pretty big surprise, as I was expecting them to be the most accepting portal, based on a combination of factors like AGDI/Himalaya's track record, our mutual goal of focusing on old games, and the amount of new customers we've drawn to their site. I've always loved GOG and what they do and it was immensely disappointing to have such inane decision-making sully the beginning of what would and should have been a very strong, long-term relationship.
I know I complain a lot about Greenlight -- they make it sheer hell to get a title through. But at the end of the day, at least they're eventually letting our games onto their system. GOG may well be the 2nd largest portal, and I suspect that shall remain so while they're so aggressively selective, that they end up rejecting games that are on Steam which would be even better-matched to GOG's audience. When all's said and done, it's more money in Valve's pocket and less in GOG's, which hardly seems sensible if your company mission is really to inspire a DRM-Free revolution. A developer really cares most about getting their games onto Steam and GOG is an afterthought, so with this in mind, why on earth would GOG be pushing strong candidates toward their largest competitor? Baffling! I just wish we weren't the ones caught in the crossfire.
Chris Warren about 1 hour ago
[...]
Also, to be clear, GOG didn't outright reject the games. They gave us that dismissive line about "not accepting at this time", but that's meaningless. For Al Emmo, they did throw us a line about the cutscenes "needing some work". That was a true WTF?! moment, because we just spent thousands redoing them in 2D and the feedback has universally been that they're a huge improvement over the old 3D ones. We're not working with the budget of Deadalic here! When I pointed out that GOG have accepted other indie titles with "questionable graphics" - their logic, not mine (i.e. Richard and Alice), they just gave an evasive excuse that they don't discuss the acceptance of other games. I asked them if they also requested AAA game developers from the 90's to make fundamental and expensive changes to their now-dated graphics, or if they simply sold them as digital antiques, quirks and all - products of their time? This question was also duly evaded. I couldn't quite grasp the logic of expecting boot-strapped indies to spend thousands and thousands more dollars redoing work to be given a chance at a "maybe", when GOG routinely accepts titles from the 90's that are filled with flaws and graphical anomalies. Case in point, I'm betting they didn't ask Activision to fix the dated, clunky 3D models in Mask of Eternity before accepting it. Overall, the thing that worries me the most isn't that they didn't accept our games - it's the erratic and inconsistent decision-making behind the process and the fact that I know any games we submit won't be given a 'fair trial'. It's even worse if the people making the decisions aren't aware of how valuable a mutual relationship could be, and wish to tarnish that and all future prosperity by being obtuse about 1 or 2 titles in there here and now. GOG requested us to put those banner ads on our AGDI site, so you'd think they'd be able to put 2 and 2 together. It makes me just not want to deal with the headache of GOG's review process at all. Greenlight's taken enough of a toll, and there are more productive ways to invest our time (like developing Mages!)
At any rate, we'll be on Steam, and that's what truly matters. And of course, we'll be offering DRM-Free versions elsewhere for players who prefer it. We'll probably just offer the DRM-Free version from the main Himalaya site and remove the DRM version altogether. The Humble Bundle widget that we have on the Al Emmo page at the moment covers that pretty well.
http://af.gog.com/forum/general/gog_rejects_agdihimalayas_mages_initiation/post63?as=1649904300
And that's all we got to say on the matter.
http://af.gog.com/forum/general/gog_rejects_agdihimalayas_mages_initiation/post63?as=1649904300
And that's all we got to say on the matter.
GOG always struck me as a relatively human company. What's the point in acting like a dumbfuck in this matter? No one likes this kind of primadonna "I don't have to explain myself because fuck you" bullshit.
Greetings, mages, magesses, and familiars! We hope that the Fire Mages have been putting in overtime for you if you’re in the northern hemisphere. Between some major illnesses and housing troubles among team members that transpired over the last few months, this update has been incredibly delayed and we’re sorry about that. However, you’ll be pleased to find out we’re quite on track with the game! Behold:
General Progress Report
There's nothing scientific about these figures. They're our best estimates on where we currently stand in the grand game development scheme. Nevertheless, when one knows that the light at the end of a tunnel is rapidly approaching, one finds it far easier to gauge how close said light really is. So while these figures contain not a shred of scientific analysis (not even from a magical measurement spell) it's safe to say they are accurate guesstimates:
Writing & Design: 99%
Background Artwork & Animations: 95%
Character Animations: 93%
Music: 80%
Sound Effects: 15%
Voices: 0%
Adventure Game Programming: 90%
Combat System Programming: 95%
RPG/Stats/Equipment Programming: 85%
And for the RPG fans who are so hardcore, they need stats about stat-raising game, here are the latest AGS engine assets being used.
