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Finally, my first proper non-contracted commercial project has been released, and is available right now on the MISoft Studios Website for $7.99. As many people already know, the game is called Eternal Equinox, and in case you haven't heard about the game yet, we're trying something pretty insane with this release: it's a text adventure with a price tag!

In Eternal Equinox, you play the role of a villager called upon to save his village (and the island it sits upon) from a horrific tsunami poised to strike from somewhere just off the coast. To rescue your people, you'll need to hunt down the Hoto, a magic statue capable of thwarting natural disasters. Along the way, you'll explore three towns and dozens of other locations scattered around the fairly large island. You can download the full game and give the demo a spin right now

.

In all fairness, I can't rightly call this a "text adventure." It's much more a digital novel, with long passages of highly descriptive text that all wind down to a very simple list of options (no complicated parser or lengthy list of commands to figure out). It isn't really aimed at IF fans as much as it's directed at people who love reading and like the story's genre.

There's two schools of thought on how this game is going to sell, and there doesn't seem to be any middle ground whatsoever here. In one corner, people think the game will be an absolute failure. In the other corner, people are thinking the game might draw up a cult following and sell fairly well, supported not by gamers but by avid readers and those who are relatively new to PC games. Win, lose, or draw, this game was a ton of fun to make, I've learned a lot while making it over the past year, and in the very least I'll come away with a few lessons on how to market games... and so will everyone else --

This afternoon I'm going to make a thread in Game Design Theory about the release of Eternal Equinox. I'm going to track my successes and failures and let everyone know how I'm doing, and hopefully this will give some insight into the sales and marketing of indie games made on the lowest tier of budgeting imaginable. In the very least, people can learn from any mistakes I make along the way, and hopefully the lessons I learn will help others boost the sales for their games. Already, a few people on TGC have shown interest in making commercial Text Adventure games if Eternal Equinox sells fairly, and if that happens, they'll know exactly how I did it. This really is uncharted waters we're entering here: I've spent months searching for examples of commercial text adventures that have been released in the last ten years, and I've been unable to find a single example of someone giving this a legitimate try and failing... or succeeding. So really, this is unmarked territory and it should be pretty interesting to see how this game's sales turn out.

At any rate, feel free to drop by the MINet site and check out the demo. If you like it, please buy it... this game is enormous and the demo only lets you check out the very first village. From all the testing we've done, it takes people an average of 20+ hours to beat this game. Oh, and if you buy it and play it, please visit the brand-spankin' new forums on MINet and let us know what you think about the full version of the game!

Anyway, I'm pretty worn out... it's been a hectic week getting this game finished and released. And my nerves are shot from worrying that this game will be an absolute failure, but I guess that's inevitable. This is the first commercial game released by MISoft Studios, and the odds are definitely against us in every way, shape, and form, so if you wouldn't mind helping me be superstitious, cross your fingers for me!

"In an interstellar burst, I'm back to save the universe"

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Aaron Miller

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Posted: 18th May 2007 09:20

Glad to see it's out.

Cheers,

-db

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tha_rami

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Posted: 18th May 2007 17:53 Edited at: 18th May 2007 18:13

First of all, congratulations on such a bold step. Commercially releasing a text adventure is what I call 'against all odds' indeed. Hope that it sells enough to make it profitable.

Second: The demo. I must admit, Matt, that I liked it. The HUD was a bit simple and the blue cursed with the yellow (hard on the eyes, a bit) - so I'd personally change that. Also, when I went to the beach the change of colour hit my eyes hard. The story and details are overwhelming, really. Writing is well done, besides an incidental typo / forgetting a capital letter. Awesome work, you actually got me interested as to how the story evolves. I was at most a bit frustrated by Salina's guess game - so many options! Glad she loves the sea as much as Dante probably does, living in his little village. I was shocked to learn of the news at the High Elder.

Why am I telling this? To explain that your game did actually 'reach' me. Too bad I don't have Paypal and am not allowed to get it, otherwise the six euro's for EE, if the HUD was changed slightly and the background colour changes were less radical, would definetly have been invested.

