Arcen Games
General Category => AI War II => Topic started by: iob on October 20, 2016, 05:17:05 am
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Hi,
I just want to add two questions before I ask more friends to back.
First: Will the game ge an official german translation (I would also recomend spanish, french etc)?
Second: Will the campaign length be lower (e.g. 3-5 hours instead of 8-12).
If both questions are answered with yes, I see a LOT of potential for our lan-parties. If not, the interest will be zero.
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AFAIK from another thread were this was discussed... to both question "it could be done via modding, but will probably not be in the base game".
German translation will be possible via modding. I know not of official translations.
Campaign length is not currently planned to be lower than in AI war I, but there are possibilities of scenarios via modding, which could / could not be shorter and tailored to smaller sessions. So there are possibilities there. I personally plan, if the KS is successful, to work on a overhaul mod that aims to reduce the game time to single sessions.
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I thought the campaign length was meant to be shorter?
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I thought the campaign length was meant to be shorter?
Aye, I could have sworn Chris mentioned this somewhere. Possibly in the document. I mean, it's a known issue that campaigns with the base galaxy size are a bit too long in the first game.
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::)
Shorter, yes, I think I saw that too. But shorter is what, 12 hours ? 16 ? The OP asked for "Shorter enough to be in the 3-5 hours range", and I haven't seen that. I stand corrected if I missed a post stated the opposite though. :D I kind of wish for a 4 hour AI War too, but I understand if / that a lot of people would like to keep the pace of the first game, so more in 10-30 hours long range.
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Campaign length: overall I'm hoping that campaigns will be about 30% shorter than what they were before, just because of cutting out some of the "netflix time" things from the first game. Making it quicker to actually get to the strategic and tactical parts, and not waiting around on things to build while timers tick down, etc. The actual "meat" wouldn't be cut down any... unless you wanted to, via the extra configurability that is now around.
Doing a smaller map with an extra aggressive AI and with only one AI home command station would potentially get you into that 3-5 hour range, maybe with a few other tweaks. There were already some folks that played the original in 4-6 hour campaigns, but they tended to both be more experienced and playing on very specific settings. That didn't stop other people from having 50+ hour campaigns, with different settings. The goal is to still have a huge spread like that for the sequel.
Official translations: those are unfortunately expensive to initially create, and then to maintain (and quickly become outdated), so I doubt we will have those. It's certainly a possibility that we'll have something fan-created, or even that eventually we do have something official, but I would count the likelihood as very, very low. We've not had good experiences with this in the past.
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Official translations: those are unfortunately expensive to initially create, and then to maintain (and quickly become outdated), so I doubt we will have those. It's certainly a possibility that we'll have something fan-created, or even that eventually we do have something official, but I would count the likelihood as very, very low. We've not had good experiences with this in the past.
If you want to stay small and niche, then do that. The German market is probably one of the biggest for strategy games. Tons of lan-parties are held here monthly and the games you can play with lan support are old and dwinling. I am talking about classic cs, starcraft, quake 3, company of heroesw and unreal tournament here.
There is a potential to be tapped.
If the translation stay "outdated" you are doing it wrong. I mean a lot of other small indie devs can do it. You just have to send your text to some fans or a translator. If it's wrong, someone will correct it.
It's a no brainer compared to the sales you can get imho, especially if you are lacking interest in the game now already. I can tell you that I have tons of friends who I regularly play strategy on lan, but noone would touch AI: War because they can't understand it. And I really tried because I wanted to beat it in lan.
I can't say much about the italian, spanish or french market, but I can tell you one thing: Most people there don't bother if it's not in their native tongue. Would you buy a game thats only in german? See.
I would also advise you to take a different route, much less units, much less options, more focus on gameplay. I mean you had like 10.000 armor and damage types in the last game. Seriously? :).
Don't be surprised if noone wants this crap anymore in 2016. Look at how succesful games like stellaris or cities: Skylines were. Less is more. Maybe play some rounds of hearthstone. Yes, it's far fetched, but more often than not, I wonder why turrets like sniper turret were even in AI:War as they do almost nothing. You chould just remove them if they are so powerless.
Yeah, if your aim is to create a game for the 100 hardcore ai1 vets, stay as you are. If you want to get big, make it fun for more people. And I tell you, the market is RIPE for a challenging multiplayer coop title that get's it right. My friend and I just dumped 100 bucks each for the gears of war 4 campaign and thats only 8 hours! :)
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I wonder why turrets like sniper turret were even in AI:War as they do almost nothing. You chould just remove them if they are so powerless.
you underestimate the power of logistics. One use case: the sniper turrets allow to skip the long process of visiting each guard post when capturing another minor planet (place several of them arnound entry wormhole, plus a few defences, and you can be busy elsewhere, these puppies will slowly clear the planet). Snipers were a part of my strategy, they save a lot of time on moving things around.
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Quote from: x4000 on Yesterday at 01:01:48 PM
Official translations: those are unfortunately expensive to initially create, and then to maintain (and quickly become outdated), so I doubt we will have those. It's certainly a possibility that we'll have something fan-created, or even that eventually we do have something official, but I would count the likelihood as very, very low. We've not had good experiences with this in the past.
If you want to stay small and niche, then do that. The German market is probably one of the biggest for strategy games. Tons of lan-parties are held here monthly and the games you can play with lan support are old and dwinling. I am talking about classic cs, starcraft, quake 3, company of heroesw and unreal tournament here.
There is a potential to be tapped.
If the translation stay "outdated" you are doing it wrong. I mean a lot of other small indie devs can do it. You just have to send your text to some fans or a translator. If it's wrong, someone will correct it.
It's a no brainer compared to the sales you can get imho, especially if you are lacking interest in the game now already. I can tell you that I have tons of friends who I regularly play strategy on lan, but noone would touch AI: War because they can't understand it. And I really tried because I wanted to beat it in lan.
I can't say much about the italian, spanish or french market, but I can tell you one thing: Most people there don't bother if it's not in their native tongue. Would you buy a game thats only in german? See.
I would also advise you to take a different route, much less units, much less options, more focus on gameplay. I mean you had like 10.000 armor and damage types in the last game. Seriously? .
Don't be surprised if noone wants this crap anymore in 2016. Look at how succesful games like stellaris or cities: Skylines were. Less is more. Maybe play some rounds of hearthstone. Yes, it's far fetched, but more often than not, I wonder why turrets like sniper turret were even in AI:War as they do almost nothing. You chould just remove them if they are so powerless.
Yeah, if your aim is to create a game for the 100 hardcore ai1 vets, stay as you are. If you want to get big, make it fun for more people. And I tell you, the market is RIPE for a challenging multiplayer coop title that get's it right. My friend and I just dumped 100 bucks each for the gears of war 4 campaign and thats only 8 hours!
You asked a question, he answered it, that response seems a little excessive. Also to my knowledge they are trying to reduce the number of units by allowing the player to upgrade them to suit their playstyle, and are trying to improve gameplay, for example by removing "netflix time", but a lot less options just seems like it would make the game more shallow. Also a lot of that stuff you said would fit better in the gameplay ideas or multiplayer & variants sections of the forums and what makes you think he is lacking interest in the game?
