Kickstarter

Hi ya, Kickstarters! Al Lowe here. It looks like we are EXTREMELY close to the finish line!

And it appears that Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded will be the first Kickstarted game to ship!

N-Fusion hasn’t wasted the last few weeks; they’ve made improvements to the game everywhere. I can’t wait for you to see it. While I’m proud we did the right thing and waited to ship until all the bugs were exterminated, we did much, much more: hundreds of new sound effects, redesigned menus with new artwork, user interface improvements, and even additional voiceovers. This truly is the best Larry game we can bring you.

And our mutual wait is almost over!

E3 Action

Paul Trowe and I spent last week at E3 in Los Angeles and had a blast. We had loads of interviews with the foreign press. (U.S. press coverage was handled earlier, at GDC.) Even though Replay didn’t have a booth (a nice one would only cost all the money we raised on Kickstarter!), Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded was on display in several other booths. Reports were universally positive, as was the response from the press who’ve seen it. So far, so good.

E3 week began with a bang: on Monday night, Paul and I joined Austin Wintory and Melora Hardin at Typhoon (a Santa Monica restaurant and jazz spot) for gig by the Late Night Jazz Orchestra. Wow, what a band! I knew they were good players after watching them record our soundtrack and this night cemented that reputation.

But the highlight for us Larryites came in their second set when they played several of the cuts from the Larry OST. Melora sang her song from the game while Austin accompanied. She looked as good as she sounds!

I just happened to have a saxophone mouthpiece in my pocket (heh, heh) so I borrowed a sax and played the Leisure Suit Larry Theme Song with them. They even gave me an opening cadenza. It was a musical highlight that I won’t soon forget!

If your Kickstarter reward level includes a download of the original soundtrack and you haven’t grabbed it yet, what are you waiting for?

Press Previews

We’ve received scores of previews from gaming sites since the beta was released and they’ve been nearly unanimous in their praise. We’re (almost) blushing! Here’s one from yesterday on Destructoid.

I’m hoping the actual reviews will be as sweet.
Another Game to Kickstart

Josh sends along news of another adventure game with a Kickstarter campaign: The St. Christopher’s School Lockdown. It’s an homage to the Sierra and Lucasarts games we love and they need your help. Josh says,

“I’m incredibly impressed by their art style, by the fascinating political theme of the story, by their extremely well thought-out plan for the series, and by the team of individuals who are working on the game. PLEASE go over to their Kickstarter site and show your support for the game and, if you can’t see your way through to supporting it monetarily, just helping spread the word would, I’m sure, be of inestimable benefit to their project.”

Well said, Josh!

Wrap-Up

Once the game goes live, you’ll want to download it but remember: you have to register first. Watch for another update from Britton with instructions on what to do, how, and when.

Of course, game discs take time to be pressed and assembled, and some of the physical rewards need to be autographed, so those won’t ship for a few more weeks. (What? Game discs don’t burn themselves?) So please have patience. We promise: we’re working as fast as we can to speed your items to you!

It’s been a fun year for me and I mean this sincerely: we literally could not have done it without you! Thank you so much for your faith in us (and Larry).

As Larry would say, “It won’t be long now!”

When Al, Josh and Paul first called me about scoring LSL I was rather speechless, and truthfully I still am. The Sierra adventure games were a huge part of my life back in the day, and so this gave me the chance to explore something real personally meaningful. And on top of that was the chance to work with an amazing big band: the Late Night Jazz Orchestra. Wait until to you hear these guys! Actually, don't wait. Watch this:

It goes without saying that I *love* Al's original Larry theme, and so I clung to it rather fiercely throughout the score. Even though this is a fundamentally new Larry, in terms of the music, hopefully it feels like one big tip of the hat. But that said, one of the first questions I asked Al was if he had any sort of agenda to recapture the previous scores, to which he confidently said "No, in fact I'd be disappointed if you did anything other than what YOU want to do." So what you hear is equal parts silly, grimy, and rather naively romantic. That last aspect in particular was of fun ... I became sort of obsessed with trying to make Larry feel almost like this idealistic romantic guy, and not some sleazeball, so hopefully you'll feel a genuine, earnest romance in the music too (which of course ends up being rather hilarious when you pair that with some of the dialogue these guys wrote).

