They may not release the voice and music pack at the same time as the game ;)
That's possible... I remember there being a discussion a while back about whether the voice pack should be optional or not... I don't recall what the outcome was, though.
Peace & Luv, Liz
I believe that it was going to be optional ;), due to the fact that some ppl wouldnt be able to download it all at once :-\
hmmm... still I don't think that they would release the game before the music pack, doens't seems right ; /
Tierra did :S, didnt they ???
I don't know... at the time I downloaded their games everything was already up ; )
lol, and I just want to hear all the forummembers' voices in the game ; )
Yeah, hearing the forum members voices in the game will be cool ;) !!!
Quote from: racx_00 on March 29, 2004, 05:10:55 AM
Tierra did :S, didnt they ???
Yes, they did... I remember the whole hoax of them saying they'll NEVER EVER make a voice pack for KQ2+, then releasing it on the 1st of april so everyone would think it was a joke ;-D
I doubt KQ9 would do the same though... they'll probably want you to be able to enjoy the full experience the first time around ;B
Ok well im allowed to hope and pray XD
Quote from: Jeysie on March 29, 2004, 05:02:23 AM
That's possible... I remember there being a discussion a while back about whether the voice pack should be optional or not... I don't recall what the outcome was, though.
Peace & Luv, Liz
lol.... I remember that thread somewhere, I dont recall how it ended though, and AFAIK (Im not even sure If I should say this myself, lol :P), I do know we are doing as much as we can to have the best finished quality product at once.
Quote from: racx_00 on March 29, 2004, 07:00:08 AM
Ok well im allowed to hope and pray XD
I don't see why the voicepack shouldn't be optional... After all, you would be able to play the game in a "text only" mode, right? :-\
I hope that the voicepack (optional or no) would be released at the same time as the game. With all due respect to AGDI, I prefer to enjoy the full game the first time I play it ;)
I hope there's at least a subtitles mode... I hate when a game has voices but no subtitles. :P
Peace & Luv, Liz
The game will not be released in May - we won't have the coding even completed by then. Also, we want the speech pack to be available at the same time.
And, no, since I won't begin recording the voices till mid April, they will definitely not all be recorded by May. Plus, I still have to cast our lovely online auditioners.
Don't expect this game before Christmas this year (and that's not an official date either - a la Bungie - the game will be released when it's finished.....whenever that is ;)). But that doesn't mean we won't have other goodies for you before then.
Quote from: Jeysie on March 29, 2004, 09:30:26 AM
I hope there's at least a subtitles mode... I hate when a game has voices but no subtitles. :P
Didn't they say there would be subtitles? I want subtitles as well - sometimes I have troubles understanding spoken english :-[
i like games that have subtitles and speech as an option so you can have both at the same time ;D
i had subtitles also cos sometimes i would play during the day (every1 was awake so no problems), but sometimes i would play at night so i would turn off the speakers and read ;B
Quote from: racx_00 on March 30, 2004, 06:48:41 AMbut sometimes i would play at night so i would turn off the speakers and read ;B
That's what headphones are for, hon! ;D
Seriously... I personally have sporadic problems with my hearing, plus my audio comprehension isn't as good as my visual comprehension. So while I enjoy the extra spice that voices bring very much, I like having text too so I know I won't miss/forget anything. Having both at the same time is better for me than just one or the other at a time.
Peace & Luv, Liz
I forget which thread it was, but both Cesar and Rich said that there will be the options of: text-only, voice-only, and text & voice. :)
I personally like playing with both text and voices. ;D
Quote from: Jeysie on March 30, 2004, 10:04:12 AM
That's what headphones are for, hon! ;D
I need an atachment for my headphones so i cant hook them up at the moment :-\ ;P
Quote from: mfortunato on March 31, 2004, 12:00:37 PMI like Torin's Passage log. You can go through and look over every dialogue that has been spoken. It's really cool. I don't think we're implementing anything like that, though. With all the text, it wouldn't be a bad idea. but let's get a fully work game first ;).
I liked the Grim Fandango log - it's saved as HTML so you can read it from outside the game as well - pretty useful if you're fishing for quotes ;)
Yay on subtitles!
The log idea would be cool, but definitely just a "cooly" thing to do *after* the game's released. ;) Fallout had a slightly similar concept, but it only saved the current conversation. Ditto for Planescape: Torment, IIRC.
And getting back to the original topic... I bet the web team's gonna hope the game comes out by the end of this year, so they don't have to think up too many monthly contests and arts of the week. :suffer:
Peace & Luv, Liz
After KQ9 is released, will there be other voicepacks(non-english)?
Hehe most likely not. It'll be hard enough translating just the text to another language, let alone finding multi-lingual voice actors. :P
:(
By the way, are there any languages you have planned to be translated, or are we going to have to wait and see?
Quote from: Yonkey on August 14, 2004, 10:59:54 PMHehe most likely not. It'll be hard enough translating just the text to another language, let alone finding multi-lingual voice actors. :P
I dunno... Harrison can speak French! ;-D (Seriously, he can.)
