Tees Maar Khan – A Farah Khan Film

Game Title: Tees Maar Khan
Genre: RPG/Comic Caper
Script: Nikhil Soman
Direction: Nikhil Soman
Game Design: Nikhil Soman
Sound Design & SFX : Canaries Post Sound, Mumbai

Tees Maar Khan is the most dreadfully accomplished ‘King of the Con’. He along with his gang of somewhat dim-witted cons, are hired by the Johri Brothers to pull off the biggest ever heist of antiquities. Join this gang as a rookie conman and see whether you can survive the hilarious escapades of this dumb and dumber crew.

The game is an adaptation of the Bollywood movie of the same name, Produced by Farah Khan, Directed by Shirish Kunder, Featuring Akshay Kumar & Katrina Kaif in lead roles.

The game has 3 levels and the action quickly moves from you, the player joining the gang as a rookie – with but one chance to prove yourself.

Level 1 : Join the gang, meet TMK

Level 2 : Help the gang & go on your first mission to crack the safe at a high security bank.

Level 3 : Masquerade as Catering staff to board the treasure train, and fight 30 cops to hijack the train.

The game is an interactive audio game featuring a rich cast from the movie, and features the Original Soundtrack & Music, while the dialogue & screenplay are unique to the game, they still stick to the original mannerisms of the characters.

Amazon’s Amazon Web Services is the largest Cloud Computing service in the world, and many startups were made possible by AWS since it was launched in 2007.

Dialify too is one of these startups made possible by the easy availability of quality infrastructure as a service.

We closely follow the various AWS services and try to model our products in a manner where we can leverage the benefits of cloud computing. We particularly have benefitted immensely as Telecom services are probably among the most demanding in terms of scalability and uptime, and this is where AWS excels. We have been able to build scalable and highly available telecom apps only because of AWS. Our business may not have launched without the easy availability of such services.

AWS started an annual event called the AWS Startup Challenge in 2009, where they invited startups using the AWS platform to a competition to find the best and most innovative uses of its platform. Soon after we launched our first product in October 2010, AWS Startup Challenge 2010 was announced and we decided to put in an entry, because we felt we had done something different from the typical use cases. Specifically the way we use AWS instances to serve Real-time Telephony applications, integrated with Telecom Service Providers in India.

We knew the competition is intense and the quality of past winners was amazing, so we weren’t really expecting to win or anything. but to our immense surprise we were selected in the shortlist and then went on to the Semi-final stage where we were among the Top 5 from Asia and Top 15 Worldwide. We didnt make it to the final stage, but being in the Top 15 Worldwide is big enough for us, being the only startup from India to have won this is – priceless.

Thanks AWS for making our business possible.

Being a very small team of 3 AWS has been a force multiplier for our team, as it lets us focus on our products rather than on the nitty-gritty of high availability systems management.

Tees Maar Khan - A Farah Khan Film

We launched our first game Cwicket in October 2010 on the Reliance Communications Network, and a flood of encouraging responses poured in. Among them one was a call from Vishal Gondal – GODinChief@ Indiagames. We met up a while later and he offered us an opportunity to build an audio game for the movie Tees Maar Khan to be released on 24th December 2010. UTV Indiagames has produced the Web, Mobile & DTH versions which when combined with our Audio version form the first ever Quad-Play game.

UTV Indiagames is the largest game studio in India, with a slew of supported platforms – from mobile and web based games to DTH delivered games. They were building an exclusive game for Tees Maar Khan, and we happend to meet up at just the right time to make their 3 screen product into a ‘Quad-play’ game. A game available over the Internet, DTH, Mobile  and finally over a Voice call.

We quickly got down to work and in 3 short weeks developed the entire game. The overall effort was spread over 3 broad stages – pre-production, parallel coding and production work & a final stitch together in post production – all in 3 weeks. Here’s how it was done -

Stage 1 – Pre-production

The pre-production process involved working with the Tees Maar Khan script to find potential gameplay opportunities [this was the easy bit, the movie lends itself beautifully to that ] – we found more than 5 situations we could work with and picked 3 that we felt would make sense in a flow. This was followed by working the situations into our game engine for the logic and scoring system and then planning out the actual game script. The script went thru multiple iterations and was finally sent for approval to Farah Khan via Indiagames.

Key factors in pre-production : Our focus was to build a game that was loosely built around the movie plot, while at the same time not disclosing the storyline much, and still  staying true to the characters, their attitudes and their potential interactions with a user/player – who would not be in the movie itself.

Stage 2 – Production

Very broadly the Production process was split into 3 efforts – Script/Dialogue Recording, Game Engine priming & SFX Recording.

The next step was to get into the UX, Navigation & branching with the script and dialogue running in parallel with the casting & studio schedule. We did the whole lot over two days and recorded the entire game script with some options. The script also contained detailed specifications on the SFX which were to be recorded for various scenes. This was handled by a separate team, which worked in parallel to get all the SFX pieces in place from multiple locations and sync it up with the dialogue.

