E.Y.E - French indie Cyberpunk FPS-RPG

[skacky]

Man I didn't know there was a thread for E.Y.E on TTLG.
I'm one of the devs by the way. I mainly create levels.

So yeah the game should be out very soon. Concerning the little sentences like 'SupraHuman reflex saved me!', they are just some indicators telling you what happened. (like if you avoided a deadly hit thanks to your luck or some other things)
If you have any other questions I'll gladly answer them.

[Briareos H]

It's not that we don't get it, it's that it's stupid and doesn't fit the general tone of the genre. None of the team's attempts at humour - both in the game and trailers - were successful. Look what people said here, look what they said over at CPC or at NoFrag. It's going to be even worse when you sell it to english speakers because the english is quite tacky.

I know I'm overly negative skacky, but it's because of the great divide between what looks like a very interesting (I was even tempted to say "awesome") game and something coming out of the feverish mind of someone who ate all the onions left in the kebab box on a saturday night watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Yeah I'm stopping with the couch-sitting references now, I think you all get it.

[skacky]

Every opinion is good to take, don't feel bad for saying negative things as long as it is constructive. If the messages bother you too much, you will always be able to disable them in the options menu.

Concerning the general tone of the cyberpunk genre, we're trying to offer a game that sort of goes in another direction, following the steps of games such as Fallout for its humour. While the background and the storyline of the game are serious, the other little aspects have humour applied to them. It's not very visible on the trailer since it is mainly packed in the dialogues or the sound files. It may or may not work, and we're aware of this. But like they say, no pain no gain. We're just trying different things from the other games.

[Briareos H]

Okay. I'm hoping for the best. Can you try to get someone to remove the blank space between words and exclamation marks in the english subtitles before release?

[skacky]

Sure, we needed to fix that anyway.

[Pemptus]

Ooh, missed this game somehow. Looking pretty good, but please, whoever on the team is the most responsible for adding "humor" - tie him to a chair or something. Something that might work in French (does it really?) sounds just inane in English. This could pretty much ruin a perfectly good game.

[Jason Moyer]

I don't mind having status messages, but the English isn't very concise. IMHO it would be better if it just said "reflex save" or "level up" or "critical".

[dethtoll]

I have to agree. If you're going to have messages like that, you have to get as much info as possible into as few words and letters as possible.

[ZylonBane]

Also, what the fuck is that "SupraHuman Reflex saved me!" shit?

I can't leave without my buddy SupraHuman Reflex!

[lost_soul]

*reads thread title
*notices "indie", "FPS", and "Deus Ex"
*becomes VERY interested
...
*reads that it will use Source engine and interest fades away

Why don't you Indie devs use the HPL engine? The first one is open source and I'm sure Frictional would let you use the HPL2 engine for a reasonable price. As a bonus, it has a lighting/shadowing system from this century. Every game from now on should have per-pixel lighting as standard.

[dethtoll]

"BAW IT'S NOT OPEN SOURCE"

[skacky]

We heard you and we fixed/modified the little sentences. They should be better now.

About the engine, we decided to use the Source Engine after we started our project on the first CryEngine. I wasn't part of the team yet then. But we decided to switch to Source since it was more flexible and easier to work on, and the license was also cheaper.

While probably not the best engine compared to Unreal or Crysis technology, we decided to stay on Source rather than rebuild everything from scratch using another engine. And with the improvements brought by the Orange Box games, Left 4 Dead 2 and Portal 2, the Source Engine is in its best shape. And another pro for Source is that it runs on a large amount of configurations.

[mgeorge]

This looks interesting. Release date soon?

[mothra]

I like it. I find the messages rather funny. suprahuman reflex saved me. gonna have to buy him a beer someday and say thanks.

[EvaUnit02]

Is all the stupid humour referencing marijuana smoking still present in the game? Honestly all that shit needs to go, it goes against the grim, serious tone generally associate with Cyberpunk.

[henke]

We heard you and we fixed/modified the little sentences. They should be better now.

Cool! Thanks for taking our stupid whining and bitching CONSRUCTIVE CRITICISM onboard! I realize that you can't start altering any big things at this late stage. The game overall really does look like it'll be fun to play.

[EvaUnit02]

Honestly the protagonist referring to himself in the on screen pops (eg "I've increased my level!", "SupraHuman reflexes saved me!") looks really awkward in English. If a character say wore eyewear displaying a HUD, the on screen messages displayed to the character likely wouldn't be specific like that. It's probably best to go for more generic messages like "Level up", "Experience points gained".

I found another promo video on their IndieDB page.

[Bakerman]

Can't wait for a demo of this, or something! Props to skacky for braving the forums, and also for fixing those messages. I've been listening to the soundtrack... good moody stuff, if a little plain. It actually sits quite well next to the TRON Legacy soundtrack which I've had in for a while - less bombast and techno-buzzes, more atmosphere. (Not to belittle TRON's soundtrack at all... it's awesome.)

[Shadowcat]

lost_soul: You know, I'm actually with you on several topics. I hate DRM. I love open source. Linux/*BSD/etc are all brilliant. But how the hell do you profess love for Deus Ex, one of the best examples around of why gameplay > graphics, and then say you've lost interest in a game purely on the grounds of the game engine used to make it, because you don't think the lighting will be acceptable?

And did you just suggest that rather than releasing the game in a few weeks, they instead re-develop it in a new engine? Or was that merely a suggestion for future games?

Maybe you genuinely are just trolling in these forums...

[EvaUnit02]

No, no, Lost_soul dislikes Source engine because it's made by Valve, the company behind Steam. He doesn't want to give money to Valve. Too bad that he's too thick to understand that the developer would've already paid a one-off licensing fee to the engine's owner (There aren't any royalties paid to Valve with each copy sold, unless the game's sold exclusively through the Steam shop, but those royalties would be still be completely unrelated to middleware licensing.).

Though this reason is just as absurd as to why you believed he disliked Source, because of the lighting.

[Jason Moyer]

This looks promising enough that if it's around $15-20 on Steam I'll buy it without checking reviews or anything. Good to see they're listening to feedback, at least in regards to the translation. Hopefully there will be some sort of localization table that will make it easy for native English folks to tweak things if necessary.

[lost_soul]

You can create a more believable environment with better lighting and better technology. For example, when I saw slide projectors that actually "worked" in Penumbra, I was completely drawn into the world. I had to hold up an object in front of the projector and rotate the object around as the light projection stretched/deformed across it based on the angle of said object in an eerily realistic way.

I'm not saying you must use the absolute top of the line engine to have a good game. DX:IW had a top-notch engine and the game was not nearly as good as the first which had stiff physics and circle shadows.

I'm saying you should use an engine where you maintain full control of your end product (aren't tied to Steam) and you can use the full feature set that has been standard on graphics cards for at least half a decade.

[Shadowcat]

The Source engine is not tied to Steam. (e.g. My DVD copy of Dark Messiah has no requirement for a Steam account.)

And I would suggest that a developer should use the engine that best allows them to make the game they want to make with the resources they have available to them. The quantity of technical features are not necessarily the primary concern.

I strongly agree that it would be preferable if the developers had full control over all of the code, but frankly that doesn't seem to happen all that often even when licensed middleware isn't involved (it would at least make it easier, though).

[dethtoll]

Because I don't think Shadowcat was forceful enough:

Source engine isn't tied to Steam you fucking dipshit. And two, DX:IW had a terrible engine.

Seriously, stop posting. Nothing you have said in this thread is correct in any way.

[Jason Moyer]

Penumbra and Amnesia are phenomenal games, but I'd say that's despite their engine rather than because of it.