AGS Game Engine Assets & Stats
Total sprites: 17203 / 30000
Sprite folders: 789
Total views: 745
Total GUIs: 68
Inventory Items: 300 / 300 (our custom inventory system is dynamic, we have over 300 items)
Characters: 194
Dialog topics: 402 / 500
(Yes, some of these figures went backwards from our last update. This is due to us deleting unused assets and/or the streamlining process of refining certain scenes and removing any wordy or clunky sections that didn't work well to convey the story.)
At this rate, we will be aiming for a May or June beta sans voice acting!
January 2015 Summit Meeting in Oz
Early in January 2015, Daniel and Chris met up for the annual Himalaya Studios summer summit meeting (yes, it took place in Australia). We used this opportunity to carefully map out the remaining work to be done on Mage's Initiation, so that we can see it to a (hopefully relatively speedy) conclusion. As is usually the case, much was accomplished during this in-person developer meeting. It was really quite motivating to bounce ideas off each other, and quickly enhance segments of the design and puzzles in real-time. There's this peculiar phenomenon in game development where things tend to get taken care of faster and much more efficiently in real life. Or maybe it's just that sitting in cramped quarters for full 40c degree days, with just a small metal fan shared between two, swarms of flies to keep you company, and the prospect of a walk around the block the only reward for a hard day's work, were motivation enough to get our work done quickly.
The first order of business was to conduct a full playtest of the game from beginning to end. This was fairly entertaining to watch, because Daniel had not actually played any of our internal demos for some months and thus was able to approach this playthrough through the eyes of a "fresh" gamer. So, naturally, he was designated the test pilot for this play-test session. He started a new game as a Fire Mage (since that's our most solid class at the moment) and we were off to the races! This method worked out well, too, because through playing, we quickly located problem areas which needed extra attention and we were able address them as we played. For example, there were times when Daniel got stuck and didn't have any direction on what to do next. He would say "If I were an unaccustomed player and I were playing this part right now, I wouldn't know where to go." Such epiphanies where very, very handy in helping us to decide where we needed to insert new NPC barks, "hint" thought bubbles for D'arc, and sometimes subtle visual, graphical indicators to ensure that the sense of progression never completely faded out on the player experience. At the same time, we didn't want to make it to hand-holdy. So, while you may still need to pause for thought every so often, as you contemplate how to solve a head-scratching puzzle, you'll always have your next goal clearly defined, and won't be stuck wandering around for lack of something to do.
As Daniel discovered issues and areas to improve, Chris was busy addressing them in the AGS engine and cracking out bug-free code. Another painstaking task that Daniel commenced during the summit was going through every… single… line... of dialog in the game, and condensing the text where necessary. Rewriting lines if they no longer fit the context of the scene or the overall game narrative (some of this dialog was written years ago and the game's design has evolved significantly in that time!).
While the dialogue clunkiness was being... declunked, we brainstormed several ideas for spell-casting opportunities using the player's existing "adventure" spells. (Each Mage class gets 5 "adventure quest" spells and 6 "combat" spells, for a grand total of 11 spells per Mage class!) We wanted to put more of these "adventure" spells to use and thought of some alternate puzzle solutions for the varied Mage castes. A few sections of the game were trimmed down and fine-tuned. Some unnecessary art and animation assets (that were yet to be made) were scrapped in the interests of consolidating specific scenes and shortening the production time. We felt particularly good about getting rid of these assets from the pipeline, as they were weighing the project down and didn't really add anything to the story couldn't be told without. The benefit was that important scenes became faster-paced, snappier; like they should be, rather than getting weighed down by overbloated dialog and overreliance on animations. In some cases, clever wording of a character line could give the same impression without the need to visually show a character's action on-screen.
As the playthrough reached the final Act, we redesigned the slightly outdated ending scenes to make them fit into the events of the scene better, and reworked the final adventure puzzle there so that things feel more intuitive and the right emotions are being conveyed.
By the time Daniel departed into the sunset (actually, he left at 4am) and was on his merry way back home, we felt that (aside from creating a monstrous to-do list) we had succeeded in planning exactly what needs to be done in order to transition things smoothly towards alpha testing and eventual beta testing. Make no mistake, there's still PLENTY of work remaining, and our noses will be to the grindstone for the next several months while attempting to complete everything for a prospective mid-year beta launch. Fingers crossed, and we'll keep you posted!