Key factors in Production : There are a number of things to be considered for the medium of delivery, particularly when it comes down to audio only, over a diverse bunch of phones with varying audio output capability with a network delivery constraint of only 8 khz sampling rate. We have evolved our own best practices and EQ algos to process the sound during recording, with varying treatments for Speech/Dialogue, Instructions & Game Navigation and the related sound stage.

Stage 3 – Post-production

Finally we had everything ready – albiet in fragments. In post production we sliced and diced all the audio and SFX and started integrating it with the game engine itself. This involves timing each scene and transitions between various scene snippets throughout the game. This also requires a number of game save states and some pretty heavy duty DB traffic to be managed while at the same time ensuring that the audio output stream is running optimally during the entire session. The final output is variable gameplay that should be able to gracefully handle any delays from the player response to the output audio stream.

This entire process is a roller-coaster ride where the final game flow takes shape – and believe it or not it can be different from the original script.

Key factors in post-production : The critical issue in stitching together things is the specific synchronization of the possible player inputs/responses to various inputs and handling of exceptions in context of the main stream of dialog running throughout the game.

The game we think, has turned out great. It features 3 levels with some filler segments to  integrate all this into one storyline.

Check out our other post on the game itself, how to play, description of levels and some cheats – coming up soon.

Hope you have enjoyed reading this, and if anyone else is working on anything similar, we would love to share notes.

You can reach us here – TEAM at DIALIFY dot COM

What we love best about Seedcamp, is their unique format of Seedcamp Day, which comprises a set of 5 min pitches by 10-20 startup’s followed by Mentoring session with invited VC’s and ‘been-there-done-that’ Entrepreneurs from the region.

The 5 min Pitch

We had worked on prepping a demo clip of our game ‘Cwicket’. This came out to 5 min, which was as long as the deck we had prepared. We knew we couldn’t do both, and decided to leave the PPT on the screen with our logo, while we decided to playback our game session. i did minimal voice over to talk about key concepts like – building audio cues for interaction, supporting all telecom service delivery platforms and low cost of production.

The mentoring session is broken up into multiple 45 minute sessions with a small group of mentors – usually 2-4 mentors, joining the startup at their assigned table, and then rotating over to other tables.

This mentoring session is probably the most valuable and concentrated advisory round your startup could ever get, perhaps more advice than you would get thru out the lifetime of a typical startup. We had the opportunity of pitching in a lot more detail in the 45 min’s to top VC’s like Sequoia, Accel Partners, Clearstone…. the list goes on and on.

At the end of the mentoring sessions, the mentors vote and give their scores to the Seedcamp team.

We left the venue happy, because we had been able to pitch to so many relevant people in one room, and felt the effort was well worth the time spent.

Later that night we were in for a bigger surprise when we found out that – WE WON MINI SEEDCAMP MUMBAI 2010.

Thanks Seedcamp for giving us a great start, and perhaps fueling our motivations. We got a healthy bunch of follow-up requests from VC’s and Angels post the event, and it took us over 2 months to meet all of them. We didn’t raise anything, and neither did we expect to, as we felt we were early to market. But all the same, Seedcamp will remain a coveted tag on our blog, and and achievement that will surely open doors, when we need them.

PS : As a Mini Seedcamp Winner, we were eligible to present to the Seedcamp board for  funding, but were unable to travel due to Visa issues.

All you got to do is dial in to the number, pick your favourite team and then follow the simple instructions to get setup to play.

You will then be taken into a stadium simulation where our expert commentators will guide you thru out the game. They will announce your opponent player and his/her team, followed by a quick toss, and then you either go in and bat or bowl.

While batting, our commentators are working real hard to figure out the delivery that your opponent bowls to you, and  you just gotta follow it up with the right shot to that particular ball.

Similarly, while bowling you pick the delivery and hear our commentators describe it to the batsman, who then picks a shot to play.

Simple, innit’..?

Of course, you get ball by ball updates and scores while you play, our game engine understands everything – from no balls to the arcana of the DL system to square off matches, when one of the players drops off due to a network issue.

Go on, give it a shot. it’s time for the pros to make space for a lot many more. Pick up on the technical lingo of cricket, learn the good stuff, what shots to play to what deliveries, all right here in Cwicket.

Dial 505 1010 65 now!

PS: If you happen to be on a network other than Reliance Communications, hold tight! We will be with you soon. As usual, networks seem to take ages to get to where we want to be.

We provide a new experience, delivered over a simple voice call – your forte’ – audio only games. Simple to play, yet compelling enough to challenge a seasoned gamer, we cater to multiple interests and preferences.

Whether its sports or a quick game of cards, hangman or quizzing, we provide single & multi-player games with rich sound stages and engaging interaction.

