Our work takes long, and time is fleeting.

I've come to understand something that is profound for everyone around the AGS community and generally the developing community, whether you're a coder, or a writer, or an artist, or a voice actor, or an animator, or any other job that is deemed useful in the game/product making process, that no matter how good or great you do that job, there's always space for improvement.

Same goes for games.

Something you could do differently, something you could improve upon, I don't know anything. At that moment, when you've delivered your quest, you are usually stricken with confidence that you did a good enough job, and that it's final, then after you revisit it, you know, stand behind and observer your labor with a more objective point of view, it is then that you realize you were completely wrong. The best way to prove myself is to find a project you've kept the first version of, and compare it with the one you released for the public. You'll probably catch yourself remembering you were quite satisfied with it back then, perhaps at that, or a later time, you thought "this is it". 

I mean, look at it.

But the more light you shed in your project with feedback either by testers or team members, or anyone practically bothering with it, and sending you his opinion about it (If I recall correctly Vince Twelve had his mom play the game (Resonance) to see if she would be having troubles with the interface), the better your game gets. 

Provided you're willing to go through feedback and process it accordingly. I mean look at any AGS game out there, take for example Technobabylon, I'm sure Technocrat thought when he first released it, "this is the most I can do with this game" and now he's turned it into a bombastic super-pretty indie game, that I would be willing to pre-order so hard.

I've been working on Primordia with Wormwood Studios these past few days (we're going to patch it everywhere (Steam, GOG, wherever it is available) as soon as we're done), and I've personally come across several things that bugged me now, but at the time I was okay with them. You tend to overlook faults over the rush of completing the core parts of a project. But when you look at the details, see deeper, that's what we call polish. And it needs to be done. The more time you devote applying small partially insignificant fixes and improvements to your work, the better.

AGS Podcast 37

Vince Twelve is there, they talk for a while, about games.

Episode 37

Alternate XII

Mr Vincent Wesselman, of Resonance, Anna and Linus Bruckmann fame, has been taken in for interview by the feds. Something about an explosion... But, he's also been taken for questioning by Alternative Magazine Online. Which is much more entertaining!

Pre-ordering open on Resonance

Leading up to the June 19 launch, Resonance can be preordered in both digital download and physical formats:

 

• GOG.com is offering a digital preorder brimming with goodies that include desktop wallpapers, a digital poster (suitable for printing), the game's MP3 soundtrack, a "behind the scenes" video, and video developer diaries. GOG's Resonance download, available on June 19, will be DRM-free. The regular $9.99 price is discounted 10% to $8.99 during the preorder period. For more details, visit: http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/resonance

 

• Wadjet Eye Games is offering a limited edition disc version that will only be available for purchase during the preorder period. The disc version will be packaged in a collectable box with a printed Resonance poster. The MP3 soundtrack and other digital goodies will be included on the game CD. The $24.99 price includes worldwide shipping, and customers who preorder the limited edition will also get free access to a Resonance download on launch day. For more details, visit: http://www.resonance-game.com/preorder

 

Resonance Preview: Mind=Blown

Alright, I'm going to start right ahead on the important statements that need to be said. As a person I get overexcited over anything. That usually raises my expectations exponentially. Usually they are never met. Resonance is the exception to that rule. A game fueled till about a year with the sheer determination of its members, is now under the hands of Dave Gilbert.

I've personally played the demo handed to me via e-mail, so you're in luck. I can't tell if the game is fantastic or great or awesome, even though I probably should. But it has all the potentials to surpass the huge legacy Gemini Rue created, and put AGS and of course its team, in the mouths of simply everyone.

Graphically wise the game looks astonishing. The animation is very fluent and the character sprites are drawn by Shane Stevens in a way that they blend almost perfectly with the background art. As for the backgrounds themselves, they are undoubtedly amazing. A terrible amount of detail has been put into them, and they all glow a majestic feel, with their vibrant colors and shapes. The sound and music are composed by a fellow greek, Nikolas Sideris. The melodies have a bladerunneresque feel to them and fit every scene better than perhaps they were designed to be.

