The Dream Machine

Indie Game Challenge

2012-01-21T02:38:00.000-08:00

We're thrilled to announce that The Dream Machine was selected as one of the 10 finalists in this years Indie Game Challenge!

Visit the web page below and vote for The Dream Machine! Please, please, please!

Indie Game Challenge 2012

In protest of SOPA & PIPA

2012-01-18T06:45:00.000-08:00

We quote: "PROTECT-IP is a bill that has been introduced in the US Senate and the House and is moving quickly through Congress. It gives the US government and corporations the ability to censor the net, in the name of protecting 'creativity'. The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites -- they just have to convince a judge that the site is 'dedicated to copyright infringement.'

The US government has already wrongly shut down sites without any recourse to the site owner. Under this bill, sharing a video with anything copyrighted in it, or what sites like Youtube and Twitter do, would be considered illegal behavior according to this bill."

Learn more here

Another Massive Update!

2012-01-10T06:45:00.000-08:00

In celebration of the new year, we released another update to the game. This time we added 75 new interactions possibilities to Chapter 1 and 2, and over 130 new interaction possibilities to Chapter 3.

Through the magic of Google Analytics, we can see whenever a player tries to combine objects unsuccessfully. Every so often we add proper responses to the top failed interaction attempts, instead of leaving the boring standard 'That doesn't seem to work'. Our goal is that every single interaction possibility will eventually have a proper response.

At this stage, the things we're adding to Chapter 1 and 2 pretty much fall into the 'strange & rare' category. For instance, attacking the bedroom pillow with the crowbar now has a proper response. In Chapter 3 we're still seeing some confusion during some of the harder puzzles. If a lot of people are trying to use every single inventory object on everything in the scene, it's a pretty good indicator that more tweaks and hints are required.

From a game design point of view, it's also important that the stimulus-response cycle never gets predictable. If you keep getting the same response no matter how you interact with the world, you will get bored very quickly. It's the equivalent of getting exactly the same loot drop every time you kill a monster in Diablo.

We don’t track who did what. All that happens when you attempt an interaction is that a counter increases by 1. So if seven people try to smear baby oil on the radiator in the bed room we just see something like this: "Chapter 1:Bedroom:Use baby oil on radiator:7".

Personally, I'm very fond of this data-driven approach to game design, since it makes the player an active part of the process. I look forward to taking this approach to the next level once The Dream Machine is done and dusted.

Development news on Chapter 4 will follow in the next post. Stay tuned!

Cheers,

– a

The Million Dollar Question

2011-12-07T10:01:00.000-08:00

Question: I don't like that you're spending time writing progress reports. Why don't you just focus on getting Chapter 4 done?

Answer: I'm glad you ask! We like to communicate with people and make sure everyone knows where we're at. During production of Chapter 3, we mainly focused on getting the chapter done, which ended up with us not communicating with those people who were eagerly waiting. It's a mistake we hope not to repeat.

As strange as it sounds, writing these types of updates also save us time. We receive quite a lot of mails requesting progress reports and instead of answering individual emails – even though we do that as well – this more general approach is a lot more efficient.

We also regard the blog as a chronicle of the making of the game, so we try to update it as often as we can. Hopefully we'll add a lot more to it in the coming weeks.

Stay tuned!

Cheers,

– a

Developing Chapter 4

2011-12-07T09:18:00.000-08:00

Chapter 3 seems to have reached a pretty solid state by now. We're still receiving the odd bug report once in a while, but overall we're pretty happy with where we're at. If you find something you think seems strange, don't hesitate sending a line or two at this address:

tdmfeedback at-sign cockroach.se

Development on Chapter 4 is under way, and has so far produced some stunning looking sets. Chapter 4 will be the longest of all the chapters, but it's also a chapter where we revisit some familiar locations, so hopefully that'll keep production manageable.

Right now, Erik is working on some of the new sets, while I'm doing some much needed engine tweaks. Hopefully these tweaks will allow us to produce and implement content faster than before. I'm not a programmer, but so far I'm pretty chuffed.

We know we're straining your patience with our slightly spaced out release schedule, but judging by what we've seen so far, we think they'll be worth the wait.

We love you.

Cheers,

– a

Chapter 3 updated!

2011-11-22T08:01:00.000-08:00

We just uploaded a massive new update to Chapter 3. More than 200 interaction possibilities were added.

Cheers,

- a

Chapter 3 has launched!

2011-10-31T16:00:00.000-07:00

This just keeps getting weirder and weirder...