Second Rule of Mage Club: Talk About Fightin'
Since the last update, the Mage's Initiation combat system has transformed from a rather simple affair, with just a handful of opponents and a majority of missing spells, into a spell-casting, battle-blasting, gem-crafting, spectacle. Morgan, our fantastic combat programmer has been devoting much time, of late, toward getting the entire system completed and his hard work is paying off in spades! The battle system is now almost feature complete. All of D'arc's stats are in the process of being hooked in, with the appropriate buffs and debuffs attributed to equipable gems being applied in real-time.
As mentioned above, each Mage class (of which there are four: Fire, Earth, Air, and Water) has 6 different combat spells - each one unique to that class. That equates to a grand total of 24 combat spells in the game! These have all been fully-programmed now, and we're almost ready to start bug-fixing all the known issues pertaining to them. Completing all of the combat spell programming, including the backer-created ones, was a huge milestone and we think you guys will have a lot of fun laying waste to the beasts of Iginor with this magical arsenal.
As of writing this, we have just 3 boss battles left to program. (All the regular enemies are already done) One of these 'bosses' is the backer battles, which we've just started working on, to be programmed in the coming weeks. For their generous pledge, these two lucky fellas not only get to be D'arc's spellcasting test-target during the tutorial, they'll also be endowed with magical gifts and get to duke it out with him mano e mano in real-time.
We're expecting the combat system to finish up soon. Very soon. This will go a long way in moving the project toward beta on schedule. The general RPG/Stats system is still lagging behind a bit, but because the combat system now necessitates its inclusion, it's likely to play catch-up very quickly!
Check Out Mage’s Initiation at These Upcoming Events!
If we have anyone reading in the New York area, please check out Playcrafting’s Winter Expo! Over 50 games will be on display including Mage’s Initiation. There’s free pizza and all kinds of games: what’s not to like?
If you’ll be in New York next week, Rachel will also be at Gamedev Hacker if you want to say hi.
She'll also be representing Himalaya for the first time at GDC 2015 in San Francisco, which we’re extremely psyched about! If you’re going to be there, feel free to stop by and give some feedback on what you’ve seen so far... and tell her where the adventure game party will be at!
RIP Astrid PolloDiablo
We received the sad news that one of our backers lost her battle with cancer recently. She was an integral part of the adventure game community and our hearts go out to her loved ones.
This concludes our broadcasting schedule. Please remember to wipe-off your combat Conductors, unequip your gems, and keep your tunics crinkle-free while you wait for our next action-packed update, which is sure to level-up on even this one!
Mages: Almost Initiated
Welcome, once more, magical masters of the mystical multiverse,
As you'll no doubt be aware if you've been following along with our updates, development has been advancing rather well on Mages' Initiation and the game is fast heading down the track to completion! Sure, there's been the fair share of hiccups, hurdles, and illnesses to stumble over along the way, but the overall forward momentum is unstoppable and in this update, we'll document our progress thus far and cast our prognosis for when we expect to launch the beta.
So, come! Gaze into the Sphere of Knowledge. Let the clouds of prophecy roll in and we shall see what the fates have in store.
Name in Library Book - Please Read if You Backed at $20 or More
We wanted to get this out there first-- we ran into a little snafu. Kickstarter lets us survey a tier just once and the only tier we've surveyed to date is the $20 Apprentice tier since these backers were only receiving stickers and no other physical goods.
We've reached the point where we need to collect backers' names for inclusion in the "Book of Backers" in the Mage's Tower library. Please note the following:
Since we're not ready to receive the other data from the higher tiers (e.g. we don't need your mailing addresses just yet), for the time being we'll be sending a private message to each tier, linking to a Google Form asking for the name you'd like to have displayed in the library book.
- There's a 30 character limit on names. (Due to the formatting of the book, each name can only occupy a single line. This character limit ensures the names will fit.)
- Keep it clean, non-abusive, and avoid any mention of copyrighted terms or trademarks.
- If you don't want your name or pseudonym included in the in-game "Book of Backers", please type OPTOUT in all-caps into the field.
If you backed by PayPal, you’ll be receiving an email. Sorry for any confusion!
