2019-02-01 18:11:59

This sounds to me like MindSight on steroids.
Little to know gameplay, to much emphasis on the meaning of being blind, and virtually no replayability for the 20 minutes you spend on completing it sad.
I'm not negatively commenting here, but now I come to think about it, although what I said back in post 12 of the first G Gun topic, people didn't agree with, it's sought of true if you look at the first impression posts here.

Though our eyes may fail, our ears prevail!
User Karma, every little helps

2019-02-01 18:27:02

david_oliva wrote:

As many of you know, Mikko Herranen is blind, and he is part of the team. He will actually write a message in this forum tonight, to say to many of you "what's up maaaan!", as soon as he has some time from his other music projects. He might comment about the touching face thing, or perhaps not, but I promise (or it was a dream?) that he told me that he had the attention of few chicks on his life with the trick of let me touch your face. But perhaps I'm wrong.


Disclaimer: Please know that this is my opinion. If you differ you still are a valuable human being.
Maybe this is a cultural difference and in your country its not to big of a deal to touch others faces. If so - never mind.
But where I live this situation would be really awkward for everyone involved. Only because you're blind you cannot easily cross this social border. If you do so this makes you a creep. The only reason somebody would accept this is because of pitty for the blind person.
This "may I touch your face because I obviously can see you then and this has of course no sexual connotation" thing might be viable at the end of a very successful date or something. In all other situations it is considered really bad behaviour amongst all blind people I know.
This thing seems to go of the rails somehow, it is almost of topic now - sorry for that. But this forum I think is not just about audio gaming but also about blind representation.

2019-02-01 18:30:58

greetings.
i have an android and i am certainly not accepting the fact that you won't update the game to fix the talkback problem cause you are concentrating on the next episod. this is just me though.
i wana play this game like the IOS users. so please fix the problem asap

don't wish to become like the oceans, the flowers, or the sun. oceans will dry out, flowers will die, and the sun will be extinguished. be yourself and nothing and no one else and hope for a better tomorrow.

2019-02-01 18:39:26

Damn abdullah, really?
You probably already have bought the whole company for thousands of dollars and thus have earned the right to order them around like your subordinates. But why don't you just talk to them in person then? Don't spam the forum with your private conversations!

2019-02-01 19:08:57

Ok, I have a small problem.
First, my tablet turns into landscape and I know that is normal.
But, obtions are arranged like new game at the bottom and setings at the top.
Do I keep the tablet in the wrong position?
And second, it asks me to tilt right or left and I do it, but after afew seconds it says to kill me, so, yeah, don't know what I am doing wrong.
I am using a Lenovo tab 3, the 8 inkes version, on android 6.0.

I am myself and noone is ever gonna change me, I am the trolling master!

2019-02-01 19:11:54

Hi.
@david_oliva: Thanks for your reply. If you previously have said anything regarding the blind thing in the story, then I'm sorry I have missed it. I see where you're coming from, and the reason for introducing people to blind people. I still have my opinion, but I'm glad you are aware of this, and will take action on it in the story in the future episodes.
I look very much forward to check out the future episodes, and to see what kind of challenging gameplays it will offer. Keep up the great development.

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
Facebook: https://facebook.com/sorenjensen1988
Twitter: https://twitter.com/soerenjensen

2019-02-01 19:15:57

Hi.
Sorry for double posting, but this message is quite important for those you are having issues with the tilt function:
Gyroscopes works differently depending on what device you have. On some devices, you have to move the device quickly for the gyroscope to react. On other devices, you have to shake the device hard to get the gyroscope to react. I hope you figure it out.

