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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsCatyph - 1st person Sci-Fi point & click (Myst-like)
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Simon_ASA
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« Reply #20 on: September 22, 2014, 02:49:03 AM »

At last we have reached the final stage of the Production process! I would like to thank all the people who have supported this Making Of until now and I hope you have enjoyed it. Please feel free to ask questions if you need more detail regarding some areas. Let’s now go ahead with the 7th and final part of this process: Development and Puzzle Scripting.

If you can recall, in part 6, I had prepared the 3D renders to use in Visionaire Studio. I had made separate elements such as PNG pictures, which would help me to create the scenes of the game.

A few words regarding Visionaire

I am aware that the previous parts of this Making Of may have been quite complicated if you’re not a graphic designer. Not everyone owns 3D software and knows how to use it, even if some programs are easily accessible (e.g. Blender, licence free, with a lot of tutorials available). Happily it is also possible to create an adventure game without using any 3D software. If you’re good at drawing things or taking photos, you can build a game using Visionaire quite easily at home. You can, for instance, paint beautiful watercolors and scan them: they can then become great backgrounds within your game project.
 
Visionaire Studio 4 “Indie Single user” version is available for around 49€ and allows you to create commercially viable indie games such as Catyph.
http://www.visionaire-studio.net/shop/category/adventures-english/

From version 4 onwards, you can export your games to Windows, Mac and Linux.


Originally, Visionaire was intended to produce 3rd person adventure games like Deponia, so you can of course spend some time on the animation of a hero, and work on the adventure of your dreams. If you’re fond of Monkey Island, Machinarium or Myst, simply choose the game-style you prefer and create your own game with your own style (retro/pixilated, realistic, cartoon…).
If you’re really happy with how your games have developed, you can also purchase more advanced versions, such as the “mobile” version that allows export to Android/iOS (490€), or a “pro” version that will allow you to work with several people and distribute your game physically (1490€) without any limits.

Fortunately I’m making Catyph on my own, so the cheap indie version is perfect!  There is an evaluation version available too, if you’re interested:
http://www.visionaire-studio.net/cms/licenses-visionaire-studio-4.html
It would probably be a good idea to get familiar with it, if you wish to more fully understand my explanations, and also be able to do developments of your own.

The main concept behind Visionaire is to allow anyone to create an adventure game without having to write a single line of code. It may sound magical, but it still doesn’t prevent you from “writing” scripts. In Visionaire, a script is a list of several pre-defined Actions that you select from a list. There are plenty of possibilities and you can probably create everything you want.

How it works:
You first need to create a new scene in Visionaire, with a background picture and several “hotspots” (clickable areas). On the very left of the editor, there is the list of scenes I have created for the prototype of Catyph.



This is what a basic scene looks like (see picture below). At this stage, I have just imported the background that I had prepared previously, for the puzzle with the switches:



The scene of this puzzle has been selected from the list, and the list of objects for this scene is currently showing as empty - we just have a “back” (background) layer selected in blue at the top (can you see?). Next you need to create a new Scene-Action, followed by a new Hotspot-Action. There are 2 tabs named “Actions” within the editor. The tab at the top is for the whole selected scene, while the other tabs at the bottom of the screen are for each separated object (layer) within the scene.

The Scene-Actions become the conditions (“triggers”) that enable the main scripts to run. They can be as simple as the following examples:
- on left click, do…
- on right click, do…
- when mouse enters action area, do…
- at the beginning of the scene, do…
etc…

They inform the engine exactly when to start all the other Actions in the scene. When this has been defined, you can begin to enter Hotspot-Actions. There is a very long list of them, separated into different categories (character actions, scene actions, audio, video, interface, etc…). For example:
- place character at position (x, y)
- show/hide scene named…
- fade to scene named…
- play sound “file.wav”
- display narration text “I’m happy, are you?”
- show/hide cursor
- if..else…
etc…

As a result, when you read the 2 Actions together, it creates a logical sentence: e.g. At the beginning of the scene, display narration text: “Congratulations!”.

After this short introduction, I will explain next time how it is possible to develop puzzles and the game with Visionaire Studio.
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« Reply #21 on: October 05, 2014, 01:39:48 AM »

I don't know of there are people who read my stuff here sometimes? lol Anyway I'd like to continue my explanations and maybe it can bring some inspiration to new developers? Let's go with today's part.

Last time I introduced Visionaire Studio, an engine made to develop adventure games without any need of scripting. Visionaire can create 1st person and 3rd person adventures, and you can even use 3D characters with 2D environments to create games such as The Longest Journey. Now I will talk of puzzle development for Catyph.

Puzzle development

Now that we’re becoming familiar with the system of Scenes and Actions, we can begin to develop the puzzle. The main idea for this scene is to switch on or off the 8 buttons, in order to create the correct combination. Each button has been set with a Variable (called a Condition), which is set either to True or to False.  At the beginning of the scene, the Condition for each of the 8 buttons is set to True. In the following picture, you can see that the first switch is selected. As long as the condition “button1” is true, the switch is down.



