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Catyph

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Simon_ASA - 25 August 2014 04:24 PM
Prom361 - 25 August 2014 03:34 PM

Edit: don’t work for me: miss MSVCR110.dll in my PC :p

WHAT?! Visionaire Studio doesn’t create clean-fully-working builds?

Looks like it doesn’t bundle the Visual Studio run-time redistributable package. Probably they don’t have the right to. It’s freely downloadable from the net, so you can bundle it in your installer assuming no legal issues, or add a note in the documentation.

     
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Antrax - 25 August 2014 11:53 PM

Looks like it doesn’t bundle the Visual Studio run-time redistributable package.

Yeah, from what I found on the Visionaire forums, people running a VS game on Windows XP need to install the following package:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-US/download/details.aspx?id=3387

Prom, can you confirm that you are running WinXP and that the above package solves the issue?

     
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wilco - 25 August 2014 05:16 PM

Game works well here, I like the effects, the rain effect. Can anything be done inside the room?

I’m glad you liked the effects. In this prototype you cannot do anything in the room, sorry Wink It’s just to illustrate the Making Of. A true demo will be released as soon as possible!

wilco - 25 August 2014 05:16 PM

Another unrelated question: when will ASA be available on Steam?

A lot of things happened with ASA. Officially I’m stuck on Steam because I have problems to retrieve an EIN number from the IRS, which is required for a matter of taxes between France and US. For some reason, they won’t give it to me, so I keep trying again and again. If anyone has clues or can help, I’m interested Smile

But this matter of EIN is just an administrative problem that could probably be solved faster. The truth is that there is something bigger in preparation for the Steam release of ASA, and I hope everyone will appreciate it.

ASA/Steam should be available by the end of the year, or beginning 2015.
Thanks for asking!

 

     
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Hi Simon! I am delighted to see how your project is growing. I’m happy for you, you’re doing a fantastic job.

     
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Thanks Vairon! Can’t wait to show you more of the game.

     
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Just to know, are there followers of this thread who wish to do a feedback regarding the short Prototype of Catyph, before I think of the next articles I’ll write for this Making Of?

Next week-end (if I have the time), I should explain the common problems I meet in the “Post-Production” process of my games. I’m not sure yet which subject I will begin with (localization, texts proofing, music, sound effects, beta-testing…).
This part will, for sure, be much shorter than the whole Production stage. Let me know if you have special requests, or want to learn more about specific things in the game development. It’s probably a good moment to let me know!

I’d like also to remind that my projects ASA, Catyph and Mon Village est Magique are now supported by a collective of indie artists called The icehouse, that I have co-founded. Even though we’re very small for now, with limited possibilities, we hope that we can grow with new members and share more and more beautiful projects with you, and not only games. We would also like, in the future, to propose physical releases of our games and our other projects in an online shop (DVDs, books, more…). Several people asked me if there was a DVD release of ASA somewhere. The answer is still “no”, but thanks to our work in the collective, it may become a possibility sooner or later.

I invite everyone who read this message to follow us and maybe discover the work of our other artists. The icehouse blog also makes it easy to retrieve the latest news about Catyph. Thank you!

>> http://www.theicehouse.fr <<

     
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Post-Production

I have finished to explain the Production stage of the game. It is possible that I add more details about it later, if, while I continue the development, I find new interesting details to share. You can also ask questions and I will do my best to answer.

We should now see the Post-Production process of the development.
Once again, I insist that the words I chose (Pre-Production, Production and Post-Production) are my own choice and might not be accurate. They’re here to separate the different parts of the development, in order to make it easier to understand. “Post-production” usually encompasses the different stages in the making of a film that come after the main stage of filming. For example, compositing and editing.

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

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


Localization

I will regroup “Text proofing” and “Localization” in the same part. Even if I usually separate them when I work, they’re somehow related to each other, as you can imagine.

When I work on a game (ASA or Catyph), I work in my native language, French. You probably understand that it’s easier for me to create the story and write it in french. However, my problem with french language is not only that most people won’t understand it when the game releases, it’s also that I work with people from all around the world that cannot help me when I share french texts.

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

Example of French text:

Example of English translation:

Problem: my english is not good enough to release the game as is! Even if I’m doing a lot of efforts in checking my texts, there are different problems of spelling or grammar that cannot be improved on my own.

This is why I have to work with another person who proofs my english texts (thank you Roger!). So, if you follow me, there are already 3 steps in 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 complicated and usually expensive)
- asking someone I trust in to proof my english texts.

