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[Pretzel Bros Studios]

Hi,

I'm getting close to a full year of developing the game. So much has changed during that time. I think I evolved as an artist, as a game developer and a human being. I have a goal in life. I learned to be consistent. I learned to work on my own, above all during times of self-doubt and desperation. The road might still be long and full of dangers and obstacles. But nothing can stop me now.


My candle burns at both ends;
   It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
   It gives a lovely light!
EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY


Last week was great. Everything seems to fall into place at the moment. Sometimes less is more. There is so much I would like to share with you about the game ... but not yet. I don't want to spoil the party.

The evolution of Dave as a character over the course of a year. But also the evolution of me.

[Pretzel Bros Studios]

Hi,

what a weekend. I hope you like creepy bunnies. His name is Leonard and he's wearing this suit since ... the 'incident'. Made the talking animation and his workplace (besides some level design stuff) over the weekend. Sorry for the german dialogues. He's saying something like: "One of the eyes is damaged. If you guys were involved in this, you're going to be in deep trouble. And stop staring at me, buddy." I think he's got massive potential to be some kind of epic end boss.

[Pretzel Bros Studios]

Hi,

it's friday again. Another week has passed. Time is such a strange construct. When I started out with 'To Hell With Dave' I was faced with the Herculean task of translating time, movement and action into reliable data.

I believe in the concept of keeping things minimal and simple, hence the size of that data was very important for what I wanted to achieve.

1. The required information per frame should not exceed 1 byte per object.
2. One buffer per object holding unsigned integer values aligned in a 1 byte order had to be enough.

There's no need to waste memory, even if you have plenty of it.

Translating the players movement and actions into reliable and precisely timed information can be achieved in many different and simple ways. But using that information in order to react to a changing environment is a bit more complex. I decided to record the players inputs in order to emulate the players actions instead of recording the movement and actions of the currently controlled object.

This is pretty much what I came up with. Some of the first lines of code I wrote for the game a long time ago. Also some of the very few lines that haven't changed since.

Code:

    rec_action ^= (-(global.player_id.rkey) ^ rec_action) & (1 << 0);
    rec_action ^= (-(global.player_id.lkey) ^ rec_action) & (1 << 1);
    rec_action ^= (-(global.player_id.ukey) ^ rec_action) & (1 << 2);
    rec_action ^= (-(global.player_id.dkey) ^ rec_action) & (1 << 3);
    rec_action ^= (-(global.player_id.akey) ^ rec_action) & (1 << 4);
    rec_action ^= (-(global.player_id.bkey) ^ rec_action) & (1 << 5);
    rec_action ^= (-(global.player_id.ykey) ^ rec_action) & (1 << 6);
    rec_action ^= (-(global.player_id.xkey) ^ rec_action) & (1 << 7);
    buffer_poke(ghost_buffer, global.game_timer, buffer_u8, rec_action);

It might not be much, but I like it. Those few lines also had massive impact on later design decisions. But that's another story.

'One byte to rule them all, One Byte to find them,
One Byte to bring them all and in the shadows bind them.'

The math is simple: 60 bytes per second, 3.5 KiB per minute or roughly 211 KiB for one hour per object. Or: if you have 40 player/ghost instances at once (which are more than enough design wise), you have roughly 2.3 KiB per second, 140 KiB per minute and roughly 8 mb per hour.

For future projects I have some interesting concepts regarding advanced behaviour trees in mind that I really want to try some day. I imagine a AI that remembers what you actually did and emulates your behaviour to reach the same goals instead of simply replaying your movement and actions. I think I could do that. Maybe one day I will.

[Superb Joe]

seriously fuck dave

[Pretzel Bros Studios]

Hi,

spent a whole day reworking the jump animation. Old one was 2 frames, new one is 4 frames and uses interpolated scaling to get more bounce. Is it better now?

[nathy after dark]

Sign me up for this weirdness.

[flex$]

mechanics are looking tight and the art is on point. keep going!

[Pretzel Bros Studios]

Thank you for the nice words and comments!

This is what I'm working on at the moment:



Making a basket is harder than it looks.

[Pretzel Bros Studios]

This started out as a small mini-game to be played within 'To Hell With Dave'. Now I have an early prototype and a ton of ideas for a roguelike-like soccer game. Not sure how far I will take this, but I have much fun with it.

[Pretzel Bros Studios]

Hey,

I'm working hard to release a public demo for 'To Hell With Dave'. But I'm struggling with localization. Any tips for a non-native English speaker? Also a non-native English speaker who is always broke (in the sense of having very little money)? All in all about 100 - 150 lines of dialogue. I think my English is good enough to do a rough pretranslation. What can I expect in terms of costs? Do you have any recommodations? I know there are tons of translation services out there. But it feels like swimming in  a pool of sharks. Or maybe I'm just too paranoid.

[zenassembly]

u guys are too hard on dave

This looks awesome, the music in the tease is pretty much perfect. And I'm a sucker for juicy footstep sounds so let's just say I'm all in. #teamdave

[nathy after dark]

If I understand correctly, you need someone to translate it into English? And the original language seems like German?

