Поздрави из Србије и поздрав од Македонија.


Hello there and greets to Ice-Pick Lodge. My name is Ljubomir and I live in Serbia.
I apologize for a lengthy post but I usually want to express myself when I'm overwhelmed and elated like this .
First of all, I would like to say that all of you people are really brilliant. It's really hard to find people (let alone game developers... well, maybe in the indie games scene) who think out of the box, out of the mainstream and are willing and capable of making something more. I've heard about Pathologic a while ago, by a word of mouth, a friend having heard about the game and told me to check it out. Now... I sometimes get obsessed with things, games, movies etc. when I find something that really fits with my interests and mentality. So I played Pathologic for a couple of weeks, straight, just thinking about the game and playing it, starting over and over, trying to figure it out . Needless to say, I was amazed yet never really managed to get that far, let alone finish it. But I see that there's an internal project at a quality English translation and I fully support the dev team at it and hopefully I'll finish the game one day.
Anyway, a couple of days ago, I stumbled upon a game called Тургор while searching for all kinds of released or still unreleased games. I was very intrigued by the visual style and the idea. Then I saw some videos on a couple of sites and I fell in love with it (without even playing ). The visual style is stunning, very surreal and beautiful. I'm a bit surprised how it all looks so professional and perfectly packaged. If this was a righteous world, you guys should be filthy rich right now.
Now, I'm not sure what your thoughts are about free distribution, piracy and all that, and it's a lengthy topic at best but I'm not gonna lie. I downloaded the Russian version and installed it. As I've said, I'm not gonna justify myself about all that, we all know how much pirated stuff gets around (as in Russia, as well as in Eastern Europe, and the whole world) and how much stuff people (like me) wouldn't be able to see and experience if it weren't for this, but I'm not writing this post about that. Hopefully, one day, I may even be able to buy a copy of my own.

What I want to say is, that I'm really glad that there is a rise in Russian (and from some European countries) games being published (or at least I've gotten aware of it just recently). Many people don't understand me when I say this, but I think that these games have a very distinct and different feel to them. An essence of the Slavic soul if you will. Be it a visual style, story, narrative, mechanics or whatever. For me, STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl is one of the best PC games ever made. Not because of the gameplay mechanics, graphics or whatever. But because of the feeling of truly walking through a Ukranian irradiated wasteland. And the best thing is, it all looks like right here, in Serbia. The abandoned factories and buildings, communist times architecture, the people, telling jokes and dealing with the problems in their own way etc. No bulky space marines. No CIA super agents. No gothic cathedrals. This,in part, is also why I liked the visual style of Half-Life 2 (for example, Serbian parliament building in City 17, I think the art director or something is Bulgarian).

Sorry, I talk about totally other games, and still, I wanna talk about Тургор .
I just want to say a big, fat, juicy THANK YOU. It's basically what I live for, to see things like this. I've just started playing and I don't understand all of it. Still, I get a thing or two about the story, I understand Russian a bit, from being in contact with other similar languages, obviously, but still, it's not enough to comprehend the whole story and gameplay.
Maybe it's for the better. Like in the times of C64 and Amiga gaming, when I had the games, and absolutely no manual or hints at how to play. It was all very mystical and interesting back then. Developers using very little resources they had and tried to make the most of it, with very wild and ambitious ideas. That's what I see Ice-Pick Lodge doing here, and I'm really glad.
I've read some topics here on the forums and read the RPS interview, awesome stuff .
I've also seen people mentioning an "english subtitles patch" for this game but I see that it's not free for the public, which I understand, it's ok. I'm not gonna ask for it (no hidden intentions here ) because I'm a newbie at these forums and I understand why the devs wouldn't give it to the public just like that (and seeing as the English version is due out in 2009 by Atari etc).

Well, I've written a ton of rubbish text here, sorry about that. I'll go back to not sleeping and playing Тургор all day long . Cheers and keep up the good work!

Hi Ljubomir, and welcome to the forums

I expect members of Ice-Pick Lodge will read this message soon, and will be glad to hear that another person has become obsessed with their work

Also, check your PM.

Are you calling me obsesed, Hydra?

<_<
>_>
^_^

(:P)

Anyway, welcome to the forums

I was calling you, me and various other people obsessed

Thanks for the greets, and thank you so much for the PM! Спасиба!
The game makes a bit more sense now. The colors thing, it's actually a mini management gameplay, very nice. I honestly wasn't expecting this at all .

By the way, I've noticed a couple of bugs, I guess you're aware of them (if they're bugs at all).
When you jump, and there's a low ceiling or something above you, your character bounces off a long distance. I guess it could be troublesome in some areas.
Also, one of the Sisters, haven't learned their names yet (in a kind of Egyptian surroundings, with a big white nude statue at the start), her standing loop animation is a bit "skippy". I mean that it's not that well looped, the skipping is pretty obvious, and for some reason, when I stand near her and she skips, my first person view kind of zooms in and skips a bit, pretty weird. But this is mainly on the aesthetics side. I also noticed that the player is never really totally static when you stand still. There's a very slow sliding or movement.