Actually, I think there is a third way. The game is possible steaming towards definete failure, or it could acquire a cult - but there's also the possibility that the incidental gamer will like it (especially the more intellectual ones) and that it will over time create a steady but noticable following. Mouth-to-mouth you won't have to count on - noone of my age (18) tells friends he plays a text adventure on a PC unless it's absolutely perfect. Your sales will have to come from your own efforts to get it out.

Concluded: get the game out in the open, I think you might be surprised how many people would be interested in 'Dantes' quest for the Hoto to save his seaside village Equinox of the tsunami. I'll give you a notice on my Blog, Little Bright Dots, in coming months edition of the gaming/software article SoftwareBASE.

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Matt Rock

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Posted: 19th May 2007 01:24 Edited at: 19th May 2007 01:26

Thank you! As far as sales go, I'm going to focus the next few weeks on getting word out in chat rooms, forums, and on blogs, and we're going to target the game primarily toward readers rather than gamers, as the game doesn't have a lot of the bells and whistles that a modern 3D game has. We've talked and talked and talked about marketing and that seems to be the best tactic. In a few minutes I'm going to make a thread in Game Design Theory about marketing this game... hopefully it will stir up some constructive discussion about marketing strategy and it can help others sell their games as well

I'm glad the demo peaked your interest! You're only the second person out of those who've played the game to tell me about the problems with the HUD, but it's something I'm going to consider changing in version 1.1 when I get around to doing that. I might incorporate an option to use a fully white background, so that the image of the beach isn't so loud. It's something to consider at any rate. It mostly just depends on how many bugs we uncover in the next few weeks, but the testers seemed to be pretty thorough in their hunt for problems.

I should also mention that you don't actually need Paypal. I just discovered this recently, but you can also pay for the game using a credit card (Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Discover, and I think there's two others) without needing to sign up and get a Paypal account. Also, I'm planning on getting to the post office soon to get a PO Box so people can send in money orders... not enough online companies (if any) offer that! So just in general, if any of you are interested in buying the game, you don't need to sign up for a paypal account if you don't want to

Edit: And thank you Rami for the free publicity! I can use all the help I can get. Contact me when it's posted, maybe we can get you a free copy of the game for helping us get the word out

"In an interstellar burst, I'm back to save the universe"

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tha_rami

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Posted: 19th May 2007 02:25 Edited at: 19th May 2007 02:28

SoftwareBASE 2 will be up early June (monthly article), beside Bontago (Tetris meets RTS) and an as yet unknown third one.

It's not a problem, it just contrasts with the soft yellow background. (http://www.uni-mannheim.de/fakul/psycho/irtel/colsys/Itten.gif) - Opposite colors curse, blue and yellow aren't exactly next to each other

. But most likely, you know that.

Also, for your list of bugs: pressing escape has nasty effects on Windows Vista. It doesn't shutdown the game, but does make it hang. I just played it with speakers on and I love the music as well. You're really pushing me to buy the game now, actually

- especially with the other payment methods

.

Let me think a day about it - is the rest of the game even better than this, dare you say?

It's that I'm stuck in both exams and Seadome, but for some small scale 2D artwork (Logo's/Banners) I'm available for you - really want to see such ideas pay off.

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Matt Rock

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Posted: 19th May 2007 03:35

Quote: "for your list of bugs: pressing escape has nasty effects on Windows Vista. It doesn't shutdown the game, but does make it hang"

Awesome, thank you

. I don't have Vista and I wasn't able to test it on that OS at all, so it's good to know it even works, hehe. I'll add that to our list of bugs and see if we can work it out

Quote: "I just played it with speakers on and I love the music as well"

Nate Madsen, one of our team members, makes all of our music, and I'll be sure to let him know you like his music, I'm sure he'd love to hear that!

Quote: "is the rest of the game even better than this, dare you say?"

It definitely gets much, much better as you get beyond the village of Equinox (the smallest town out of three). There's tons of puzzles, side missions, and even jobs... to earn money, you can work in docks loading ships, in shipyards, a lighthouse, a tavern tending bar, and a few other locations throughout the game. And based on the study you chose when making your character, you might get injured on the job, so you'll have to be careful choosing what jobs you take. You can also head to the taverns in the Port of Hymns and the town of Hap and play 21 with the tavern's patrons. And the game has tons of buried and otherwise hidden treasures. Oh, and the story... if you only play the demo, you're getting about 5% of the whole thing. It gets pretty insane down the road!