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
Facebook: https://facebook.com/sorenjensen1988
Twitter: https://twitter.com/soerenjensen

2019-02-01 19:58:18

no need to repeat over over over and again
this is won't get you somewhere
they stated mentioned already,  this is first episode,  so bugs will be happen
every first release games have poor voice acting and bugs,  come and tell me about,  you creating the games,  without zero bugs real?
course, you are updating the games,  and these updates going to fix bugs surely
who would say here, example,  developer harry johnson created a game first beta without zero bugs,  so that's impossible a thing
all games have bugs in the first beta or first release whatever
keep up the good work!
looking forward to see next episode

2019-02-01 20:42:34

Okay I've been away today since I was having a singing lesson and spending some time at my parents so haven't been able to check the boards.
I have however played gold gun episode 1 through, and I'm going to give my thoughts now.

I apologise if I happen to  repeat something someone else has said or if I'm breaking in on a discussion in mid flow, since I'm deliberately writing my thoughts about the game before I've read anyo0ne else's, indeed the only post I've read in this topic was David's first post mentioning the game's release.

First, as a positive point I like the audio including the background music. The acting is sort of fun (the Russian gangster or  whoever he was at the  made me laugh  for being so wonderfully overthetop), I also liked at least some of the dialogue, for example the point where Soren taunts Hugo about not being beautiful.

I also  like the sort of matrix setup for the game itself, and I thought the final rotation puzzle was an interesting use of the Iphone haptics even if it was over rather too quickly to be really difficult.

Now on to the less good stuff.
Firstly, the gameplay is really easy. essentially just hear and react by sliding the phone with no judgement involved. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with that, but tits exactly the same thing we've seen in audiogames time and time before.
I thought I would give things a pass since it seemed to be a tutorial, but right at the  stage we seemed to be getting into the game properly, the thing ended.

That is my second point, I very much hope the paid chapters of the game are longer than this one.
I started the game on a train journey, played for 15-twenty minutes, had to stop since we were getting into the station, then started again and had finished within two more minutes.
In the previous topic I said that I had no problem paying 2.5 Euroes for a game considering that that is what I would pay for a cup of coffee, and a game would last me longer than a cup of coffee, I'm afraid though, this game literally does! last me as long to finish as a cup of coffee.
Of course, if this first episode is just a preview and later chapters will be far longer, that is fair enough.

if however this is the planned length of each episode, then I will say I would be disappointed for a commercial game.

Lastly, the character.
I'm afraid this was my major issue here.
Soren is so sterreotypically blind. every topic of conversation is blindness, he has to have people describe every room to him even in a familiar place, and it takes a contrived audio interface to give a reason for him to actually do what he does.
He even did the "let me touch your face thing", which is something I've honestly never known a blind person do in reality, but something which for some odd reason every sighted person tends to assume blind people do do.


As I said previously, I don't mind playing a character who happens to be blind, but in this game, Soren is very much a "blind!" character with a capital blind! everything he does is blind! and based on very standard blindness tropes.

I'm afraid in general, Gold gun has a lot of the hallmarks of a first audiogame, from reaction based gameplay,  a central concept and character that is so much about "blindness" it isn't about much else.

I will admit this aspect of things I am disappointed in, since I was hoping we would have a crime drama with actual interesting confrontations and plot.

All that being said, there are positives here, I like the audio, and the sf plot has potential to be an interesting one, also I will very much hope that gameplay will get away from  simple "here it, hit it" model and into something a little more detailed in future, indeed when Soren was being guided around his office I did wonder if we were in for  full scale first person adventure to replace Pappasangre.

So, while I will freely admit to being a trifle underwhelmed with this particular instalment, I hope things will improve in the future, especially if the Mytruesound team can take a few of these cryticisms on board.

Oh, and I'm still looking forward to audio wizards big_smile.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2019-02-01 20:55:55 (edited by Dark 2019-02-01 22:39:52)

Sorry for the double post, I've just read through the topic, and I appologise for bringing up points that had already been mentioned (as I said I wanted to give my own first impressions bias free, especially since I know opinions of some are inclined to be harsh).