The story, that I'd prefer not to bother with any detail or at all for spoilers sake, and the dialogs have been co-written by the whole team, mostly by Vince Twelve, and are my favorite aspect about this game.

Every line feels natural and well delivered by the voice acting. After playing for about 30 minutes, I realized I haven't skipped a single dialog, which is totally unlike me. The game offers many choices that made me feel, as if I was living the story/character.

You have to be a fool to overlook Resonance. And a complete and total one at that.

Remember the times when..

The times when real men were real men, real women were real men, and bloggers blogged about real women being real men?

Good, me neither.

In the meantime, Dave Gilbert posted this wonderful and gorgeous looking poster for Resonance.

Resonance is this:
A particle physicist's mysterious and spectacular death sparks a race to find his hidden vault and claim his terrifying new discovery. The player will take control of four characters whose lives become entangled in the search for the scientist's vault. They will have to learn to trust each other and work together to overcome the obstacles in their way and to keep this new and powerful technology out of the hands of a dangerous organization.

Resonanced!

Screenshots goodness follows:

Video goodness follows (STILL NOT THRILLED?):

Resonance has been, what now, 5 years in production by the amazing and fantastic Vince XII. It's a game consisted of a story between four playable characters and an interface that's innovating and challenging. The team behind the game is fantastic and now that Wadjet Eye Games have picked the game up, we may finally get to be amazed beyond amazement.

Preorder & Support Resonance

The Release Something POST-MORTEM

Important Notice: YOU ARE LATE FOR THE PARTY.

Now, that's out of the way, let's talk about what this is all about. Icey games/Studio3 had the idea of an AGS Show equivalent to E3. While that may sound a bit silly, and perhaps you're right, it actually is kind of silly, Ben304, in all his enlightening insanity, actually made it happen.

So, let me use the amazing powers of copy-paste to show you what Ben304 actually did.

We used to have these under the guise of a "Release Something", and while I never participated, they were great fun, it's amazing to see all the different members of the community showcase little parts of their projects. I think having a date, an event in which you know people will be interested in this sort of thing and all your buddies will be doing it, really motivates one to tidy something up for people to look at it. And, if nothing else, it gives you somewhere to finally show off those couple of screenshots that you know aren't going to be in a game anymore, but you spent hours working on and might as well do *something* with, even if it does just mean posting them for people to go "oooh, I wish that was a game!" over.

As far as I can tell, the last Release Something was February 2009. We had something a little in the vein of this last year in May when ProgZmax set the mags topic to "Release Your Game" and the comp was clearly a great success - 6 entries in a MAGS comp is a great showing by anybody's standard, so the interest is clearly there.

That was over a year ago - perhaps it's time for another release something?

With no objections having arisen, I'm going to go and set the deadline for this activity as the 10th of July. You have one month to polish up your games/tech demos/demos/prototypes/vertical slices for release! Keep the sweet stuff rolling in guys, it's awesome to see!

So there. And I will also as a kind sir that I am, give you 2 things.
-Firstly, the link to the topic.
-Secondly an amazing GIF with (Almost) everything released. There are some games and demos in the topic, so check em out.

Kickstart(er) My Heart

VinceXII or Vince or VinceTwelve back a while, started a donation thing offering the following:

• Never-before-seen screenshots
• Never-before-heard music tracks
• Some sneak peaks at awesome character animations.
• An amazing wallpaper
• A special video!"

With the help of Kickstarter, and those of course that pledged he got a fair amount that helped him pay some of his errands. Now you probably go boo! But just wait till you see a screenshot.

*Drum Roll*

One offer says this: For a 15$ Dollar or More, you can download the game for free when it's out!!!
And this time you can use the ol'PayPal account of yours!

More on the offers and certain info can be found at the XII Games Blog.

Twelve tenets of wisdom

Vince XII shares his wisdom about interfaces over at Hardydev.