Of course since we work over voice we have perfected the ability to keep our game engine & logic separated from the user experience, which means that we can serve up our games in a language of your choice.

While millions of your customers seem to be using more and more data services, we are sure you agree that they have hardly stopped speaking, besides the billions of others that still use only voice calls as the primary telecom offering.

Do write in to us for more information on our portfolio and roadmap. You can reach us at team@dialify.com or call us at +91-90040-33399

We believe in the power of brands, we believe in the power of your programming, we believe the power of your characters and shows. Now extend your reach and monetization potential by collaborating with us on your content portfolio.

Whether it’s a TV Show, a special News Anchor, a celebrity show host, or for that matter even a multi-part series on any topic – we can turn anything into an interactive, multi-session game or story, now made accessible over a simple voice call.

Cue in the access number on-air and see viewer engagement go skyrocketing.

For Broadcasters

We are currently working with a TV Broadcaster with a strong portfolio of characters loved across the world. We are helping them by creating a lineup of voice accessible products that take these characters into every viewer home, and build real-time participation, while at the same time creating a new revenue stream via telecom operator revenue share from the incremental telecom revenue generated by their content.

For Studios & Production houses

We are also currently working with a gaming studio, with a large portfolio of online & mobile games. We will help them transition suitable content into a portfolio of voice accessible games. They recognize our unique competence at working on the creative & technology aspects together to deliver a spanking new revenue stream.

For Aggregators

If you are a content aggregator for telecom service providers with an existing supplier relationship – call us. We help enhance your set of offerings by syndicating products we have created for others, as well as our own lineup of unique games.

Write in to team@dialify.com or call +91-90040-33399 for more information.

Their coverage is spot on, and they dont have any particular leanings – one way or other. Which is extremely important. If you want unbiased coverrage of the Indian tech & web space, they should be on your feed reader for sure.

Pluggd.in has also launched their UnPluggd conference series, that showcases Indian startups at an annual conference.

At Dialify we had defined a fairly simple PR policy – no talk, no engagement, no PR, no blogging and no twitter till we were live with our first product. The opening on nominations for Unpluggd Oktoberfest coincided nicely with our first release of Cwicket going live on Reliance Communication Networks  [GSM + CDMA + Fixedline].

We decided to apply, and were selected in the top 10 draw by a jury comprising Sequoia Capital and Jumpstartup from a nomination pool of some 300 other startups.

We are grateful to Pluggd.in and their jury to have selected us and given us an opportunity to talk about our business.

Check out the links here and here.

Thanks

Team Dialify

We are a startup working on developing innovative technology to make calls, over any telephone – a lot more engaging, particularly while delivering – games, content, services, productivity tools & even social interactions.

We believe that the real-time nature of core voice telephony, is a very powerful medium. It provides for Identity [a phone number], Location [Fixed Location in case of Home/Office phones & approximate location for cellular phones], Voice Transmission in full-duplex, Real-time communication, Granular Charging [via your service provider's billing platform] and a lot many more capabilities that can be extended to common voice telephony users with little effort.

Some of these extended service profiles include capabilities like – Conferencing, Push-to-talk, Find-me-Follow-me call management, and a host of new services like Transcripts [Speech to Text], and Recordings. Most of these new services are provided by creating network hosted applications in various programming languages that can then be used to generate VoiceXML & CCXML. Most such applications are built by large telecom OEM’s and Software services companies, that tend to focus their product development efforts in the business services/corporate use application space.

Dialify is founded by a team of people that have deep roots in traditional Media [Print, TV, Radio] & New Media [Internet, Social Media]. This experience is combined with significant research and R&D efforts in the Telecom applications space to create a new generation of applications and services for mass consumer use over normal phones.

Our focus is to build new experiences by combining – new technology, next generation network capabilities and creative content – to create a new media experience for every phone call.

Among these we have chosen gaming as our first application, as games help showcase a number of capabilities unique to our platform.

Our patent pending interaction technology and content delivery process, enables us to quickly deliver a wide variety of applications to the widest possible market – essentially, anyone who can dial a number - no downloads, no gprs, no data plans, right from the latest smartphone to the simple landline at home

The telecom market in India is currently reported at around 650 million subscribers, with over 80% of these in semi-urban & rural markets, speaking no less than 28 languages across 1000’s of dialects. Most don’t speak or write English, which happens to be the only language spoken by technology. While a large number of businesses cater to the English speaking minority with new applications & services, such lifestyle and productivity enhancing tools are not available to the masses due to technological constraints in delivery of other languages.

At Dialify, we focus on separating the engineering constraints of the medium, from the language of the interface, thus enabling the delivery of many new applications over the ubiquitous voice telephony networks.

We hope to see millions of common folk – just like us – benefit from these applications, services & content.

Team Dialify

twitter : @dialify