I'm glad that the developers are so aware of issues and taking things on board for moving forward.
If you'd like any voice acting doing, both myself and my wife would be very happy to help, we both have a good deal of stage experience, and some voice acting experience too.
I am English with a typical English accent, while my wife is American, though we can both do accents if need be.

Please drop me a message by  pm on this forum or email me on dr dot lukehewitt at g mail dot com  if this would be helpful.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2019-02-01 21:27:28

I don't know if I'll say anything that hasn’t been said already but here goes. I could not make it through the whole thing do to boredom. Everything is basically double tapping and tilting the controls need to be a lot better. For example swiping the direction you want to fire. The story for me is way too much seen and not enough action and the touching the face thing like really? That honestly made me gag a little. Also the constent prompts were kind of annoying when and when you cannot act. I'm really not trying to slam the developers because this is their first game but it needs a lot of work. Better controls, less talking, get rid of the prompts telling you what to do maybe have a brief introduction on how to do things, and I'm kind of disappointed that there's no driving in this game. Like does the cop have to be blind? I’ve noticed that that has been a common theme across smart phone games and it is starting to get old for me. Just my thoughts and thanks for the game.

Kingdom of Loathing name JB77

2019-02-01 22:17:10

Thank you for at least not roasting the game quite as much, but the developer is aware of all of this. When they're trying to pitch a game for funding, they have to stick to your plan in order to satisfy investors. But now it's only uphill from here.

2019-02-01 23:27:30

hey there.
first, they said they're not gonna update the android version for those of us that has issues with talkback, and now you are telling me that i am ordering them? ok fine then. but i am as a customer i have my oppinions. isn't equal access a part of the forums policy?

don't wish to become like the oceans, the flowers, or the sun. oceans will dry out, flowers will die, and the sun will be extinguished. be yourself and nothing and no one else and hope for a better tomorrow.

2019-02-01 23:36:28

no need for updating the android version really,           because you suspend talk back and you have built in speech, like on alot of games.

I am myself and noone is ever gonna change me, I am the trolling master!

2019-02-01 23:47:56

Yeah in a lot of android audio games we just suspend talkback so its not really an issue. If you really want to play with talkback on just add an extra finger to your taps and swipes, but it might just be easier to turn it off anyway.

2019-02-02 00:03:41 (edited by mherrane 2019-02-02 00:07:23)

Hello everybody and thanks for your interest on our first release.
I read through this whole thread here and somehow it's sad to realize how negative many of you seem to be. It's true our game is far from perfect, the voice actors, the lack of playability, clumsy unnecessary talk of blindness, I wish these aspects could be better from day one but this is where we are now.

Before going on I have to point out that I'm blind, as blind as those of you who seem to have the guts to define the rules for us all,  the whole blind community I mean. I've been like this my whole life which is by now almost 43 years...I'm telling this since it seems some of of you seem to think Goldgun is kind of an insult from  sighted against us blind they can't understand.

Like David said, we released the pilot episode as a free download since we wanted to have all the feedback, the good and the bad, to be able to make things better and also to consider if this all is really worth the effort it takes.

I thank all of you for your honest feedback, in many cases (like the talk of blindness and lack of playability) it's quite much the same as mine.

There are some things among the feedback I'd like to talk about though.
To be honest the "can I touch your face"-idea came from me, the only blind guy involved in the whole team, haha....I was surprised it caused so much bad criticism. I'm married to a sighted woman, been the last 10 years, kids and stuff. Really without this comment things could be completely different. And believe it or not my social skills are above average (not only my opinion). The question here is do you know what kind of games are going on all the time among the sighted when they play the "human realtion-games"? Also how do you flirt with the sighted without face emotions and all those little movements we (the blind I mean) don't have a clue of...Yes, we can be good at talking but do they let us talk or take us seriously even though we do?
Of course this is something that truly needs the right skills and the right people in the right situation. This is not an opening line when you meet new people, but haven't you really thought that Soren and Maria knew each other before the briefing...Or is Mrs. officer just lacking social skills here when she doesn't introduce two new team mates to each other smile? So, to summarize. we all have our ways and nobody should make the rules for others...Also if we want to get picky, Soren just got blind so he might not know the rules (just joking here).