To these 3 steps, you should also add:
- looking for other people to translate from english to x (spanish, italian, german…)
- import the translations in the game

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

Empty datalog:

Text only (with alpha transparency):

Final result when playing Catyph:


Maybe you don’t realise it, but this whole stage takes a lot of time and efforts. The simple fact to write the texts in French, in order to make them interesting, logical and clean, is already a signifiant work. Translating everyting into english is also time consuming. The datalog in the game (a kind of diary) is composed of tens of pages with different informations that have to be accurate and shouldn’t be contradictory with other parts of the game.

If you asked me, I would say that the datalog is the most difficult part to write, and the longest too. The translations have to be copy/pasted in pictures (PNG with alpha) in order to appear in the game.

But there are other parts that can be tricky. The in-game dialogues (cutscenes or AI narration) are more interesting to write while developing the game, but require more attention during the translation process…
The method I use is quite simple. As explained, I write the texts in french and english in the game, and I prepare a place for other languages. Then I export all the dialogues to a “speech file” in CSV format. The content is as follow:

"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."


But it is not very easy for the people who translate to work with that kind of text, so they use free softwares such as DM csv Editor. They can see the replicas as follow:

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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Hey man just wanted to drop a line and say this looks bleeding awesome. You’ve got tight visuals, I love it.

Keep up the good work. Smile

     
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Thanks theo! It really helps to read nice comments.
There is still a lot of work on the game, but things are going well.

     

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hah, believe me, I know the value of asspats. Smile

When are you hoping to be done?

Btw I love your lens effects and camera motion. What are you rendering this in?

     
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When are you hoping to be done?
—> end of the year, if localization process and beta-testing don’t take too much time…

Btw I love your lens effects and camera motion. What are you rendering this in?
—> Glad you like! The camera motion is created and rendered with 3dsmax 2015, the lens and other effects are added in compositing with After Effects CS6.
I think the process is more or less explained in the previous pages Wink

     

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nice, good luck!

sorry, I could have read it all and found out, I guess. Too much text. I look at pics and then write. That’s how I work. Smile Thanks for the info anyhow.

     
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Two weeks ago, I explained the problem of localization in my video games, and how I deal with them for now.

In this new part, I was supposed to explain the problems about having good voices in indie games. I was supposed to write this article last week, but was not very inspired. Yesterday I thought of it again, but still didn’t find the inspiration. The truth is that this is a complicated theme: it can be both easy to explain (just find an actor -> he records your text), or much more complicated (go find funds for the actor, and all the consequences). So where should I start here? I still haven’t found a corect answer, and I will probably write my ideas on the fly.

Also, as you can see in the previous parts of this Making Of, I usually like to illustrate my explanations with screenshots or pictures, but illustrating the question of voices is a bit more subtle. I thought of sharing free samples in streaming, but was not convinced by this idea and just gave up. People could get a wrong idea with samples.

My! I must sound so defeatist in this part! Yes, it’s true, voicing the game when you work on your own and with no funds is a nightmare. You can have all the goodwill of the world, if you cannot use your own voice (because you don’t speak english well, or because your voice just sucks - it’s my case!) then voicing the animated sequences of your game becomes a giant problem.

Happily, it seems that a lucky star decided to help me, as I could get in touch with different voice actors (Jared, Klemens and Steven) who agreed to help the project in their free time. There is no way for me to say how thankful I am, and it makes me even more happy that they did it for fun.

Maybe you don’t realise first why it is so much luck to have these actors. A simple thing to do, in order to understand well, is to put yourself in my situation: you have a video game where you need 3 different voices. 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 with friends
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

Honestly I tried the 4 possibilities, and if I am now very happy to have the support of Jared, Klemens and Steven as voice actors for Catyph, I mostly proceeded by trial and error before I could get in touch with them.

My first try was with the 3rd choice above: my idea was that amateur actors could be found quite easily on internet, so I seeked for them on google and… was quickly disapointed 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 english born: it’s difficult to find the best keywords).

Anyway I finally found some obscure forums of voice actors and tried to get in touch, until I realised that nobody was around to answer. I didn’t give up yet and seeked again for amateur actors and found young people who were creating video games Fan Films, based on the World of Warcraft (WOW). Not exactly my first idea, 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 another 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 is my own voice. I 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 want the best quality as possible for Catyph: I decided to search for professional voice actors. Why not? If they ask for money, which I understand, maybe there is a way to find an agreement. It would not be the first time that a professional worker brings me their help, and that I reward them with a % of my sells. Unfortunately, none of my messages received a positive reply. I was not surprised, but a bit disapointed.