Peace & Luv, Liz
But can he act in french? ;-D Besides knowing how to pronounce the words, emphasizing on correct syllables, using the correct speed and of course acting ability would be needed to effectively do multi-lingual voice packs.
Louisiana: We haven't decided which languages to translate the game into yet. It will depend on whoever is willing to translate. XD I did get two e-mails almost a year ago about someone wanting to translate it to French, and another one in Italian. ;D
Quote from: Yonkey on August 15, 2004, 10:27:14 AMWe haven't decided which languages to translate the game into yet. It will depend on whoever is willing to translate. XD
I'd be willing to do a translation, but I don't think there'll be much of a market for my language. Not to mention that I myself have always prefered playing games in the original English version - translated games seem silly to me, kinda like having a voice-over instead of subtitles in movies :-\
I was asking, because I know a guy that can speak about a half-dozen languages. He was the historian/translator in ION. If there will, eventually be a position open for him, I want to tell him about KQ9. If there won't, eventually, be a position open for him, I don't want to bother him.
He says he can translate english to japanese/chinese.
Storm, by translating the game you can actually open it up to a larger market. If I didn't speak english, but found a kick-ass game everyone's talking about actually available in my mothertongue, I would definitely check it out. :P
Louisiana, you can tell him the same thing I told the other people offering: For the time being, we are
concentrating on the English version and will consider multi-lingual translations when we reach a later stage of development. :)
Quote from: Yonkey on August 15, 2004, 12:34:59 PM
Storm, by translating the game you can actually open it up to a larger market. If I didn't speak english, but found a kick-ass game everyone's talking about actually available in my mothertongue, I would definitely check it out. :P
I know... but since I can understand English almost as well as my mother tongue, I'd rather have it in the original language. Computer games just don't sound right in Hebrew to me... and I know how things tend to get lost in translation :-\
Interesting. I've watched a few foreign movies (i.e. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Run Lola Run, etc) with English subtitles before, and even though I'm sure plenty got lost in translation, it at least enabled me to view them. That's all I'm trying to say. ;D
But it's up to you. I'm not going to turn down a translation offer when the time comes, regardless of the language. 8)
Quote from: Yonkey on August 15, 2004, 09:20:06 PM
I'm not going to turn down a translation offer when the time comes, regardless of the language. 8)
Finally, something I can tell Yamato.
Quote from: Yonkey on August 15, 2004, 09:20:06 PMI've watched a few foreign movies (i.e. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Run Lola Run, etc) with English subtitles before, and even though I'm sure plenty got lost in translation, it at least enabled me to view them.
Yes, but it's different when you *know* the language of the movie and can exactly where the translator fouled it up (which happens to me A LOT). Plus, no matter how good the translator is, you usually end up losing a lot of the cultural references/word games :-\
Yeah, it's annoying watching German movies with laura, cause she keeps saying stuff like "haha, that was soooo wrong!" throughout it all. ::)
Anyway, why don't you tell them how big the script is Neil? Maybe they'll stop offering their translating services after that? :suffer:
Quote from: Grundy on August 17, 2004, 04:39:28 PM
Yeah, it's annoying watching German movies with laura, cause she keeps saying stuff like "haha, that was soooo wrong!" throughout it all. ::)
Anyway, why don't you tell them how big the script is Neil? Maybe they'll stop offering their translating services after that? :suffer:
You don't know Yamato, he was bored in ION. Maybe it would help, if you knew he was from Taiwan.
I think I should mention, that he might have joined that other WWII mod by now.
Quote from: Grundy on August 17, 2004, 04:39:28 PMAnyway, why don't you tell them how big the script is Neil? Maybe they'll stop offering their translating services after that? :suffer:
I already know how monstrously huge the script is... but it's not like we'll have a deadline, is it? ;-D
In other words, you don't mind spending as many years as Cesar did on it? ;B
Of course not. Besides, it wouldn't take me half as long ;)
Translators would have deadlines because they would become part of the team. Still, it shouldn't take extremely long since they're not writing a new script, they're just translating the current one.
Also, the more translators we have in a certain language, the faster that version of the game will come out. ;D
Is Torque compatible with Hebrew fonts/text? ;)
I've read that you can embed fonts into Torque. As for the dialogue itself, we're designing that ourselves. I'm still not sure exactly how it'll be inputted into the engine (i.e. local language files).
On the subject of voice, texts and all that.
Yes, there will be subtiltes, at least in english for now. I may do an spanish translation, and well, others can do some other translations. But that's only for text, of course, voices will always be in english.
On the subject of the voice being optional, I still haven't made my mind about this. Same with the videos. See... we won't be spending all this time so that someone doesn't download something by mistake and therefore doesn't enjoy the whole experience. Since KQ9 is very story-driven, it's very important for someone to experience, or even understand it, to see the videos. I tend to think the same for teh voice packs. We may force the player to download it all before playing it, but that's not something set yet.
