Even though our priority is the Tsar Project, we didn’t left Semblante behind. We’re sitll working on it to improve the gameplay and sharpen the game concept, looking forward to achieve a more complet experience on what’s been proposed for the game.
We just got extra motivation! =)

What must mark the beginning of production is a stage where we do not have any kind of uncertainties or doubts and can work on a “final” version of the software, without getting around different ways of doing things and without any big scope or feature changes.

The Production Planning we discussed the answers to questions that our testing and experimenting didn’t solve 100% and even the ones that testing and experimenting themselves had raised. The end result of our planning was excellent. More details… on the next chapters!

By the way, the one posting is Marcel Pace, executive producer of Tsar Project. (I rarely post here… You know, sound, music, project managing and process managing… kinda busy here, hehe! )

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!

We had a hard time defining the game concept. That happened not because we found it hard to fit a game concept to the theme proposed, but because we always have a creative boom and we end up having so much options that it’s difficult to pick up one way to go.

Even so, our sub-teams managed to make substantial advances. Game design defined the game mechanics and challange pallet; having the game concept the screenwriting team could work out the plot and main character; graphics develped some tilesets, props, and some animations fo the main character and enemies.

The prototype is almost with all mechanics and features implemented. By the time it’s all done, game design will start composing the level design.

Considering it all, we have a nice optmistic feel!

Later on we’ll talk more about the game itself.
Stay tuned! =)

Also this weekend Aduge will be a bigger and baddier team as we will be adding muscle to our team. Adding to our usual lineup of six developers we will have the collaboration of other 5 people:

Daniel Rossato

A friend of Vermonde and fellow programmer. A graduated Electric Engineer, Rossato has also some hidden skills that are revealed when he sits in front of a piano. Rossato already helped us on Tsar Project with some nifty pathfinder algorithms and now will return working with Aduge at the Global Game Jam.

Gabriel “Florzinha” Jacobi

Our fellow ex-junior entrepreneur and colleague at the Graphic Design course at Federal University of Parana. Flor, as we call him, is a comic book and cinema aficionado, that enjoy his games from time to time. He will lend his skills in scriptwriting and graphic design. He will also be an asset with his more-critical-than-the-norm approach to things.

Paulo “Lies” Faria
http://www.myspace.com/andalucia

An ex-Adugan, Paulo Lies left Aduge to fully dedicate himself to his band, Andalucia. A skilled musician and composer, Lies will be a great asset to creating great music to accompany our game. He is also a competent programmer and knows a thing or two about game design.

EDIT: Paulo had another things to do on the weekend and didn’t attended the event.

Paulo “Pixel” Reinehr

http://www.pixeljoint.com/p/3182.htm

We call him Pixel because he is very good at pixel art, but it doesn’t stop here. Paulo is a jack-of-all trades, knowing his way into various other aspects of game development. He will help us at the GGJ with his expertise in the art department mostly. Paulo is another fellow student at UFPR and already worked with Aduge before on a old project, being a great help with his pixel art.

Pedro “Santo” Medeiros
http://thelectricafe.blogspot.com

A ex-colleague of Pirin at Melies’s traditional character sculpture course in Sao Paulo. Santo is a prodigal illustrator and a graduate in Digital Design at Anhembi Morumbi. He is leaving Brazil soon to attend at Gnomon school to further improve his already impressive skills as an artist.

With these additions we will be going full speed ahead to the Jam. Expect updates during the weekend and the results next week! See ya guys!

Now back to our update. These two weeks were used to regain our rhythm and to review certain aspects of our project. The most important update this time is that we are re-designing the game pacing, episodic/plot structure and level design to better accommodate our initial design goals. This is being accomplished through a change of approach to our development process by first structuring episodic and thematic arches to the game and building everything from there. A classic “do the Mario” approach I might add, but when something works, it works.

We pretty much finished the main revamp and the new structure is much more solid and coherent than the older one. The map was seriously redesigned. Before we used only the palace and it’s immediate surroundings. Now the area covered is much bigger but with the same scope, exploring new regions of the Moscow Kremlin that were neglected by the old level design without actually enlarging the game or making it more complex than it was.

