The Silver Lining - Episode 2: Two Households
by Phoenix Online Studios · 09/18/2010 (11:56 pm) · 5 comments
It's been two months since the release of The Silver Lining - Episode 1: What is Decreed Must Be, and the public reception to it has been fantastic! We had a lot of expectations to live up to, and it was a big relief to see that we didn't disappoint the fans, especially those who have been around for years and years supporting this project, waiting patiently for the game to be released, signing petitions to convince Vivendi and Activision to let us release it, and cheering us on from the sidelines.
Today, we weleased The Silver Lining - Episode 2: Two Households, picking up the story right where Episode 1 ended... don't worry, no spoilers will be revealed here! Some of you may still want to check it out, but haven't started playing yet. Instead, what I would like to talk about is some of the design decisions we made and how the episodic format allows us to listen to fans and pick up on their ideas to continually improve this game as each episode is released!
Splitting up this game into episodes may seem like the obvious choice now, but it was actually an idea concieved very late in this project. Too late one might think (the entire game was basically playable at this point, from start to finish) but thanks to some clever adjustments to the story, moving the odd puzzle from one scene to another, and fairly simple additions to the game engine, we found a way to make it happen without adding another year of development time to it, something we all knew we didn't want to do. It was time for this game to get completed!
Thankfully, the general structure of the game allowed us to make the transition to an episodic format without reworking much of it, and by thinking of the game in these terms we discovered new cool ways to make use of our scenes, improving the overall gameplay experience. Because you travel between a number of islands in the game, each new episode could expand on the game world by allowing full access to one island after another. Only minor changes to the plot and puzzles were needed to achieve this. Sure, we should definitely have thought about this much earlier in the development process, but we were lucky to find that it worked. It's never too late too make a design change as long as it makes sense!
The episodic also allowed us to start releasing this game earlier. Instead of focusing on completing the entire game, it has given us smaller and more mangeable goals. But we still knew that we would need a "head start" by having Episode 2 close enough to complete that we knew we could finish it in 2-3 months once Episode 1 was released, and later episodes already in the pipeline for timely releases as well. But, as previously mentioned, the entire game was basically playable at the time we decided to go episodic, so we were confident that it was doable. Some of the major technical and artistical challenges that still lay ahead could be solved one by one, each in time for their use in an episode, and thinking of them in that way made them seem a lot less intimidating.
The episodic format has also given us a great opportunity to listen to complaints and suggestions by both critics and fans, picking up ideas to improve the game that come from outside the design team and our own testers. We paid close attention to what people had to say about Episode 1 and made sure to incorporate improvements in some of the most important areas based on their comments.
One of the major gripes people had with Episode 1 was that it was short and featured too few puzzles. Admittedly, we knew that this would be an issue, but we decided to let it be and release it this way anyway. The main purpose of the episode is to give an introduction to the story and characters, and to introduce players to the gameplay mechanics. But yes, it is brief, and much of it is just non-interactive cutscenes. We didn't worry too much about this flaw, as we knew what was coming in the later episodes. But maybe we underestimated its importance a bit. It means we didn't get to prove our ability to make fun and challenging puzzles in this episode, a key component in any good adventure game. That makes it a big relief to have Episode 2 out there now, as it is has plenty of that which people were missing from Episode 1! There are many closed doors in Episode 1, few people to interact with... This is all deliberate. It sets the mood for the story at that point. But it also disappointed a lot of people that they couldn't DO much in all those locations they had waited so long to visit! Fortunately, you can now go back to these same locations in Episode 2, and now they are populated with many people to talk to and lots of stuff to do! We hope that the majority of players will be very happy with the balance of gameplay in Episode 2, but the final verdict is still out on that...
The Silver Lining has a lot of very long narrations and plenty of dialogue, much of it not essential to the gameplay but intended to deepen the athmosphere, provide fans of the King's Quest series with entertaining references or simply adding comic relief. Some players, however, felt that at times it could get a little tiresome to listen to all of these long lines, not knowing what would be important and what wouldn't. To reduce their frustration, we decided to implement a "short narrations" option and even the option to cut out the narrator's voice, only showing the text. But we decided to do it in such a way that we didn't have to rewrite or re-record any lines. We simply cut out those that we feel aren't necessary if you activate the short narrations option. This way, everyone can play the game with narrations the way they want, and we didn't actually have to do much to achieve it.