Probably my favorite feature of the game is that we're planning for the sequel to consider your actions in this first game. If you buy an object in EE1, you might still have it in EE2. Your character files can be ported over when the sequel is released, and your position in the world will depend heavily on how thoroughly you explored the first game, what jobs and tasks you did, etc. We're going to start writing the sequel in July... I can't wait to get working on it. We're planning an entire trilogy like that, with your character being ported from one game to the next. I personally think that's pretty cool, hehe.

Quote: "You're really pushing me to buy the game now, actually"

You might get to be the first person to buy it, but I'm not sure about that, I haven't checked to see how it's doing yet. But you're probably helping this game's sales just with all of your positive statements about it, hehe. Thank you!

Quote: "but for some small scale 2D artwork (Logo's/Banners) I'm available for you - really want to see such ideas pay off."

Maybe I could take you up on that, let me talk it over with the rest of the team (well, the part of the team that worked on this game anyway). Maybe we could get you a net percentage of the game's profits depending on how it does in the next couple of months

"In an interstellar burst, I'm back to save the universe"

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Moondog

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Posted: 19th May 2007 04:02

http://moondogsnotebook.blogspot.com/

I've just tried the demo, and I'm impressed. I'll probably buy it.

though i found a weird bug:

+ Code Snippet

i talked to your childhood friend after i talked to the elder, and
my character said he will be with the other two that were chosen,
but i just learned they are dead.

then when she asks if i remember our favorite childhood game, i did option 8, and for some reason it took me to the witch doctor dialog..very weird

anyway, very nice atmosphere, and from what I played, it was fun. There were a few uncapitalized words in there, but otherwise well written.

MOONDOG

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Matt Rock

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Posted: 19th May 2007 04:19

Awesome, ty moondog

And ty for putting that bit about the bug in a code snippet, it's good to avoid spoilers, hehe. About that

+ Code Snippet

The Elder asked you to avoid telling anyone in the village that Jio and Gabriel are dead.  I was going to make it so that you could
choose whether or not you told people, but then I had a lot of trouble making the consequences important.  That's an odd bug about
the medicine man, I'll have to look into that, ty for pointing it out!

There's a small handful of typos that I just noticed in Equinox, the capital letters. I also found a couple in Hap as well. I'll fix those for version 1.1 when I release that in a few weeks. I'm still working out our patch system for updates, hehe. I'm glad you guys are liking the demo, I hope you like the full version even more!

"In an interstellar burst, I'm back to save the universe"

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tha_rami

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Posted: 19th May 2007 13:45

Quote: "Maybe I could take you up on that, let me talk it over with the rest of the team (well, the part of the team that worked on this game anyway). Maybe we could get you a net percentage of the game's profits depending on how it does in the next couple of months."

To be honest, I wouldn't need any percentage of anything - I'd rather just see this game take off than anything else.

Quote: "You might get to be the first person to buy it, but I'm not sure about that, I haven't checked to see how it's doing yet. But you're probably helping this game's sales just with all of your positive statements about it, hehe. Thank you!"

I'm a spare time game theorist, investigating all kinds of gameplay approaches, game concepts and the like: This is 'new', and anything new or bold is a good thing - especially worked out this way.

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Chris Franklin_

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Posted: 19th May 2007 15:00

I must say when I tryed the alpha version it was very very well made, good luck with sales Matt

DBP Media Pack

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dark coder

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Posted: 19th May 2007 21:19

I'll start off by saying that I'm not a fan of Text based games or MUDs or anything of the sort, however who am I to not try a DBP game.

First off, as it's pretty much just a text game you should have used a much earlier version of DBP so that the requirement is a version of DX you get off auto updates rather than being a specific version you have to manually download ad 90% of PC users don't have the very latest DX, and usually don't need it.