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In general, yes, we're going for fewer units, etc.
As to the whole translations issue and things getting out of date:
1. I'm sorry that offends you, and that's not meant to be an insult or anything.
2. Huge numbers of indie games can afford a translation to a lot of languages since they have a few thousand words in them at most. The original AI War, circa 3.0, had about 35 thousand words. The German and Russian translators were kind of agog at it, and the publishers we were working with in those markets were really going "oh no," sort of thing.
3. For some of the companies that are larger and working with Paradox or similar, I believe they have in-house translators, so it's no biggie. If a unit is added or repurposed, or a tutorial needs tuning, or whatever else, then just call up Jan and get him to make the adjustments for German, and then someone else for Russian, Italian, Spanish, and maybe that's it. For us the quotes we have had from translation companies (and we literally have been approached by multiple dozen over the years) have been astronomical. Worst part is, the last translation of AI War was so bad that our German fans actually had to work together and fix it; this was not a company we hired, but rather the one hired by the German publisher we were working with for local game stores.
4. I know that the German market is huge, and a huge number of our players are from Germany actually. We always go out of our way to make our games translate-able, in that we have everything pulled out into separate xml files and so forth so that translations can be done with ease. But actually having someone who is sufficiently bilingual and sufficiently versed in the game, and available on an ongoing basis, is hard. The localization services really stink. And while I do have a number of German friends (I was last over in your country in 2014 and can't wait to be back; it's my favorite place to visit), they are not exactly strategy gamers or translators, and it does make a difference.
Anyway, the point is that it's complex, it's overwhelmed us in the past, we've tried it before and it has failed to lead to anything substantially useful, and I wish that wasn't the case. We may be able to overcome that in the future, but pointing to an indie with a game with 2k of unchanging text and comparing it to an ever-evolving game with tens of thousands of words of text is very much apples and oranges.
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...our German fans actually had to work together and fix it...
Subcontracting translators is generally a bad idea - from the other side, one'd almost always end up with phrases out of context, which is impossible to translate correctly, let alone with decent quality.
I'd reiterate here that you could open up discussion in the KS updates/main page about the possibility of community translations, and be frank about the challenge (since lots of people don't appreciate how difficult translation is). This will help you gauge whether a localised v1.0 version would be possible, and whether it's worthwhile canvassing for a volunteer team during alpha. I say team here because it'll help to compensate for mistakes of individual unskilled volunteers - like how Duolingo works.
Would you buy a game thats only in german? See.
If there's a strat/RPG/adventure game you'd recommend, do mention it - I'd like something to help me solidify German.
As a side note, there was an age in the past where there were sets of decent Japanese PC games that could easily have attained cult following abroad like their consoles analogues. The trouble was how Unicode wasn't, well, universal code, so that you had to have a Japanese Win95/98 to not see gibberish... ...so a lot of Nipponophiles probably ended up opting for consoles instead to save themselves the trouble.
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If there's a strat/RPG/adventure game you'd recommend, do mention it - I'd like something to help me solidify German.
I would recommend Drakensang http://store.steampowered.com/app/12640/
and Legends of Eisenwald http://www.pcgamer.com/legends-of-eisenwald-review/
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Actually, if there are any games that are only in German that you think would help me learn German, I'd be all over that. If it requires advanced German I'm out (I'm not remotely up to that yet), but I've been wanting to learn more and more.
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I wanted to point out what is needed as a multiplayer game for the usual,lan,party i know.
I am nit sure how much lan play ai classic even got. From some major bugs i stumbled across, not so much i guess. I would say less than 1% gameplay.
For solo,play, a long campaign, civ atyle, ia very good thoguh. Also i dont care if its tranöated in a single player game.
But for lan play in germany with new players, it doesnt work.
I am also not offended in any way. I just think that its a no brainer to make a pc game with challenging coop for strategy fans.
Maybe the coop market is smaller than i thought but then even sc2 implemented a shitty coop and tons of friends play tower defense maps...
If thentarget isnt an international game or the guys who like,coop tower def its fine.
I would target those 2 though ;)
If you want to learn german, probably the old lucasarts adventures are great. At least thats how i learned english.
Mckraken, maniac mansion, monkey island...
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Besides, why.does ai war classic even have so much text?
There was no story. Did it have 35k units with 100 words decription each? As I said the problem is seen here. If you have so much text in a game without a story something is wrong.
Maybe compress unitbdescription?
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Besides, why.does ai war classic even have so much text?
There was no story. Did it have 35k units with 100 words decription each? As I said the problem is seen here. If you have so much text in a game without a story something is wrong.
Maybe compress unitbdescription?
You'd be surprised.
Each unit (over 120) had short descriptions, plus there's all the story-log files (for the various "campaigns") all of the AI taunts, UI elements, etc. etc. etc.
It adds up fast.
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Faster than I'd expect, it sounds like. 35k in 3.0? ???
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He has a point there.
The game could be design to convey a large part of its information with a lot less text, and would probably be clearer as a result.
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He has a point there.
The game could be design to convey a large part of its information with a lot less text, and would probably be clearer as a result.
It's been a long stated goal to reduce the clutter and increase the clarity. Even the sample tooltips shown (they are on the KS page) are a lot leaner than the tips form Classic.
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It's been a long stated goal to reduce the clutter and increase the clarity. Even the sample tooltips shown (they are on the KS page) are a lot leaner than the tips form Classic.
Hum... yes.... but... Are you really speaking about the point I was trying to make ? Are we seeing the same tooltips ? My point is that it's all text ! I agree that the proposed presentation is leaner than the old one, but it's completely irrelevant to the point I'm trying to make. For example, the heavy beam cannon that's proeminently shown on the KS page. There's is not even a single icon on it, except if you want to call the explanation mark an icon. And, a lot of the reduced clutter amounts to the new "objects" having less properties than the old one. Not UI changes.
A large amount of text could be cut from this window:
=> health, attack, range, reload, power, build time, ship cap, engine health => All should be icons, with advanced longer description in a pop-up when howering. And, by the way, an hover-up description of each stat is kind of mandatory if you want the UI to be labelled as good.
=> title: "player" mention should be replaced by an icon representing the player.
=> The icon that represents the unit should be in this window. Also, the title of the pop-up should picture the unit icon.
=> requires supply: an icon for this should be enough. Also, I'd propose to use an icon to represent supply when present on a planet / on the main galaxy map.
=> Click to expand: a single "+" icon on a corner is enough to convey the same idea.
=> Description should be shorter there, 10 words at most. If a unit can't be explained in 10 words, then the user can click on the + icon referenced above, which will display advanced (longer) description.
Applying similar ideas to the whole game would increase clarity and reduce text amount by a lot. On a side note, even if you don't remove the text part, icons should be added. Removing text / adding more icons will increase accessibility by foreign readers.
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A large amount of text could be cut from this window:
=> health, attack, range, reload, power, build time, ship cap, engine health => All should be icons, with advanced longer description in a pop-up when howering. And, by the way, an hover-up description of each stat is kind of mandatory if you want the UI to be labelled as good.
=> title: "player" mention should be replaced by an icon representing the player.
