Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs Discussion Topic Part 2

[Paddy™]

Here's a handy reference containing all of the quotes about the current state of the game and its delays:

Spoiler below!

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19th February 2013: Jens Nilsson of Frictional Games
http://www.frictionalgames.com/site/node/126

Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs reached a major milestone last week, when thechineseroom sent us their final version of the game, representing over a year's worth of hard work. But don't get too excited just yet!

Some work is still left to be done. We are testing, tweaking, optimizing, porting, translating and all those things that are part of the process of creating and releasing a game. Currently we are looking at a release around Q2 2013.

How come a game meant for Halloween 2012 has been delayed for so long? Originally we thought it would be a short, experimental game set in the universe of Amnesia, but thechineseroom had a vision that was bigger than that. As their work progressed, the potential for a much greater project emerged. What we ended up with is no longer what we had first imagined, but a fully fledged Amnesia game. A different kind of Amnesia, but definitely not a short experiment.

More information on the game, pricing, requirements, availability and so forth coming at a later date. Stay tuned as we wrap things up!

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23rd May 2013: Dan Pinchbeck of The Chinese Room, via the Forum
http://www.frictionalgames.com/forum/thr...#pid233723

Hello, you lot. Right, listen up, this is coming from the team no longer working on the game. Yes, it's been quiet from FG. This is because they have their heads down, doing the very long, very intense, very hard and frankly, pretty boring task of hunting down and finding every potential little bug or thing that could be optimised in the game and as someone pointed out, there aren't very many of them doing it. So give them a break please.

Jens and I talk regularly, and the development reports when we check in, or I check SVN are things like "found a collision error in wall 16 in level 5, fixed" or "moved pathnode in area x in level y to give better cornering for AI" or "reduced x sound file by y amount to aid framerate reduction in area a" and so on. It's difficult stuff, because it's a hunt for small important things, not obvious stuff, a lot of code work, and a lot of coming in and out of the game. You need to put your head down and focus and concentrate and there's really nothing interesting to report apart from "still working hard, lots of little things, nothing exciting, we will let you know when we are done".

So cut them some slack, yeah? They're not ignoring you. There just isn't anything interesting to report.

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27th May 2013: Jens Nilsson of Frictional Games, via the Forum
http://www.frictionalgames.com/forum/thr...#pid234672

To give you guys some info..

We are working away as fast as we can, it has to take the time it takes. We have no rush and as a certain well known game developer said "A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.".

We are optimizing, tweaking and in general putting the FG expertise to good use. TCR keeps putting in work as well. There are companies working on the translations (will launch with 9 languages in addition to original English). The porting guys are porting away. Deals are being made. Things are prepared for launching the game through more online stores than any other FG game before. In general occupied with all things related.

We know we will not make Q2, we also know when the game will be ready for launch. We have not set the exact day yet. You can however make good use of the weather outside this summer and look forward to gaming with the piggies as the summer comes to an end.

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22nd June 2013: Dan Pinchbeck of The Chinese Room, via Twitter
https://twitter.com/ChineseRoom/status/3...0884404224

I did what I think will be my very last piece of work on Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs last night, around midnight (of course). #aamfp

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28th June 2013: Dan Pinchbeck, via Polygon (Updated from the 5th of June)
http://www.polygon.com/2013/6/5/4400280/...e-for-pigs

One of the great things about being an indie developer is you can really spend the time you want and need on a game without the pressure to release by a certain point. So there's a lot going on right now that is mainly optimisation and polish. One of the things that's important about the Amnesia franchise is you get a top grade game that runs on quite low spec machines, and as we've pushed upwards with the visual quality of Pigs, it's quite a technical challenge making sure that you can drive specs down whilst driving fidelity up. That takes time to get really right, but it's an investment that's worth doing.

Plus we have localisation going on and that takes time, and it's a great opportunity to revisit parts of the game and tweak and improve here and there, which you don't often get a chance to do. So we're taking advantage of the necessary delay caused by optimising the game technically to also get another loop round on the gameplay and player experience, which is a brilliant opportunity. So it's all good really - we know fans are being super patient and we really appreciate that, but I can absolutely guarantee the delay is 100 percent worth it.

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28th June 2013: Frictional Games, via Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?s...2416275440

Currently uploading the last major test version of ‪#‎aamfp‬. Left to do, fix all small things left, then fix stuff coming in from testers and finally do last internal testing. Then "only" have to prep the whole launch thing. Getting there, but quite a bit to go yet. As before, enjoy the summer!