Now I'm more of a graphics guy and reading many pages of text is rather boring(luckily you can skip it

) I have some tips on how to make the game look a lot better though. I think you should use some graphics to tell the story, much like a comic, only with more words. Ideally the text scene would play out much like this awesome 2D animation http://youtube.com/watch?v=AF7grGxJwDc where you'd have various speech bubbles to read from. This would make the game a lot more appealing to users I think, especially for a commercial product, because at first it doesn't appear as if much work went into it, which probably isn't true, but that's my opinion. Also the icon could be better, i.e. not aliased ms paint like, same goes for the main menu option selection.

Other things I noticed like when you have an option of 1-5 keys say, if you input 5 I think it should automatically chose it for you, pressing enter for your choice is a bit pointless, or you could have a mouse selection for questions / options to pick. As said above the beach text with black on white was a bit too contrasting, I found the yellow background at the village fine though.

Also I wasn't able to terminate the application using the escape key, and upon bringing up the task manager I noticed full usage of my primary CPU, I'm not sure if this is by default or due to me pressing escape however.

Lastly make sure the installer comes with an uninstaller as manually deleting installed files is quite annoying.

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Matt Rock

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Posted: 20th May 2007 00:35

Thanks for all of the input Coder, it's definitely helpful as I'm getting ready for the 1.1 build. A few points:

Quote: "think you should use some graphics to tell the story, much like a comic, only with more words"

It would really defeat the entire purpose of the game. It isn't really targeted towards gamers as much as it's targeted toward readers, and it really is a borderline digital novel, hehe. But for the sequel (three games are planned) we've been talking a lot about using images... I'm still extremely unsure if that's a route I want to take and I'll have to wait until the people who buy the game weigh in with their opinions on the game's forums (I set up a thread on the EE boards just for making suggestions regarding the sequel).

Quote: "you should have used a much earlier version of DBP so that the requirement is a version of DX you get off auto updates rather than being a specific version you have to manually download"

I was made to believe that the version of DX required by your game was the version you have installed on the compiling computer... ack, I should stick to design lol. But that's duely noted and I'll see what I can do to fix that in v1.1

Quote: "Also the icon could be better, i.e. not aliased ms paint like, same goes for the main menu option selection"

I'm extremely artistically-challenged, but I'm thinking about taking up rami's offer for 2D art help... god knows I could use it, hehe. As it stands, I made all of the art myself, except the photographs which were all taken by NOAA. For the sequel, though, I'm hoping to actually take photographs myself, or have a friend take them, in some tropical location (if I can get the chance to visit one between now and then). While some of the art is pretty amateur, I'm still pretty proud of some of it though... just not much

. The coin in the gui is my biggest disappointment :/ but hopefully that can be replaced by 1.1.

Quote: "if you input 5 I think it should automatically chose it for you, pressing enter for your choice is a bit pointless, or you could have a mouse selection for questions / options to pick."

Originally I was using inkey$ commands dropped into loops for making selections, but then I started making options that had multiple numbers involved (10, 11, etc.), and secret buried treasures in the full version have long numeric strings to enter, so it negated the use of inkey$ or scancodes. One of the testers mentioned this as well (I think it was Jess T), but I couldn't work out a decent solution to it that suited every scenario. But this is yet another issue that won't exist in the sequel.

Quote: "Lastly make sure the installer comes with an uninstaller as manually deleting installed files is quite annoying."

Yeah, the installer I'm using isn't the best for a commercial game, unfortunately. A friend says he's going to make MISoft a custom-made installer for the rest of our games, but he said that months ago and we're still waiting :/. Does anyone know of a good free installer that might be better than Advanced Installer, that won't require me to learn some new scripting language?

Thanks for constructive criticism! I want to make the updated version the last update I need to make (I'm sure it won't happen, I'll end up doing v1.3 eventually, hehe), so all of these opinions and bits of advice are warmly welcome

.

"In an interstellar burst, I'm back to save the universe"

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Gil Galvanti

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Posted: 20th May 2007 00:52

I've tried the demo, and it's very nicely made, just a bit short IMO

. Interesting story too, hope the game takes off for you

.

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Matt Rock

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Posted: 20th May 2007 22:14

Thank you Gil! I'm glad this game has been so well-recieved, if anyone does a search for EE on google, I hope to god they find this thread, hehe.

