The Girl Who Sold the World - EAR MODE; accessibility news and feedback thread

Alright, trailer is online + soundtrack. I hope you like it.

@Brennen I'm sorry to hear that. After opening the app you should be able to tap in the middle of the screen (that's where the button"connect with skyler" is). If it doesn't appear at all, the most common issue is that not all of the needed permission have been accepted which results in a black screen.
I'm not an Apple user, but you need to go to the app manager and turn the permission (especially the one related to storage) manually on. Please let me know if that worked.

@Queenofeagles07 Please keep in mind that it's not accessible so it might be difficult to play it at all. But yes, it should be available in the turkish store as we didn't made any territory restrictions.

@Hannes Thanks for your input. Yes, it goes in the right direction with the inventory and there's a lot more like logic, building whole tasks like: examine item1, pull item2 or combine item1 with item2 just to point out the simpler ones.
But let's dive deeper into that when we are in the production phase.
It's hard to give any cost estimation at the moment because we don't exactly know yet what the earmode will involve.

For now we'll focus on attracting additional players all over the world to make a kickstarter campaign which will ensure the development of the ear-mode, an enriched and improved chapter 1 (puzzles+additional branch) and a fully developed chapter 2.
All further chapters will be set as milestones.

Yesterday we surpassed 10K downloads on Apple, yay! But 90% of them are chinese players and I doubt there will be a lot of potential backers amongst them. But we'll see.

I will keep you up to date. Thanks to all of you!

@music_fairy Thank you, great to hear that!

@Justin Thanks, we're excited too!

@Remy As always, I'm very thankful for your thoughtful contributions. I posted on Adventuregamers.com right from the beginning. Though it seems that TGWSTW could arouse enthusiasm only for a few members over there. But i think for sighted players it's just a matter of getting used to the missing picture.

I mean, I grew up with monkey island and it was lovely to see the pirate world, but who knows how I would have imagined it myself if I didn't see it in the first place. It would be certainly no less exciting.

And I still often wonder that when I have to put on my headphones and listen to the world of TGWSTW I still had not enough of it. It's just gets so personal and the experience burns into your head and remains there for a long time. It's so much deeper.
And that's what sighted people have to learn again - to use their imagination!
I think they got pretty lazy...LOL
But seriously, I think that over time much more players can be convinced. It's just a very slow process.

And yes Remy, the stalker certainly won't be the only character. In fact we even plan (which could be a nice tier for kickstarter) to engage some fans for voiceover so they could perpetuate themselves in the game.

As to the recording process:
The Zoom H1 functioned only as a digital recorder which is great with its low-noise pre-amps (at least the first models). But other than that, the sound was picked up by 2 large condenser micros which sit with its own preamps in a steel tube cage, hanging on elastic bands to lessen vibrations and unwanted noises. I've built it myslef specificallyl for this project. It's pretty much sturdy like a tank and great for scenes like running (besides capturing amazing ambience) because it very much lessens all the hits, rubbing etc. which turned out to be horrible with any other recording solution I tested.

Our amazing voice actress is based in Canada so unfortunately we couldn't afford it to fly over and record together. But I instructed her to physically act according to the script as much as possible.
However, we toured Europe for a few weeks to record all these sounds in real locations.
So what you hear for example in the beginning of chapter 1 is a real decayed cabin in the woods where we spent 3 thrilling nights recording every tiny bit of sound. No repetative samples.

I really wanted to capture the soul of the location (which of course matches the required location of the script) because I believe that it can drive your imagination even further and make a scene more scary, more intense, more emotional.
And finally I had to squeeze my sound engineer skills and compose everything together in a way, that it would sound like from one take.

If only our budget will allow it in the future, I would love to record physcially together with the actors and actresses. I have a few cool ideas and would like to try out some techniques, while attaching additional microphones to their bodies to capture even more from their acting, so one can really feel beeing in the middle of the journey not just aside of it.

So yeah, it's really a lot of hard work and we take it very seriously. I hope to have given you a little insight into the creation process.

@Remy Those kickstarter tiers would be great fun. The story delivers some opportunities for that, like an old, underground psychiatric hospital where you guys could voice act some of the mad patients :) But I can't tell any more. Only the best would make it through the casting *hahaha*
Remy, I wrote you an PM about some technical stuff so we don't bore other users here in the thread. I hope you got it.