=> The icon that represents the unit should be in this window. Also, the title of the pop-up should picture the unit icon.
=> requires supply: an icon for this should be enough. Also, I'd propose to use an icon to represent supply when present on a planet / on the main galaxy map.
=> Click to expand: a single "+" icon on a corner is enough to convey the same idea.
All of those changes combined would result in eliminating fewer words than the tooltip explaining what a Design Backup Server does.
The real bulk of the text is in those descriptions. There's no way to come up with an icon that explains that stuff, because it requires an actual explanation. You either shorten those up enough that people have to go looking externally to find out, or you simplify the concepts and chop stuff so you need fewer words.
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The real bulk of the text is in those descriptions. (and the rest)
Oh, I completely agree with that part. Cutting down on the large amount of descriptions to make them shorter, leaner and more comprehensive is good, but if you need to go to an external site, it's pointless. What I'm thinking here is that some of the concepts that require experimentation and / or walls of text to understand need to go away. Another thing, the current game currently HAS those pages of stuff explaining everything and I think a lot of people agree that an external source's needed to understand the game. So, even without taking into consideration my post, failing for failing, I'd rather run on the "more international" route.
But, I've not been stressing this part in my post because it's already the direction that Chris is going to in the design doc. At least that's how I understand it.
PS: and if you actually want to see how to explain advanced concepts with icons, a lot of the board games produced recently only have text in the rulebook (basically, a wiki in video game term), and are completely icon-based otherwise. Most manage to keep icons at a minimum. I'm actually surprised at how much non-written communication manages to pass complex messages, and create / enable complex game mechanics anyway. That said, I disgress.
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it's completely irrelevant to the point I'm trying to make
We are talking about the amount of text in the game (translation purposes).
advanced longer description in a pop-up when howering
Even if you replace every stat with an icon and have a hover pop up for it, you don't reduce the amount of text.
If you have advanced tool tips, you don't reduce the amount of text.
By the way, replacing everything with icons means memorizing what all those icons are in addition to the stats behind them. It also adds a ton of work because iconography isn't easy.
a lot of the board games produced recently only have text in the rulebook (basically, a wiki in video game term), and are completely icon-based otherwise.
if you need to go to an external site, it's pointless
Going to be nit-picky here, but having to go to the rule book to figure out what an icon does is just like hitting up an external site to figure something out.
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The real bulk of the text is in those descriptions. (and the rest)
Oh, I completely agree with that part. Cutting down on the large amount of descriptions to make them shorter, leaner and more comprehensive is good, but if you need to go to an external site, it's pointless. What I'm thinking here is that some of the concepts that require experimentation and / or walls of text to understand need to go away. Another thing, the current game currently HAS those pages of stuff explaining everything and I think a lot of people agree that an external source's needed to understand the game. So, even without taking into consideration my post, failing for failing, I'd rather run on the "more international" route.
*nod*
I don't think replacing "Health" with a heart icon or some such is a bad idea, either. Some of the concepts used are standard in so many games that there's simple icons that everyone is going to recognize immediately. It would tighten up the space used and make things easier to read, even if it doesn't save a ton of words.
But, I've not been stressing this part in my post because it's already the direction that Chris is going to in the design doc. At least that's how I understand it.
I believe so as well.
PS: and if you actually want to see how to explain advanced concepts with icons, a lot of the board games produced recently only have text in the rulebook (basically, a wiki in video game term), and are completely icon-based otherwise. Most manage to keep icons at a minimum. I'm actually surprised at how much non-written communication manages to pass complex messages, and create / enable complex game mechanics anyway. That said, I disgress.
Magic: The Gathering and other card games do that as well. The reason is that space is at a premium on the cards themselves, and the rulebook can explain those things. It doesn't save a ton of words either, it just moves them to a place that's easier to print and reference.
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Also going to point out that AIWC has a lot of stuff that's only documented in the wiki or patch notes; you'd have to translate those too.
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Replacing Text with icons isn't realy the problem. Ai War doesnt really have *that much* Text imho that is relevenat that needs to be tranlated.
Lets say each unit has a speed - thats one word to translate, even if every unit has a different speed. All the really relevant text might be special units that behave totally different - but if thats the case, you should translate it once and thats that - if you don't alter the mechanic of that unit drasticlly.
I just booted up the game, and I can see 58 tips of the day. Thats probably 2000 words just there.
Not sure how much they change, but yeah.
I jhust checked costs, 35k words cost like 2000 to 4000 bucks. Thats like 1 months of work? Yeah, sure, you will have to develop with this in mind and probably have to differentiate in text that changes and text that stays the same.
But... the developer already stated that it's too much hassle and he'd rather not be able to sell this game in france, germany, italy and so on.... You don't really have to be perfect with each translation, like blizzard has had bugs in alsmost every german patch when they changed stuff :).
And if they can't do it...
I think i once downloaded a fan translate for AI war but it was either not working or the text wasn't fitting the textboxses anymore. Might have to try again.
Btw, you don't have to translate a wiki - let the fans make their own if they need one. Patch notes, yeah, you will have to do that. I am just saying that the cost / reward for this game - if dont right - is a no brainer. Lets say you add 1% costs per language support - but you open up 20-40% more potential buyers.
And if this game somehow is "untranslateable" then probably something went very very wrong, as other strategy games are translatable. I think even the stellaris game got translated and for sure that one has more text than ai war.
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And I just want to point out that I backed AI War 2 and I personally don't care if it gets translated or a good lan support.
But I find it highly a pity that I can't play 1 it with friends on lan because they can't understand it and because it wasn't made with lan parties in mind, where you play a game 3 hours TOPS and then have to take a break.
Well let's see, maybe the AI War 2 will be a game for TD fans after all ;).
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I just checked costs, 35k words cost like 2000 to 4000 bucks. Thats like 1 months of work? Yeah, sure, you will have to develop with this in mind and probably have to differentiate in text that changes and text that stays the same.
But... the developer already stated that it's too much hassle and he'd rather not be able to sell this game in france, germany, italy and so on....
Two questions:
-Where's the monthly maintenance cost in that estimate?
-Why is it only for one language? (French, judging by the cost.)
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-Where's the monthly maintenance cost in that estimate?
I am not in the game business. But if you don't change your units dramatically, there won't be any "monthly maintenance costs" for a translation. You also dont need monthly maintenance costs for english descriptions?
-Why is it only for one language? (French, judging by the cost.)
Because it's an example? I don't know the sales of ai war at the countries - chris just said that germany was the largest market besides the english countries if I understood right? I would *guess* that german, french and spanish are worhtwhile. Maybe even polish and russian. But i just don't know.
You also have to factor in 2 things here. First: If someone in poland buys the english version and has 3 non english friends who would love to play this with him, they won't buy if it's NOT in polish. So it's hard to guess how hard missing language support really blocks sales.
Second, how often does the description even alter? If you alter your units on a monthly basis, of course it's very hard to do this externally. The overhead is just insane.
THat being said, i played salt and sanctuary yesterday and the translation really is horrible :). They probably used google translate.
I also booted up ai war classic again. That game did not age well i have to say. But we all know that :).
Its become as super hardcore game for hardcore gamers where you need 20 hours to grasp the basics with all expansions.
