So it’s already December and we haven’t posted any news? Well, these last 4 weeks were the most busy weeks of the year for we Adugans, hands down. Last fortnight I was at São Paulo attending the first Interection South America, where I’ve published together with Beto a paper about Game Design. This paper is the result of our early studies on Game Design for our graduation project of which Beto will write about in the near future. There were also finals at university and all around end-of-the-year-craziness for everyone. Excuses, excuses, but what about the project? Well, let’s do our usual round up:

Game Design finished the core of the GDD and, even if we are a small team, the GDD is very important for this project. Now it is just polishing and revisions (and extensive testing of course!).

Vermonde at the programming dept. is working hard on finally turning the prototype into a prototype (the screenshot above may seem a little silly in it’s crudeness, but the function is what it is important at this early stage). Now we have a controllable character, guards, multiple levels, so things are finally taking a true shape. Probably me and Beto will drop the Legos and go work with the real deal very soon.

Sound Design is steaming up work on making the last sound assets for the conceptual soundscape. They also made an comprehensive conceptual work dealing with the nature of the abstraction layer of some sounds (specially soundsteps related to the guards and other NPCs) which seems complicated (and actually is pretty intricate) and I hope Marcel will write about it in the near future.

Ingrid, after finishing the core script, took a step back and started to really develop and deepen our main character’s… well, character. The whole deal: backstory, internal psyche, external behavior, etc. This was necessary to address some issues we are having with plot development. She finished this step and now is extending this work at a less detailed level to all the other characters found in the game.

Speaking of which, Visual Arts finally finished the characters concept arts. Endless color and texture testing resulted into a complete package of more than 70 characters, being 30 basic archetypes, plus 30 special individuals, plus a bunch of bonus characters, now resumed into a beautiful crowd concept. Some of which Pirin will present to you very soon.

That’s it for now. Expect a new Update next week, since it will be a productive one.

Oops! We passed a fortnight without an update. It was a busy fortnight, you see, so we had to abandon the blog for a while and for that we apologize. The last month was a very productive one, obviously more for some areas in the studio than for others, but everyone got relevant stuff done, either way.

Starting from the borderline between project work and administrative work we, me as the Director and Marcel as the Producer, worked on a risk management plan for the project, in which a lot of issues were addressed and contingency actions were planned. For the most part, this kind of work is barely noticeable on the finished product but it’s just as critical as developing good assets or game design to the success of this particular project (and future ones too).

On the Game Design front the level design and the game’s structural pace were thoughtfully laid out (which resulted on our most recent posts, as you can see) and all of the game dynamics were explained on the game design document (GDD) for further programming reference. We also made a very complete revision of all of the GDD chapters and sections correcting a lot of out of date information and other minor errors. I can say that we are at the 0.7 version of the document.

Ingrid, our screenwriter, reached an important milestone last week: the structure of the core script is done! And what does it means? Basically, that the game’s endings, introductory dialogues, main tutorials and important events which covers the core of the game’s screenplay were written, drafted and their vocabulary and characterization revised and polished. Right now she is hard at work on secondary events and side scripts.

Sound Design is now working on the conceptual soundscape, but the entire fortnight was used to detail the components and descriptions of the sound assets that will be produced, overcome conceptual aesthetic issues about realism and abstraction and also the preparation of professional sound production hardware and software.  Now they finally are past all this and are working on the assets themselves. Hopefully before this fortnight ends we will be hearing blizzards, bells, footsteps and the cracking of fireplaces.

Visual Arts started working on the background concept arts, to achieve a better understanding of the tilesets and the overall game tone as you can see on the image. Four concepts of different areas (outsides, the prison, a palace hall and a kitchen, of which a w.i.p. is shown here) are being made as this fortnight approaches its end. Color tests for the characters were also made, starting with guards and civilians.

And last, but definitely not the least, our lone (at the moment) programmer worked on implementing a batch of features into the game’s prototype, the documentation of past milestones and, of course, the compulsory bug fixing and code efficiency improvements. The generic class for all of the game’s characters was created and now the process of creating new characters and enemy classes is getting progressively easier and finally we have a playable character in the prototype.

We also came across pretty interesting new information while doing some more historic researches, but the update is beginning to become a wall of text. So we leave these interesting findings for another opportunity.

Last time I spoke briefly about the Tsar Project’s themes of aloneness and patience and how they are thought to be integrated with the gameplay and other aspects of the game. Now it’s time to talk about the gameplay itself, more on general terms rather than on specific details. What it means is that I will talk about how the game will be played/experienced on a general level, trying to not spoil too much of the experience proper.