If the player clicks on a switch that is down, the current picture of the switch must disappear and then show the “up” switch button instead: so the condition is then set to False. In Visionaire, this is translated as follows: On left click, Change condition “button1” to false



Then we have to check the Conditions for all of the other buttons and see if the combination we expected is correct. This is done by clicking on the round button under the light bulb. If the result is correct, we turn on the light bulb.

So far, I have only done it for button1 (I first check a combination using 1 button for example, but in the end the puzzle needs to check all the 8 buttons):



In the picture above, you can see the following list of Actions:

Hide Cursor
Change Condition “ButtonLamp_Pushed?” to true
Pause for 500 ms
Change Condition “ButtonLamp_Pushed?” to false
If condition “button1” is false
  KeeperDoor_CodeFound” to true
  Pause for 2 seconds
  Switch to scene “0001domekeeperpath11”
End if
Show Cursor



This can be translated as follows:

- Prevent the Player clicking during the running of the script -> hide the mouse cursor
- Animate the round button to simulate the fact that it was pressed (show it pressed for 500 milliseconds, then hide the pressed button).
- Check if the button1 is up or down.
- If the combination (of 1 button in the example) is as expected, then the puzzle is solved and the light turns on.
- Pause the game for 2 seconds (to give some time to see the light turned on)
- go back to the scene of the door, which will now be opened.
- End of the script
- show the cursor —> The player can click again.

The puzzle is solved and the door is opened.

I must also not forget to allow the possibility to return to the previous scene without solving the puzzle. This is done using the “red arrow” cursor showing on the left.



Finally, the player goes back to the scene of the door. If the correct combination of switches was found, the door is opened. Otherwise, it remains closed.



Animations and more

It is possible to go further in the development and add much more Actions. The puzzle illustrated here was easy to program, but sometimes there are a lot of Conditions and Variables that have to be checked.
It is often very difficult in Visionaire to optimize the list of scripts in order to save both memory and cpu-usage. Most of the time, you would work with quite a lot of “if…else…” actions together, so you cannot really reduce the number of Actions in your scene and make something more compact.

When you have finished your puzzle, you may want to add animations here and there, for a more dramatic result. What I did in the region of Kynan, is that I added an incessant rain effect. It is an animation of about 35 frames that runs in a permanent loop in front of your screen.



Can you see the dark raindrops in the lower right window of the above screen? They are blurred on purpose, because they flow on the surface of the glass of your helmet.  It is a loopable animation, and as you can see in the picture, there is a timeline of 36 frames, that represent the total of pictures played during the game. By default, Visionaire will play this animation once, and probably not at the correct speed, so there is  the possibility to change the settings as follows:



The most important options available are:
- the speed (the frame makes a pause for x milliseconds before the next one)
- the Infinite loop
- the possibility to play forward or backward.

I will conclude with a short manual script developed in the LUA language, which corresponds to a different Action that was not listed by default in Visionaire.

First, let me explain the situation:
The Rain animation above was created at a resolution of 960 x 400 pixels. It is 50% smaller than the game resolution (1920 x 800). The reasoning was to save memory, because the rain is a PNG sequence with transparency, which can prove quite heavy in terms of resource usage. The full sequence of 36 frames would be saved/stored in RAM for as long as the rain loops onto your screen. To avoid problems on lower-level PC configurations/specs, I chose to reduce the rain resolution.

However, in order to fill the screen with the rain effect, we have to artificially double its size. Do you follow me? There is a simple LUA code that allows to scale an active animation, so I used it to scale the Rain.



getObject(“ActiveAnimations[Rain]”):setValue(VAnimationSize, 200)

This line will check within all the active animations in the game, for an animation named Rain. Then it will scale its size to 200%. LUA is quite an easy code to understand, and LUA is very useful to help in developing more advanced puzzles. Someone with good skills in programming will therefore have an infinite number of possibilities to create a game, even if an Action is not included within the editor!

And so ends the Production part. Next time I will try to share a playable prototype demo of Catyph, which will also help to introduce the Post-production stage.
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« Reply #22 on: October 05, 2014, 03:12:57 PM »

I just read your devlog yesterday and became quite interested in trying Visionaire Editor just because of this. I remain impressed by the amount of information put in here and really like to see the progress.

I really hope to try your game, though not having great experience in the genre.
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« Reply #23 on: October 06, 2014, 04:47:27 AM »

I just read your devlog yesterday and became quite interested in trying Visionaire Editor just because of this. I remain impressed by the amount of information put in here and really like to see the progress.

Thank you! Yes of course you can try Visionaire, it's a good software if you want to try making games at home. It doesn't have to be a 1st-person adventure like Catyph, it can be a 3rd person game like The Longest Journey (3d character + prerendered environments). It can give good results! The strengh of Visionaire is that there is no need to write any line of code, because it is often a problem with game engines.
There is a free version of Visionaire, but I don't know what the limitations are. Maybe you should not purchase it if you don't like what you see in the free version. A good idea too is to look at Wintermute Engine, which allows to create more or less the same games than Visionaire, except that Wintermute is totally free. The main difference is that the user interface of Wintermute can be a little more messy or old-school at first look, and it probably needs more time and involvment to use this soft. But it's free and powerful... Smiley
If you decided to go with Visionaire Studio, you can have a look at this tutorial: http://www2.visionaire2d.net/glenfx/
It's not very complete (it is based on an old version of VS), but it is very easy of access and allows to start making game.