@Queenofeagles07 I'm sorry to hear that, I hope Brennen will reply soon and help you out. I'm curious myself what action resolved the problem. Did you check all of the permissions? I don't know why this happens on some devices, but although you approve them on the first start of the app it seems like they are not saved correctly.

@Kimbowen Thank you! I really believe in the power of imagination :)

@Will No need to be frustrated. It was never said TGWSTW is accessible. That's the purpose of the ear-mode.

TGWSTW is not dead and of course we are still working on it, alongside our daily jobs/operations. It's funny how people who never had an own business give you advice how to turn theory into reality quickly (Not talking about anyone of this forum here) Sorry, but that's life. Most people give a sh... about your life and what you are doing until you get huge. So we are mostly on our own.

I know that 1 year passed already, and if we were working on TGWSTW 14 hours a day it probably would be finished, with all 21 episodes. But that was not the case. We have to find ways to finance further development BUT ALSO our living costs. Although many of you who played TGWSTW think it is perfect already, we have to optimize it to make it stand out and attract more players who have different expectations.

We have to focus on the market that is easy to access for us, and that is Germany at the moment (we are living here) So we are going to make a german voice over to market it here and that will hopefully generate enough income to finance the english version, which is much more expensive for us. Why? Because the german voice over artist is a friend of ours :)

Also technically TGWSTW is moving forward:
• I'm rewriting the whole code to assure a fast production pipeline for all upcoming episodes. This will guaranty that upcoming episodes will be published within a timespan of 3-5 weeks.
• I've thrown out all the mini games and came up with the P.A.D. system (Plan and Do). The puzzles will be seamlessly entangled in the story, no disruption. You'll be presented verbs like: GO, EXAMINE, TAKE/PUT DOWN, USE, OPEN, PUSH, PULL, DISMANTLE, SHAKE, TURN, TALK, and GIVE, which you then can combine with a location or an item or a person to execute actions. You'll be able to solve puzzles in different spots, in a non-linear manner. Like in a small open world so if you don't move forward with one puzzle you can try another. That should reduce possible frustration.
• Another new gameplay element which will regularly appear is the XONAR (kind of next gen Sonar). It gives us a bit more action and anxiety when we hear strangers trying to track down Frances. The goal here is to listen carefully and guide Frances away from the Danger.
• Last but not least: N.E.R.S. (Neurons reconditioning stimulator) You'll be able to read/listen to Frances' brain activity in order to examine her thoughts/emotions/fears/memories and manipulate them. This will help you to understand the past, to plan or change the future and to make appropriate decisions.
• Plus all the other things like a smooth auto-save, including cloud saving, in-app purchase etc.

So as you see there is a lot going on. Please be assured that I won't give up - never ever. TGWSTW is my project of a lifetime.
See it that way. For now, it just costs you a little bit of patience - please don't loose it. It's worth it. Spread the word where you can. That helps a lot.

Big thanks to all of our supporters! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

@music_fairy Thank you for understanding us! It's really cheering up :)

@Kimbowen Thanks, I got your email. You are on the list of patient people now :)

@Remy my friend :) Yeah, Germany is a great place for targeting adventures and even audio plays, thus we hope and expect to light the spark here.

Yes, sir. I posted some time ago on adventuregamers.com and you're right. It's one of the most active forums about adventures, so I will stay in touch with them and see what we can do in the future.

The last was a good one. I know how many crazy things disappeared in Guybrush's pockets :)
But seriously. Everything Frances is carrying fits in her backpack, because we recorded that way.
Maybe it is unclear that she has a backpack at all. If so, we'll change that. Anyway, if you feel we should shrink Frances' pockets, let me know any time, because we don't want to loose the realism there.

Thank you guys. Over and out. (for now)

Hey guys,

I hope you're doing well.

Small news here for all interested and those who didn't get an email from us.
We've started a blog where we're going to share the creation progress, story and audio related content and polls.

You can check our first post here:
https://thegirlwhosoldtheworld.com/welcome-to-the-tgwstw-community/

Although there's nothing new there for you yet, I'd appreciate if you would create an account there, so we get an actual number of currently interested people.

There is also a first poll available, but marked as "visual poll", so you know immediately which poll is interesting for you and which one is obviously not.

I went with a screen reader over our website and everything seems to be working fine. Please let me know when you find any issues.

See you!

It's so damn hard right now because we have to switch every few weeks between story writing, coding, marketing. We need to grow our community so we can make a successful kickstarter in a few months. Please spread the word wherever you can. Thank you.