To cap it all off, Josh and I collaborated on an original song called "Tiers of Joy," which was sung by the amazing, incredible Melora Hardin (who you probably didn't realize was a singer; she played Jan Levinson on NBC's "The Office!"). She even sang it live with the band, not as an overdub the way it's normally done these days. I'll be posting a video of that soon too.

All told I couldn't be more excited about this game and soundtrack. Coming off of experiences like JOURNEY and MONACO, this was the most wonderful opportunity to try something totally new. I hope you enjoy the music and the performances by these absolutely stellar musicians. And I am so grateful to Al, Replay and N-Fusion for the wonderful partnership, and above all to YOU the backers for making all of this possible.

The OST (Original Soundtrack) will be coming to Kickstarter backers relative to their giving level, and for everyone else you can check it out here:

http://austinwintory.bandcamp.com/album/leisure-suit-larry-reloaded

Ok, go pour a glass of wine or mix up a martini, kick back and open up your ears ... ;) -

Austin Wintory

Hey gang,

I know we’ve been sending you a lot of Kickstarter updates so far and for that, I want to first apologize. We’re nearing the end of the project, and we want to keep you up to date with the information as soon as it hits our desk. This is in an effort to be as transparent as possible while creating what we hope is the single best Leisure Suit Larry project in the entire history of the franchise.

I want to start off by thanking our 4k+ beta testers who have uncovered more GREAT bugs than any internal or external QA department I’ve ever worked with in my entire career. This is largely in part due to the amazing work of QA Manager Jeroen Dekkers, and lead testers Tom King, Justin McMenamin, & badass “woman in gaming superstar” Serena Nelson. Without each and every tester, Lead Tester, and QA Manager, the game would not be getting all the fixes you’ve found and continue to find.

Here’s the problem, and thus this unscehdule Kickstarter update: due to the pure number of bugs found in the PC version alone (Mac version is being tested now,but not via Steam), we’re having to delay the game, yet again, until the end of June. I can’t tell you how many phone calls, arguments, and heart breaking conversations I’ve had with my advisors on this. I SERIOUSLY wanted this game out by the end of May because we’ve postponed it more times than Larry’s been rejected. Ok, well, maybe not THAT many, but still….we’ve had some delays.

I want you to know this decision was not made lightly, and I’ve consulted with advisors inside the company and outside the company…with Al, Josh, distributors, our QA Manager, testers, marketing people, “stake holders,” board of directors, etc. The bottom line is, it’s just not ready for prime time. Sure, we COULD release the game at the end of the month, but we’d be shipping it with bugs. Things like: the wrong line being spoken, Larry walking through a table in the cabaret, missing sound effects in the tutorial, no music in certain spots, and Larry’s scaling needing fine-tuning. While some of these may seem trivial, we have ONE SHOT at getting this game right, and it will set the bar for quality for all future Larry games to come.

The first one to bring up the suggestion of delaying the game was Josh on Thursday of last week. We’ve fought, laughed, cried, and argued over what to do for two full days and came to the conclusion you’re reading now. Josh offered to write this update to you since it was his original idea, but I told him “the buck stops here” and it was ultimately my call, and my responsibility to tell you and the rest of the world. I am not proud of this decision, but -- and please trust me when I tell you this -- having considered every single possible outcome, I’ve come to the conclusion that we need to give N-Fusion one more month to finish the game. There’s a good possibility that we MIGHT be done before that, but we want to give the game enough time to fix ALL the bugs, and put as much polish on it as possible. Nobody is holding a gun to our head and saying “YOU NEED TO RELEASE THE GAME FOR CHRISTMAS” or anything like that. I’ve always said “we’ll ship it when it’s ready,” and it’s simply not ready (as much as I wish it were….trust me).

I’m sure there will be community backlash and I’m sure I’ll get more hate mail because of this, but please understand, this really is the best thing for the game, for Larry, for future versions of Larry, and for you, the person who took a HUGE risk on us in hopes we’ll deliver to you what you firmly believed to be the game we’re making.

I’m sincerely sorry and I hope this decision is the correct one.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you understand.

From my heart, 

Paul

If you pledged at the $75 level or above, this update is for you. If it’s not, forgive the intrusion. Next time, maybe?

Hello, Larryettes, and welcome to the great Leisure Suit Larry 1 Kickstarter Beta!

Let’s take care of some necessary paperwork.