I really hope to try your game, though not having great experience in the genre.

Yeah, it's true that this genre of game can be difficult and probably not appealing. The first thing you need to know is if you feel ready to play a slideshow adventure game (not realtime 3d). If it is a problem for you, then it's more likely you won't like Catyph. When I discovered the Myst series (and particularly Riven) years ago, I fell in love with the graphics. But in another hand, it was very disapointing to play and move in static pictures. It needs time to get used to it. Now that I develop that kind of game, I really understand the problems when developing a game like that, and why they chose to make it with slideshow pictures. It is what I try to explain in this whole devlog. Now there are developers who create 1st-person adventure games in realtime 3D and it is great. I personally don't have yet the possibility to do so (it's more expensive, I'm alone and working at home...).
If the graphics are not a problem for you in these games, then the only reason why you could not like is the difficulty of the puzzles. This is why I want to add an Easy mode in Catyph, with lots of tips for beginners. I don't know if people will like it.
Anyway, I think that if you like exploring mysterious strange planets, faraway places and sci-fi worlds, Catyph could be very interesting for you!
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« Reply #24 on: October 18, 2014, 04:44:17 AM »

As I announced two weeks ago in the last part of this Making Of, I wished to share with you a playable prototype of Catyph, because I felt that it would illustrate quite well the different issues that have been described in this series of the Making Of. After you have played this prototype, if you are interested, I would suggest that you might want to re-read the previous pages of this thread, which may then give you a better idea regarding what I was talking about in the Production stage.


It's a prototype, not a demo!

My use of the word ‘Prototype’ is important, because I consider that what you will see cannot be properly considered to be a demo. It’s more of an experiment that I initially made for myself in order to see what the possibilities of Visionaire Studio were and also what were the different options available to me to create the game. This prototype is not something I had originally considered to share publicly, in comparison to what I would have normally considered to be a demo. For me that is the biggest difference in definition between a prototype and a demo.

I think that what this prototype does show quite well relates to all the work that there is still to do on the game, from the Production Stage (previously explained) to the final touches: localisation, proofing, music and sfx, beta-testing… This is also why I decided to share it now, because I feel that it is a good summary of the whole game development process, highlighting all the troubles I may encounter now and later in the near future. As it is an early build, it probably contains various running issues and text errors. The texts here have not been proofed.


About the prototype

  • What can I do in game?
Even though it is playable (you can move between different scenes), it is also very short and limited. The inventory is disabled, (which contains items such as the menu and the datalog). You can open the door of the small building (which is quite easy to do), but you cannot open the gate on the opposite path. The full storyline for this portion is also missing.

  • System requirements
This prototype was initially created with Visionaire Studio version 3.7, and then updated in Visionaire 4.0. Visionaire 4 allows more options and also allows Catyph to run video transitions without showing a black screen after each move. However, I did find that VS4 requires more system resources, and as a result, the game can appear to run quite slowly sometimes. It is important to say that this prototype has not been fully optimized. It is possible that the game may not run well on low PC configurations.

  • Story
The events take place in the desert region of Kynan, where incessant methane rains fill the hydrocarbon seas on moon Tytaah. You take your first steps in this region, just after the ending of the original Catyph short film (

)

There is no structured ending in this early version, so you will have to quit the prototype yourself by pressing Escape. For more details on the gameplay, please read the short Readme.txt included with the files.


Download

I hope you read the above presentation before downloading and trying the prototype version of Catyph Smiley If not, please be aware, at least, that it is not representative of the final quality of the game!

Your feedback is welcome, please send/post your comments here or, which might even be best, get in touch with me by email (on http://www.theicehouse.fr or simon[at]theicehouse.fr). Thank you!

>> Download playable prototype of Catyph <<


Known issues

My webhoster seems to have issues at the moment. If the pictures I provide do not display, or if the links I share are not working, please wait a little while and try again later.
 
Visionaire Studio (Player and Editor) needs the runtime library for Visual Studio 2012. This can be missing on older windows installations and must be installed manually: http://www.microsoft.com/en-US/download/details.aspx?id=30679


This article definitely ends the Production stage of the Making Of.
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« Reply #25 on: October 18, 2014, 05:49:04 AM »

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« Reply #26 on: October 18, 2014, 03:44:38 PM »

Hey, I tested it. Ran okay-ish... For some reason I have screen tearing(?) some black areas flick on the screen in fullscreen, but not in window mode (I meddled in the config file.

I looks and runs amazing. Of course, I'm stupid and can't open the door. I flick all switches randomly and push the button but the door does not open.
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« Reply #27 on: October 19, 2014, 01:44:12 AM »

Hey, I tested it. Ran okay-ish... For some reason I have screen tearing(?) some black areas flick on the screen in fullscreen, but not in window mode (I meddled in the config file.