Someone over at gamedev suggested that I make this game mobile. That might be a great idea... I'd love to see people on the subway playing Eternal Equinox on their cell phones. Does anyone know of a DBP-compatible mobile conversion tool? I don't even know where to start looking, lol, but that might be a great avenue for boosting sales.

"In an interstellar burst, I'm back to save the universe"

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tha_rami

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Posted: 21st May 2007 00:02 Edited at: 21st May 2007 01:01

Mobile would definetly rock! You might want to contact Binary Zoo, they did (let?) port DuoTris to mobile and BlackBerry, if not mistaken.

On a side note: SoftwareBASE's new edition has been published at Little Bright Dots. I ran into two other noteworthy projects and decided to post it early (effectively changing the SB column into a bi-weekly release). Eternal Equinox is the second in the list.

Link:
http://littlebrightdots.blogspot.com/

Direct Link:
http://littlebrightdots.blogspot.com/2007/05/softwarebase_20.html

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Matt Rock

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Posted: 21st May 2007 05:22

oh, awesome! Thank you! Would you mind if I used your review in the "reviews" section of our website? It would be the very first review posted on the site

"In an interstellar burst, I'm back to save the universe"

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Shadow heart

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Posted: 21st May 2007 07:12

i'm not a fan of text adventures, but I played the demo and I liked it. I wish your success in the game") and hope t sells very wI liked how you aimed at readers, and selling it to readers is a good idea. There are lots of book clubs, message boards, and chats. it should come out really good.

to the ones thats trapped inside of you, this is it!!

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tha_rami

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Posted: 21st May 2007 08:36 Edited at: 21st May 2007 20:11

Nope, wouldn't mind at all. You're more than welcome to use it. A link back would be appreciated, of course, but is not required. SoftwareBASE is written as free-to-use.

Been toying with Photoshop a bit to create something in style. Example is attached.

Your website (http://www.ee.misoftstudios.com/) was down this morning (in fact the whole domain) for over 30 minutes (I had to leave), so I wasn't able to buy it... shame, get it back up!

Oh, and check your forums

.

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Matt Rock

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Posted: 22nd May 2007 23:29

Yeah, looks like our server's host had some technical difficulties yesterday. I was out playing soccer and didn't see that we were down

. But everything is back up and running today.

We've been toying around with a few 3D coins this weekend, and this friday we're going to view all of our options for an alternative GUI and see what we might come up with. Maybe we'll replace the watery area of the GUI with white, so that the contrast of blue and yellow isn't so hard on some players' eyes, and then it might also help the transition to white when you're visiting the beach. I'll be looking at all of our options this week to see what the best alternative is, and I'll keep your photoshop work in mind

.

Quote: "i'm not a fan of text adventures, but I played the demo and I liked it. I wish your success in the game") and hope t sells very wI liked how you aimed at readers, and selling it to readers is a good idea. There are lots of book clubs, message boards, and chats. it should come out really good."

Thank you! It feels like the whole community is behind me here, I love the support from everyone

"In an interstellar burst, I'm back to save the universe"

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tha_rami

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Posted: 23rd May 2007 00:47

I think white would be unclear. Personally, looking at the colour circle I'd say either light blue or slightly hued and desaturated yellowish-orange (background color).

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Matt Rock

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Posted: 23rd May 2007 19:27

Maybe I should use light blue then, like cyan perhaps. That would allow me to keep the water-meets-sand effect.

I'm going to make a request here of every TGC member who has been reading about this game, especially those of you who would consider buying this game if you had the money, or those of you who feel like "helping the cause." If you've been following the other thread about this game (the one in Game Design Theory), then you know about my plans to create a press release and send it out to every newspaper and magazine I can find on the internet. Later this afternoon (and probably every day for the next two weeks straight) I'm going to try and find contact information for every publication I can hunt down. It would genuinely be awesome if some of you could e-mail me with contact information for your local newspapers, TV stations, radio stations, etc. PLEASE DON'T POST THEM HERE! We don't want trolling spambots to find e-mail addresses and attack these poor people. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated! Don't worry about major national or international publications, like magazines... I'll more than likely find those myself. But feel free to suggest the name of your favorite magazine so as to be sure I don't miss any of them

. Even if all you can do is tell me the name of your local newspaper, it would be greatly appreciated! I want to send out these press releases to as many publications as I can find, and the more I know about, then the better my chances are of getting a few people to review (and in turn, publicize) Eternal Equinox!