We're almost there. As I'm stating in my recent post here we've developed the core gameplay elements N.E.R.S., P.A.D., and X-ONAR already. In a few weeks, at the next coding session we'll start working on the Ear-mode exclusively.

So, please hold on! Testing is not that far off already and we are super excited :)

P.S. Are there actually content creators/writers here who would be interested in developing IAX (Interactive Audio Experience) content via our upcoming sonicS engine or online platform? If so I'd like to invite you to register here because the first 100 ambitious creators who join us will get free lifetime access to sonicS!

We appreciate every little help from the bottom of our hearts.
Thank you Dominique for pushing that idea. Indeed, we could use additional manpower soon, preferably in these areas:

1. native English speakers for editing story and dialogues
2. translators (English to French, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Chinese, Japanese,
Russian, Portuguese, Korean)
3. a passionate sound engineer with a home studio or access to a pro studio who can strive for quality without the time pressure you have with big studios. We need someone in the east of North America (Canada-Toronto,US-Chicago,Detroit, New York)
4. anytime and anywhere: social media people who spread the word and maybe have some own cool and creative marketing ideas

If you can do something or know someone who can please email me: support ( at ) tgwstw.com

With programmers it's a bit different. No one likes messing around with someone else's code because it can be a real pain, especially on such relatively small projects.

@Dominique Stansberry That's great news. I'm working with Reaper too. I could imagine you preparing the sound scenes loosely so I could just open such a prearranged project, choose the best takes and complete the scene. I'll think about the whole process and will email you.

As to the whole ear-mode you have made some good points there. Some of them are already on our draft. We want to keep it simple and immersive. That's one of the reasons why we want to use our own system voice that is exactly how we need it in pitch, speed, and tone. Only that way we have the guarantee that everyone listens to the same audio quality and has the same level of immersion.

1. rewind/fast forward - Could you elaborate on that? If you mean the main audio, I couldn't imagine jumping to different points in the story and omitting important logic where your choices should be made. But rewinding just the system voice wouldn't make sense either. I'm sorry if I got you wrong or there's something I didn't consider.

2. A very good point to check if a voice reader is enabled and if it is, then play back an advice to turn it off.

3. As to saving, we've planned to implement automatic cloud saving, so you'll have access to your progress device-independent. The question is: Do you find you still need an option to save manually? This would have the advantage, that you could also load different slots instead of only the auto-save. Just in case you'd want to jump to a specific point.

4. Swiping through the P.A.D. We have 12 actions to choose from. A user from the audiogames community suggested to do it in a grid. So you don't have to swipe up and down through all 12 actions but instead you could snap directly into a grid, because with time you know exactly which actions sit in which grid. Do you guys see it the same way?

Thanks for your engagement, Dom. I really appreciate it.

Point 3 and 4 is addressed to everyone. Please let me know what you think.

Hey Fans Of Story Driven Entertainment!

A first small bit of the N.E.R.S. module is ready to be tested (including an ear-mode prototype). Do not expect too much, because it's very short but you will get a feeling for it and will be able to give a feedback if this is the direction we should go.

I’d like to encourage you to read our new blog post here and also join our community here, so we could have a discussion altogether in one single place. You should get a Test-Flight invitation by the end of the day if Apple will give me a smooth app-sign-process which unfortunately is not always the case.

@Remy We could use that for marketing purposes :)
Oh, I thought we had you in our tester group already. If that's not the case just join our community (link in my previous post) with the email address you want to be used for Test Flight. Thanks.

@Orinks & @kenny Did you get a Test Flight invitation already? I hope so. If not please email me with your appropriate address and I will double check. Also - always check your spam folder.

@TO ALL
Well, we have nearly 100 testers and most of them did install the app, but only two got back to me with a feedback. It would be really helpful if more people would let us know what they think. A simple "It's ok." or "Well done" is enough. Just so we know if you like it or not.

The whole testing - although it's very short - took quite some time to prepare and go through. Now we get back to developing and writing. I created one additional goodie for you so you can check the progress in an convenient way and see how we are moving forward. (I suppose at snail's pace but still forward). It's a devlog packed into infographics. You can find them via the following link https://www.thegirlwhosoldtheworld.com/devlog
(Let me know if it works with your voice readers. It should because it's implemented as text)
I will post a new one every time there we made significant progress.
So long!

@DMNagel Thanks!