Oww  Mock Anger
Thanks, it's good to know if there are issues haha!
Can you tell me which version of Windows you are using, so I can make a feedback to the Visionaire Studio team?
This is not related to the prototype I think, but to the engine itself. Unless you speak of the black bars at the top/bottom, that give a cinematographic aspect to the game? It is normal that there are black bars, but they shouldn't look strange, unless you really dislike the 12:5 ratio instead of the usual 16:9 ^^ I can understand that.


I looks and runs amazing. Of course, I'm stupid and can't open the door. I flick all switches randomly and push the button but the door does not open.

You're just unused to that kind of game, that's all. In the final version you will have tips to help you. Everything is based on observation and deduction. For example, for the good position of the switches, you just need to go a few steps back and look around. in Easy mode, there will be something to tell you to look at the strange green stones around the small tower. They have something special that will give the answer. I'm sure you can find now! Let me know, and good luck Wink
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« Reply #28 on: October 19, 2014, 02:06:01 AM »

This is looking more and more wonderful every time I drop by!
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« Reply #29 on: October 19, 2014, 09:07:04 AM »

Hey, I tested it. Ran okay-ish... For some reason I have screen tearing(?) some black areas flick on the screen in fullscreen, but not in window mode (I meddled in the config file.

Oww  Mock Anger
Thanks, it's good to know if there are issues haha!
Can you tell me which version of Windows you are using, so I can make a feedback to the Visionaire Studio team?
This is not related to the prototype I think, but to the engine itself. Unless you speak of the black bars at the top/bottom, that give a cinematographic aspect to the game? It is normal that there are black bars, but they shouldn't look strange, unless you really dislike the 12:5 ratio instead of the usual 16:9 ^^ I can understand that.
No, it's definitely something to do with video playback. It's not the top bars (they don't bother me at the least), because they flicker really fast. I noticed something weird because the splash screen flickered, and immediately the main game screen behaved weirdly.

I have Windows 8, NVidia Geforce Go 7300, 3 GB Ram, 1.66GHz CPU. More exactly, an ASUS F3Jc.
Also, In window mode I always have to push the game window to the center of my screen (using ALT+Space and right key), because it places itself to the left, with half of the game screen hidden.

I looks and runs amazing. Of course, I'm stupid and can't open the door. I flick all switches randomly and push the button but the door does not open.

You're just unused to that kind of game, that's all. In the final version you will have tips to help you. Everything is based on observation and deduction. For example, for the good position of the switches, you just need to go a few steps back and look around. in Easy mode, there will be something to tell you to look at the strange green stones around the small tower. They have something special that will give the answer. I'm sure you can find now! Let me know, and good luck Wink

Ah, I have observed them, but was unaware they had the "key". Indeed, it was quite obvious and I just sped through it. I now entered, collected the oil can and I believe there is not much left to do(?). I like the voice, the minimalistic signs and the movement. The landscapes are perfect. I just might buy this if you ever ask for money. Wink
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« Reply #30 on: October 22, 2014, 07:54:13 AM »

@JctWood: thank you!

No, it's definitely something to do with video playback. It's not the top bars (they don't bother me at the least), because they flicker really fast. I noticed something weird because the splash screen flickered, and immediately the main game screen behaved weirdly.

I have Windows 8, NVidia Geforce Go 7300, 3 GB Ram, 1.66GHz CPU. More exactly, an ASUS F3Jc.
Also, In window mode I always have to push the game window to the center of my screen (using ALT+Space and right key), because it places itself to the left, with half of the game screen hidden.

Thanks a lot! I will try to find a solution to this problem.
In my opinion it is better if you don't play in Window mode, as the game doesn't give this option by default (even if I know it can be changed in the files!). The game is created to play fullscreen.

Regarding the flicker issue, if it only happens during video playback, it can be due to the video codecs. For the moment I used Xvid, so maybe you don't have the good version installed? In the final release of Catyph, I will probably use different codecs.

Ah, I have observed them, but was unaware they had the "key". Indeed, it was quite obvious and I just sped through it. I now entered, collected the oil can and I believe there is not much left to do(?). I like the voice, the minimalistic signs and the movement. The landscapes are perfect. I just might buy this if you ever ask for money. Wink

Yeah exactly, all you can do in the prototype is open the door and take the oil! I'm glad you liked what you could see so far.
I'd rather not think about money for the moment, since the game is still too far from the relase... And I'm afraid it will be delayed to 2015.
However, I will probably release a real Demo until then, so you'll have more opportunities to try Catyph and see if you do really like it!
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« Reply #31 on: October 26, 2014, 08:26:59 AM »

Post-Production

So far I have completed explaining the Production stage of the game. I may possibly add some more details about it later on, if (for example), while continuing the actual development, I find some new items of interest to share. Please continue to ask any questions that you have, and I will do my best to answer.

Now we should review the Post-Production process stage of the development.

Once again, I would advise that the descriptions that I have chosen (Pre-Production, Production and Post-Production) are my own choice and might not be absolutely accurate. They’re here simply to allow me to separate the different phases of the development, and in order to make it easier to describe and for you to understand. “Post-production” encompasses the different stages following the making of a film and they normally come after the main stage of filming, for example, compositing and editing.