"In an interstellar burst, I'm back to save the universe"

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Darth Vader

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Posted: 29th May 2007 13:48

Hi Matt!
I've downloaded the demo but haven't had a chance to try it yet. Don't worry I'm sure its great. Personally I love reading it's one of my hobbies, and I especially like choice storys. Hence my large collection of 'Choose your own Adventure' books.

I haven't followed your other thread but I would like to add an advertising magazine that I think would feature your game. It's an Austrailian magazine but they do offer International subscription.
PC Powerplay a very good Gaming Magazine that I've recently subscribed to. They send me a monthly magazine packed with game reviews, tech reviews and all the latest news! They also send a dual sided DVD that has trailers, demo, patches and utilites. Coicendently they just added an 'indie' game section on their DVD were they showcase freeware, sharware and demos of inde games. You could email them if you like. Heres the web address,
http://www.pcpowerplay.com.au/games/index.php
Good luck!

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tha_rami

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Posted: 29th May 2007 22:17

Hey, I'm honored by your notification about the review on Little Bright Dots at the MiSoft website. Thank you and you're welcome

.

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Dr Manette

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Posted: 30th May 2007 01:04 Edited at: 30th May 2007 01:13

Great game, Matt; the graphics were the main thing that bothered me, the writing was excellent, however. I'd buy EE, but I'll wait to see what you can improve in the next version.

Also, I have two sites of my own right now; one for my web comic and one for my game dev group. Both would be good places for me to help you advertise. Just tell me what you'd like to be said and I'll see what I can do.

BioFox Games...http://www.biofoxgames.com
Life after death http://www.biofoxgames.com/comic/index.php

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Matt Rock

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Posted: 30th May 2007 23:26

Thanks Vader, I'll add them into the next round of press releases! I need just about every magazine, website, and newspaper that can be suggested to me

Quote: "Hey, I'm honored by your notification about the review on Little Bright Dots at the MiSoft website. Thank you and you're welcome "

It's the first time we've ever had a proper review of one of our games... we're just as honored! You should have seen the look on everyone's faces when they read that review, and you scored us 95/100, we'll be bragging about that for months, hehe.

Quote: "I have two sites of my own right now; one for my web comic and one for my game dev group. Both would be good places for me to help you advertise. Just tell me what you'd like to be said and I'll see what I can do."

That would definitely be awesome. Give me some time to pick apart the press release and I can give you some segments that would be good for advertising the game. Alternatively, you can see the press release in this game's alternate thread and if you want you could pick and choose which parts would be best for your site. Whichever way would work best for your, let me know

The upgrade is currently scheduled for development right after the third press release goes out (sometime next week). After that we'll buckle down once more to get the small handful of issues within the game fixed. For art, we're only changing the blue area of the GUI, the coin, and the frontend's selection box. It's still going to use writing to tell the story, we're not going to implement new images or anything. I know a small handful of people were hoping I might add pictures to tell the story, but as I've said before, that will be a feature in the game's sequel (well, if we sell enough copies of EE1 to warrant a sequel, lol). In terms of technical stuff I'm fixing, there's a list on EE's bug reporting thread on the MISoft forums. If that list is missing anything, please let me know

"In an interstellar burst, I'm back to save the universe"

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Matt Rock

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Posted: 29th Jun 2007 21:50

Sorry in advance for bumping this, but I'm working on version 1.1, I figured I'd mention you can drop me an email and offer up suggestions, or visit the bug reporting thread at our website and leave it there. I don't want to end up missing something and then get forced into doing version 1.2, lol. Again, sorry for bumping, just thought this was worth bringing up.

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Agent Dink

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Posted: 30th Jun 2007 01:12 Edited at: 30th Jun 2007 01:14

How are the sales doing on this? I apologize for not buying it. I just can't really get into text adventures. I played your demo a bit though. Even though it's a text adventure I think you could stand to spruce up the graphics a bit, maybe find a way to do Antialiased text through bitmap fonts or something. It would make the whole experience more enjoyable for those less likely to buy a text adventure.

