Strangeland
Strangeland MacOS Native is now LIVE!
Minor patch [LINUX Version]
CohhCarnage, Mostly Walking, and Other Streams / LPs of Strangeland
One of the incredible pleasures that has followed Strangeland's release has been the opportunity to watch Twitch streams of folks playing our game. Back in Primordia's day, streams were much less common, so we only were able to watch the after-the-fact Let's Play videos on YouTube. James, Vic, and I have loved not just watching streamers react to the game, but also watching their audiences contribute to, and feed off of, the streamers' enjoyment. The different perspectives and comments have been a treasure. It's also awesome to see people work through puzzles, speculate about symbols, decipher clues, and catch references in real-time.
We've enjoyed all of them, and we could probably post five dozen, rather than just five. But to be reasonable, here are just a few to check out -- whether you're interested in the game and want to see more before buying, or whether you simply enjoying watching streams and LPs for their own sake. (All of these have follow-up videos, which no doubt you can find on YouTube with your adventure-game-puzzle-solving skills!)
CohhCarnage
[previewyoutube="lzRNCKBmBlc;full"]
Mostly Walking / Day9TV
[previewyoutube="smLO65-Lpc8;full"]
Keith Ballard
[previewyoutube="cnnexXjzt1A;full"]
博伟君 Bowie (Chinese)
[previewyoutube="2_jcEaX2j70;full"]
Staszek iGRAszkowski (Polish)
[previewyoutube="iHmWh6FaJso;full"]
As ever, we're grateful to the streamers, LPers, and players who have helped spread the word about our game!
[WINDOWS/LINUX Updated to v2.3]
-Fixed a minor bug with Save detection.
-Prepared things for Translations.
PushingUpRoses and Grimbeard Analyze Strangeland
PushingUpRoses
[previewyoutube="rGIWj2MOnTQ;full"]
Grimbeard
[previewyoutube="RmsCHv3ackk;full"]
Strangeland: Cracking the Code
Audio Engine
Many players have said very kind things about the amazing soundscape that Vic and our voice actors created. But this was only possible by completely overhauling AGS’s default audio engine.
As anyone who has bought the soundtrack or listened carefully has noticed, Strangeland has a huge number of relatively short musical tracks. The music changes from exploration to dialogue, and even sometimes within dialogue. Because of frequently changing musical tracks, we needed crossfading to avoid unpleasant cuts from one track to the next. But AGS did not support custom crossfading; instead, you would have to use one of AGS’s limited sound channels.
The problem is, Strangeland uses a very large number of sound layers to achieve its rich soundscape: music, ambient sound effects, active sound effects, dialogue, etc. can all be playing at the same time. When I dedicated a channel to crossfading, the result was that some other audio (perhaps a sound effect, perhaps a voice over line) could get cut off. It was impossible to predict when this would happen.
The easy solution would be to cheapen the soundscape. But with a project so personally important to Victor and Mark and myself, cheap fixes were not fixes at all.
So I took the hard solution: finding and integrating a cross-platform audio engine. I settled on SDL Mixer and after about a week of work, I managed to get it working in AGS.
Around the same time, I was playing the game Celeste, and I was very impressed by its use of a low-pass filter. It struck me that we could use that to good effect in Strangeland, particularly in combination with a blur visual effect when the inventory is open. It actually took me about a month to get the filter working right. It’s a small thing that players may not notice. The point is not for them to notice it, but to feel it, and I think it adds to the feeling of immersion and even dream-like quality of Strangeland. To my knowledge, it’s the first use of a low-pass filter in any AGS game. You can hear for yourself here:
[previewyoutube="mOi4UlOH2GI;full"]
Savegame System
By default, AGS saves games by dumping all of the system memory associated with the game into a file, and restores games by moving that data back into memory. In a way, this is a very reliable system because it makes sure that nothing gets lost in saving and restoring. But it has serious flaws.