For the game Catyph, what I call Post-Production includes the following steps:

- text proofing
- localization
- music composition
- sound effects
- voices
- visual effects
- beta-testing
- bugs fixing

Localization

For now I will group “Text proofing” and “Localization” into the same step. While I would normally separate them when I work on them, they’re somehow related to each other, as you can probably imagine.
 
When I work on any game (ASA or Catyph), I always start work in my native language, French. You can probably appreciate that it’s much easier for me to create the story and write it in French. However, my problem with the French language is not only that most people won’t understand it when the game releases, it’s also that I am frequently working with people from all around the world who generally cannot help me if I only share French texts.

As a result, I not only work in French, but I also work in English. I have no choice but to work in 2 languages at the same time, so Catyph contains both French and English texts.

Example of French text:



Example of English translation:



The Problem: My English is not good enough to release the game! Even if I make a huge effort in checking my texts, there are inevitably different problems caused by either spelling or errors in grammar that I cannot improve on my own.

This is why I currently have to work with another person who proofs my English texts for me (thank you Roger!).
So, if you can follow me, there are already 3 steps within the process of localization:

- writing the texts in my native language (French)
- translating the text into my own English (or looking for a person to translate, but this is both complicated and also usually expensive)
- asking someone I trust in to proof my English texts.

To these 3 principal steps, you also need to add:
- looking for other people to translate from English/French to x (Spanish, Italian, German…)
- importing all the translations into the game

This is the end-result when importing the texts in the game.

Empty datalog:



Text only (with alpha transparency):



Final result when playing Catyph:



It may not, at first, appear to be the case but this process takes a significant amount of time and effort. Initially writing the texts in French, in order to make them interesting, logical and correct, is on its own a significant enough job. Then having to translate everything into English is massively time-consuming. The datalog within the game (a kind of diary) is composed of tens of pages full of different information which has to be both accurate and, in addition, shouldn’t be contradictory with any other parts of the game.

If you were to ask me, I would say that the datalog is by far the most difficult part to write, and it takes the longest time as well. All of the translations have to be copied/pasted into pictures (PNG with alpha) in order to be able to appear in the game.

But there are also other elements of the game that can be tricky. The in-game dialogues (cut-scenes or AI narration) are more interesting to write while you are developing the game, but actually require significantly more attention during the translation process…
The method I currently use is quite simple. As explained earlier, I write texts in  both French and English within the game, and I also prepare a location for any other languages. I then export all the dialogues into a “speech file” in CSV format.

The content appears as follows:


"Id (original language:0, translation language:2)";
"Context";
"Original text (English)";
"Original speech file (English)";"Translated text (Spanish)";
"Translated speech file (Spanish)";"Comments"
1507;
"0001domekeeper_Balls: action_balls: Left click";
"That's the same object in different views. 
You can probably use it to find a connection 
between the hatchings. 
Let's focus on the most visible ones.";
 

It is not, however, very easy for the people who are translating to work with that format of text, so they tend to use free software such as DMcsvEditor (not necessarily this one!). They can see the replicas as follows:



This method works for the narration by the AI, and for the cutscenes where other characters speak directly to you.



That is almost all you can learn from me about the localization of Catyph. The rest of the process is some additonal checking, and it is more likely that the people who help me will have to try the Beta version when it is ready, in order to check their work one last time!

Next weekend (probably) I will talk of the problem of voices, which is directly related to the localization process, and why it is so difficult to have good actors in indie games.

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« Reply #32 on: October 27, 2014, 12:48:39 PM »

As a translator, I can definitely feel your pain, but I think it is strange that you need to transfer the text to images, and not using a CAT tool to massively aid the translation process in these kind of projects is just impossible.

Translation memories are a definite plus, and there is the time where you must resort to professional translators.

How much text is there, in words? And are you paying for translation services? You can find cheap-ish services out there.
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« Reply #33 on: October 28, 2014, 01:45:36 AM »

@eyeliner: Interesting! You're translating into which languages? Smiley

For the moment the game is translated for free by friends or people willing to help. In the future, if I can sell my games correctly and create more ambitious projects, I will probably pay the translators, because it's a lot of work for them (for now I work with no funds, so...).

Regarding the localisation method I use, it is mainly due to the working process within Visionaire Studio, and also probably to my lack of experience in the world of translation! However, after seeking in the software for the best way to translate the game, I've found that a good solution is to export all english texts to .PO or .CSV files. These files can be opened with free softwares by the translation team, as explained in the previous article. What do you think of this process?

Regarding the fact that I use PNG pictures, this is only for the diary of the game. The problem with the diary is that it displays static text on the screen, but Visionaire is meant to create dialogues (that is to say: short texts that disapear after a certain amount of time). The diary text could not be created with the dialogues system (or not with good results), so someone on the Visionaire Forums advised me to use pictures.

In my opinion, Visionaire is quite different of tools like Unity and offers very different possibilities and processes. I'm not familiar with CAT tool, and I'm not sure it is possible to use it with Visionaire games...
But it would be great to learn more about it, so feel free to give more details. Thanks!
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« Reply #34 on: October 28, 2014, 10:09:39 AM »

I work with English / Portuguese to and fro.

