Dusmania 8.0
skizzo

26 Jul 2006 | 4 Comments

On July 15th and 16th, Dusmania took place. Dusmania is a gathering of hobby game developers where fans can see the progress on the fan games that are being developed. This year, mindFactory also attended Dusmania to show their progress on Broken Sword 2.5.
Here is the English translation of the article that mindFactory put on their site:


Dusmania 8.0
By Sebastian Nisi (webmaster, marketing, writer)


The decision to attend to Dusmania 8.0 was made on April 6th 2006. Everybody was immediately excited by the idea to present our game there and so we started to work on chapter 7 about a month later. We chose chapter 7 of the game, while the now famous tech demo is also from this chapter of the game. This way we would be able to show the fans how the second floor and the front of the pub from the tech demo looked.

At the start of July we had all the resources we needed and mostly we only needed to fix some bugs. Malte Thiesen (lead programmer) has, just like everyone else, done a great job when looking back at it and he was heavily motivated by it all. After all, it was our goal to deliver a demo which would give fans a look at a finished part of the game.

Four members of our team, namely the aforementioned Malte Thiesen, but also Marten Schäfer (3D animator), Michael Elsdörfer (programmer) and myself (Sebastian Nisi) headed to Rodgau, a small town near Frankfurt, on July 15th. Martin and I made sure that we would both be in Rodgau near the city hall about the same time, namely around 2.30 PM. With our PCs under our arms we entered the meeting hall. It already was fairly crowded, but luckily we found a place to set up our computers near the hall entrance and we sat down. Even before we had set up our computers and had found ourselves some chairs, Malte and Michael came to us. Because of our new team T-shirts, we had an easy time identifying ourselves as Broken Sword 2.5 team members. After a short time, we also met with Martin Lassahn, our former lead graphics designer, who stood at Dusmania 8.0 with his own game Timanfaya.

It wasn't long before the first curious people showed up at our stand and they got the opportunity to play through chapter 7 of the game. We answered every question and often several demonstrations took place simultaneously. Luckily, we were fourth in line. Finally, we were amazed at the number of people that took an interest in our adventure, especially Muck from our forums. He had come all the way to Dusmania 8.0 solely for our game and for Timanfaya!

Because we took so much time to demonstrate and answer questions about our game, we didn't have much time for ourselves to see the rest of the games at the convention. I really found that a shame and put my hopes on seeing more of the other projects on next year. On the other hand, it was really nice to see so much interest in our project.

At 6.30 PM, it was time for our presentation, according to the schedule. Five minutes before this time I looked at my watch and with cold sweat on my forehead I realized that it was almost our turn. I quickly run to Malte, with whom I would present our Powerpoint presentation. Although we had both prepared our part of the presentation, we hadn't yet thoroughly talked about the content of the presentation. So we quickly rehearsed the presentation before it was our turn. Apparently, the presentation went pretty well, because when we finished it, we received an applause. The whole presentation only took 20 minutes.

Well, not exactly. Our hint that people could play the demo at our stand was answered to by many. We were at some point even mistaken for professional game developers. Of course we were flattered by this, but sadly it is untrue.

Since the moment that we had arrived I had been trying to find some time to work on the project and I put if off every time until it already was 11.00 PM. Very tired, I split the work with Michael, who was as tired as I was. It had been a beautiful but very tiresome day for me and I was beginning to loose my voice. Still, I finally found some time to look at the game Timanfaya, which indeed looked very good. I had been searching for a phone which had been ringing since the beginning of the convention and now I had found its source (the sound came from the game Timanfaya). I would have liked to play the game even more intensively to form a better opinion of it, but time wouldn't let me.

At 12.30 AM Martin Schäfer and I went on the journey back home, although the convention continued. On Sunday morning, the veterans of Dusmania presented the, according to them, award for the most successful presentation. "Soda's Sleepy Sushi Service" won third place and "Rastullahs Lockenpracht" won second place. Tension rose and then the winner was announced: Broken Sword 2.5! Because of the many 3D action games that were presented on Dusmania I was very surprised and proud that adventure games can still compete with those kind of games. Malte and Michael, who were still there on Sunday, accepted the prize, which consisted of books and a goblet.

Both of them went home that afternoon. The four of us agree: it was a great experience and we had lots of fun and we will certainly be returning next year!


The original article, in German, can be read on the Broken Sword 2.5 website.


This is the rough translation of the German article on the official site. It sounds like they've had a really great time and on behalf of Revfans, I would like to congratulate the team on winning first prize! From what we've seen of the game so far, you guys have certainly earned it!