Another thing that we realized we have to improve on based on criticism for Episode 1 was the player walking implementation. We had automatic pathfinding already, but not in all scenes because of the limitations of the system we'd implemented, and we did not have the option to toggle between a walk and a run mode, which many people felt was something we should have. We wanted to as well, but we had too many other things to worry about for Episode 1. During the last two months we have brought in a new programmer to rework the pathfinding system, implemented the running mode, and brought in fresh walking and running animations based on motion capture that look much better than the old ones we had! Just one example of things you can improve on as you go along with a game like this, and the episodes are not separately installed so these general improvements will apply to earlier episodes as well. With each new episode we are releasing a full installer containing all episodes so far for people who haven't played any of them yet, but we'll also provide an installer only containing the latest episode and changes to previous ones, so you can download this smaller version and install it on top of your already downloaded episodes.
We also keep looking for community-driven add-ons and improvements to TGE that can help us improve the game (if you have ideas, don't be afraid to contact us!) and for this episode we decided to integrate the Flash GUI Component, because we needed some animated gui elements for this episode and they needed to look really good, which this resource allows for in an easy way. Yes, it has its bugs and limitations, but it's not like we needed advanced Flash capabilities either, just basic animation... And for this it works just great! The results of this can be seen already in the introduction to Episode 2, so go check it out! :)
Leading up to the release of every episode, we also publish articles on our website from the fictional publication The Four Winds, which exists inside the game's own universe. This provides some extra backstory leading up to each episode and is also a way to entertain fans between releases. Previous issues can not only be browsed on our website, but also from inside the game itself, as they are continually posted on a bulletin board in front of the Four Winds headquarters on the Isle of the Crown as time goes by and new episodes become playable. This also gives us the chance to do something really cool, which is to allow fans to write in for competitions, submit comics and contribute in various other ways to something that then becomes part of the actual game. In this way, our fans can leave their permanent mark on the game on a very personal level, and that is something that should excite a lot of people! We feel that this is also very much in spirit with the Sierra On-Line way of connecting with their fans, something they are still fondly remembered for today. With everything we do for this game, we strive for the same level of excellence as those great games we remember from our childhood. If people think we achieved even a bit of that, it makes us all a bunch of very happy game designers! :)
Stay tuned for more...
Petter Holmberg, lead programmer on The Silver Lining
Today, we weleased The Silver Lining - Episode 2: Two Households, picking up the story right where Episode 1 ended... don't worry, no spoilers will be revealed here! Some of you may still want to check it out, but haven't started playing yet. Instead, what I would like to talk about is some of the design decisions we made and how the episodic format allows us to listen to fans and pick up on their ideas to continually improve this game as each episode is released!
Splitting up this game into episodes may seem like the obvious choice now, but it was actually an idea concieved very late in this project. Too late one might think (the entire game was basically playable at this point, from start to finish) but thanks to some clever adjustments to the story, moving the odd puzzle from one scene to another, and fairly simple additions to the game engine, we found a way to make it happen without adding another year of development time to it, something we all knew we didn't want to do. It was time for this game to get completed!
Thankfully, the general structure of the game allowed us to make the transition to an episodic format without reworking much of it, and by thinking of the game in these terms we discovered new cool ways to make use of our scenes, improving the overall gameplay experience. Because you travel between a number of islands in the game, each new episode could expand on the game world by allowing full access to one island after another. Only minor changes to the plot and puzzles were needed to achieve this. Sure, we should definitely have thought about this much earlier in the development process, but we were lucky to find that it worked. It's never too late too make a design change as long as it makes sense!
The episodic also allowed us to start releasing this game earlier. Instead of focusing on completing the entire game, it has given us smaller and more mangeable goals. But we still knew that we would need a "head start" by having Episode 2 close enough to complete that we knew we could finish it in 2-3 months once Episode 1 was released, and later episodes already in the pipeline for timely releases as well. But, as previously mentioned, the entire game was basically playable at the time we decided to go episodic, so we were confident that it was doable. Some of the major technical and artistical challenges that still lay ahead could be solved one by one, each in time for their use in an episode, and thinking of them in that way made them seem a lot less intimidating.
The episodic format has also given us a great opportunity to listen to complaints and suggestions by both critics and fans, picking up ideas to improve the game that come from outside the design team and our own testers. We paid close attention to what people had to say about Episode 1 and made sure to incorporate improvements in some of the most important areas based on their comments.