About the blind talk: This is something I really tried to be taken away completely...I was really "scared" when I finally heard the dialogues. I quite much hated every single one of them, haha and thought they would be a deal breaker for many, me among the others.
Unfortunately (from this point of view) I work extra-long days as a fulltime music producer and a performing artist and my time for MyTrueSound is limited. The truth is that when I heard all the blind talk,  it was too late to remove it completely. Also the truth is that Aku, the guy who wrote the script doesn't have any blind contacts or experience...except me with whom he talked once on the phone before writing Episode one. So please forgive the guy, he definitely didn't mean any harm.

Since he feedback (as partly expected) has been so negative, I tell you something about the developing background.

A year ago, we started to develop our first game. We had quite much 0-resources, just a good idea of making cooler games than (at least I think) most of the current audiogames are...I'm an active Playstation player, even though my playing sucks most of the time smile...I just love the games, the atmos, the sounds, the stories..As much as playing I love watching my sighted friends play games I'm not able to. Assassin's creed, Mad Max, Last Of Us, Red Dead Redemption. Story games...I get much more out of them than I get from movies.

Our first game (which hopefully some day still hits the market) was about to be an "escape room" kind of multiplayer...yes, we do have multiplayer technique ready for mobile phones, believe it or not. Two players could play over the internet and try to solve puzzles and missions to get from one room to another (you press this switch, I press that one so the door opens and so on).
The game had free movement, 3D directional sound, the players could speak to each other and the sound changed depending on the distance from one to another and many other very cool things that really made it better than most audiogames in the market (of course just my personal opinion). We ran into serious problems with 3rd party plugins and the Unity game engine, so serious we finally had to ditch the whole project, start all over again and on top of that write our own game engine which would serve better the needs of audiogames than Unity does. I'm not a programmer so I wont go into details here...If the more tech oriented of you are interested, I can find out more about the technical details here.

Anyway. At the same time we got a minimal funding from AVEK (an organization that helps the developers of audio visual content here in Finland) to make our first game demo. We knew that we were stuck with the Escape Room thing so we wanted to make a game to show people that IMAGE (Immersive Audio Game Engine) works in practice. GoldGun Episode 1 is the result of this. Like GoldGun, Image is also still in development but I can tell you that we really have some serious coding skills among our team. If you don't believe me now, you will when our multiplayers and other cool things hit the market.

One more thing...Somebody asked about our motives to make audio games...the motivation really comes from trying to improve the gaming culture among us, to bring more games (and quality games) to the table...It's harder than we thought but that's where we're aiming at...Please don't shoot us down just because we released something many of you didn't like..There's still much more to come but unfortunately we have to make mistakes and learn on the way and since we don't have big money for neither development or production like SomethinElse and such,we have to take the hard way or there's no way for us at all.

Sorry for a long post. All the best to everybody! Oh and please check out the Episode 2 when the time comes smile.

-- Mikko

Wanna hear music composed, produced and performed by (mostly) me, here you go:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeluxpGJWio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G638xWmbdBQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aYQv0mQP9Y

2019-02-02 00:10:47

The game certainly seems to have potential in terms of story, but methinks I may wait until more than one episode becomes available before I dive in. I get the impression that episode 1 isn't very long, so I'd kind of like to have more episodes to playbefore I begin, even if I don't wait for all seven.

But wait, what's that? A transport! Saved am I! Hark, over here! Hey nonny non, please help!

2019-02-02 02:17:27 (edited by jack 2019-02-02 02:19:19)

abdullah_mohammad wrote:

ok fine then. but i am as a customer i have my oppinions. isn't equal access a part of the forums policy?

