Pyke
The Brotherhood
And wow - Shadowgrounds looks frikin amazing!
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KickStarter STASIS - An Indie Space Adventure Game - now with CAYNE DLC
- Thread starter Jaesun
- Start date
General Maxson
Arcane
This is going to be an awesome adventure game, it fits my tastes perfectly! I mean sci-fi horror, what's not to like? If only there was an cRPG in such a setting... 
Maybe it even makes sense to turn the light off in certain situations.
Pyke
The Brotherhood
A basic save system is easy. It records each time something is changed and saves the games state at that point. But then the saves just get bigger and bigger...and take longer and longer...and the bigger a save file gets, and the longer it takes to write it the more chance there is of something going wrong.
So what you have to do is set up 'blocks' of saving where you know where to discard information that you don't need. An example of this would be saving in 'chapters'. So you divide the game up into pieces, and you know that if you are in Chapter 2, you can discard Chapter 1 - and in Chapter 3, where you now discard 1 and 2...but you have to ensure that nothing you did in Chapter 1 and 2 will have any effect in Chapter 3. So that generally just becomes a gameplay testing issue.
A way around this is to use save points, because the designer can have a pretty good idea of what a person needs to have done to get that point, and can artificially set up the game to 'mimic' what has happened up to that point. I know that in Stasis you start of Chapter 2 with the High Speed Neural Drill and the Crowbar. All other information from Chapter 1 can be thrown away (door states, item visibility, precached animations etc).
In Stasis I have 3 save systems.
1 Is a death save system, which activates when a death is close at hand so that there isn't a big penalty for the death.
2 Is a system that comes into play 'in case' of crashes, bugs, etc - that lets the game 'roll back' to a point before the crash occurred to make sure you can work around it (an example of this is you save your game JUST before you die - now every time you load that game you will be stuck in a loop. So you need a way that 'rolls back' the game to a few seconds before that...again setting up a system that mimics what you would have done to get to that point).
3 Is the aforementioned 'Chapters' saving system where the game is divided up into blocks.
The idea is that all of these systems work simultaneously so that you don't notice that they are there.
That's why games have 'save points'. Its as much a game design decision (providing an 'ultimate penalty') as it is a technical one. Save points are usually in neutral areas where you aren't going to be attacked, or do anything that may break the game so as to keep the player from getting stuck in a loop. They are also generally far enough away from items that you can interact with to stop any conflict from happening there. So lets say you have a door that opens within proximity of the player. Generally the save station will be as far away from that as possible so that the game state knows that the door is closed when it loads.
Lots of bugs in games happen when you reload a saved game. Things like 'infinite ammo caches' in the Dead Space series are from this - because the game isn't actually saving and loading your game - its saving and loading an approximation of your game.
Currently Stasis just has a brute force 'SAVE EVERYTHING' system (the one that comes with Visioniare) - but as I said, the save games just become longer and longer to save. I want the saving and loading to be as fast (invisible if possible) as possible.
So what you have to do is set up 'blocks' of saving where you know where to discard information that you don't need. An example of this would be saving in 'chapters'. So you divide the game up into pieces, and you know that if you are in Chapter 2, you can discard Chapter 1 - and in Chapter 3, where you now discard 1 and 2...but you have to ensure that nothing you did in Chapter 1 and 2 will have any effect in Chapter 3. So that generally just becomes a gameplay testing issue.
A way around this is to use save points, because the designer can have a pretty good idea of what a person needs to have done to get that point, and can artificially set up the game to 'mimic' what has happened up to that point. I know that in Stasis you start of Chapter 2 with the High Speed Neural Drill and the Crowbar. All other information from Chapter 1 can be thrown away (door states, item visibility, precached animations etc).
In Stasis I have 3 save systems.
1 Is a death save system, which activates when a death is close at hand so that there isn't a big penalty for the death.
2 Is a system that comes into play 'in case' of crashes, bugs, etc - that lets the game 'roll back' to a point before the crash occurred to make sure you can work around it (an example of this is you save your game JUST before you die - now every time you load that game you will be stuck in a loop. So you need a way that 'rolls back' the game to a few seconds before that...again setting up a system that mimics what you would have done to get to that point).
3 Is the aforementioned 'Chapters' saving system where the game is divided up into blocks.
The idea is that all of these systems work simultaneously so that you don't notice that they are there.
That's why games have 'save points'. Its as much a game design decision (providing an 'ultimate penalty') as it is a technical one. Save points are usually in neutral areas where you aren't going to be attacked, or do anything that may break the game so as to keep the player from getting stuck in a loop. They are also generally far enough away from items that you can interact with to stop any conflict from happening there. So lets say you have a door that opens within proximity of the player. Generally the save station will be as far away from that as possible so that the game state knows that the door is closed when it loads.