Roundup roundup

Deirdra Kiai (of various indie adevntures and Hothead Games) summarized the decade in 10 games, including RLBAT, WLBSWHEAC and The Shivah!

7 Days a Skeptic gets a mention in diygamer's top 10 indies of the decade.

And the top 10 of 2009 from diygamer includes Time Gentlemen Please

IGF Resonates

Indiegames have chosen their top 10 IGF 2009 picks and... Resonance is in there and all the other AGS entries get a mention, too. Awesome!

I sure saw what Linus saw, Esau

Vince reveals the sekrit ending to Linus...

Vince Able

For more see, Vince's blog

Interview Part 6: Nikolas

1)How did you find AGS? I mean as a musician it's not the first place you'd visit on the internet.

Back in 2003/4 I was in the army (it's compulsory in Greece, as you very well know) and I had tons of time to spare. So I started trying to find older games to play on a very old computer in the camp. I found underdogs, then abandonia and finally I spotted "Cirque du Zale" by Kinoko. I fell in love with this game, based on an pretty much abandoned genre, thus I decided to visit AGS forums and attempt to contact Kinoko, in order to work on her next game (Gift of Aldora, never to be completed I think).

My very first post was greeted by Don the barbarian, who welcomed me in such a nice manner, that I decided to stick around and make the AGS forums my homepage (until today).

2)You have any favorite AGS games or any AGS games in production, you can't wait for ?(apart from Resonance :D

Resonance... DITR, ATOTK, etc... No kidding.

I think that 'The Forgotten Element' could be great, but all 3 of us have been working on different projects for a long time, so I can't tell what the future will hold for the completion of that game.

Legend of the lost lagoon, although probably not to be completed either...

Picaroon and anything by Ben, ProgZmax, Vince and others who I trust blindly!

3) From the very first moment I do recall seeing your name in these forums, it's highly weird how you've managed to work on games, that eventually ended up a huge success (Tales of Two Kingdoms, Linus Bruckman). How do you manage to select games that have success written all over them?

Why on earth is that weird? As it appears I'm capable of making the 'right' choices!

In all honesty I try to get as much information as I can before I say yes to any project, so I try to pick where I work for. I, no longer have the time to work on freeware games, sadly, but still on commercial games I've had to say no, only because there were things I would do hugely different, or the inexperience of the dev team was a problem. With a publisher these things tend to dissappear, but also the freedom in composing.

4) I'm not really into music ways the way you are, but where do you compose all that music into? A personal studio?

In the music world it's called a 'project studio'. It's exactly a studio for personal use. Recently I've managed to get a grand to build a normal studio, so now I have my own acousticaly treated space, where my monitors, amps, microphohes, computers, etc are.

But my music is 95% computer based. I use samples, since it would be impossible for indie budgets to fund a normal orchestral recording, and the computer is the heart of my studio. Only very recently I got some high quality preamps and mics, in which case I can start recording live instruments, voice, and do custom sfx. Resonance has a huge bump upwards in the quality of audio (especially the sfx).

5) We all know that you've now been hired by VinceXII to compose for Resonance, care to tell us more on what style of music should we expect or at least what you're aiming for?

It's a rather weird mix of aesthetics. The story is based on 4 different characters, so I tried to give each character their own aesthetics and motifs. It's worked so far and I have to admit that it doesn't sound disjoined!

There are orchestral tracks, dissonant tracks, electronic ones, more pop/rock oriented and even some solo piano in there...

6) From all your collaborations (even non-AGS games) is there one (if any) you could separate from the others?

Apart from Vince, with whom our love is a public secret :P ?

There is Alkis; We're good friends now and see each other as frequent as we can and our other obligations permit! I value him greatly as a person, as a writer, and as a collaborator.

Actually now that I think about it, pretty much all the people I've worked with, I've become friends. Vince, Alkis, Peeter (ATOTK), Rebecca (Kinoko), etc...