I want to pretend I didn't just hear that, but I can't. Equal access a part of the forum's policy. Ok, so by that logic:
Let's remove all the mainstream games because there's no menu you wil fix immediately as a customer I am expect lot from yu and...
You know what I mean, your argument doesn't make sense. If equal access was a part of the forum policy we wouldn't be getting anywhere, because how the hell would you regulate that kind of thing? If you were talking about the database's policy on access, that's a different ballpark altogether, because people new to audiogames quite obviously may not want to hear about a game that requires memorization of a multilevel menu, yet. Needless to say, I know something that would probably not belong in the forum policy: entitlement and blatant demotivational bitching.
Android is lacking in good quality games, and we just got one, and there's a bit of an issue with...version 1.0 for shit sakes, that didn't cost you a dime to download, and your entitled ass has to go on here and bash the project? What kind of feedback is that?
I have an Android device myself and am a trifle irked at the issue with the menus not speaking, but know they are looking into why that is. They didn't have enough Androids to test the game on, so it is understandable that issues like this are bound to happen. But they never said they would not! update the android app, they just might've said they weren't going to be able to do it right away.
Shit, and people wonder why mainstream developers are often advised to steer clear of this forum. Get a grip, people.
Mikko @mherrane, thanks for this post and glad to see you on the forum along with the rest of the guys. It's nice to hear a bit of the inside scoop on this game's creation, and I  completely get where the script-writer could've done some more research and maybe gotten more info from more blind folks. Nevertheless, this is still again episode 1, so this all being said I believe both of you when you point out that now that episode 1 is out in the wild it's only uphill from here.

2019-02-02 08:26:01

Hi.
Let me clarify something here.
The audio aspect is great, the 3d audio effects you implement in your game are great and the sounds are appropriately placed. The sfx however are of low quality. That's what makes the audio not as good as it could be.

Another thing is the blindness issue. If those who funded your game wanted you to raise awareness about the issue of being blind, let me give you an example.
The other person could ask the guy if he wants to touch her face and he can say no it's ok.
this would turn a very bad deal into a less worrying deal, since the blind person would show that blind people don't require such interactions.

Sorry again for being so blunt yesterday, you really didn't deserve it. Keep up the good work.

ReferenceError: Signature is not defined.

2019-02-02 10:32:44

Hi.
@Mikko:
Thanks for telling about the interesting background about the development of the game. The multiplayer stuff sounds extremely amazing. I didn't knew it is possible to make such things on the iPhone, where you can talk to other people. Wow...
I have said what I wanted to say regarding the blindness subject, and choose to only focus on the game and the future development. Keep up the awesome job guys.

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
Facebook: https://facebook.com/sorenjensen1988
Twitter: https://twitter.com/soerenjensen

2019-02-02 10:39:34

ogomez92 wrote:

Hi.

Another thing is the blindness issue. If those who funded your game wanted you to raise awareness about the issue of being blind, let me give you an example.
The other person could ask the guy if he wants to touch her face and he can say no it's ok.
this would turn a very bad deal into a less worrying deal, since the blind person would show that blind people don't require such interactions.

Sorry again for being so blunt yesterday, you really didn't deserve it. Keep up the good work.

Hi ogonez92. Don't know if you read my previous post and I really hope you do, it helps you understand the point here even if you disagree...I see exactly what you mean...I've been in the same situation quite a many times but this is not the case here. This is not related to people knowing how to be with the blind, it's related to "social audio games with no visuals" smile.
Please read and get back to the conversation if it's still needed.

All the best!

- M

2019-02-02 15:30:14

@ogomez92:

Mherrane wrote:

The truth is that when I heard all the blind talk,  it was too late to remove it completely. Also the truth is that Aku, the guy who wrote the script doesn't have any blind contacts or experience...except me with whom he talked once on the phone before writing Episode one.