César (who's watching a rough intro video at the moment) :P
I'd leave the voice optional... as much work as the voice pack is, the story can stand alone without it, and audio is a very sizable chunk of a game's filesize. Better to have more people getting at least the basic game experience, then chasing off potential players, I'd think.
Peace & Luv, Liz
As far as downloads go, the plan for the installer is a combination of IE's Active Setup and Office's Add/Remove components. By that I mean the installer itself will be somewhat small and allow the user to choose which components (i.e. chapters, voice pack, etc) to download and install.
There will be some selected by default, but the user will have the choice of downloading everything at once, or downloading the others later. So, the installer will definitely be able to resume partially downloaded files, and should easily be able to download other components in the future, without overwriting or having to download everything all over again.
But honestly, the voice pack would probably end up being smaller than a chapter file, since videos take up more disk space than voices and the videos are definitely not optional. So, if we decide on making the voice pack mandatory, the voices for a chapter would be bundled with that chapter (just like the videos).
The reason why I'd like to have the voice mandatory is because this game has a HEAVY cinematic feeling to it. So, while yes, it can stand without the voice, it loses a lot of its magic without the real voices. Dialogues are written to be heard, not to be read, if that makes any sense. For example, a lot of the time is not about what the character is really saying, but the way the character is saying it.
After it's translated into other languages, we'll be able to listen to the voices, AND have another language for subtitles. Right? 8)
Cesar: I was mostly just worried that the audio file would be significant enough in size that some people who would be willing to forego the voices so they could at least still play the game (which would still be good) might be put off if they were forced to download the voices too. Yonkey said he didn't think that would be much of a factor, so... (shrug)
I want to see as many people as possible playing your game. 8)
Peace & Luv, Liz
Hmmm... This is quite a problem you people have here?
If you were to look at it in practical terms then it would boil down to file size. Even if your someone like me who uses broadband+download accelerator combo (soon to upgrade to a 1MB connection) then it would still take a painfully long time to download file sizes of around 1-2GB.
The solution I would adopt (which is relatively similar to yours) would be to break the game down in chunks and do so in such a way that you have to download all of the files before you would have a functional game. A special installer could then be employed to string all the smaller downloaded files together to create the finished product.
It may be a little fiddley (if you were to compensate for people with 56K+download accelerator modems then the number of small files would be tremendous)
but it does mean that downloading a game of this size is a practial option for a large number of people
and they will recieve the full product.
Besides, no offence to all you adventure game fans, but this is a niche market product. Therefore the target audiance will be patient enough to download the entire game unlike those outside the adventure genre who couldn't really care less.
Anyhoo, thats what I would do if I ever offered my KQIX for download and it looks like your solution is just as effective (probably more so as you have better technical know-how).
Shadowfax is right, it's all a matter of file sizes. Basically, if voices are decided to become madatory they would be bundled with the chapter files (as I said earlier).
However, chapter files may be broken up into further smaller parts (otherwise the server load for Chapter 1 would be insane :P). Does anyone remember how IE's Active Setup worked? There were maybe 20 cab files, but if you decided to stop at some point and start the installer again, you wouldn't start from cab 0, you would start from the last incompleted cab. The only thing I
didn't like about that was it didn't support resume capability.
So, let's say Chapter 1 is 400mb including voices/video/everything, the installer might look like:
- Chapter 1
-> Chapter 1 - Part 1/10
-> Chapter 1 - Part 2/10
-> Chapter 1 - Part 3/10
-> ...
Which means, broadband users could select Chapter 1 and it would download all 10 parts sequentially, but there is also the option (mainly for dial-up users) to ask for a specific part at a time, as each part would be 40mb. In either case, the user cannot play the game until all 10 parts of chapter 1 are downloaded and verified.
EDIT: And it was previously decided that you must play the game in order, i.e. starting from Chapter 1. So, downloading
only Chapter 6 will not trick the game into starting there. :P
Quote from: Louisiana Night on September 18, 2004, 12:08:00 AM
After it's translated into other languages, we'll be able to listen to the voices, AND have another language for subtitles. Right? 8)
Correct. The game has three options: Voice & Subtitles, Voices Only, Subtitles Only. Translations only affect the subtitles, voices would still be in english.
(announces in biblical voice) And Lo! The Great Shadowfax finally gets something right!
(eveyone in forum looks at him curiously)...oh not again...(shuffles off to Dunce stool to resume learning the ways of the KQIX forum)
Will bittorrent be used? I'm sure it'll come in handy when the entire forum tries downloading the game at once. ;B
I knew I saw bittorrent mentioned (http://www.postudios.com/blog/forum/index.php?board=2;action=display;threadid=1255;start=msg77458#msg77458) before... and I currently use Azureus, though I still can't get it working super with my router connection. :(
EDIT (By Yonkey): Forum stretching. :P
Quote from: Oldbushie on September 23, 2004, 02:01:39 PMwhen the entire forum tries downloading the game at once. ;B
Igetfirstdibs!