I'd also seperate a non AGS game, from a negative point of view however. The specs and whole concept seemed to be going very well, and the team even got requests from publishers, but they decided to pretty much abandon it and abandon all hope for further fame and fortune! This was one experience I try to stay away from, from thereon.

7) What's with that signature of yours (quoting a reply from Emerald to you) ? Meaning what's the story behind it.

I actually don't remember exactly what happened, but it does appear that I was being a little 'smart' to Emerald and he decided to tell me off. Instead of being frustrated and flame back, as I would normally do, I took it the light way and put the quote in my signature, so it would never go away.

8 ) How hard is to have a family and have AGS developers on your back as well, apart from your other projects...?

It used to be hard, since there was no money coming in and it was quite frustrating to try and explain to a wife and two kids, why you have to work late, talk through MSN/Skype and other details.

Recently it got a lot easier, since it became apparent that even playtesting is a part of working in games and this has been accepted, thankfully.

Now, it just feels normal. After all, since I'm no longer doing freeware games, it's a part of my daily job (my income is 90% based on composing) and there's no need for even an excuse to work... on your daily job! ;)

Definitely a very interesting interview with Nikolas..(mind the love affair with VinceXII!!)

Interview Part 2: Resonance

So second interview and this time it's Vince Twelve (XII), the man (not just him) behind Resonance. Look down...

1)This is getting typical, but well, got to ask, what's your favorite AGS or non-AGS game?

Among AGS games, Nelly Cootalot, Gesundheit!, La Croix Pan, The Blackwell Series, Shifter's Box, Reactor 09, Cirque de Zale, and tons of others. Non-AGS games, wow, too many to count. I love the Myst Series, The Longest Journey, Silent Hill, The Dig, Portal, Braid, Armadillo Run, ummm... tons. I generally go for the more serious stories rather than zany comedies. I just love getting drawn in by immersive Sci Fi or Fantasy worlds.

2)How did you decided to start making games in the first place?

I've wanted to make games for as long as I can remember. I remember drawing huge Final Fantasy-like world maps with my friend on the floor of our fourth grade classroom. That interest led me to majoring in Computer Science, and eventually to where I am now, as a hobbyist/indie game maker. I might try the jump to a real game company some day, but for now, I'm satisfied with my business software development job, which pays the bills and feeds the kids, and my game creating hobby.

3)You've recently moved from the one side of the Atlantic to the other, and you've got a nice big family there. When do you get time to work with Resonance?

Actually, it was the Pacific! About a year ago, my wife and two year old moved from Okinawa, Japan to Omaha, Nebraska, USA. And recently we added one more kid to the family, so yeah, I keep busy. Other than the odd lunch hour, most of my Resonance development time takes place when every one else is asleep. I get a lot done on weekends, when my wife and kids are taking naps, and every night after 10 PM after everyone's in bed. I stay up most nights until 12:30 or 1 working and then get up the next morning at 6 to go to work. So I'm running myself a bit ragged, but I'm very dedicated to what I do.

4)How did you manage to gather a team full of talented people? Nikolas for the music, ProgzMax for pixel art, MashPotato, JBurger, You, Deirdra...So how?

Yeah, I absolutely love collaborating with highly-talented people, and I'm doing a damn good job of it on this project, if I do say so myself (and I do). Nikolas was the first team member. We worked together on Linus Bruckman and became good friends, so that was a no-brainer. To attract more talent to the project, I wanted to have some major work done to demonstrate my dedication and help sell the project.

So, after I had written the entire design document for the game, laying out every background, character, plot point, and puzzle (though it has changed quite a bit since then) I went looking for ProgZ on the AGS IRC channel. He was my number one pick to be the artist for Resonance, and to my surprise, he jumped right aboard! He actually had created the first concept version of Ed, the main character, within 20 minutes of me pitching the game to him! It was a bit harder to find the backgrounder, because I didn't have anyone in mind, so I posted ads around the internet looking for artists and got several replies. I talked with ProgZ and Nik and eventually we picked Nauris Krause, who has been doing an awesome job with the backgrounds ever since! Mash, Deirdra, and JBurger all came a bit later. I asked Mash specifically if she could do some character portraits. And Deirdra and JBurger both answered some open calls that I put out on the forums and on my blog looking for writers and artists, respectively. I'm super happy with the team that I've got working on Resonance. It's a very talented, very international group of game makers!