I'm a native English-speaking writer and that's really not a lot of dialogue, I'd be happy to help you with the English translation for super cheap as a contractor, and I can also maybe lend assistance with the localization programming and give some tips on how to go about planning/designing for localization based on my experience. My email's in my profile, just hit me up that way.

[Pretzel Bros Studios]

It's finished
I finally finished making a demo!

It's far from beeing perfect. But I think it illustrates pretty well what I've been working on for such a long time. Although a good translation is still missing (I translated everything myself with a little help from the weird smelling monkey who lives in the suitcase under my bed), I still hope to find some potentially suicidal beta-testers for the demo here.


If you don't mind that my amateurish translation will absolutely ruin your experience, I'd love to hear from you! If you speak German, I can also provide you with a German version, which might be a lot better vong Dialog her!


I'm looking for any form of criticism and suggestions (except for death-threats and calls for my public execution of course). So if you have no plans for this weekend: maybe you should play my demo instead of getting drunk and ruining your couch! Unless you're highly gifted. Then you can get drunk while ruining your couch and playing my demo.

Get in touch with me!

(Maybe you won't even regret it!)

I would love to hear from you!
Alex

[nathy after dark]

I'm honestly loving it. Here's my feedback:

• The English isn't bad at all. I'd be happy to make some improvements just to get a free copy of the game, and my name in the credits. 
• Your daughter is 6 and she can beat this?!?!
• Some of the things you're doing with the ghost-Bacons mechanic is really clever, like having the targeted harpoon shooters get distracted by them. I also liked having to light myself on fire using a ghost. In other levels though, like the bossfight, ghosts didn't do anything and just got in the way until I would clear them out. Maybe the pig could slow down slightly when he eats them, or something?
• I was playing on the keyboard but it showed me the gamepad tutorial. I had to figure it out by guessing keys, because I didn't realize the pause menu had the keyboard layout in it. 
• I generally don't mind trying games over hundreds of times, but the boss fight is particularly brutal, especially for a demo. The two main problems are that it could use at least one checkpoint, and when I get to the part with the individual blocks, I except to be able to wall-jump on them and I guess I can't? I never actually got past that part because it was so hard to make it all the way, anyway. I almost never give up in hardcore games, so if I ragequit, you're definitely gonna get more complaints.
• When do we get to meet Dave? Is he even in the demo?? 

[Pretzel Bros Studios]

Hi Nathy!

• The English isn't bad at all. I'd be happy to make some improvements just to get a free copy of the game, and my name in the credits. 

Sound like we have a deal! Thank you so much! The demo has no credits yet. But the final game will and you will receive a free copy + your name in the credits! Thank you for helping me!

My daughter beats the game in easy mode, but she's already 7 now!

Regarding the boss fight: the idea of slowing the boss down when he eats the ghosts is great! It will also automatically adjust the difficulty level. The more ghosts the player creates by failing, the slower and easier the boss will become! I will make the boss fight shorter, too. I don't want to take away the pleasure of experiencing the grand finale.

However, I also have some bad news. You don't get to see Dave in the demo. He has his big debut later in the game.

Thanks again!
Alex

[nathy after dark]

If I wasn't already psyched to be doing a game translation, I have an extra incentive now: I talked my professor into counting this as my final project in the Writing (English) Across Borders class. I probably won't be able to turn the entire thing in to her (because it's due today actually...) but I can do a good portion of it.

I started last night! Here's a sample (the first line in the game).

Guten Morgen, Kinder. Setzt euch und haltet den Mund!

Good morning, children. Sit down and be quiet, please!

Good morning, kids. Sit down and shut up!

Good morning, children. Take your seats and quiet down!

I'm still not sure if I'm settled on my version, especially after seeing how brilliant the Google Translate version is. I could sit and obsess over every little decision here.  

@PretzelBrosStudios While I can edit the Dialogues_ENG.txt and Dialogues_DE.txt files, it seems you've actually hard-coded the dialogue into the executable, because when I run it, it still shows the original dialogue. I can always just show my professor the text files, but it would be cooler to have an executable version with my words in it.

[Pretzel Bros Studios]

Hey Nathy!

Wow, sounds great! I've recently started working on reading the dialogues from an external text file. I'm gonna need another hour or so. I will send you an email with a link to the new build and some information about line breaks as soon as possible. I also made the bossfight a lot easier!

Alex

[io3 creations]

Guten Morgen, Kinder. Setzt euch und haltet den Mund!

Good morning, children. Sit down and be quiet, please!

Good morning, kids. Sit down and shut up!

Good morning, children. Take your seats and quiet down!

Okay, Google ... are you trying to be funny?   That translation was unexpected at first but I wonder why the following also came up with "shut up":

Good morning, kids.   Sit down and keep your mouth shut!

Good morning, children.  Puts you and shuts up!.

Is that the actual meaning?  Or does the exclamation mark play a role?

[nathy after dark]

However, I also have some bad news. You don't get to see Dave in the demo. He has his big debut later in the game. 

I just thought of something. One of the kids in the class, near the start of the game, should raise their hand and ask "So who was Dave?" at some point after the title logo appears, but before Jesus ever mentions the name. It'd be funny, or at least, before trying to explain the joke, it was funny in my head.

[Superb Joe]

fuck dave. seriously.