Scribblenauts Comments by Christian Donlan

What a fantastic idea. Looking forward to it.

Sounds amazing. Can't wait to try it out.

Autumn? Damn, I thought it was sooner. Saying that, probably sooner in the US as they don't have to translate it for European countries. Wow, that's gonna take a while!

Sounds absolutely friggin awesome

Must be a localization nightmare!

Brilliant concept and brave execution, hope it turns out well for everyone.

It'll be very simple from a loc point of view. It's mostly single words with little need to explain what the context is. It'd be like a dictionary, translating whole sentences and story in games is a lot more of a headache

Crikey - they must be limiting the number of nouns that can be used as I cannot imagine everything being in there.
It just seems great but ludicrous at the same time.
I will be buying a copy though ;)

if this turns out as good as it sounds then this could be the first DS game I really bother playing

Fantastic idea, and it looks nice. Looking forward to trying it out.

Sounds like magic. If it works like they say it will, this might be one of the most amazing DS titles so far.

Summon Bubble Chamber!

Colour me interested, even if it isn't invoking Penny Crayon Magic.

I would write "obedient T-Rex"

This game sounds awesome.

Why is it so far away??

Sounds really great. I'd love a PC version with the option to design and download custom levels and objects.

That's such a fantastic concept. I hope they can pull it off, as it sounds like a great game.

sounds ridiculously amazing

Niiiice.

Only on the DS

...is still skeptical

Sounds amazing but healthy scepticism is of course always a good option. Developers always promise wonders in their new games (just as Christian says at the beginning of the article) and I remember Ion Storm and Bethesda spouting excited enthusiasm about the incredible level of emergent gameplay in Deus Ex: Invisible War and Oblivion respectively and I am sure I am not the only underwhelmed person in the room. Still, Scribblenauts sounds like an amazing concept and I will gladly give it a spin once it's out.

Proper nouns and anything grotty have been ruled out

pfft. if i can't play every level using penises and penises alone, whats the point?

merkdot: I would write "obedient T-Rex"

Nouns only, no adjectives

It sounds brilliant, here's hoping they can pull it off to some degree of success at least.

I will see if a llama can solve every puzzle.

I want this badly.

Burn the witch!

It's black magic I tell you.

It says no proper nouns, then the writer gives Sopwith Camel as an example.....

Well they also New York taxi cab, but presumably 'taxi' or 'biplane' would work - which is still amazing! :)

Fantastic idea but I cannot see how they are going to pull it off.

"pfft. if i can't play every level using penises and penises alone, whats the point? "

well since its touch screen you can play it with your own penis

It's really interesting how the DS beats every other platform in innovation.
I would have missed out on a lot if I wouldn't have picked up my cousins one out of boredom. Now I'm loving it.

The guy explained very well how it's going to work. They think of all the properties stuff might have, from common like 'flammable' 'eats plants' 'is very heavy' to not very common like 'is scared of mice' and program into the game exactly how those properties interact with the world. Then they get a list of all the objects they can think of and make sure those properties apply to the appropriate objects. So someone needs to make an elephant. They don't need to program that elephant from the ground up, they just need to make sure the game knows an elephant is heavy, scared of mice, drinks water, whatever else.

The game is already programmed to know how those properties work, so as long as it has been given enough of the right kind of properties, it should act like an elephant. So all that's left to do is for the artists to make the sprite. In order to save on assets, they are animated using a ragdoll style 3d thing, and there you have it, instant elephant - it's just a collection of properties with a graphic and some basic animation. As you can see the art style is sketchy so it doesn't take long to make the art for the game, so I can imagine that they can knock out dozens of these objects a day while still maintaining quality. Maybe more. They've been working for it for some time, and they have most of the year left, so I can see how they'll manage it.

The test won't be how many objects they can include - that's not so hard, just time consuming because of sheer numbers needed. The real test will be how well these various properties work, and the early signs look good.

That sounds incredibly awesome. But yet again I got preview confused with review and thought it was coming out soon :(

Ace! Want.

I think this will actually be impossible to localize.

First, while the object itself doesn't change between languages, the terms will. For example, the English "nut" means two things (and more, yeah, but let's stick to non-grotty). In every other language, there are multiple words for this. Now how are you going to differentiate? Also consider the opposite case: The German "Schloss" can mean "castle" or "lock". What now?

Second, Many languages have a larger or (in most cases) smaller vocabulary than English. You cannot simply re-map the existing database entries to other languages without re-assessing the elements' importance to the game. Stuff would likely need to be dropped from the game, and the developer would need to choose exactly which items to keep.

Third, and most crucial: If I'm not totally wrong, the developers have stated that another rule would be "only one word", i.e. you couldn't write "fuzzy apple" or something, which would render this already difficult task all but impossible.
Now remember two things: First, many languages rely on determinators in order to express English concepts, like the Italian "mazza" (club) and "mazza da tennis" (racket). This is really the only clear way of saying "racket" in Italian, but completely gets shot down by the one-word rule.
The other thing is that speakers of the teutonic language have basically every freedom they want to actually amalgamize words into new ones. Example? Videospieletestermonatsgehalt. Created on the spot, perfectly understandable and 0 google hits.