To begin with, Tsar is an infiltration mission.  The protagonist is an outsider, an invisible summoned creature inside the heavily guarded and tense Moscow Kremlin Palaces. A mission is presented, but it hardly matters, the character is where it shouldn’t be, and there are people that will attack anything that don’t belongs there. Thus, the game objective is quite clear: avoid all guards, civilians, animals (read: everyone) and reach your destination within a set time limit. Failing to elude the obstacles means a very hard time for the player, or simply failing the game itself.

And what means this character has to complete its objective? As said above, it is an invisible creature. No human can see it under normal conditions. Although particles, debris, snow, blood or and any other mundane object over this creature’s body remains visible. So it’s for the best to avoid getting dirty. And even if invisible, the character still makes sounds which can be heard by any attentive guard, so silent movements are still important. Also, the protagonist (it’s name shall remain a mystery, for now) is very athletic and agile, being capable of exploring the environment with great mobility. Now it may seems pretty easy, right? Not that much. There’s one major vulnerability in this playable character that enforces the game as a “sneaking mission”. The protagonist is fragile. Fragile to the point that any wound can mean it’s death. A direct combat situation is extremely adverse to the player and even if this character is powerful enough to kill or incapacitate most humans in one single strike, this kind of situation remains a risky gamble that should be avoided.

Another interesting aspect of the game is related to it’s time limit. The player has one in-game night to complete the mission. All characters (and I mean all of them) that inhabit the Moscow Kremlin have their routines and their stories on this particular night, as the time progresses. The player can simply watch everything or take action and see the results, whichever he wants. Guards will stand watch, workers will do their jobs, everyone will sleep, eat, or do whatever else people do. There is also a behavior system which conducts every character’s actions and reactions that will result in a very complex AI system, where enemy characters will not be as dumb as players are used to.

To sum it up, the Tsar Project is a stealth game where the player must elaborate routes and actions that are the most efficient to reach a destination without being seen or raising suspicions. Killing guards seems easy, but it’s not a very good idea most of the time (as it can cause a full scale alert, locking paths and whatnot) or going the most obvious and guarded route is not as efficient as using other sneaky and more subtle paths. When playing Tsar, remember: you are invisible, you are alone, you are deadly, but you still breath and is mere flesh and blood as any other. Better tread carefully.

So, we are back from Rio! (actually, we arrived in Curitiba late saturday) The highlights of the event I would say it was Jason Della Roca’s provocative keynote about the current state and trends of the games industry, and the panels about important issues of game development in Brazil. Both resulted in pretty useful discussions!
Besides that we heard some good news about funding opportunities and met a lot of nice and promising fellow developers and students (networking is key, right?). So, despite the uninterrupted rain, sprained ankles, organizational flaws and overall below-par content, the Symposium was fairly nice.

Well, this is just to say that we came back alive and are safe and sound. More information and specific details about SBGAMES 2009 and Aduge’s trip to Rio in general will be posted later. See ya.

Wanderer above the Mists - Caspar David Friedrich

So, we said we have a new project. We even posted a production update of it. But… we still didn’t present it properly did we? Well, let’s correct that. Presenting: Tsar Project.

Most people upon contact with a new game simply ask “what kind of game is this?” and are satisfied by the fairly superficial answer. Simply put, Aduge’s current project is a challenging stealth game set on XVI century Russia. We could go on and on about the game’s mechanics and features, but this wouldn’t present Tsar Project more than it’s outermost layer. To most players this would do, but the target audience of our studio isn’t most players. When it comes to Aduge’s projects the more correct question we’d like to hear is “what is this game about?”. This type of question let us explain why Tsar Project is a challenging stealth game set on XVI century Russia which is the heart of the “problem”, so to speak.

Now, getting finally to the point of this post: Tsar Project as a game is about aloneness and patience. It’s not just a story about aloneness and patience, it’s a game about these concepts. This means that the game itself through it’s mechanics and challenges deals with these concepts.

Aloneness not in the sense of loneliness, but in the sense of distancing an individual from a group, up to the point he becomes a complete outsider. In Tsar’s case, the player will be immersed on the main character’s mind which is alien to the universe of the game itself, hence the feeling of aloneness. Other supernatural traits of this main character contribute to the distancing and the feel of aloneness, but the nature of these traits we leave to another opportunity.

This is a game about waiting and that is what makes it difficult in the first place. The more reckless or hasteful the player is, the more mistakes he will eventually make and this will compromise his/her task. It’s a true stealth game, where active push and aggressive behaviors end up biting the player’s hand in the long run. Waiting, contemplating, looking for patterns, reading behaviors, these are actions that rewards the player more than his skill at pressing buttons at the right time.

That being said, this is only the conceptual guide that drives the game development and design. But that is not the “right” meaning of Tsar Project and we still encourage players to play and interpret the game the way they want to. See you next post!

We are working on a “new” project! Actually started last March, the project is currently around half of it’s pre-production. We call it

Tsar Project.

We will start a production journal of it very soon on this same weblog and more info will be filled on a future special page.