Mobile version of Al Emmo

[Nipples]

Hi Himalaya!!

Are you going to have labeled hotspots in your mobile versions of the game? I hope so! Labeled hotspots are almost a must for touchscreens.

Thanks for being the amazingly wonderful adventure game designers that you are, btw!

[GameDevChris]

If you mean the tooltip hotspot bar that appears at the bottom of the screen in v4.0, then yes, the mobile versions will also feature that. You can drag your finger around the screen and whatever your fingertip is touching at any given time will be displayed textually in the tooltip bar.

There won't, however, be a feature that highlights all of the important hotspots on the screen simultaneously with the touch of a button.

[Nipples]

Yes, the first thing you said is what I meant. Sounds perfect.

Thank you for the information. Happy holidays and happy new year to everyone at Himalaya!

[GameDevChris]

Excellent, excellent. Thanks! And the same to you, Nipples! 

[Nipples]

Any idea when the iOS version of Al Emmo will be available?

Thanks.

Also, congrats on getting the game Greenlit on Steam!

[GameDevChris]

Thanks! (Though, if I knew Valve were going to start Greenlighting pretty much everything, I wouldn't have bothered investing so much time into it. :|)

We're working on the iOS port right now. We ran into a bit of a snag earlier with the cutscene movies. No matter how we optimize the Theora video files, they just don't want to run smoothly on iOS - not even on higher-end iPads, so I had to re-script the entire cutscenes in an alternate form for the smartphone versions of the game.

On iOS, they'll be a series of (sub-titled) 2D stills that appear and disappear in sync with the audio track. At first I was concerned that the result might not look good, but it actually turned out to be pretty effective. (To the point that they probably would have been acceptable like this in the PC version, too, and we could have saved ourselves a bunch of time and money!)

Anyhow, now that the rigmarole is over, we're just implementing some final smartphone functionality (such as dragging your finger over a hotspot and lifting it to trigger interactions). After that we still need to do some testing to ensure everything's working as intended. So hopefully it won't be too much longer!

We also run into some issues with the audio in the Android port for AGS. Those are also being investigated.

[Nipples]

I'm just so happy that there will be iOS versions of your games. Now, with the bigger iPhone 6 models just around the corner, I will be able to play on a decent size screen when I don't have my iPad with me.

That is a shame about the cutscenes, but I'm glad to hear you guys have worked out a good solution. Will this also be an issue for the cutscenes in the iOS version of Mage's?

Keep up the great work!!

[GameDevChris]

Yeah, the video issue will probably affect Mages on iOS too unless the bug gets addressed before the game's release. Unfortunately, the guy who created on the AGS port of iOS got busy and hasn't worked on it for a while now and it appears nobody else with the know-how has stepped up to address the issue, despite the port being open source.

Of course, if it's ever resolved in a future update of the iOS port, we'd be able to re-include the original video cutscenes via a patch/update.

[Nipples]

Also, I like the option to press escape when I want to skip an action (like walking or running across the screen) or conversation. Hopefully an option like this will be available in the mobile versions of these games.

Another thing I wanted to say about Al Emmo is that there is so much funny and clever narration and dialogue (I love it!), but I think it comes across better when you read the text, rather than listen to the narrator actor, who overdoes the condescending aspect, though he is talented. So I think it's great you're apparently trying to go with more "neutral" sounding main character voices.

[Nipples]

Just want to say that I'm almost finished with Al Emmo again (great work on the game, all), and I just realized that the same actor did your KQ3 narration. Whoa. That guy is excellent and so versatile. I definitely prefer the KQ3 style of narration delivery (and I know it's a not a comedy) and would say that sarcasm from the narrator in adventure games, even comedies, probably works best a lot of the time when delivered with a subtle, light touch. There's so much narration in these kinds of games and too much of a strong personality can be a bit much. In smaller amounts it's fine, though. I will say that over time I increasingly liked the delivery of the Al Emmo narration. That actor's talent is undeniable and his work is always so professional.