As for the other departments, Visual Arts made a new background concept art, a wine cellar, Programming is finishing the core AI for the NPCs and Sound Design advanced with the conceptual soundscape, creating the abstract layer of the soundsteps (don’t ask).

So, yeah, we are back and warming up for the Global Game Jam 2010, which has a confirmed Jam Site in Curitiba. See you all soon.

Ok, ok, I know we already are in the third week of the year, it so happens that, as usual, we were very busy since the 10th when we returned from our brief break. After more than half our studio went to Argentina, have our headquarters at Azuri Building reordered and having reviewed the next Tsar Project milestones, it was about time to write again here!

I decided to start 2010 continuing my presentation of the Tsar Project’s character design. The last phase I’ve showed in my last post was the creation of a generic character that defined the game’s general visual aesthetics.

After this I started designing other characters using this chosen style. After drawing more guards, some adaptations were made and I started to focus on a very important aspect of Tsar Project’s character design: designing different groups of characters by their silhouettes.

The silhouette is one of the most recognizable aspect of a character and the shape can say a lot about function, abilities and even the personality of a character. I started with the guards that were categorized into different functions by the Game Design and after that this was extended to all characters of the game.

Beyond the useful function of identification these different silhouettes became an important visual feature to convey the vision that our protagonist has of the people, animals and creatures that inhabit the Moscow Kremlin.

This concept was further improved, as all things seen or heard in the game will be filtered by the subjective perception of the protagonist. When the time comes, we will speak more about it.

In a future post I will further explain the character design development. See you soon!

The prototype is advancing at a fast pace. Me and Vermonde finally worked out one of the most tricky aspects of the game logic which is the way the game will control the NPCs routines. We are now implementing our solution onto the actual code.

Sound design finished the blizzard concept sound effect (which will probably be the actual asset used in the game) and made a lot of new conceptual definitions. This time it was about the abstract layer of the voice overs and more specific details about soundsteps.

Visual arts this week worked on tests regarding how the game will handle the different light sources (or lack thereof) upon the sprites and background. Besides this, the Yard concept art was thoroughly improved with new different layers of snow and snowfalls.

Finally, our screenwriter continued her work with the characters, finishing the full characterization of our protagonist, our “antagonist” and some secondary characters. They are finally fully fleshed out and whole, which will be a big help on the development of the game’s script.

And that’s it, pretty much. This update actually is more of an announcement as this was the last week of 2009 for Aduge Studio. As we approach the end of 2009 and, consequently, the holidays, Aduge will finally get a much deserved break from work. We return January 11th and before that there will be no new Tsar Updates though I can promise there will be other posts around the corner. So, in the name of the entire studio, I wish you all readers happy holidays and a successful and great 2010.

At that stage of the project we’re working in the Tsar Project for a month, basically developing the idea, researching and searching for plots that would express our goals. And then came the question: how to translate all this visually?

To answer this I’ve first worked in the characters graphic style. Interestingly, after those 8 months, and all the researches I’ve done along with Ingrid for our graduation project, we’ve developed a methodology of creating visual worlds focused exactly in the characters style.

Some of our first references were illustrations by Vladmir Semenov

This creative process started with the selection of a character that could be both generic enough so it won’t need many individual features and could carry as many cultural and contextual elements as possible. A soldier was a natural choice at the time: we’ll have plenty of them in the Kremlin and they seemed the more neutral characters in the cast. Upon that, Muscovy armors and arms from the period were some of our major visual references in the beginning of the project.

Set the character, a Muscovy soldier wearing a heavy armor  and wielding a spear-axe, I’ve done a set of sketches during the first two weeks of April. What I had in mind was to see all the possibilities, from realism to pure geometric abstraction, from childish cartoons to the complex frenchphonic comics. The result was the next image, that we now call the Father of all Tsar Art. He’s a hand drawn lad 2 and a half inches high, made of indian ink and markers.

The next step was choosing a direction to go and explore it deeper, testing other characters in the same style. I’ve done that with another soldier, lighter and faster, and with a nobleman. A very synthesized style turn to coherent and flexible, allowing good consistency for the characters without needing too much visual complexity, just what we’re looking for.

And how the character creation continued I’ll tell you on my next post! See you soon!