My suggestion is to use exactly .csv or plain text or even .xls. Usually, all sentences are in different lines, because the developers find their way to navigate the texts with their own parsers. You can even write a plain .doc normally, and the CAT tool easily breaks the text no problem because it uses periods as a limiter.

You can for example use Across as a translation tool for free (though it is massively complicated for a non translator to pick up) and you can basically throw anything at it.

Either way, the developer doesn't usually need to worry about formats because the translators almost always find solutions.
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« Reply #35 on: October 29, 2014, 08:57:55 AM »

I work with English / Portuguese to and fro.

Thanks, it's good to know! I never in portuguese in my games until then, but it is a very common language, so I will keep that in mind for the future!

My suggestion is to use exactly .csv or plain text or even .xls.

Ok! I think it's not that far from the process I explained in the Making Of, above. We're indeed using .csv files.

You can for example use Across as a translation tool for free (though it is massively complicated for a non translator to pick up) and you can basically throw anything at it.

I had never heard about Across (but I'm not familiar with localizations yet), maybe it's the tool they already use to translate Catyph? There are different translators with different methods in the team.

Either way, the developer doesn't usually need to worry about formats because the translators almost always find solutions.

Yeah I noticed that. Translators usually don't complain a lot and I admire it.
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« Reply #36 on: November 09, 2014, 08:49:35 AM »

Two weeks ago (or more?), I explained the problem of localization in my video games, and how I currently deal with the issue.

In this new section, I had intended to explain the problems about getting and ensuring good narrative voices for use in indie games. I was hoping to write this article last week, but could not find any inspiration. Yesterday I thought of it again, but still could not get started. The truth is that this is a very complicated issue: it can be both easy to explain (just find an actor -> he records your text), or much more complicated (go find/source funds for the actor, and all the consequences that that raises). So where should I start?

I am still uncertain that I have a correct answer, so I will probably have to write my ideas on the fly.
Also, as you can see from previous parts of this Making Of, I normally like to illustrate my explanations with screenshots or pictures, but illustrating the question of voices is a bit more difficult. I considered sharing free samples of audio-streaming, but was not convinced by this idea and in the end I just gave up. People could also get the wrong idea from samples.

To be honest, it’s very true, adding nice voicing to the game when you work on your own and have little or no funds is a nightmare. You may have all the goodwill of the world, but if you cannot use your own voice (either because you don’t speak English very well, or because your voice just sucks – my case!) then voicing the animated sequences of your game becomes a gigantic problem.

Happily, it appears that a lucky star decided to help me, as I managed to get in touch with some different voice actors (Jared, Klemens and Steven) who all agreed to help the project in their free time. There is no way for me to say how grateful I am, and it makes me even happier that they did it for fun.  You may not realize at first why it was so very lucky to have these actors. An easy way to explain this, in order for you to be able to easily understand, is to ask you to put yourself in my situation: you have a video game where you need 3 different voices to read quite a lot of replicas. You have no funds (but a lot of passion of course) and you need 3 actors. How would you proceed?

1 - try to record your own voice and modify it with an audio editor
2 - proceed as in 1, but using friends voices
3 - seek for amateur actors on Google and get in touch with them
4 - seek for professional actors and ask if they agree to help in their free time
5 - Huh? (tell me!)

Honestly I tried each of the 4 possibilities above (except 5), and if I am now very happy to have the support of voice actors for Catyph, I mostly proceeded using trial and error before I was in a position where I could get in touch with them. My first attempt was using the 3rd choice above: my idea was that amateur actors could be found quite easily on internet, so I sought for them on Google and… was quickly disappointed by the result of the search. The results for “amateur voice acting” and other keywords didn’t return anything great (that’s also another problem of not being born English: it’s difficult to identify the best keywords).

Anyway I eventually found some obscure forums of voice actors and tried to get in touch, until I realised that nobody was actually around to answer. I didn’t give up yet and looked again for amateur actors and found some young people who were creating video games Fan Films, based on the World of Warcraft (WOW). Not exactly my first choice, but why not. When you don’t know where to start, you just try anything. Unfortunately, they didn’t receive very well the idea of working on any other game than WOW, specifically a game such as Catyph. So I gave up with amateur actors.
 
I didn’t even try the 1st choice of the above list, because I know how terrible my own voice is. I have had to record it for other projects in the past, and there is no way I would use it in Catyph! Then I decided to go for the 4th choice of the list, because I wanted the best quality possible for Catyph: I decided to search for professional voice actors. Why not? If they ask for money, which I fully understand, maybe there would be a way to find some form of agreement. It would not be the first time that a professional worker has given me their help, and that I rewarded them with a % of my sales. Unfortunately, none of my messages received a positive reply. I was not particularly surprised, but was a bit disappointed.
 
That left only one possibility: asking the help of my friends. But most of my friends are French, who have a very strong French accent whenever they speak English! C’est très beau. I hope now that you can see why it’s so very complicated to add voices into an indie game you are making on your own? Either you need quite a lot of money and credibility, or you need English-born or native English speaking friends who love sci-fi and video games, and who have some talent in voice acting.