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The monthly maintenance cost comes from the need to have a translator available 24/7 if we want to release patches in all languages at the same time. If we stagger them, then it isn't such a big deal, but then our German customers are pissed off because they're getting the short end of the stick.
While you're right in that most text doesn't change, there is a substantial amount of text that does end up changing. What happens when we add a new unit? When we change the function of an existing unit?
The most cost effective solution that I have come across is crowdsourced translation. Problem is, that's expensive as hell and I can't find any open source packages that do that. Maybe Weblate, Pootle, or Zanata do it, but for the most part they just let the community translate the games, which is nice, don't get me wrong. But that requires enough people to constantly keep the translation up to date and make sure someone isn't purposely screwing it up.
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While you're right in that most text doesn't change, there is a substantial amount of text that does end up changing. What happens when we add a new unit? When we change the function of an existing unit?
I am not sure what kind of quality you want to achieve with your translation. But if the developer gets a good firm that does translations, you send in the english description and get back the one in your target language some hours / days later.
Yeah, it will delay the new expansion / unit / Patch for a few days, but this it then how it is.
Also, translating patch notes, this is hillarious. A patch note usually is very very small. this won't cost more than a few bucks per patch notes. NOTHING compared to actually creating the patch in the first place :).
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While you're right in that most text doesn't change, there is a substantial amount of text that does end up changing. What happens when we add a new unit? When we change the function of an existing unit?
I am not sure what kind of quality you want to achieve with your translation. But if the developer gets a good firm that does translations, you send in the english description and get back the one in your target language some hours / days later.
Yeah, it will delay the new expansion / unit / Patch for a few days, but this it then how it is.
Also, translating patch notes, this is hillarious. A patch note usually is very very small. this won't cost more than a few bucks per patch notes. NOTHING compared to actually creating the patch in the first place :).
The patch notes for AI War 6-current are 71,000 words. That's going to cost a whole lot, unless you don't bother translating the patch notes and just stick to what's in game. Which is likely what would happen.
This conversation should really come down to if the cost of translating AI War 2 is going to be made up in extra sales, which isn't something most of us have any data to answer.
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The patch notes for AI War 6-current are 71,000 words. That's going to cost a whole lot, unless you don't bother translating the patch notes and just stick to what's in game. Which is likely what would happen.
Yea, the game has been out for how long? 2009? thats 7 years. Let's say the translation costs 7000 bucks for 71000 words. Thats 83 bucks per month. If you at least some copies per month extra because of this language, it seems worth it.
I am not sure how pricey Ai war classic was. Let's say arcen gets 50% of the price. lets say it was 20 bucks. So they have to seel arround 10 more each month.
Ai war sold how many units? 300.000? Lets say it coudl havfe been 50.000 more with a translation. That means 100.000 more bucks cashflow incoming, minuts 7000 bucks for the patch notes and 3500 bucks for the general game.
As I said, a no brainer.
But, as stated it won't happen anyway with ai war 2 :).
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You are very adamant that we should translate the game, I'll give you that.
Let's say that AIWC did sell 300K units at $10 profit going to Arcen (Not real numbers, but the actual numbers are really convoluted and painful to interpret). How do we know that it will sell 50k more units? What if three quarters of the German speaking fans also happen to know enough English to play and buy the game anyway? The biggest problem with "What if" statements is anyone can make them. What if Skynet comes into existence and outlaws video games? Then we make no money, so we shouldn't make games. What if we stumble across a wild unicorn in the woods? Then we're rich and famous and can make all the games we want.
Now, if we do sell 50k more units by translating the game, then yes, it would be a good business idea. But here's something that you think would be great for business: we reached over 10 million people with our Headtalker campaign. We got 0 sales from that (As of the last time I checked). What makes translation different than that?
I'm not trying to come off as a jerk, and I'm sorry if I do, but I'm trying to look at this from a very negative perspective because if I prep for the worst, then everything else is a good outcome. If you can convince me that translating the game would guarantee sales somehow, I'd be fully in your corner and I'd fight for it with you. But right now, I see a lot of potential problems.
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The patch notes for AI War 6-current are 71,000 words. That's going to cost a whole lot, unless you don't bother translating the patch notes and just stick to what's in game. Which is likely what would happen.
Yea, the game has been out for how long? 2009? thats 7 years. Let's say the translation costs 7000 bucks for 71000 words. Thats 83 bucks per month. If you at least some copies per month extra because of this language, it seems worth it.
That's 6-8. Not 1-6. I didn't count them all. So, roughly speaking, triple it. Now do that for every language supported. If you add four languages, the real number is $84,000 just for the patch notes. If we take your 3500 number for the game itself (which I don't buy for a second given all the changes over the years), that's another 14000. So we're pushing $100,000.
I am not sure how pricey Ai war classic was. Let's say arcen gets 50% of the price. lets say it was 20 bucks. So they have to seel arround 10 more each month.
It was 20 at launch. Far less during sales and bundles (and is currently $1). Steam/GOG/etc take their cut. And that's assuming people are paying the US price, which isn't true in other regions. That's even true in North America, where it's 17% less for Canadians (like me) and almost half in Mexico. So, a Spanish version selling in Mexico earns half per unit what an English version selling in the US does, due to currency exchange and local pricing. The normal price in Russia is $3.50 USD vs $10 in the US. You need to sell three copies there to get the same revenue as one copy in the US, so that translation has to sell well to be worth doing.
Ai war sold how many units? 300.000? Lets say it coudl havfe been 50.000 more with a translation. That means 100.000 more bucks cashflow incoming, minuts 7000 bucks for the patch notes and 3500 bucks for the general game.
As I said, a no brainer.
Except that none of those numbers have any basis in fact.
If it's going to happen, it should be done on a proper business case, not back of the napkin assumptions. It would also require them to change their development process, mostly to not change text so often (since doing so costs money every time it happens).
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Now, if we do sell 50k more units by translating the game, then yes, it would be a good business idea. But here's something that you think would be great for business: we reached over 10 million people with our Headtalker campaign. We got 0 sales from that (As of the last time I checked).
Last I checked, the Headtalker campaign hadn't finished yet. It can't have generated any sales since it hasn't done anything.
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Last I checked, the Headtalker campaign hadn't finished yet. It can't have generated any sales since it hasn't done anything.
I quickly checked and they actually made a second, smaller headtalker campaign (25 people goal) which was completed. That 10 millions reach is pretty crazy for just 28 people. o_O
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Now, if we do sell 50k more units by translating the game, then yes, it would be a good business idea. But here's something that you think would be great for business: we reached over 10 million people with our Headtalker campaign. We got 0 sales from that (As of the last time I checked).
Last I checked, the Headtalker campaign hadn't finished yet. It can't have generated any sales since it hasn't done anything.
The primary Headtalker campaign hasn't finished, but the secondary one we made with the intent of getting massive reach finished and we got nada.
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Last I checked, the Headtalker campaign hadn't finished yet. It can't have generated any sales since it hasn't done anything.