Lots of bugs in games happen when you reload a saved game. Things like 'infinite ammo caches' in the Dead Space series are from this - because the game isn't actually saving and loading your game - its saving and loading an approximation of your game.
Currently Stasis just has a brute force 'SAVE EVERYTHING' system (the one that comes with Visioniare) - but as I said, the save games just become longer and longer to save. I want the saving and loading to be as fast (invisible if possible) as possible.
Brother None
inXile Entertainment
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2004
- Messages
- 5,673
Looks amazing Pyke 
Pyke
The Brotherhood
I have. Technically I've had the ability to do Linux builds since the original Kickstarter (I've been using developer builds). Our 'lack' of official Linux announcement is really due to making certain we can provide support for it.
I've never used Linux, so I'm really unfamiliar with its ins and outs. When we get the game to BETA we will be doing runs on as many machines as possible, on as many platforms as possible - so will be in a better position to judge it then. I don't see it being a problem - but I'm hesitant to make any promises that I'm not 110% certain I can follow up on - and give those platforms all of the support and attention that they deserve!
I've never used Linux, so I'm really unfamiliar with its ins and outs. When we get the game to BETA we will be doing runs on as many machines as possible, on as many platforms as possible - so will be in a better position to judge it then. I don't see it being a problem - but I'm hesitant to make any promises that I'm not 110% certain I can follow up on - and give those platforms all of the support and attention that they deserve!
Pyke
The Brotherhood
We have also announced that STASIS will be out in English, French, German, Russian, Polish, and Spanish. Unfortunately the voice acting will only be in English at release.
We are also going to be giving out the .po file after the release of Stasis and will be supporting fan translations as well as our official translations.
We are also going to be giving out the .po file after the release of Stasis and will be supporting fan translations as well as our official translations.
I bet the people behind the potato version are incompetent 
Pyke
The Brotherhood
Yeah - I'm currently working on a way that people can 'rate' the fan translations in the engine. When submitting the .po file they will all be available for download from the site so anyone can take it and modify it....or something. I don't know - I have to try and figure out the logistics of it!
I know that fan translations are really popular and I want to make it as easy as possible...but hopefully will have a way to weed out the bad ones from the good.
I've got an excellent font that supports a multitude of languages, and have built the text displays to handle variable lengths...so the systems are in place. Its just the damned human element.
I know that fan translations are really popular and I want to make it as easy as possible...but hopefully will have a way to weed out the bad ones from the good.
I've got an excellent font that supports a multitude of languages, and have built the text displays to handle variable lengths...so the systems are in place. Its just the damned human element.
I also can help with the Spanish translation.
Well I can help too, are you all Spanish or what.
EDIT:
You can maybe set up something along the lines of the Disqus message board, where people could post corrections and/or alternative translations and everyone could up-vote them accordingly, kinda like the Brofist system here. I think a system like that would be a generally good indicator, unless you want to actually hire professional folk to edit/correct these translations.
EDIT:
You can maybe set up something along the lines of the Disqus message board, where people could post corrections and/or alternative translations and everyone could up-vote them accordingly, kinda like the Brofist system here. I think a system like that would be a generally good indicator, unless you want to actually hire professional folk to edit/correct these translations.
Last edited:
Pyke
The Brotherhood
Ideally the fan translations would be fan moderated - so I agree that a system like that would work well. If a specific language gets a lot of traction however, we would probably switch it to an 'official' translation and get a service to monitor and update it.
The language selection is based on things like demographics of websites that support the game, Greenlight votes, where people Kickstarted it from, certain portals that we are aiming for, where YouTube views come from, etc. When the game finally gets released, if we notice that we are losing out on sales from a specific region - or the game gains popularity there then we will do an 'official translation'. The current 6 now are just done on budget. We only had enough money for 4 translations, plus English - but we managed to work our budget into getting the additional one.
The translations don't take a long time to do - they are just expensive. Its 60 000 words...its basically a book.
Thanks for the offers to help with the translations - those are currently sorted, but we will need testers in all of the languages, so Ill be putting out a call closer to the date!
polo
Magister
- Joined
- Jul 8, 2014
- Messages
- 1,737
Pyke
The Brotherhood
A small audio snippet from one of the playable sequences in the game....
When the fuck is this coming out?
Thursday.
Pyke
The Brotherhood
That guy in the background is struggling pretty badly during taking a shit.
One dude said it sounded like he was furiously masturbating to the sound of a little girl... I lolled. :D
As for release date - patience! It will be Q1 2015...just gotta make sure it's completely bad ass before we release! Trust me...it's worth the wait!
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