In my opinion, the only way to localize this would be to re-develop it from scratch in each language. Oh, and not release it in Germany.

It's really interesting how the DS beats every other platform in innovation.

I don't know. Nintendo is supposed to be the one with all the innovative games, but I'm seeing Sony come up with a lot of innovative titles for a while now too. Patapon, Locoroco, Eye of Judgement, LittleBigPlanet.. I was kind of annoyed for a while that I got a DS, and then saw all the quirky, innovative thinking-outside-the-box games come out for the PSP while the DS games didn't seem to get any further than "You have to blow in the speaker!!!"

Rockets + Glue + Velociraptor - it's the first thing I'll try

Camorrista: Third, and most crucial: If I'm not totally wrong, the developers have stated that another rule would be "only one word", i.e. you couldn't write "fuzzy apple" or something

You're totally wrong. They haven't said you can only write one word, they've said you can only write nouns. In your example, fuzzy is not a noun and therefore isn't allowed, no problem with that.

As for "nut" having a few meanings, I'm sure there's a simple enough solution to that, involving choosing which type of nut you want on the touchscreen before it appears up top.

As far as localisation goes, I'd be more interested to see if it's localised to proper English, to be honest. Are we going to be stuck with "check" for "cheque" etc.

Scribblenauts' graphics are a mixture of 2D backdrops and 3D models - a little like New Super Mario Bros.


Maybe I'm really blind, but I don't see anything 3D in this game. Maybe you're confused by the characters made up of rotating sprites?

toythatkills: See this Neogaf thread, scroll to post #70. Jackson is one of the developers, he says "no adjectives", which is not quite, but pretty much a confirmation of the "single word" rule.

Camorrista:

That's what I said, only nouns are allowed, as in, no adjectives. That's not even remotely the same as "only one word." Straight off the top of my head, Tyrannosaurus Rex, I imagine, will work.

Nikanoru:

Sprites would take up waaaay too much memory, so all the things are made in 3D, but to look 2D.

The other thing is that speakers of the teutonic language have basically every freedom they want to actually amalgamize words into new ones. Example? Videospieletestermonatsgehalt. Created on the spot, perfectly understandable and 0 google hits.

In my opinion, the only way to localize this would be to re-develop it from scratch in each language. Oh, and not release it in Germany.

But every German will easily be able to differntiate between a basic noun and a composite noun. We're talking about "elephant", "ladder", "bottle" here. I have a hard time coming up with an idea of a composite noun where the basic noun that would work isn't immediately apparent.

First, while the object itself doesn't change between languages, the terms will. For example, the English "nut" means two things (and more, yeah, but let's stick to non-grotty). In every other language, there are multiple words for this. Now how are you going to differentiate? Also consider the opposite case: The German "Schloss" can mean "castle" or "lock". What now?

Just ask the player what he meant? If you type "mouse", the game could ask you whether you mean the animal, or the computer device. The game could also simpy show you the different objects, and you pick the one you meant.And this could certainly be automated - after the word-for-word translation of the dictionary, the game (or the devs/localisation team) just looks for double entries with different meanings, and link it with a query of the game. So in your "Schloss" example, they will find after the translation that they translated "lock" and "castle" with the same German word - problem pretty much solved. I really don't see the problem.

This sounds excellent. It's important not to expect too much, I suppose, but I'll definitely be checking this out when the time is ripe!

Sprites would take up waaaay too much memory, so all the things are made in 3D, but to look 2D.


Where did you pull that "fact" from? Look at the video. Those are characters made up of a bunch of rotating sprites.

The dev in an interview on IGN said it.

First thing I'd write?

"Infinite Polygon Engine"

I'd like to see the specific quote on that. Besides, if someone says they drew a circle while you clearly see a square, what do you believe?

Just look at it, there is no 3D movement, it even shows the typical texture artifacts you get when you rotate a flat image on the DS.

Besides, if someone says they drew a circle while you clearly see a square, what do you believe?

I was going to find you the quote, but then you made that absolutely absurd analogy, and now I'm not going to. I don't think I need to explain why it's so stupid, do I? Go to the back of the class.

The quote's on IGN, find it yourself.

Way to dodge the argument.

So I started looking up the quote and I KNEW it was gonna be something people would misinterpret. And surely, what do I find:

"Our art style is very minimal, and we did that on purpose just because of the nature of the game, and all the animation is 3D. It's still a 2D game of course, but they're all basically "doll" animations, so that made things a lot easier."

Do you know what he means by "doll" animations? That's right, a bunch of rotated 2D drawn sprites for limbs, like I said. It's just so immediately obvious. It's the same thing they use in Aquaria and other games.

It's only "3D" if you count anything that's a texture mapped to a quad as such (apparently he does), but then there would be countless so called 2D classics that you would suddenly have to classify as 3D. For instance, every single 2D game ever made for the PSX (that's right, Alundra was all polygons underneath).

So humour me, why was my analogy stupid?

I kind of want to get this game, get a dictionary and start trying out every noun to see what comes up.