Edit: Hey, if you want I can maybe make some more updated graphics for you. I'm not sure of the size and scope of the game and all that would be required, but if you drop me an e-mail or hit me up on AIM or MSN we could talk about it.

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Matt Rock

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Posted: 30th Jun 2007 01:56 Edited at: 30th Jun 2007 02:01

Rami is planning on doing the game's aesthetic overhaul, for the HUD/ GUI anyway (not the front-end, I love that bit), but then I've got tons of other stuff I'd love for him to do on a new project in development... it might free him up, and maybe working on EE could get you to start liking Text Adventures, hehe. Well, not that it would matter at that point because I'd give you a free copy... but then maybe you'd tell friends to buy it

. I'll drop you a line later tonight (after I get through this mess I'm dealing with over in the DBP board, types and arrays are making my face hurt lol). Anyway, if Rami would be cool with it (I can't imagine saying "less work" would make him upset), then sure! I think I want the hud replaced (not the beach hud but the sandy/watery one), and the game's icon could use replacing as well. And maybe the front-end's circular selector deal, that should go too probably.

As for anti-aliasing, I wish I'd done that from the start

. I started out with plans for a small freeware game with 5k... and it grew and grew beyond that, and now the whole thing is hardcoded and horrifying. Really a miracle it has so few bugs in it, lol. So for EE1, anti-aliasing is hopeless, but EE2 is going to have an epic engine and a special text scripting language (we're making it from scratch, pretty neat stuff), and all of the text is going to revolve around Cloggy's DLL. We did a "test village" with the new format, it's absolutely beautiful. Now we just need a pencil artist who can make all the art for EE2 in the style we're aiming for, and write a few million lines of text, and it'll be ready to hit the market, hehe.

Edit: Sales, forgot to mention that... horrible lol. We've sold 4 copies. I think it might be partly due to the pricing though, some people are saying it's too expensive, and others are saying it's too cheap (thinking the price reflects the quality)

. But eh, it's only been out for a little more than a month, I think it's going to take some time and a lot more word-of-mouth. I'll bet the forums on our site being so barren are also a detractor... no one has used them since I made the move from PHPBB to SMF :/

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tha_rami

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Posted: 30th Jun 2007 04:43

Personally, I'd love to do something on EE - it was the game that attracted me to MISoft studios - but hey, if you think Agent Dink is more capable - I only wish the best for the game

.

Your choice, really.

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Matt Rock

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Posted: 30th Jun 2007 23:07

It isn't really a matter of capability, it's more an issue of assignments. On "Project Domesticated Ferret," (man I love MISoft's code names, lol) I've got TONS of work for you, hehe. GUI's, HUD's, icons, cursors, in-game buttons, sprites... it's an enormous project and the art needed to make it is never-ending, hehe. So I figured it might be wise to free you up from some of the EE stuff so you could focus on PDF, but if you can handle the workload from both projects, awesome. Or maybe Dink could help out on PDF... what would you think about that Dink? I'll email you and tell you more about the other project and maybe you could do some of that stuff. We were actually planning on having 2 to 3 artists on PDF anyway, and from what I've seen of Dink's artwork I think he'd fit right in with the PDF crew. I dunno, I'll email you about PDF Dink, I think it might be right up your alley

.

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Agent Dink

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Posted: 30th Jun 2007 23:19

Hey Matt, yeah I'm interested to learn more! I'll watch for an e-mail.

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Matt Rock

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Posted: 30th Jun 2007 23:25

I just sent it a few seconds ago

, let me know what you think.

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Agent Dink

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Posted: 1st Jul 2007 02:59

Letting you know I replied in case you check here first. After this post lets keep it all over e-mail or messenger tools. I see you have Yahoo on your TGC account here, I have it as well, so if you don't have MSN or AIM here it is:

Agent_Dink ( A T ) Yahoo ( D O T ) com

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Matt Rock

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Posted: 1st Jul 2007 03:06

awesome, I'm on xfire too, my UN there is maximuspt1 and my SN is Matt Rock, I'm almost always on xfire and I'm usually invisible on yahoo

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tiresius

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Posted: 1st Jul 2007 04:30

Congrats on selling 4 copies in about a month. That's nothing to sneeze at. Enjoy the feeling of someone paying you $ for something you made, it's a good one.