One of the major gripes people had with Episode 1 was that it was short and featured too few puzzles. Admittedly, we knew that this would be an issue, but we decided to let it be and release it this way anyway. The main purpose of the episode is to give an introduction to the story and characters, and to introduce players to the gameplay mechanics. But yes, it is brief, and much of it is just non-interactive cutscenes. We didn't worry too much about this flaw, as we knew what was coming in the later episodes. But maybe we underestimated its importance a bit. It means we didn't get to prove our ability to make fun and challenging puzzles in this episode, a key component in any good adventure game. That makes it a big relief to have Episode 2 out there now, as it is has plenty of that which people were missing from Episode 1! There are many closed doors in Episode 1, few people to interact with... This is all deliberate. It sets the mood for the story at that point. But it also disappointed a lot of people that they couldn't DO much in all those locations they had waited so long to visit! Fortunately, you can now go back to these same locations in Episode 2, and now they are populated with many people to talk to and lots of stuff to do! We hope that the majority of players will be very happy with the balance of gameplay in Episode 2, but the final verdict is still out on that...
The Silver Lining has a lot of very long narrations and plenty of dialogue, much of it not essential to the gameplay but intended to deepen the athmosphere, provide fans of the King's Quest series with entertaining references or simply adding comic relief. Some players, however, felt that at times it could get a little tiresome to listen to all of these long lines, not knowing what would be important and what wouldn't. To reduce their frustration, we decided to implement a "short narrations" option and even the option to cut out the narrator's voice, only showing the text. But we decided to do it in such a way that we didn't have to rewrite or re-record any lines. We simply cut out those that we feel aren't necessary if you activate the short narrations option. This way, everyone can play the game with narrations the way they want, and we didn't actually have to do much to achieve it.
Another thing that we realized we have to improve on based on criticism for Episode 1 was the player walking implementation. We had automatic pathfinding already, but not in all scenes because of the limitations of the system we'd implemented, and we did not have the option to toggle between a walk and a run mode, which many people felt was something we should have. We wanted to as well, but we had too many other things to worry about for Episode 1. During the last two months we have brought in a new programmer to rework the pathfinding system, implemented the running mode, and brought in fresh walking and running animations based on motion capture that look much better than the old ones we had! Just one example of things you can improve on as you go along with a game like this, and the episodes are not separately installed so these general improvements will apply to earlier episodes as well. With each new episode we are releasing a full installer containing all episodes so far for people who haven't played any of them yet, but we'll also provide an installer only containing the latest episode and changes to previous ones, so you can download this smaller version and install it on top of your already downloaded episodes.
We also keep looking for community-driven add-ons and improvements to TGE that can help us improve the game (if you have ideas, don't be afraid to contact us!) and for this episode we decided to integrate the Flash GUI Component, because we needed some animated gui elements for this episode and they needed to look really good, which this resource allows for in an easy way. Yes, it has its bugs and limitations, but it's not like we needed advanced Flash capabilities either, just basic animation... And for this it works just great! The results of this can be seen already in the introduction to Episode 2, so go check it out! :)
Leading up to the release of every episode, we also publish articles on our website from the fictional publication The Four Winds, which exists inside the game's own universe. This provides some extra backstory leading up to each episode and is also a way to entertain fans between releases. Previous issues can not only be browsed on our website, but also from inside the game itself, as they are continually posted on a bulletin board in front of the Four Winds headquarters on the Isle of the Crown as time goes by and new episodes become playable. This also gives us the chance to do something really cool, which is to allow fans to write in for competitions, submit comics and contribute in various other ways to something that then becomes part of the actual game. In this way, our fans can leave their permanent mark on the game on a very personal level, and that is something that should excite a lot of people! We feel that this is also very much in spirit with the Sierra On-Line way of connecting with their fans, something they are still fondly remembered for today. With everything we do for this game, we strive for the same level of excellence as those great games we remember from our childhood. If people think we achieved even a bit of that, it makes us all a bunch of very happy game designers! :)
Stay tuned for more...
Petter Holmberg, lead programmer on The Silver Lining
#3
Want to ask you some q's if possible ...
09/21/2010 (4:14 pm)
@Phoenix Online Studios - Whats your contact info?Want to ask you some q's if possible ...
#4
Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time... a long time.
Good memories, especially since absence makes the heart go yonder.
Nice work. :)
- Colin
10/04/2010 (2:03 am)
King Graham... Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time... a long time.
Good memories, especially since absence makes the heart go yonder.
Nice work. :)
- Colin
#5
You guys overcome huge challenges to release this work. That is a testament to your immense determination and hard work!
I suggest putting a link to your site in the first paragraph so people can easily download it to give it a try.
10/04/2010 (2:56 pm)
Really awesome work Petter by you and your team. Haven't checked out the game yet but the quality from the video looks fantastic. Been following this on and off for years now.You guys overcome huge challenges to release this work. That is a testament to your immense determination and hard work!
I suggest putting a link to your site in the first paragraph so people can easily download it to give it a try.
Torque Owner D Fasel
Game 3D