Progress Since January
We’re pleased to announce that we recently hit a glorious milestone! The art and animation assets for the project are now essentially finished. Every game background and associated animation (e.g. things like rivers, doors opening and closing, smoking fires etc.) has been completed. Our lead artist, JP Selwood, has worked endlessly, detailing over 80 game backgrounds. He has given each screen a consistent artistic style so that the landscapes appear seamless, without any clashes or variation in the style and quality (which is sometimes hard to avoid when multiple artists have worked on adjoining background pieces). We have truly strived to give the valley of Iginor the most verdant landscape we could imagine, remembering the way our imaginations ran wild playing all the classics on account of their brilliant art. We hope you'll enjoy getting lost in this lush, aesthetic world.
Karen also finished the last of the animated in-game character dialog portraits, which is another milestone worth celebrating. We're very pleased with the high quality of her work and it has been a blast seeing Iginor's diverse cast of characters come to life on-screen. Since none of the character voices have yet been recorded, their mouth frames currently just animate in a looping pattern. But we're really looking forward to getting the voices in place and the lip-syncing added, in order to witness the full effect of all those intricate mouth phoneme frames that Karen has painstakingly crafted.
Onto the final artistic front: the character animations. Shane and Jeremy have been knocking down the remaining entries on the animations list for both D'arc and NPC characters. Once a grand and intimidating sight to behold, the list is now dwindling and contains little more than a small handful of entries, which we expect will be finished in a matter of weeks. With 4 player classes and animations for nearly every player action, Mages is a very animation intensive title, and this, in large part is a major factor in what's contributed to the lengthy development time-frame. So to say that we're "elated" to finally see the animations list reach an end is the understatement of a quarter-decade… quite literally!
The music and sound effects are coming into the final stages. Brandon is currently working on polishing the remaining pieces for the game and we're getting them set up as they roll in. Adding sound effects, on the other hand, is a somewhat painstaking task which we usually leave until the very end.
In terms of programming, there are several outstanding areas that we still need to focus on before the game will be in a state fit for beta testing. Jason is getting close to wrapping up programming the Wastelands section of the game. This is a region which had to be put on the back-burner for a long time, for a couple of reasons The first being that the decision to re-include the wastelands as a fully-explorable area was decided upon later, as it was based on meeting our $80K Kickstarter Stretch Goal. And the second being that it's a complex area to script, with chasms, unique landmarks, and other obstacles - we wanted to get the combat system fully functional before implementing the wastelands as a secondary major combat zone (the forest being the first). That, and there were more important scripting priorities that took precedence, such as getting the RPG and Stats system working without flaws.
Simultaneously, Morgan is working through a very long list of combat-related bug-fixes. These tweaks are aimed at bringing stability to the battle system so that it can be fully-integrated into the RPG system. Hooking both of these together is something that still needs to be done, as if you were to test the game in its current state, it would simply play like a straight adventure game with optional combat tacked on that you could ignore. This means you could finish the game without raising any stats and the only mandatory combat encounters you'd face would be the bosses. Obviously, a lot of fine-tuning needs to be done once the combat and RPG systems are interlinked, and the timing of this long list of combat bugs is the largest variable affecting when the beta will be stable enough to release.
Those programming tasks aside, there's a trivial amount of work to be done on the class-based side-quests, one interface GUI still needs to be properly implemented, and a couple of mini-games are in need of fine tuning. That pretty much encompasses all of the remaining programming work.
A Word on Beta Testing
When all is said and done, we're realistically looking at a beta launch of around mid to late August 2015. Bear in mind, however, that this beta will likely be closer to an alpha, as the voices won't be present and there will be a fair few rough edges. Releasing a beta this way is a new process to us, as with all our previous games we've held off on releasing beta versions until the products were in a very polished state, complete with voices, and having been comprehensively alpha tested internally until we couldn't find any more bugs. At that point, we'd turn it over to a small, controlled group of beta testers to scrutinize and report their own findings.
To be honest, we do feel a little 'exposed' at the prospect of releasing such an early build as a beta version to a much larger test group, but we also feel that this will be the right time to let backers at the appropriate tier levels see the game they've backed after the long wait. This new approach also comes with some advantages, in that backers/testers can help us weed out any spelling or grammar anomalies before the time comes to record voice actors. (It's always a bit of a hassle having to get actors back for pick-up sessions if you've already recorded all their lines prior to the beta.)
We're aiming to have the game and all of its systems fully-functional and playable to the end by the end of June, so we can spend adequate time internally alpha testing it for a month or so. We'll keep you posted!