There was only one last possibility: asking the help of friends. But most of my friends are french people, with a very bad frenchy accent when they speak english! C’est très beau.

Now, do you see why it’s complicated to add voices in an indie game being made on your own? Either you need quite a lot of money and credibility, either you need english-born friends who love sci-fi and video games, and who have some talent in voice acting.
It’s finally thanks to previous contacts in the US and UK that I could find the help of the 3 actors I named previously. And that’s exactly why I said it was a lot of luck 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 this is the list of actors for Catyph:

- Character of General Lantier / voiced by Jared Murphy.
I already worked with Jared in the past: he has an incredible deep voice, and he made some very good records 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 recorded the diaries in ASA! It was logical that I ask his help again, and it is great to have him in the team again.

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

All of the records are based on the texts written previously. It is important that the texts are final, proofed and that they won’t change!

Next time I should talk of the music!

     
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Great news!! I can’t wait…

     
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Last time I tried to explain the problem with finding voice actors for an indie game with no/low funds. It was a good opportunity to remind that Catyph is being 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’m supposed to talk of the music in Catyph. It is a bit difficult because it is not publicly released at this time, and I cannot share many examples. I will explain the work of the musicians by referring to our previous common work: ASA.

The OST of Catyph will be composed of something like 20 tracks (more or less). It is approximately the same number of tracks that Karreo did for ASA: A Space Adventure. In fact, we followed the same process of creation: using the mains themes of the initial short film as a starting point for the game.

You can listen to the ASA OST in free streaming here:
ASA Playlist on Youtube

Karreo is a Soundtracks Producer. It’s an association gathering several artists who both like pictures and music. You can visit www.karreo.com for more info regarding their work. They try to work on video clips for their musicians, which is a good way to support everyone within the collective. Making music for games is not their main purpose and they prefer animation and films.


You can watch and listen to their music showreel here:
Karreo Showreel

The creation process of the soundtrack of Catyph is difficult because Karreo works while 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 have almost no pictures to share at the time they begin to work: the graphics of Catyph don’t exist in 3D! So I have to create a precise brief document, including reference pictures found here and there on the web. The idea is to use these pictures to describe the ambiance of each region of Catyph. Of course, these pictures are accompanying a descriptive text.

As an example, the region of Saad:

The description I shared was quite simple: if you remember from the previous screenshots that were shared already, 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 place is covered with a small forest. 

This is a screenshot of Saad:

But this picture, Karreo didn’t see it at the time they worked on the music! Instead, I insisted on some keywords, such as : desertic, forest, meteorite, alien… etc!
The reference pictures I had attached were from various works, 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 uses the pictures as a source of inspiration, but in the end, they have to imagine everything by themselves.

It is the way 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…

The corresponding track of Planet Forte reminds me of an outdoor place, filled with sun, where the highs are a bit mystical.

The process worked well on ASA, and it was 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, they could focus on their own ideas, with no fear to make a bad music that wouldn’t fit with the game. I think it brings a good balance within the whole OST.

It is important to remind that the whole ASA OST was very 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 below:
Catyph/film Playlist on Youtube

It alread gives a very good idea of the future OST! The track Mind the Mines was particularly liked, and will probably become the Theme played in the Menus in the game.

Finally, the best idea is probably to defer to Stélian Derenne, and let him explain his feeling after he worked on ASA:
<< Lucky enough to surf on the relative success of the short film preceding the game, I took back the introduction scene’s theme and tried to spice it to the various environments the player would be going through, most of the time wondering what I’d play on my iPod on the spot.
Composing it felt more and more like a casual movie soundtrack thanks to the many graphic material provided, keeping it easy on the ear on most parts, dynamic on other, and even experimental in some cases…
This is my first complete video game soundtrack, made fun thanks to the freedom I had.
What worried me in the making was how to keep the balance in the lively and dramatic touch I believe any composition of this kind should have, and how to prevent the player not to just turn the music off out of boredom.
I actually wish I didn’t know that much about ASA, just to enjoy discovering it totally once I get to play the full version! >> (Stélian Derenne - Karreo)

Next time : working on the sound effects!

     

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