I quickly checked and they actually made a second, smaller headtalker campaign (25 people goal) which was completed. That 10 millions reach is pretty crazy for just 28 people. o_O
Ah. That 10 million reach for 28 people is also BS. Those are going to be bot accounts that exist to rack up followers and then sell the reach, except most of the "reach" is other bots. Twitter in particular is full of bots.
Take a look at some of those 28 accounts. They also supported things like "Get paid to post!", "Become an influencer in the Headtalker Market!", and my personal favorite "Obama has weakened the gates of hell".
In terms of raw numbers, it's impressive. If you're into social media, you recognize those accounts for what they are. They're low quality reach, as it's not like me talking to my friends. It's a bot that follows zillions of people in the hope a percentage follow back, then spam paid content until they lose value. The facebook equivalent is accounts that send out things like fake Costco cash card contest offers to get lots of followers. They're not well targeted in any particular way, either.
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Oh, don't get me wrong, we knew it wasn't going to be high quality reach. We were hoping to have maybe a .01% conversion rate (Really just any conversions, even one would have been nice).
But it serves a good purpose in this argument. There is clearly a large group of people that should, _in theory_ contribute even a very tiny amount but don't. There is the same problem with translations. Yes, there are millions of Russian gamers. And in theory 10k of those millions would like AI War. But that doesn't mean we'd get 10k sales. We might get 5k sales. We might get 20k. We have no way of knowing, and it is a huge upfront cost.
So, to summarize, if anyone can give me the name of a good translation firm that produces HIGH QUALITY translations, I'll take a peek at them. I can promise that much. I can't promise anything more than that.
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It's kind of not much of a debate. If next to no one does it, it's because it's not profitable.
Basically, the market for english speaking people in the world is around what, 1.5 billion people ? For Germany, the number of people that don't speak english, and are physically capable of buying the game is what, 25% of the population ? So 20 million ? (yeah, 3 year-old will not buy video games ad mostly don't speak english, and I know for a fact than more than half of the German population speaks enough English, and some of the people that don't speak foreign languages ain't really the most open-minded people out-there... I'd assume a significant part of them don't want alien stuff).
We're therefore speaking of an increase in potential customers in the 1.6%. Ok... let's be crazy and assume 2 percent. Let's go even more crazy and assume that a game would make 10 dollars per sale after taxes, sales, whatever, and sells 100 000 units (both are VERY high numbers as far as indy video games are concerned) over its complete life-span, with 1 expansion. That makes it 20 000 dollars "gained", and a 2 year shelf life. I'm roughly basing numbers on TLF, by the way.
Now, prices.
- base translation would be in the 5000 dollar range. To be redone for each major update. I'm taking into account some overhead costs like proof-reading and the like.
- each minor update would require proof-reading - let's assume 200 dollars each.
- I'd assume that everythin ain't perfect and that some typo-related bug reports happen, roughly once month. That's again around 200 dollars per month (dev work + translator).
Taking into some averages, I'd suppose 20 minor updates during the life-time of both the base game and the expansion. That means, 10000 for "base translations", 2 times 4000 for the minor updates, 2 * 12 * 200 for typos, which amounts to 22800 dollars.
That's a net loss. That's what would have costed, more or less, TLF, which, as far as game goes, is very successful. And, that's not taking into consideration marketing to other countries in other language, the risk associated with translations failing, the fact that games are created with a "culture" background and that it's not because it's succesful in one place that it would appeal to a foreign market.
It's also not taking into consideration that translating for the sake of translation is dumb. If a developper is sane, he'd want the translation not to bring additional sales to pay for the translation only, but to bring additional profit. Otherwise there is little point, because the extra work is just going to make the game more complex to do, increase the budget, and therefore increase the risk and losses if the game fails. At last, please take into consideration that the number's I'm using are based on costs the companies I've been working for during the last ten years as a dev, so... there is potential for improvement, but I don't think I'm far from the mark.
Now, you can tweak numbers as much as you want, but as long as the tranlsation cost isn't more than 30 or 40% of the expected additional sales profit, I personally wouldn't do it.
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Not sure what is the problem with translations (for latin based languages, Asian and Arabic of course would require some programming effort in UI). The fans will do it for free with minimal help/guidance from the game authors (if the game is really good).
It is like organizing beta-testers. You split text into pieces and ask for volontiers to translate the pieces.
When fully translated, ask again for volontiers to review the translation.
If you want to verify translation, google translate it back to English.
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Not sure what is the problem with translations (for latin based languages, Asian and Arabic of course would require some programming effort in UI).
Every language requires checking every UI element, and changes are more frequent than you think. Have some English text? How do you know it'll fit in the allocated space in French, where the text is usually longer?
I write software for internal corporate use, and we localize everything into French. It's not just "slap some text in a file and you're done."
The fans will do it for free with minimal help/guidance from the game authors (if the game is really good).
Far as I'm aware, there are zero up to date fan translations of AI War. Why do you think that would change?
It is like organizing beta-testers. You split text into pieces and ask for volontiers to translate the pieces.
When fully translated, ask again for volontiers to review the translation.
That's requiring a lot of volunteers that may or may not exist, with language skills that you can't know ahead of time. Good translations require a strong understanding of both languages, i's not something just anyone can do. Even professional translators get it wrong at times, when it comes to technical stuff.
If you want to verify translation, google translate it back to English.
... no. Just, no. At work, we are expressly forbidden from using Google Translate because of just how bad the translations are when it comes to language that's in any way even remotely complicated.
I also use Google Translate to talk with some friends from Syria, and you can kinda get the point across, usually. It's not even close to good enough to sell something with it. Relying on it is a great way to insult your customers and get a high refund rate.
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Every language requires checking every UI element
Modern game these days should have auto-resizable text boxes anyway. One of the problems of AI War is that font size is fixed.
Also nowhere I said about putting google translated text directly into the game. It seems that instead of reading the message you have just snapped on the familiar concept (google translate) ignoring the context.
The only usage of google translate that I suggested is an optional verification that the translated piece from a volontier is not a complete garbage. The final review of the translation (when all pieces are complete) should be done again by volontiers (or a professional translator).
It is a recurring pattern on this board. The other day I mentioned Kicktraq in context of the average daily rate required to reach the goal, and people snapped that Kicktraq predictions are worthless (even though I was not writing about Kicktraq predictions at all).
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Modern game these days should have auto-resizable text boxes anyway. One of the problems of AI War is that font size is fixed.
Have you looked at the ship tooltips lately?
There are several stats that are in fixed places horizontally inside a window of fixed width.
Lets say, for argument (as I don't feel like booting the game) that Damage, Attack Range, Reload, and Speed are all on the same line and pretty much juuuust fit with the units with the largest numbers possible in each.
Watch what happens when we translate to German.
Damage xxxxx Attack Range xxxxx Reload xxx Speed xxxx
Schaden xxxxx Angriffsbereich xxxxx Reload xxx Geschwindigkeit xxxx
It's longer! It no longer fits in our text box.
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Also nowhere I said about putting google translated text directly into the game. It seems that instead of reading the message you have just snapped on the familiar concept (google translate) ignoring the context.
The only usage of google translate that I suggested is an optional verification that the translated piece from a volontier is not a complete garbage. The final review of the translation (when all pieces are complete) should be done again by volontiers (or a professional translator).