5)I'm not sure about the rest out there, but I've really noticed a very innovative and very impressive interface. But there has been a talk whether the interface will be user friendly. Comment on that.

Who's talking about that?! :) I can guarantee that the interface will be easy to use. I tested it out on my Mom! I have previously worked as an interactivity designer focusing on usability at a giant multi-national corporation, so I've got some experience in this arena. Because of that work, I find myself always nitpicking the interfaces of other games. I don't know that the interface will be perfect for everyone (is any interface perfect for everyone?) -- some people may not like it because it's different from most other adventure games -- but it should feel immediately familiar and natural. So hopefully it works out well!

6)From the poster and some of your posts on Twitter and XIIgames, I've seen that the story divides into four chapters (based on feelings), but I've yet to get a grasp on the plot. Want to tell us more about it?

Actually, the game has three acts. There are four playable characters, though, and that's who you see on the poster. But, yeah, the story takes place over three days, and each day makes up one act of the game. Each act is pretty different in tone and feel. Act I is the setup of the characters, setting, and plot, but keeps mixing up the gameplay to keep you on your toes. Act II opens the world up to more exploration and is more similar to standard adventure game pacing. And Act III pulls everything together and sends you spiraling towards the conclusion. Each Act has it's own set of goals and motivations, so it should keep things interesting! The plot surrounds a new discovery in the field of particle physics. Something that could be used for great good or great evil. So several different shady groups are after the research, and you have to make sure that you get it first! That's all I'm sayin'!

7)The graphics, the animation, seem all to be of high product value, so how much will this game cost?

The price point is undecided, but I can practically guarantee that it will be more than the fifteen bucks that it currently costs for a pre-order over on Kickstarter

8)It has been previously said that AGSers don't really buy commercial games (even AGS ones), your thoughts on that? And how did you decided to go commercial?

I think that people interested in the game will buy it and people uninterested wont. I'm not too worried about sales numbers or profits, really. I started this project because I wanted to make the game of my dreams, so I've invested hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars over the last two and a half years to make sure that it got done and that it was of the highest possible quality.

I don't know if I'll break even on the project in the end, not really sure what to expect, but that was never my goal to start out with. Though, I did make the game commercial to help justify it to my wife. :P

9)When are you planning that the game will be ready?

That's the real question. When it's done. I'm hoping, (but it's only hoping) that the game will be done in 2010.

10)Final question, if you would propose a game of yours to someone, which one would that be?

I would show everybody Linus Bruckman, which I'm still super proud of three years after release. I think it's clever and unique and bizarre; all things that I love about games. It's not for everybody, definitely, but I'd like to think that people who like hard logic puzzles and brain twisters or just weird stories will enjoy it.


Thanks a lot for the interview Vince, it has been a pleasure! If you want to find out more on Resonance, go to the XII Games Website Section

Give Vince Money!

Vince XII has put his epic game-in-production Resonance on kickstarter in order to raise cash to enter it into IGF. Head over, give him some dosh and you'll get mentioned in the credits. Give him $250 and he'll base a character on you! With awesome people like ProgZMax, Nikolas and Deirdra Kiai involved, how could you not want to sign your life savings over to him?

Blog round-up

JD reviews La Croix Pan and Vince Twelve appeals for an artist.

Au-to-mated Affection

Well, Gnome's lair has declared his list of 40 best freeware games, and Annie Android and Nanobots made it. He also noticed the sexist elements on Annie, as said already by me here.. Good job, sir Gnome. Click on the pics to go the games' download page.

Anna nother review

Find Therma, Review, Anna, Vince Tweleve, awesome. Now, what do I put in the tags field?