Oh, and one interesting thing. I'm very glad that it works very nice on my PC so I put HDR ON too. Now, with HDR, it looks nice but it seems it's really putting my graphics card to the test (still working flawlessly) as it gets really hot really fast (still have to see if there's a major difference with HDR on and off, except in the GPU temperature). I haven't seen my card so hot since trying Devil May Cry 4 on .
I'm not saying it's a bug or it's something wrong, I was just curious as to how much the HDR effects in Тургор really stress the graphics card and why.

Complements on the interesting color smudge effect when drawing the glyphs. The very gameplay mechanic is something like Arx Fatalis, but the color (shader I guess) effect looks cool. The game reminds me a bit of Uru - Ages Beyond Myst but that's a more conventional point & click adventure. And while it has it's own charms, it doesn't have the brilliant otherworldly, insane feel like Tургор.

Thank you for your wonderful post. We're in a bit of a crunch right now, but I'll write a proper reply as soon as I can. In short - it was very nice to hear. ) Also, considering the potential contents of hydra9's PM, I'm expecting to see soem comments on the translation.

Greets LxR, I'm glad you've read my post here .
I'm really loving this game. I only got to the 6th cycle now and the Brothers appeared.
Now, I gotta say, this game is surprising me more and more. The whole gameplay mechanic is very simple, and if you'd try to explain it to someone it would seem very confusing and also very boring. And it also came to me that the gameplay is a bit boring. BUT... what's so wonderful about Тургор is that it all seems like the story and concept are adapted from the gameplay, it gives you the feel and need to survive. The whole harvesting thing, wandering from one place to another, trying to squeeze out as much Color as you can, it all creates exactly the right mood for the game, the sense of lonelyness, urgency and the unknown.
And right when I thought that this is all the game can offer, the Brothers appeared, at a very appropriate moment. They're mindblowing, their designs wonderfully demented. Kind of feels like a mix of Silent Hill and the Cenobites from the Hellraiser movies.They're positively disturbing and frightening. And right now, when I see them wondering around the Void, I really feel uneasy and worried as to how I'll continue to gather all that Color .


Regarding gameplay, I'm still trying to figure out some things. Only recently, I understood that I have to feed the Sisters with Lympha by drawing the Donor sigil over and over again until that bar on the left fills up.
Also, the little flying orbs that gather around Color on the ground, do they have some fixed amount of color in then so I have to lure them and grab them instantly? I also encountered a couple of glowing orbs, a concentration of Color which shows and disappears. I know that the Sisters mention these things but I think it's not clear enough as to what function they all have.

As for the translation, I think it's very good so far . I'm thinking that the Brother Pit should be named Chasm instead (I think the Russian name is Јама?), maybe it sounds a bit better. In one of the Brother's conversations, he says "For starters". I think that sounds a bit too modern and casual, maybe you should put something like "To begin" or "Firstly" as I'd say they all should sound ominous and more formal.

There are some alignment problems with some of the text, mainly at the start of a new chapter, the text is all the way to the left, out of the screen, so you can only see two thirds of the sentences. And in some of the Brother's texts, there are several lines with, for example, "?text", aka there's a question mark right before the actual word.
Now, regarding the names of some things... I THINK I read some lines, in the info screen or ingame, can't remeber now, where some locations, names or events are translated differently, but I got to check it out. Also, there are some spoken lines which have no subtitles at all, mainly on the Void screen when the voice of a Brother tells you something (I think he was warning me that I've violated one of the Taboos, but I'm not sure).
Oh yeah, the first Sister, she doesn't have a name? In the info screens, all of the Sisters have names, and she is referred to only as "Sister". Also, there are different descriptions for all of the Brothers, but none for the different Sisters.

It's a bit confusing, the whole thing about Lympha. Correct me if I'm wrong:
There's Lympha, that's the name of the whole life force in the Void. The Lympha is gathered around and stored in your Memory, from where you extract it and put it in a Heart, through which it is processed into Nerva and finally transfered to your Palette. So Nerva is the processed product of Lympha (speaking in a purely technical sense)? And all of this, at the same time, is referred to as Color aka Цвет. Or is Color a name for the different states of Lympha (aka the Colors of Lympha)?

Long post, but what the heck.

I'm really fond of the "demoscene" and the art that those people make in such small programs. It's often all very abstract and interesting, and I've always wondered why doesn't somebody make a game in such abstract and wonderful environments, incorporate a lot more audiovisual artistic content because it's not all about usefulness and gameplay. Very few games actually do this, and I'm really glad Тургор is among them .

