Competitors

I hope it's a real success. The resurrection of the adventure game genre can be seen in two ways - it can be seen as competition but it could encourage people to buy Tex if they bought another adventure game and liked it - cross selling is definitely a good thing.

Ruben wrote:It will be great to know if it is selling well (Big Finish games may tell us later on). It's currently in the top ten of gog and sixty something of the adventure games on Steam.

Ooh Top Ten before its even released? That is good news.
Also I just looked at GOG and they're doing a Tex Murphy video contest too, I'm happy they're going that little bit extra to promote the Tex series!
http://www.gog.com/news/video_contest_t ... _adventure

I think Steam is a tougher marketplace to break into up the ranks but when the Kickstarter was going there was a lot of work put into a Steam Group to promote Project Fedora (now Tesla Effect). It's still retained over 1,400 members and I've made some announcements there about the game being up for pre-order etc. You can invite others to the group if you're on Steam and hopefully if they see the interest in the Steam Community surrounding its release they'll check it out.
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/tex_mu ... ect_fedora

Moebius thats a joke, its not even in tesla effect glass. I have the backer steam code & well all the reviews are right about this game.

I'm a backer for Mobeius too though the Tex Kickstarter was the only one I paid more than the lowest tier on.

I haven't actually followed Moebius development since the Kickstarter ended but I did watch a trailer recently. I gotta say I wish they had gone with a 2D illustrative style like in the beautiful concept art. The 3D character models are distracting... it's as if they have dislocated shoulders with stringy spaghetti arms, the facial expressions leave something to be desired too.... In the image on the left, it may look as if he's just got the fright of his life, but he's actually just in the middle of casually folding his arms...



Seems review sites are noticing the same things:

Venturebeat: And the things they do with their hands and arms while talking … well, I think an alien could do a better job trying to appear human after observing an Italian family dinner.

Gamespot: Many of the characters, Malachi especially, frequently spasm during their walking animations. Conversations sometimes take an interesting turn as arms occasionally clip into torsos. Other animations are equally peculiar, such as low-quality lip-syncing, which ranges from silly to downright creepy. In one of my early cases, I spoke with a woman who would pick up a cup of espresso, put it back down, and then repeat the motion while rarely taking sips. An investigator would normally see such a movement as nervousness on the subject's part, betraying a feeling of guilt. In Moebius, however, such exaggerated animations, ranging from waving hands to slouching shoulders, are meaningless, and are more distracting then helpful.

I didn't like how poorly the Gabriel Knight series transitioned into 3D. It feels like in the decades since not much has changed in that respect. I don't have a problem with 3D itself as I have played/enjoyed many such games, just the way it's been handled.... I'll just hope the story draws me in enough to ignore the fact everyone seems to be a malnourished contortionist.

At least with Tex Murphy we don't have to worry about unrealistic character animations I understand people got a bad experience of FMV back in the day, so therefore come to them with highly critical pre-conceptions, but all my experiences were great so I sincerely do think having live actors should be another tool for bringing characters to life in game development, alongside 2D / 3D animation.

yes the character seems to walk funny but then again he had just had an accident, but he does look awkward. At least tex voice will sync with his lips

Adventuregamers did a poll recently about which adventure game in April readers were most excited about, and Tesla Effect more than doubled its nearest competitor, Moebius. I don't think that's a real worry.

Among the hardcore adventure game audience, Tesla Effect will get its due. The tough part will be getting the word out to the people who haven't been following any of these games.

Something interesting on the GOG forums for Moebius:

Here is the strange walking motion in the demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHjfUJU9B9A

But the surprising thing is the if I play the demo in 3D using 3D Vision glasses and monitor, the walking motion LOOKS NORMAL. Here is a capture of the demo when I played it in 3D: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcwLxVSnwyw
I converted the image to 2D so everyone can see it. This has to be the strangest feature (bug?) I have ever seen.

Later:
Hey, I found the cause and solution for the strange walking motion. It is caused by my monitor's 120 Hz refresh rate. I changed it to 60 Hz and the walking motion looked normal, just as it looked in 3D. The reason 3D looked normal because 3D creates 60 Hz images.

Wilco: Yeah we haven't ever been able to figure out why the 120hz thing has such an odd effect on the walking animation. We'll continue to try and sort that one out though. One of the stranger things I've ever encountered.

So it only looks good on specific monitors? Weird...