It is a recurring pattern on this board. The other day I mentioned Kicktraq in context of the average daily rate required to reach the goal, and people snapped that Kicktraq predictions are worthless (even though I was not writing about Kicktraq predictions at all).
How do you use a potentially crap translation to tell if another translation is good or not? Without knowing if the google one is any good, you can't use it as a comparison, and you can't know if it's any good without having someone who knows (aka: a translator).
It's a handy tool during development to put some placeholder text in to see how things look with an early translation during development (and to make sure there's no hardcoded English text), but it's of little to no use when it comes to translation quality.
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Not sure why Google Translate gets such a bad rap. Purely anecdotal, I have google translated your comment to my native language and most of the meaning was preserved.
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Not sure why Google Translate gets such a bad rap. Purely anecdotal, I have google translated your comment to my native language and most of the meaning was preserved.
The meaning alone isn't always sufficient. How was the grammar?
For example... I ran Tridus' post through Translation Party (http://www.translationparty.com). Here's one that came out after a while
You may tell better than crap translation or another. Comparison is a good one knows someone who might, you know, you Google almost that good (which is known: translation) something. (Whether or not to display the translation of the early stages of development to develop a text hard-coded English, now and then, and take into account
And when it finally gave up trying to reach equilibrium
If you can convert shows for spamming or any other. One little known comparison Google knows it (which is known: translation) something. (Account of whether or not to display the translation of the early development of hard to develop text for English encoding.
Then start trying sentences that contain the same word with a different meaning.
"I object to this object." or "When the award was announced for the most rose rose Rose rose to accept it."
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Not sure why Google Translate gets such a bad rap. Purely anecdotal, I have google translated your comment to my native language and most of the meaning was preserved.
Because I've seen people translate memos and records in software with it, and what came out was barely coherent. It's gotten a lot better over the years, but it still regularly produces nonsense. If you're asking for money for the product and claim it's in a given language, people expect it to be done properly in that language.
It's also much, much better at some languages than others.
(Years ago, a friend of mine named their World of Warcraft group by putting "hug Warlocks" into Google Translate, translating it, then translating what came out back to English. They ended up with "Magicians of Kisses". Not exactly a confidence boosting experience.)
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I just tried translating "the old man the boat" (that is a sentence, it means "the elderly crew the craft") into Japanese. It comes out as gibberish, http://goo.gl/3FQXHJ or "old man boat." Because it assumes that man means "guy" or "person" as opposed to "work at, run, or operate."
The "correct" (my best guess) translation should be http://goo.gl/s6zwd9 or "old boat crew" (where "boat" has become a modifier noun).
By the way, what is the correct order that adjectives get applied to a noun?
Edit for goo.gl links as the Japanese characters did not save.
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For example... I ran Tridus' post through Translation Party.
Not that I disagree, but I'm sure if we hire a lot of humans to translate an initial text back and forth (each human pass the result to the next one), the end result also could be unexpected (with right grammar but possibly different meaning altogether).
Just saying that each translation step magnifies the differences.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers
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Random thought: Amazon Mechanical Turk, 5 repetitions, take the most common answer.
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EGT cucumbers, cucumbers I, like a cucumber, are cucumbers, cucumbers are like cucumbers, please take pickling city.
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please take pickling city.
DEAD. :D
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Modern game these days should have auto-resizable text boxes anyway. One of the problems of AI War is that font size is fixed.
Have you looked at the ship tooltips lately?
There are several stats that are in fixed places horizontally inside a window of fixed width.
Lets say, for argument (as I don't feel like booting the game) that Damage, Attack Range, Reload, and Speed are all on the same line and pretty much juuuust fit with the units with the largest numbers possible in each.
Watch what happens when we translate to German.
Damage xxxxx Attack Range xxxxx Reload xxx Speed xxxx
Schaden xxxxx Angriffsbereich xxxxx Reload xxx Geschwindigkeit xxxx
It's longer! It no longer fits in our text box.
THats not really a problem if you do it right, like, first get your translations for those elements and then get your UI done. If you want to target 5 languages, get your translation to those 5, if you know the english one is 5 symbols, the longest one 10, then put in the 10 word thingie.
But as I stated earlier, such problems only come up if you don't start the project with stuff like this in mind.
It's - imho - sad to see that the limited viewangle of the creators will ensure another bad / mediocre arcen game despite the ideas are fantastic are there is a HUGE need for challenging games especially with coop (look at dark souls or gears of war 4).
If only blizzard would make AI war 2... :).
On a sidenote, anyone knows how the solo / multiplayer ratio in ai war classic was? I feel like nobody played it multiplayer because I had a ton of errors in a build where there was 2nd expansion already out and I wondered why nobody else reported this.
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That's a bit harsh there.
If language support is easy, then many games would have it.
Many games do not have it, therefore, to consider it easy, is mistaken.
Strategy games are very hard in this respect, because of the amount of text. Worse yet, it is the continual revising of the text, or replacement of entire ways of saying something.
I'll give you an example from Starward Rogue.
How would you say:
- This attachment provides a 10% increase in the base damage dealt by the player, and is summed additively with other damage increasing effects.
- This attachment provides a 10% increase on the total damage of missile attacks dealt by the player, and is multiplicative with other damage increasing effects.
- This attachment provides a 50% increase in the rate of fire of all weapon systems, which is reduces the reload rate by 50%. It is matched with a damage multiplier that multiplicatively reduces damage by 50% to cause Damage per Second to stay constant. After which, there is an increase of 10% of base damage dealt by the player.
Now fit that into a text box and have it work for 4 different languages. I'll accept google translations and English as one of those translations.
re:multiplayer AI Wars
I believe this works just fine. They are running a discord channel if you'd like to have someone try to get it up and running with you. https://discord.gg/VDvVAUk
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If only blizzard would make AI war 2... :)
Sure, if you want a game that is AI War 2 in title only.
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If only blizzard would make AI war 2... :)
Sure, if you want a game that is AI War 2 in title only.
I wrote an Email to arcen about this. It's about polish.
Take hearthstone for example. I think the team wasn't that big, like 10 or 15 ppl? So basically it's compareable to an indie title. I am just saying that they spent so much time into polish and accesibility.
There are even tons of very very polished indie titles. Arcen isn't one who brings out polished games - thats ok, they give you he "rough cut". But you can't expect to hit a 300k kickstarter with rough games for a very very small market. You will have to go more mass market.
I doubt that it would be a different game. If you tasked Blizzard with reimplementing AI war and give them the task to add most mechanics, it would be a very similar game. But I can tell you, the units descriptions would be alot shorter, the ui would be coherent and there would be a different learning curve. I even bet that there would be tons of less options and units... But in the end, it would be just as hard to beat the ai - but less hard to learn the game.
That's a bit harsh there.
If language support is easy, then many games would have it.
Many games do not have it, therefore, to consider it easy, is mistaken.
Strategy games are very hard in this respect, because of the amount of text. Worse yet, it is the continual revising of the text, or replacement of entire ways of saying something.