Finally thanks to previous contacts in the US and UK I found the help of the 3 actors I named previously. And that’s exactly why I said I was very fortunate to have their support! In the end, when making an indie game, most of the solutions come from friends of friends of friends. You know how it works, don’t you?

So here is the current list of actors for Catyph:

- Character of General Lantier / voiced by Jared Murphy.
I already worked with Jared in the past: he has an incredibly deep voice, and he did some very good recordings for the initial short film Catyph. I was glad that he accepted to work on the game during his free time.

- Character of Germinal / voiced by Klemens Koering.
Klemens is a professional voice actor who worked on cartoons & TV shows. He knows very well what he’s doing and it’s wonderful to have him in the project.

- (Secret character) / voiced by Steven Tidwell.
Maybe the name of Steven is not familiar to you, but he also recorded the diaries in ASA! It was logical that I asked for his help again, and it is great to have him back in the team.

- The AI, M.A.I.D.EN / synthesized voice, Microsoft Zira.
The voice of the AI was created, like in ASA, using WavePad software!

All of the recordings are based on the previously written texts. It is vital that the texts are finalised, proofed and that they won’t change!

Next time I will discuss the music!
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« Reply #37 on: November 16, 2014, 02:47:03 AM »

Last time I tried to explain my problems finding voice actors. It hopefully highlighted that Catyph is entirely homemade, has not been crowdfunded, and is not yet supported by any publisher, except for our collective of indie artists The icehouse!

This time I would like to talk about the music in Catyph. This is a bit difficult because it is not publicly released at this time, so I cannot share many examples. I will explain the work of the musicians by referring to our previous collaboration: ASA: A Space Adventure.
 
The OST of Catyph will be composed of somewhere in the region of 20 tracks (approximately). It is roughly the same number of tracks that Karreo did for ASA: A Space Adventure. In fact, we followed the same process of creation: using the main themes from the initial short film as a starting point for the game.

You can listen to the ASA OST (free streaming) here:




Karreo is a Soundtrack Producer. It’s an association of several artists who enjoy images/videos and music. You can visit www.karreo.com for more information regarding their work. They work on video clips for their musicians, which is a good way to support everyone within their collective. Making music for games is not their main purpose and they generally prefer animation and films.


You can watch and listen to their music showreel here:



The creation process of the soundtrack of Catyph is difficult because Karreo works at the same time as I am creating the graphics. It means that they don’t exactly know what the environments will look like when they work on the music. I had almost no images to share with them at the time they began to work: the graphics of Catyph didn’t exist at all in 3D! So I had to create a precise brief document, including reference pictures found here and there from the web. The idea was to use these pictures to describe the characteristics of each region of Catyph. Of course, these pictures were accompanied by a descriptive text.

For example, the region of Saad:
The description I shared was quite simple: if you remember from the previous screenshots that were shared here and online before, Saad is a place of red sand where a crater was made by a meteorite long ago. In this crater, some alien plants have grown and a part of the area is covered with a small forest.

This is a screenshot of Saad:



But this picture was not available to Karreo, so they didn’t see it when they were working on the music! Instead, I specified some keywords, such as : desert, forest, meteorite, alien… etc!
The reference pictures I had attached were from various sources, and the most representative example might be the forest in the movie Avatar.



As you can see, it is very different from the above picture of Saad! Karreo used the pictures as a source of inspiration, but in the end, they had to imagine everything by themselves.

It is the same method that we had already used to work on ASA. If you played ASA and remember Planet Forte, you will easily understand the keywords I gave to Karreo at the time: rock, turquoise sea, paradise islands, blue, water…





reminds me of an outdoor place, filled with sun, where the highs are a bit mystical.

The process worked well for ASA, and it was also interesting for the main composer of the OST at Karreo (Stélian Derenne), who had enough freedom to create the tracks of his choice. There were not many restrictions, so they could focus on their own ideas, with no fear about making “bad” music that wouldn’t fit with the game. I feel that it resulted in a good balance overall within the OST.

It is important to remember that the whole ASA OST was also strongly inspired by the soundtrack of the original short film 2011: A Space Adventure. We have been following the same process with Catyph, and you can listen to the Catyph short film OST on: Catyph/film Playlist on Youtube

It already gives a good impression of the future OST! The track Mind the Mines was particularly enjoyable, and will probably become the Theme played in the Menus in the game. Finally, the best idea is probably just to listen to Stélian Derenne, and let him explain his feelings after he worked on ASA:

<< I was lucky enough to surf on the relative success of the short film preceding the game, so I took back the introduction scene’s theme and tried to flavour it to the various environments the player would be going through, most of the time wondering on the spot what I’d play on my iPod.

Composing it felt more and more like a casual movie soundtrack thanks to the many graphic materials that were provided, keeping it easy on the ear in most parts, dynamic in others, and even experimental in some cases…

This was my first complete video game soundtrack,  and it was made fun thanks to the freedom I had.
What worried me while making it was how to keep the balance between the lively and dramatic touch I believe any composition of this kind should have, and how to avoid having the game-player just turning the music off out of boredom.