The worst flaw, in my opinion, is that if you update the game in a way that changes how it handles memory, old saved games will break. As a result, most AGS games on Steam are only rarely updated, and the updates tend to be fairly minor (to avoid breaking saved games). We did a few small patches and two large updates to Primordia, and when we did the large updates, many players were frustrated because even though the game was now much better, they had to start from scratch. I spent a lot of time making custom saves for these players so they could resume where they left off.
But this leads to the second problem: AGS games actually use a lot of system memory. Even if they look like adventure games from the 1991, they use RAM much more liberally. Saved games for Primordia, Unavowed, or Technobabylon can be as large as 20 megabytes. This makes them a pain to send or backup. During development, that means it’s a hassle for testers to send me saved games when they encounter a bug.
That isn’t the only problem with large save files, though. When saves get that large, even on a fast hard-drive there is generally a small FPS drop when you save. Because we wanted an autosave for Strangeland, that meant that every time you entered a room, the fading effect and audio would skip slightly. My dear neurotic friend Mark sent me roughly 1,000 emails complaining about this.
And the problem got even worse for Strangeland. As you know, Vic does many very large, even full-screen animations. Loading these into memory is not instantaneous, which means that if we load the animation in real-time, there can be a very slight FPS drop there, too. Naturally, Mark complained about this as well. I solved the problem by precaching the animations when the game loads, where the player will not notice a short hang. But now,
[WINDOWS and LINUX UPDATED TO 2.1b]
-Fixed an issue with Superego having an incredibly generic reaction when the orb was used on him.
-Fixed an issue with the torch on Crab.
-Fixed a typo on Cicada's dialog.
-Fixed an issue with the mirrors glistening.
[WINDOWS/LINUX Updated to v2.1]
-Fixed a potential issue with Shard selection in the Portal puzzle UI.
-Fixed a soft-lock regarding alt-tabbing after resolving Portal puzzle.
Linux Build [Minor update for Debian]
-Now the plugin doesn't require glibc 2.29 (which is not present on Debian distribution) There was a dependency but it has been removed.
-As far as I know Linux 32bit systems are very niche and quite rare, if you are on 32bit Linux, do let us know, I'll work on making it happen :)
Linux Build and Welcome Steam Summer Sale Customers!
First, we are pleased to announce that we now have a Linux build for Strangeland. We've always been very fond of the Linux gaming community, and we're really happy to be able to get a build posted so quickly. Please let us know if you run into any issues, and we will quickly patch them!
Second, for possible players on either Windows or Linux, a few notes about the game:
- If you are unfamiliar with point-and-click adventures, please check the How to Play information in the options menu.
- Unlike many older adventure games, you cannot lose the game (either by permanently dying or becoming permanently stuck). There's always a way forward (and sometimes that way forward actually is transient death!).
- If you get stuck, the game has an integrated hint system accessible by dialing 0 on the pay phone in the central area. But if you'd rather ask someone outside the game, there's a very active community on the message boards, and the development team reads it throughout the day. We're happy to give you nudges.
- Similarly, if you have any technical difficulties, please post a message on the boards or send an email to me at mark@wormwoodstudios.com. We typically manage to respond in a matter of minutes (or at most hours). No game is ever bug free (especially games with a giant cicada!), but as of right now, we haven't heard of any ongoing issues. Nevertheless, we're always happy to help.
- While Strangeland may evoke comparisons to games like Sanitarium or Silent Hill, it is not a game about uncovering a deep, dark secret. There are plenty of mysteries and darkness, but some players have been surprised at the lack of a surprise.
- The game has an incredibly robust commentary and annotation mode; if you are finding the mysteries and metaphors impenetrable, you might experiment with this mode, which many players have enjoyed. Our recommendation, though, is to play the game without commentary and annotations in your first run.
Most of all: we hope you enjoy the game, and that you share your thoughts with us. There is nothing more rewarding than hearing from players, and nothing more valuable as a developer than receiving feedback (positive and negative alike) from the folks drawn to the game.
Much love, and happy(?) adventuring!