Voices and Subtitles

[Yonkey]

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).

[Cez]

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)

[Jeysie]

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

[Yonkey]

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).

[Cez]

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.

[Louisiana Night]

After it's translated into other languages, we'll be able to listen to the voices, AND have another language for subtitles. Right?

[Jeysie]

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.

Peace & Luv, Liz

[Shadowfax]

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).

[Yonkey]

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 ).  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.

After it's translated into other languages, we'll be able to listen to the voices, AND have another language for subtitles. Right?

Correct.  The game has three options: Voice & Subtitles, Voices Only, Subtitles Only.  Translations only affect the subtitles, voices would still be in english.

[Shadowfax]

(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)

[Oldbushie]

Will bittorrent be used? I'm sure it'll come in handy when the entire forum tries downloading the game at once.

[Oldbushie]

I knew I saw bittorrent mentioned before... and I currently use Azureus, though I still can't get it working super with my router connection.


EDIT (By Yonkey): Forum stretching.  

[Jafar]

when the entire forum tries downloading the game at once.

Igetfirstdibs!