My answers in red

Thanks for the answers . Hahah, yeah, about the talking colors, I thought that it was strange too but thought that maybe you'll get more info from/about them. Good to know that the pink elephants talk to someone else than me.

Seeing as that the first Sister doesn't have a name and she never had a Brother, would that mean that the Sisters' names are given by the Brothers or at least somehow connected?

By the way, it seems I can't make a proper donor glyph on the ground because it always shows how much I've dropped, so I'm guessing I did something wrong.

You get a different sound effect in case you dropped lympha by some generic stroke. Also you won't lose color if you do use the 'Donor' glyph, i.e. it'll be the same amount you dropped when you collect it again. 3/4 or so of your lympha will be lost otherwise.

I could answer some doubts about the Sister, but then I would have to kill you (and I would spoil a bit of the story, although this part is explain earlier)

I've been playing the game these days, albeit somewhat slowly and carefully. I'm on cycle 20 or something. I mostly play games in a slow manner, trying to see everything I can and figure it all out etc.
Managed to kill 3 or 4 Brothers so far and I gotta say, the fight with them is really adrenalin-pumping, the tension building up and all that . Today's FPS games can't even begin to create that kind of feeling.
And despite all this, I still haven't spoken to 3 or 4 sisters that are left (by spoken I mean no contact at all).

Wanna ask, how do you harvest the Color from the glowing rock walls in the mines? I think one of the Sisters might have mentioned something about this but now I can't find that info.

Also, the trees in the Gardens, I've gave them maximum color and got very nice amount of Color from them after a few cycles. But after a while, they just don't produce Color anymore. I think this is due to the fact that Brothers harvest it for themselves but I don't know how to stop them (apart from the obvious direct attack while they're feasting). And it seems that even after their harvest, several cycles pass and they don't even touch that Garden for that time and still, the trees are barren, no color. Do I need to re-feed these trees somehow? The Nameless Sister told me something about using a sharp rock or anything as a trap for the incoming Brother, didn't really understand that.

As for the translation, I think there is room for improvement. Mainly in the tone of speech of the characters. Most of the lines sound too plain and common in English, and sometimes they don't make that much sense regarding the storyline and the game universe. I'd say this is due to the somewhat artistic and literary approach to the Russian writing. I can understand what the characters wanted to say or their mood from the Russian voiceovers (well, bits and pieces of it anyway, wish I knew more Russian) but the English subtitles just don't sound adequate a lot of the time.

I'll try to point out to some things from the translation when I get the time and when I finally finish the game once although I don't know how much that would actually be significant. I don't know how much of this English text will actually be in the English retail version.

Well, going back to play Тургор, the more I play it, the more interesting it gets. I thought it would be the exact opposite .

You need two glyphs to harvest the Color from mines, I do not know their English names, but they should be something like Strike and Harpoon.
Tree can exhaust by itself - amount of the Color it produces is limited. But Brothers do harvest the Color also. You should charge a trap against Brother. Almost any Garden has a trap. When you point your mouse on the trap the cursor will change to the trident. You should fill the trap with required amount of the Color, no matter wich Color, you can even mix Colors when charging a trap. But remember that you should recharge the trap each time after it triggers.

Expose and Extract

Thanks, it turned out I didn't have half of the glyphs (and hearts of course).

Well, I finally got to the end of this evil, twisted, demonic game that has taken over my life these past days. Got the Guest becomes the Doppelganger ending. I was playing too slow and too careful and really didn't understand half of the things I should have done - didn't unlock all hearts, didn't get the Breakthrough glyph, no idea how to actually free a sister or how the heart unlocking really works (the heart-giving point seems to vary greatly from sister to sister and I got to level 2 with all sisters). And I also got 2 or 3 of the same hearts/glyphs twice. Is this a bug or a gameplay mechanic for choosing different paths?

There's a bug regarding movement that varies from location to location. I mean that the RUN key somewhere works as RUN and somewhere as WALK (meaning that in certain areas autorun is enabled, and in others it's not).

Anyway, I'm pretty tired from playing Тургор all day today so I'll be taking a break from it (or else I'll end up in a black space talking to half-naked women and disfigured dudes ).
Thank you so much for a very memorable experience and I'm really looking forward to the English retail. I love you people!

It's a gameplay mechanic for choosing different paths.
And again it's not a bug - it's a feature) IPLs decided that you will not wish to run in the sisters chambers since there are no dangers (except for Ima's tower)

Thanks for clearing that out for me . The running thing seems a little bit strange to me seeing as you can walk and run on all levels.

And here you whet my appetite even more for this game! I am confused. I want The LxR and everyone else working on it to take their time and make it as perfect as possible. I also want to play the game now.

Patience is a virtue...

Excellent insight and thank you for taking the time to share.

Yes, patience is a virtue and I strongly recommend waiting for the full English retail version because I feel I've definitely lost some of the good stuff this game has to offer due to the language barrier (and the damn fast subtitles ).