Good luck on the next project and I hope that one has some nice scripting and not have everything hard coded. It should be dynamic and editable.

Once you get a good text-based engine going then you can just pump out story after story.

I'm not a real programmer but I play one with DBPro!

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AlexRiva

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Posted: 1st Jul 2007 23:08

Quote: "Sales, forgot to mention that... horrible lol. We've sold 4 copies. I think it might be partly due to the pricing though, some people are saying it's too expensive, and others are saying it's too cheap (thinking the price reflects the quality) . But eh, it's only been out for a little more than a month"

IMO 4 copies sold in the first month are a great achievement

, try to compare it to the number of demo downloads, if the rate is more than 0,1% (ie:4 copies sold on 4000 downloads) that's a great result to start from. Try then to improve your marketing strategy and to promote the game a bit more and you'll see the results! Keep on positive thinking

and my personal congrats for a solid and deep game (from what I can see from the demo) with a concept which differs from the usual match-the-color-puzzle too often seen on the shareware market.

Visit my new website: http://www.maskedbear.com

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Darth Vader

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Posted: 2nd Jul 2007 07:19

I think of it this way, 4 copies in the first month for a text adventure game! Thats pretty good!
Keep up the great work!

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Matt Rock

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Posted: 3rd Jul 2007 18:53

Quote: "try to compare it to the number of demo downloads, if the rate is more than 0,1% (ie:4 copies sold on 4000 downloads) that's a great result to start from"

Apparently we're doing phenomenal. From what I can gather, we've only distributed 1,113 copies of the demo, so by that system we're doing far better than I realized. Still, I think it's next to impossible to hit our target mark by the end of the year (as I'm discussing in the "Selling Commercial Text Adventures" thread. But I guess it's not too bad, maybe we'll be able to pull off eight sales in July, and keep targeting our sights on a goal of doubling our sales each month.

And again, thank you for the comments and compliments guys! Even a little over a month after the game's release, I'm still getting positive comments on the game and genuine support from the community

. When people search for our game on Google and this thread comes up in the results, people are going to see all of these great comments from fellow game designers and maybe it will be an extra little push for them to buy the game

. So it's a "thank you" with more than one purpose, hehe.

Quote: "Good luck on the next project and I hope that one has some nice scripting and not have everything hard coded. It should be dynamic and editable. Once you get a good text-based engine going then you can just pump out story after story."

I can't wait to release Eternal Equinox II, even though it's far from being finished at this stage. Nothing will be hardcoded this time... we're creating a whole new engine from scratch to cater to the specific style of the sequel (multiple islands and text-based naval exploration! Kind of like Pirates of Port Royale, but entirely text, hehe), and it will be expandable so we can add more territory to explore and quests to accomplish as we see fit. Also, we're creating our own scripting language, built using DBP, which will allow us to write text and have it displayed without any sort of coding effort. We write a block of text, noting it as such, then list our options (each marked with a symbol to denote it as an option), and in effect we can write all of the text for the game in text files without needing a single PRINT command

. And it runs out of a single function! It's really cool so far, after we release EE2 I'm thinking about distributing our text scripting language as well (but then I didn't design it myself so I can't say for sure if we will or not). Sorry, I'm rambling hehe. I'm just extremely excited about the sequel's potential and can't wait to show stuff in a WIP (when we get to that phase).

The problem though is that I'm spending all of this time talking about EE2, and I might end up leaving people wanting the sequel and not the first game in the trilogy

. And so, I should mention that if you purchase EE1 and beat the game, your final score will determine your lot in life in EE2

. You'll be able to port your old EE1 character into EE2 and keep much of your old inventory, and your place in the world will be based on how thoroughly you explored the island of Equinox in the first game. Pretty cool I think! Okay, I won't rant about EE2 anymore, I promise, lol.

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Kevin Picone

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Posted: 4th Jul 2007 07:48 Edited at: 4th Jul 2007 07:50