Here we are, Adugans and friend developers, at Global Game Jam.

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! =)

So, Global Game Jam is this weekend and Aduge will this time join the party! We are very excited about it, specially because Curitiba is as of right now the biggest Jam Site on the southern hemisphere and we’d like to meet and exchange experiences with all the people that will be there.

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!

Hello again! We are back from our break for awhile now and our first fortnight of the year has already ended. But before the usual round of updates on the Tsar Project I’d like to speak about a interesting article I read at Gamasutra last week. It’s about the Brazilian game industry environment and perspectives written by James Portnow. I will just say that the article was very well informed and precise, covering much of the problems that plagues our infant industry, and it’s a well worth read for everyone interested.

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.

Hello and happy new year!

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!