You can always use the verbs area to show advertising and put the store to buy clues and objects. It’s what new generations like: instead of paying for a game, download it for free, eat advertising and spend 10 - 100 times more with microtransactions than if they had bought it.
Of course, put the currency UI, you can also reuse it as roulette to get free coins daily.
[ /ironic_mode OFF ]
I wasn’t trying to suggest that there exist permanent appointments but you certainly agree on, that there is an advantage of having a network of people, you’ve already worked together with, instead of having to start from scratch.
What’s your dream size/structure of Terrible Toybox?
What about translating it to extra languages? There’re large non-English speaking countries like China, Japan, etc.
It shouldn’t be super expensive and it might attract a huge new audience.
I guess that depends on how the pointer/cursor is designed, it can be a hand/finger with a dot a few pixels away. So I don’t see the con here.
I don’t know what kind of coin UI you have used, but as far as I remember the ones I used had separated functions. To use the selected function you use the left mouse button, to bring the UI on screen you press right, or middle, or use the wheel to roll between options. I see no delay but the other way around, the UI is where I press the right mouse button without the need to got to a specific area on the screen.
I don’t get what is the problem with this.
Why can’t it be dynamic? It will depend on how the programmers/designers want it to be.
This may be a possibility, but a few pixels wouldn’t be enough. Is there some game with a working implementation?
CMI: You have to left-click and hold until the coin pops up (short click is walk to, right click is inventory).
FT: Same.
I would want same verbs being in the same position and not move around depending on which other verbs are possible or not.
When I want to pick something up I open the coin and click e.g. the verb on the right. I don’t want to always have to look at the wheel/coin and search for the Pick up verb (good examples: CMI, FT; bad: DOTT:R).
I differentiated between a more generic wheel (e.g. DOTT:R) and a (graphical) coin (e.g. CMI, FT). With a coin you can’t just invent new verbs unless it fits the graphics. E.g. if you imagine Franklin with a coin interface it would be something completely different since punching, kicking and licking is not really his thing 
Of course China has an enormous population (one billion people who understand and little less who currently speak mandarine chinese) but a translation in that language would represent not a minor challenge since chinese is based on ideograms rather than characters. It’s the language with the higher number of native speakers nevertheless. And not many western adventure games are translated in that language.
It would be really amazing to see a verb interface with ideograms, and it has the potential of being beautiful.
Any translation is challenging but doable… The product I work on (big financial boring stuff) is translated to Japanese and Chinese.
Oh well, of course is doable but, how much it will cost? Even the characters we see in latin and cyrillic alphabets were drawn by an artist specifically for the game.
And the logic of the command sentence in the context of the engine…
It’s not like translating only a text.
More: market exists and it’s huge but… how will chinese people know about the game? Marketing, probably. More costs.
But, for what my opinion counts, I personally like your idea of translating it in chinese. I imagine the ideographic interface and it seems astonishing.
You make me remember that two years ago, when I started writing the italian TWP page on Wikipedia, chinese was present among german, english and swedish. Good sign.
I wonder if the time you spent making a great engine is factored into this equation but either way, the team made something substantially more than I was expecting in terms of quality and depth.
I remember him saying he and Gary didn’t get proper salaries to begin with.
Since Ron is the only engine developer (excluding porting) the costs of the engine wasn’t really a factor to begin with.
I conclude that for the next game costs for porting will be substantially lower and established workflows make everything more efficient. But they would want to produce an even better game, with having a producer since the beginning and a proper sound designer etc.
Ron, without the need to build an (adventure game) engine from scratch, would be able to focus more on game design and adding/polishing engine features while the code monkeys already have a documented and working scripting environment.
Otherwise it should be very similar, like having to pay contractors for visual art, writing, game scripting, music, translations, voice, testing, PR, events.
In the podcast he said they could make subsequent games in less than 2 years. But I’m afraid the costs are the same or more of what they have paid to make TWP a (somewhat ) reality.
Woops, I totally forgot Ron won’t have to make any blog posts anymore!
He can take art classes instead, no need to hire artists, budget halved, next game scheduled Christmas 2018, wohoo!
That alone will cut years off the project.
2 or so years ago you had an interview that ended up in the free Metro UK newspaper. Arrange a follow up to say the game is out.
I don’t read Slashdot anymore but did anyone submit it to that as a story? I read Soylent news and I don’t remember seeing it posted.
I am about to buy my family additional copies so I am doing my best.
That depends on what one consider a coin UI, If the remastered DOTT, MI & MI2 can be considered that way those can be an example.
I have just checked FT UI and it looks fine to me. Are you telling me that the time you need to wait for the UI to pop up disturbs you? I think it takes less time than moving the cursor to the verb you want to use and going back to the object you want to use that verb with.
But that is easily achievable, as verbs can be changed (the same number of verbs are available to every character, the only thing that change for 
is the name and the action associated) you can change the icons/images you display on the coin depending on which character you are using. I don’t see the problem there.
This was the original statement:
When using touch: your finger/hand may obstruct parts of it (especially problematic when context sensitive)
I don’t remember MI1SE & MI2SE, only DOTT:R.
There are at least three things when using touch which aren’t that great:
Yes, it would disturb me if I wouldn’t use keyboard shortcuts anyway.
Btw. I’ve just now tried the original CMI and FT and realised they both doesn’t really work with my touchscreen at all since the coin needs a time to popup but long-touch results in right-click which then opens the inventory.
Wheel yes, coin is not so easy:
What about releasing Part One and Two for free? A demo.
I guess this wouldn’t be much work.
Don’t you think this could up the number of people eventually buying it?
Edit: Act -> Part
What about Part 5, instead?
That sounds like a lot of work when people are watching Let’s Plays anyway.
Now that sounds like a plan!
I don’t see how Let’s Plays do any good to these kind of adventure games.
At least I want to play it myself and don’t get spoiled by someone else playing it,
probably even constantly commenting crap. 