To that end, if perhaps they had contributed or had more time to edit the script, I'm sure something similar to what you were saying would've been in the script. Fact is, correct me if I"m wrong, but if you have investors to satisfy, aren't you then tied to a hard deadline - if you say the game is going to be out by the 31, then it needs to be on or around the 31st no questions asked?
Either way, they had said they would have removed that stuff from future episodes.

2019-02-02 16:24:11

jack wrote:

:
To that end, if perhaps they had contributed or had more time to edit the script, I'm sure something similar to what you were saying would've been in the script. Fact is, correct me if I"m wrong, but if you have investors to satisfy, aren't you then tied to a hard deadline - if you say the game is going to be out by the 31, then it needs to be on or around the 31st no questions asked?
Either way, they had said they would have removed that stuff from future episodes.

Hi Jack
No. We don't have investors to satisfy. We just need to satisfy our future clients.

I wish we would have investors behind, so I could pay a proper salary to the team. What I meant the other day was, that if we get 10000 downloads, we would be able to prove that there is a potential market, because that's is why the have asked from us. To believe and invest on us they demand a proof. At the end, all the blind community will benefit from that. If we can not prove them that there is a business potential, then we are still far, or at least we will move slow, until the time when have moved from amateur to a pro team.

For this GoldGun, we had a legal binding though with the funding instrument that gave us money to make the first pilot (AVEK). We had to stick to what we have told them that we would do on the funding application, and I take full responsibility of what there was written. And in that first script version there was Soren, who was the blind policeman in charge to play the GoldGun only by listening to the game audio, because the police department was only able to hack the audio and not the visual.

Even thought some betatesters said they didn't like the dialogue, there was not much we could do, because we could not brake our contract with AVEK, and then because I needed to move forward and not get stuck on the first episode but to move to the next one and make it better.

All this being said, I would say at this point: I will not be able to answer those chats anymore to talk about the same issue of the blindness in the game. We made an error, and we will not do it anymore. Period.

Now I need to move forward; Analyze the feedback, present it to the team, study our next script which is kind of ready, design with Maksim the new minigames, supervise the work related to the audio quality of the game, look for money to pay the next salaries, get a proper office for the guys, write a couple of applications, and on top of that, the 8 hours a day that I work at the University. So kind of busy. And now my son asks me to go to play in the snow, so I'm out. I think I might not comment anything about GoldGun episode 1 anymore. I've said all what I have to say, and then I need to look forward and not back.

Best regards to all
have a long life
enjoy the games you think are cool
please don't hate the ones you didn't like
pineapple in pizza is okay
but you don't need to order it if you dislike tha' fruit

sincerely
david

mytruesound.com - we hear the difference

2019-02-02 16:41:09

Yeah, I would agree, I think we've all said all that needs to be said at this point.

2019-02-02 18:19:28

The blind stereotype stuff bothered me. I turned off the game and don't know if I'll play again if I have to endure that the entire time. I cut it off after the touch your face thing, like come on, if you're writing a story about a blind protagonist, at least portray blindness accurately. That kind of stuff does a lot of damage, because there are already a lot of misconceptions and stereotypes about us. Luckily, I doubt many, if any at all sighted people will play this, but still. There is a line between sighted and blind, we are apart from them. Some of that is our own fault, in the way we act and behave, and it puts people off, but some of it is just constantly perpetuated stuff. Now, you guys ever seen that show Growing Up Fisher that got canceled? That show was actually funny, but I guess the NFB got angry at it. I thought it was funny mostly because they were accurate about their portrayal of blindness.

Also The audio is maybe 5 out of 10, and I would give it a lower score, but for the positioning and stuff like that, all the reverb I've heard thus far feels unnaturally dampened and not allowed to decay on its own. I also feel the controls are clunky. I've died because even double taps didn't register, then you add the turning stuff with tilting the device, which I actually think is kind of cool, but it just doesn't work right.

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
End racism
End division
Become united