Tbh, I don't know of any release on Steam recetly who has no german translation in the top 10. Transport Fever, Battlerite, Master of Orion - they all have it. Sure, if you are a very very small indie dev and are producing a very specialised product, it's not worth it. But if you want to sell more than 1000 copies, better get your game a translation if possible.
I'll give you an example from Starward Rogue.
How would you say:
- This attachment provides a 10% increase in the base damage dealt by the player, and is summed additively with other damage increasing effects.
- This attachment provides a 10% increase on the total damage of missile attacks dealt by the player, and is multiplicative with other damage increasing effects.
- This attachment provides a 50% increase in the rate of fire of all weapon systems, which is reduces the reload rate by 50%. It is matched with a damage multiplier that multiplicatively reduces damage by 50% to cause Damage per Second to stay constant. After which, there is an increase of 10% of base damage dealt by the player.
If you have a mechanics like this, I would delete it and replace it with something that makes sense. Even 90% of the english speakers can't understand this on the first readthrough. This reminds me of the effects on classic dota where nobody but the hardcore experts had a clue how wepons stack.
You could simply replace it with 10% more damage dealt, 10% more missile damage and 50% more damage dealt and 50% reload time reduce.
The way the texts are written is just clunky, overcomplex and irritating.
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If you have a mechanics like this, I would delete it and replace it with something that makes sense. Even 90% of the english speakers can't understand this on the first readthrough. This reminds me of the effects on classic dota where nobody but the hardcore experts had a clue how wepons stack.
That's because the mechanic has been written and rewritten 14 times, both trying to make it make sense, make the description make sense, and to provide consistent benefits.
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If only blizzard would make AI war 2... :)
Sure, if you want a game that is AI War 2 in title only.
I wrote an Email to arcen about this. It's about polish.
Take hearthstone for example. I think the team wasn't that big, like 10 or 15 ppl? So basically it's compareable to an indie title. I am just saying that they spent so much time into polish and accesibility.
There are even tons of very very polished indie titles. Arcen isn't one who brings out polished games - thats ok, they give you he "rough cut". But you can't expect to hit a 300k kickstarter with rough games for a very very small market. You will have to go more mass market.
I doubt that it would be a different game. If you tasked Blizzard with reimplementing AI war and give them the task to add most mechanics, it would be a very similar game. But I can tell you, the units descriptions would be alot shorter, the ui would be coherent and there would be a different learning curve. I even bet that there would be tons of less options and units... But in the end, it would be just as hard to beat the ai - but less hard to learn the game.
That's a bit harsh there.
If language support is easy, then many games would have it.
Many games do not have it, therefore, to consider it easy, is mistaken.
Strategy games are very hard in this respect, because of the amount of text. Worse yet, it is the continual revising of the text, or replacement of entire ways of saying something.
Tbh, I don't know of any release on Steam recetly who has no german translation in the top 10. Transport Fever, Battlerite, Master of Orion - they all have it. Sure, if you are a very very small indie dev and are producing a very specialised product, it's not worth it. But if you want to sell more than 1000 copies, better get your game a translation if possible.
I'll give you an example from Starward Rogue.
How would you say:
- This attachment provides a 10% increase in the base damage dealt by the player, and is summed additively with other damage increasing effects.
- This attachment provides a 10% increase on the total damage of missile attacks dealt by the player, and is multiplicative with other damage increasing effects.
- This attachment provides a 50% increase in the rate of fire of all weapon systems, which is reduces the reload rate by 50%. It is matched with a damage multiplier that multiplicatively reduces damage by 50% to cause Damage per Second to stay constant. After which, there is an increase of 10% of base damage dealt by the player.
If you have a mechanics like this, I would delete it and replace it with something that makes sense. Even 90% of the english speakers can't understand this on the first readthrough. This reminds me of the effects on classic dota where nobody but the hardcore experts had a clue how wepons stack.
You could simply replace it with 10% more damage dealt, 10% more missile damage and 50% more damage dealt and 50% reload time reduce.
The way the texts are written is just clunky, overcomplex and irritating.
You know what I like about this? If you are so set against the text and have ideas on how to improve it, you can redefine 99% of the text in game by going to your RuntimeData/Languages/en/a_bionic.xml file for Starward Rogue (I think thats the file name, if not you'll be really close to the file). Best of all, we will give you credit for improving the writing and if its such a massive improvement, there is always the chance that you could work with us.
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If only blizzard would make AI war 2... :)
Sure, if you want a game that is AI War 2 in title only.
I wrote an Email to arcen about this. It's about polish.
Take hearthstone for example. I think the team wasn't that big, like 10 or 15 ppl? So basically it's compareable to an indie title. I am just saying that they spent so much time into polish and accesibility.
There are even tons of very very polished indie titles. Arcen isn't one who brings out polished games - thats ok, they give you he "rough cut". But you can't expect to hit a 300k kickstarter with rough games for a very very small market. You will have to go more mass market.
Arcen is around 4 people, total. If you're comparing that to a team of 15 dedicated to a project, with Blizzard's entire admin/support/IT staff behind them, then there really isn't anything left to say.
Some people just love to talk even when they have absolutely no idea what they're talking about, I guess.
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Arcen is around 4 people, total. If you're comparing that to a team of 15 dedicated to a project, with Blizzard's entire admin/support/IT staff behind them, then there really isn't anything left to say.
Some people just love to talk even when they have absolutely no idea what they're talking about, I guess.
*Sigh*
Guess who is takling.
What I wanted to say: Instead of assigning those limited 4 ressources into 30k words of text and creating tons of units that all need a unit description, they should probably use these ressources into a clean game that works.
I'd rather have 1 fun unit than 10 units taht are not fun.
But I am not sure how I can tell you that, you seem to not understand.
Imho, the vision for Ai: War 2 was too small to succeed. Just look over to kickstarter if you have any doubts. The interest in 2016 to a sequel to a game that has a lot in common with excel is very limited.
I opted for a slightly different game - but alas, the creators want to stay true to themselves and create another failure, ignoring all good advice. At least in my opinion. But I am just a gamer - i can just tell you that i stoped buying arcen after last federation because the outline is good, but the execution lacking.
This thread also sums up my opinion pretty well.
https://neogaf.site/forum/showthread.php?t=1270356
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Best of all, we will give you credit for improving the writing and if its such a massive improvement, there is always the chance that you could work with us.
I am in no way game related at all in the creation process. I am just a gamer. Maybe even a casual gamer.
But you might have heard of the problem, that programmers often write stuff that "they" understand and then they are baffled, when "users" don't get it. Basically every software has it, even accounting software where data suddenly shows up sorted in a way that only makes sense for the programmers.
It's really an interestig topic to pass the things on your feet on to someone else. If I would have any say in the creation of AI: War 2, I would have probably made a study of my target audience. Which game do they want? What niche is currently open?
The "Excel-Like-Overcomplex-RTS-Niche" obviously is smaller than expected.
I don't really know exactly why a major deal wasn't possible. But then, the views of the creators are a different one. They want to code and have a relaxed lifestyle instead of being the pushover of a major I guess.
Just one word of advice, asking your playerbase who already backed and are in the boat about what game they want is irrelevant if it's onlylike 5000 ppl and you want to sell to 50.000. You would have to ask the 45.000.