First I need to inform you that the keys are for the PC build *only* tonight. First Paul, then me, then N-Fusion spent all of last night and all day today trying to get the builds uploaded to Steam, but it’s a very strange and complicated process, and no matter who tried it, there were timeouts and multiple other issues. Sending the Mac version is even more complicated than sending the PC version, so N-Fusion is working on that (they are amazingly patient people), but it will probably be a few days before the Mac beta build is up and available. Hey, welcome to the never-dull world of game development. We love and want only the best for our Mac users, and the delay is unavoidable. Hopefully, it will be a very short one.

Second, and almost as important:

If you have the LSL:R alpha version already installed:

You probably have noticed that Steam is already updating your version of the game.

Unfortunately, Steam will not uninstall the alpha version before installing the beta version. This is not what we want . To ensure that you’re getting the beta and only the beta, you need to uninstall the game completely from your system. Delete the folder that contained the game, just in case your uninstall process didn’t get every last file. We don’t want any junk files left over that might result in “false” bugs.

Only after you’ve uninstalled the game should you log back into Steam and reinstall the game.

If you do NOT have the LSL:R alpha version installed, and/or if you have never gotten your key:

You will need to go to the ReplayGamesInc.com website and log in so that you can get your Steam key. Then you can proceed directly to Steam and download the game.

Now, on to the bug reporting guidelines and procedures.

There are literally thousands of you beta testers, and just a handful of us whose job it is to sift through the bug reports, organize them, assess their severity, and get them to the dev team. So we’re trying to streamline this by doing what we need to do to avoid duplicating bugs.

First: what is a bug?

For the purposes of this beta test, a bug is a mismatch between the way the game is clearly supposed to work and the way it actually does work, and which can be reproduced.

Examples of bugs:

• Larry’s mouth doesn’t move when he TALKs to the Clerk.
• When you LOOK at Larry’s wallet in inventory, it disappears.
• When talking to Fawn in her close-up, she suddenly becomes Jasmine.

Again, you have to be able to reproduce a bug. If you can’t reproduce it, don’t report it…unless/until you figure out how to dependably reproduce it. Irreproducible bugs are the equivalent of telling a car mechanic, “My Volvo makes a little whirring noise about once every 500 miles, and usually I’m the only one who can hear it. Please get rid of that noise.” 

Examples of not bugs:

• I think the icons should be in alphabetical order.
• Faith has a straight Southern accent. Shouldn’t it be more Southeastern?
• You’re using THAT logo in the opening credits? Wrong, wrong, wrong! Don’t you guys ever learn?
These are what we call “enhancements,” and we already have more ideas for enhancements than we can possibly use in a dozen bigger-budget remakes. But we can always use legitimate bugs.



Second: How do I report a bug?

1. Go to the Replay Games beta test forum.
2. Check the KNOWN BUGS thread that’s pinned at the top of the Forum. Make sure your bug hasn’t already been reported! This is so important to keeping the beta test streamlined that I’m wriggling around in my seat just thinking about it.
3. If the bug is already listed, there’s no need to report it. We’re on it.
4. If the bug is NOT already listed, find the subforum that, in your best judgment, mostly closely corresponds to the bug you found: Installation, Animation, Sound, the translation of a particular foreign language (there are sections for each language), and so on.
5. List the following information:
   • A one-line description of what's happening;
   • A brief summation of what you think should happen instead;
   • The operating System you're running on: Windows XP/ Windows 7 / Macintosh;
   • The screen resolution you’re running in;
   • Steps needed to reproduce.
6. That’s it! If we need more information in order to tackle the bug, we’ll contact you!

Now…head over to the Replay Games website and grab your keys! Last one to post an authentic translation bug in the “Polish Language” subforum is a rotten egg!

Josh & Jeroen

Good day, Larryettes.

I’m making this very short since I just updated you a few days ago.

The PC version of what we’re calling the “Kickstarter Beta” is being built as we speak. After that version’s built, the Mac version will follow later this evening. Both versions will be uploaded to Steam immediately.

Don’t worry. There will still be a DRM-free version of the finished game available. The Steam requirement is for the beta only; we need to do what we can to keep the game from being pirated before it’s even out.

Items uploaded to Steam take a number of hours to become available, so it will be tomorrow before you’ll be able to download your beta version. (Remember, only people who pledged at the $75 level or higher have access to pre-release versions of the game.)

We’re also preparing a list of instructions and known issues. Definitely read ‘em over; this’ll save you both time and frustration down the line.

Hold on to your hats, ladies and gentlemen. By this time tomorrow, the game should be on your hot little hard drive.

All my love,
Josh