Just to update you guys on what we are up to lately: there will be a new Semblante version coming soon. December 2nd to be more precise. See you soon.

EDIT: Ops. Looks like we will miss the deadline because of some health problems (and some pendent graduation project errands). New version should be uploaded tomorrow (December 3rd).

And here it is: Semblante 2.0, the IGF version. It’s a full revamp of the previous version, as we ported the game to the Construct Game Creator.

As it is a full port and a redesign, pretty much everything is changed between visuals, mechanical tweaks, level design etc. We will improve this version as the time goes by as since we had more than 48 hour to develop Semblante 2.0 the code and all the production pipeline is much simpler, which makes improvements, bugfixing and asset implementation way easier than what we could achieve on the Game Maker version.

And yes, Semblante is one of the 391 games competing at the 13th Independent Games Festival. We submitted it for all the tiny bits of publicity we can get and to receive feedback from the judges and peers.

To download the latest version of Semblante click here. Or you can go grab it on the game’s main page.

See you.

Well, well, almost 3 months and no news eh? You must be wondering if we are dead or something, right? Well, not quite. Let me explain.

We are currently a little away from our Aduge work and specially Tsar Project in these last 3 months. This is because all adugans are currently working on their graduation projects, and yes, everyone of us six at the same time. Because of this we are a little overburdened and we decided that we should slow down production on Tsar Project until December to maximize our productivity on our graduation projects and, well, live to see another year after all this.

However Aduge is not completely frozen in time. We are still working on Semblante, porting it into the Construct game maker, tweaking and making it better overall in order to send it to the IGF by October 18th.

With this post over with, expect others soon (this time we mean it), with more news from these past few weeks. Most of them involve Semblante, but there are some related to our grad. projects and to the SBGames 2010. Stay tuned.

And we are back from our N Design duties as the event comes to an end and everyone from around Brazil returns home after a rainy and chilly week in Curitiba. As mentioned on an earlier post, we went to N Design as supporters of the event, with two adugans working on the organization itself (on management), by organizing an art-games (or expressive games) exhibition and with a series of 5 workshops about indie game development that was named MegaMergulho.

The exhibition was about expressive games, games that through game-only means (mostly their rules and mechanics) can express an idea or make some kind of commentary, in the vein of what Ian Bogost calls procedural rhetoric. Short on budget, we had to chose only 7 games to expose, and 6 of them couldn’t be demanding since they would run on relatively weak hardware. We tried to chose diverse kinds of games, but all of them were indie in the end. The exhibited games were: Michael “Father” Kasprzak and co. Towlr (and other puzzles), Jason Rohrer’s Gravitation, David Shute’s Small Worlds, La Molleindustria’s Everyday the Same Dream, Jason Nelson’s Game game game and again game,  Terry Cavanagh’s Don’t Look Back and Jonathan Blow’s (and David Hellman’s) Braid.

The purpose of the exhibition was to promote games as a creative and expressive medium and also purge the common misconception, one that is rampant in Brazil, that the game industry and games as a medium can be summarized only by the mainstream AAA games. You can see some photos of the exhibition below (click to enlarge).

An overview of the exhibition space.

Visitors enjoying the games.

Guilherme Xavier from Donsoft chatting with the guys from Ratel Studio.

The minimalist Small Worlds.

The thought-provoking Everyday the Same Dream.

The frustrating experience of Towlr.

The eccentric Game, game, game and again game.

The metaphorical Gravitation.

The difficult, but rewarding, Don’t look back.

And last, but not the least, the time bending action of Braid.

About the MegaMergulho, it was a series of 5 workshops about some (but not all) game development topics: Conceptualization, Game Design, Visual Development, Sound Design and Project Management. The first one, conceptualization, was basically a workshop about going indie, about coming up with a vision and conceptualizing a game that follows that vision. We asked our participants to create a game vision about the theme “Desert”.  The second one, about game design, we showed our own conceptual framework about games and made a comprehensive overview about the game designer and his job. The third one was about visual development, showing our own case on Tsar. The fourth workshop was about sound design with some theory over sound design and then practice by composing sound effects. The last workshop was about project management, we showed our management processes and also we made our own take on Chris Hecker’s finish your game rant from the last GDC, by encouraging everyone to organize, develop and finish their games.  All in all, the workshops were a resounding success and we’d like to thank everyone that participated and contributed to it.

So now that we are relieved of our side questing, we will return to the development of Tsar Project. Expect a Tsar Update soon!

Whew. It’s been months since the last update. Last time I made our regular round of updates, we were returning from our holiday breaks and in the middle of our pre-production pretty much.

Well, here we are, at May’s doorsteps, and now we are finally entering the full production stage. So, where are we? We are finishing a gameplay mock-up on Game Maker to test some last ideas and the general feel of the game and finishing up the final touches of preparation for production. The mock-up has pretty much all game mechanics in a simplified, leaner way. It’s working for us to test some gameplay dynamics and adjust certain aspects of level design and the level of difficulty. It will be more vital in the future when we will be working on the full functionalities of the final software, the mock-up will be a testing fallback for game design to address gameplay problems and to find solutions in a simpler environment.

While the mock-up code is being done by myself, the graphics were quickly drafted by Ingrid and Pirin and sound effects quickly assembled by Marcel and Beto. They are now working the kinks with how visual and aural assets will be produced, both technically and creatively. Vermonde is currently in Berlin studying Marketing and drinking quality beer. However, he is also in charge of testing our new engine and tackling some of the more difficult technical stuff that will be used in the game. Namely, dynamic 2D lighting and shadows (using normal mapping and simple geometrical math to do the trick), dynamic sounds (without the use of expensive middlewares, it is a little tricky) and solving algorithms to satisfy our robust AI requirements (the troublemaker of the lot).

Well. There will be more updates and posts following up soon! See ya.

We are finally back from the Global Game Jam and we’d like to produdly present the result of our 48 hour effort: Semblante.

Before I start, a brief clarification. “Semblante” is a portuguese word that means “visage”. A good reason for the choice of this particular name was because it is a phonetically pleasing word (when spoken in native portuguese at least) the other reasons are pretty much subjective and we leave to each one his own to think about it or not.

The game is still a little incomplete as of now, even if it has a beginning and an end, as we need to work out some of the mechanics, asset implementations and general level design. Semblante is also quite simple, you control Jung inside its own mind as it searches for its own identity (represented as a mask) while avoiding the shadows that lurks within. The metaphor is obvious and I will not linger on it anymore.

The mechanics are pretty simple. Jung has 4 mechanics. It can move, jump, shine and scream. To shine, the character needs to stay in light spots to charge its body. Jung glows for a limited amount of time and while it is glowing, shadows are repelled by it. Jung can also use its remaining glow to scream and attract shadows to itself. We have a lot of bugs to work out still but the core mechanics are all there.

The guys at PUCPR jam site (we are at the right, with “uniforms”)

Aside from the game itself and talking about the Jam itself. It was a pleasing (and exhausting) experience to participate on a Global Game Jam. The extra hands were crucial for the game to come into fruition. In the name of the team I’d like to thank, Flor, Santo, Paulo and Rossato for their effort and dedication during the Jam. We also want to thank Bruno Campagnolo for organizing the Jam Site and the free sodas and sfihas. We’d like to do it again next year!