Also, probably most don't even know what they want until you show it to them^^.
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Some people just love to talk even when they have absolutely no idea what they're talking about, I guess.
*Sigh*
Guess who is takling.
Okay, let's all put our metaphorical swords away and have a nice civil discussion. No need to be rude. Please remember that you are communicating through text as well, which means what you might not consider rude can come across as rude due to a lack of ability to discern facial expressions, body language, tone, and other factors.
Best of all, we will give you credit for improving the writing and if its such a massive improvement, there is always the chance that you could work with us.
I am in no way game related at all in the creation process. I am just a gamer. Maybe even a casual gamer.
But you might have heard of the problem, that programmers often write stuff that "they" understand and then they are baffled, when "users" don't get it. Basically every software has it, even accounting software where data suddenly shows up sorted in a way that only makes sense for the programmers.
It's really an interestig topic to pass the things on your feet on to someone else. If I would have any say in the creation of AI: War 2, I would have probably made a study of my target audience. Which game do they want? What niche is currently open?
The "Excel-Like-Overcomplex-RTS-Niche" obviously is smaller than expected.
I don't really know exactly why a major deal wasn't possible. But then, the views of the creators are a different one. They want to code and have a relaxed lifestyle instead of being the pushover of a major I guess.
Exactly. If our users don't understand the software, then they can change it to something that they do understand, and we can put that in the base game, making it a win-win for everyone involved. You understand what the mechanic does, and we get more sales because people understand the mechanic better, and you get credit for it (Which you can put on a resume, and that always looks nice).
The problem with that line of thinking is AI War 2 can't be a puzzle game or something different than an RTS. Then it isn't AI War 2. It becomes Tidalis 2, or AVWW 3, or New Game 1, which are all harder sells. It is much easier to push AI War 2 as AI War Classic, but improved in X,Y,Z ways, since AIWC is a known variable.
That being said, could we do a study of our target audience and figure out the genre they would prefer? Almost certainly. We just thought that AI War 2, in its full expanded form, was what everyone wanted. And what we found is this: A lot of people want that. But we can't reach many other people, so we don't know what they would want. If we could reach every existing owner of AI War Classic, I think the kickstarter would have been funded a long time ago.
How exactly was the vision for AI War 2 "too small"? We haven't even hit a third of the funding we need, so I think it was, if anything, too big. If we made the game bigger, the cost would go up. Companies like Blizzard have very large amounts of staff and more money than all of Arcen's games have ever made, combined, before anything is deducted from that total. And that is just the budget for a single game.
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Arcen is around 4 people, total. If you're comparing that to a team of 15 dedicated to a project, with Blizzard's entire admin/support/IT staff behind them, then there really isn't anything left to say.
Some people just love to talk even when they have absolutely no idea what they're talking about, I guess.
*Sigh*
Guess who is takling.
Well, you were talking about software development by comparing two radically different organizations as if they were the same. I'm a software developer, and I know how stupid that comparison is.
What I wanted to say: Instead of assigning those limited 4 ressources into 30k words of text and creating tons of units that all need a unit description, they should probably use these ressources into a clean game that works.
All four of them weren't working on it. Chris did the majority of it himself, with community involvement. The others were doing other things. And, the number of units in 2's design was cut down massively from what was in 1. So, not sure what you're complaining about.
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I'll give you an example from Starward Rogue.
How would you say:
This attachment provides a 10% increase in the base damage dealt by the player, and is summed additively with other damage increasing effects.
This attachment provides a 10% increase on the total damage of missile attacks dealt by the player, and is multiplicative with other damage increasing effects.
This attachment provides a 50% increase in the rate of fire of all weapon systems, which is reduces the reload rate by 50%. It is matched with a damage multiplier that multiplicatively reduces damage by 50% to cause Damage per Second to stay constant. After which, there is an increase of 10% of base damage dealt by the player.
If you have a mechanics like this, I would delete it and replace it with something that makes sense. Even 90% of the english speakers can't understand this on the first readthrough. This reminds me of the effects on classic dota where nobody but the hardcore experts had a clue how wepons stack.
You could simply replace it with 10% more damage dealt, 10% more missile damage and 50% more damage dealt and 50% reload time reduce.
The way the texts are written is just clunky, overcomplex and irritating.
It's not quite that simple.
When we HAVE had overly simplistic text on descriptions for items, people complained. They wanted to know "what EXACTLY does this do? This description is too vague!". Which frankly is the norm for the genre that Starward is in (the game those description examples are from), people want to know what each item does in detail. So our descriptions need to work with that. In addition, in that genre, items that just plain are overly simple are considered BORING. We cant just simplify them to make them easier to read. An item that merely gives you a 10% bonus to something and does nothing else is dull. So a lot of items do way more than that; this is expected. What's more, those descriptions can change at any moment. If I were to decide to go in there, and go "Well you know this item that does funky stuff with missiles needs a change, because of reasons. I'm going to set it up differently now", suddenly, the description needs altering. This sort of thing can (and does) happen very frequently.
So not only do you have the issue of trying to figure out even the basic wording of stuff (a lot harder than most people think), but you have the constant need to re-do those, which requires a looking at by a translator EVERY SINGLE TIME, if there is a translator. And the translator has to make sure to get it right. And that'd just cost way too much. If a game has full translation, they A: have a lot more resources than Arcen does, or B: they did it very, very slowly, with no intention to *ever* allow the game to change much after release (so that they don't have to change it or worry about that). Or C: they have multi-lingual people on the dev team. None of those three things are applicable here, that's all. As irritating as it may be... and I can understand that it is... some things just aren't viable for some developers. This is one of those things.
And that's for Starward. It gets outright ridiculous for something like AI War... even a slimmed-down version of it.
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Good lord is this thread persistent. :D
1) It has been said, multiple times, and in many ways,
You can have the language of your choice if there is a fan willing to translate it!
2) Writing crap translations is not appreciated. Paying for expensive translations does not appear to be profitable and requires ongoing cost.
This isn't an insult to your language, or your country, or that your group of people is somehow not valued. Everybody here on this forum welcomes everybody else from a lot of different countries and backgrounds. We want everyone to participate. Unfortunately, it costs money.
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In addition, in that genre, items that just plain are overly simple are considered BORING.
Well, if easy to grasp concepts in a strategy game are boring, then go for the hard route. But as it seems on kickstarter, it can't even raise 100k bucks.
As I stated earlier, I love hearthstone. I also love starcraft. And the crisp, easy to understand mechanics are not boring :).
But yeah, if you want a very very specialised product for like 1000 fans, then do it. Charge every fan 100 Bucks and there it goes, bam your 100k budget :).
I think the whole point of my post (make the game interesting for more ppl by translating it and dumbing it down) is completely unwelcome. You all seem to want a game that noone else can understand, comprehend or even play (cause lack of funding).
My best advice would be to do a 100k kickstarter and have one pledge level at 100 bucks.
But as I said, I am not sure about sale progonsis with language X added or sale prognosis if target audience would be 1 million players instead of 1000. But seeing arcens recent track record, success by accident might do the trick ^^.
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I believe we have summed the various position sufficiently now.
Moving along.