I actually enjoyed not knowing that much about ASA, I was able to just enjoy discovering it totally once I got to play the full version! >> (Stélian Derenne - Karreo)

Next stage in this Making Of: working on sound effects!
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« Reply #38 on: November 30, 2014, 08:55:54 AM »

I will discuss the Sound Effects in Catyph and ASA, and I think this will be the final section of “The making of”, which itself has taken a lot of effort in being written. There are probably several other subjects related to the development of the game that might need to be explained, but I think that it’s better if I write a few lines later on when I feel ready, or if people ask questions.

To understand the importance of sound effects in a game like Catyph is really easy: just look at a static picture, and ask yourself how you could make it more alive. It will probably become immediately obvious that sound effects can be as important as the picture itself.

In the word “Audiovisual”, Audio is placed before Visual! Once you bear that in mind, you realise that in a game, you’re not only sharing pictures with your public, you’re also sharing sounds. Sound Effects can be even more important than music in terms of creating an atmosphere. A horror game/film can frighten you without a single piece of music, merely by showing you a completely black screen, and using a very creepy sound.  Of course Catyph and ASA are not horror games, but I’m sure you can understand the comparison in order to explain the importance of sfx (sound effects).

Can you see the frogs in this picture of region Saad? No?

Of course, without the sound of them, you would not imagine that there are frogs around!

Have you ever played Riven? If the answer is yes, you will know how important sound is. It was so important, that Cyan (the developers) added several options in order to setup the audio device/s correctly and benefit from the best auditory experience possible in the game. When a door opens, when an animal cries, or simply when the waves roll on the rocks, you have in Riven a very realistic and beautiful work in terms of sound. This is something I wanted to try to reproduce in ASA and Catyph.


The sound of the balls moving in Riven was very important to the game, and the sound of the water was very relaxing!

I worked with Stélian Derenne (stelian.be from Karreo), who was also the music composer of ASA. The process was not always easy for either of us, because I had to send him a lot of pictures and descriptions of the sounds that I had in mind for the scenes. We were working apart from each other, so you can probably imagine the difficulties involved.

Fortunately, Stélian was very happy to experiment with the sound design, even though it’s not really his normal job (he usually composes and performs music)! To create the sfx for the videos of the game, I just had to send him the 3D animations, and he worked on the videos directly, adding sound effects either of his creation, or from a library. Then he would send me back a single wav file (audio) for each video of the game, and I just had to mix them together (audio + video).

It’s the same process that is used, more or less, to add sound into an animation film: it’s quite easy because you work directly with the pictures, it’s something solid, and you can see where a sound is needed. 
It was more difficult to work with “punctuation” sounds: many sfx in the game were isolated sounds: you push a lever, you press a button, a door opens… In these cases, there were no videos as such to work on. I contacted Stélian and I gave a [description + screenshot] for each sound. And he had to imagine everything! My role was limited to making a detailed list of my needs. He did all the hard work.

For example, when I asked him to create the sound of rain in the region of Kynan, he needed to know whether this rain is incessant, what is was made of (ammonium), that it’s not a violent storm, and that it falls on the helmet of the hero. Explanations like these require a lot of time and effort to be communicated correctly as there are a lot of sounds to manage in the complete game.


Can you hear the rain?

There were several hundreds of sfx that had to be created for ASA and Catyph, and each of them had been thought through carefully for each specific situation… That was the main part of the job: using sound effects and link them with pictures. But how were these sound files actually created?

We used 2 different ways. The first thing we did is purchase the Sony Pictures Sound Effects collection, which contains a lot of sounds with professional quality.



However, this library is very limited despite its price! It’s good when you need a sound of button or door, but as you know, ASA and Catyph are Sci-Fi games, where all kind of sounds can be needed: alien devices, the engines of the Ark, birds and insects… Most of these sounds cannot be found in the Sony library, so Stélian decided to record them on his own. That was the amusing part for him. He took his microphone and recorded the sound himself.



The wind on Kepler? Stélian blowing into his mike. I can still remember when he told me: “I put the microphone under my car in the street and recorded the sound of it. My neighbors were wondering if I had gone mad!” But all these efforts were worth it! In 2013, Aggie Awards on Adventure Gamers, Best Sound Effects category. Runners-Up: BEYOND: Two Souls, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, Papers, Please, ASA: A Space Adventure. Even though we didn’t win, we got recognition for the quality of our job, it was very encouraging.



This concludes the sound effects section, and also the Post-Production stage!

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« Reply #39 on: November 30, 2014, 09:01:17 AM »

For now this is the end of the Making Of. I think I have described most of the processes for developing a 1st person slideshow adventure game like ASA, Catyph or any other Myst-like production. Thank you for following me. I will continue to come onto this forum and add more info and screenshots of course. Some of you maybe still waiting for an exact release date!

All this work on the Making Of will be shared as a free bonus with the final game, as a PDF file. I also plan to release a self-published book with all of it + more pictures and details. It will release later on http://www.theicehouse.fr so if, you’re interested, please follow my work on The Icehouse!

Now I will focus on the game dev, as there is still an awful lot of work! In the meantime you can also try the early prototype of Catyph if you haven't yet! I hope to release a true demo soon. Thanks for reading Wink



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