2011-10-31T15:01:00.000-07:00

Something's approaching on the horizon...

2011-10-31T14:10:00.001-07:00

Something is brewing in the kitchen...

2011-10-31T13:21:00.001-07:00

A New Trailer Appears!

2011-09-01T06:15:00.000-07:00

We're pushing towards the finish line on Chapter 3, but just to whet your appetite a bit more here's a new trailer we decided to cut!

The stellar music is made by Ale Speranza, and if you enjoyed it you'll be happy to hear that he's the main contributor to the music in Chapter 3. Check out his other works here.

Watch the trailer here!

Feel free to share the link! We hope you enjoy it!

Cheers,

– a

Twitter

2011-05-23T05:55:00.000-07:00

After much press ganging we've finally decided to join Twitter! So if you're wondering why Chapter 3 is taking so long, it's because we're busy tweeting up a storm.

No not really. But if you feel like staying abreast with the latest developments, we suggest you follow us there as well!

Tweet, tweet!

@theDreamGame

Server Maintenance

2011-04-13T03:30:00.000-07:00

Just a quick heads-up: There'll be some server maintenance between 03.00 and 05.00 CET 14th of April 2011. It's just for two hours, but we're sorry if it causes any inconvenience for you!

Chapter 3 is progressing well, but still needs a bit more time. It's still a bit early to set a date for its release, but you'll be the first to know once we do.

Cheers,

– a

Sorry about the lack of communication

2011-03-21T11:58:00.000-07:00

We're sorry to say it, but our estimated release date for Chapter 3 has been pushed back a bit. It's a bit a more ambitious in scope and will require more time to complete. We will announce a new date once we feel confident that we can stick to it.

We're working hard on Chapter 3 right now. Sorry about not communicating more. We hope you understand.

Cheers,

– a

Spreading the love

2011-02-05T03:05:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while people question our choice of genre. Adventure games are dead, they say. The genre died in its sleep back in '98 supposedly, and we'd be well advised to stop beating the dead horse.

Obviously we disagree with this notion. Sure, it might not be the commercial power house it was back in the golden days, but it's far from dead. It's not even particularly niche either, since it's one of the best selling genres of the Nintendo DS.

You don't have to take our word for it. Recently the supreme chaps over at Ars Technica and IGN decided to revisit the "ailing" genre and found that it's doing quite well, thank you for asking. Fact of the matter is that it's feeling better than it has in a long time. Both articles make for nice reading together over a cup of coffee and some pastry, and can be found here and here.

Feel free to send us links to similar articles, if you know of any. We can't get enough of reading about this!

Cheers,

- a

IGF's Audience Award

2011-01-31T03:50:00.000-08:00

Regardless of who wins, we're honoured and delighted to be rubbing shoulders with this stellar line-up. Aside from the jury picked awards, there's also an audience award that you can vote for here:

2011 IGF: Main Competition Audience Award

Go forth and make your voice heard!

Cheers,

- a

Why is the game only playable online?

2011-01-08T08:09:00.000-08:00

During the time since launch some people have expressed concerns over the fact that the game is only playable online, with no downloadable version being offered. We'd like to take the moment to address these concerns and outline some of the reasons why we've chosen this model.

As gamers, we think the pros of this model outweigh the cons:

Play on any OS (Mac, PC, Linux). Play from any computer (home or work) with cloud saved inventory, settings and progress. No install required: play instantly, without the game taking up any of your precious hard drive space. Patching is automatic. We can continuously add things like language support down the line.

We also consider this game to be a continuously supported service, not a static product that we're done with and then just send out into the world never to hear from again. Distributing it online allows us to check statistics for how people play and adjust the game accordingly. If enough people try to solve a puzzle in a way we didn't think of, or can't solve it at all, we can actually see that and act accordingly. This helps us make the game better.

Another factor is Piracy. We're only two people making this game and we don't have the financial backing of a publisher. We looked a lot at what had happened to Machinarium. They released the game as a single downloadable file and unfortunately got heavily pirated because of that. According to their estimation about 85-95% of the played copies where pirated versions, and though we're quite liberal about piracy, those numbers sound frankly depressing. That's was a situation we wanted to avoid. We hope you understand.

We don't limit how many computers you can play the game on or how many times you can install the game, which to us differentiates us from intrusive DRM-models.

The game requires an Internet connection because of the cloud save system and because the assets (things like background music and the rooms) are discreetly streamed in the background to minimize loading times. Without a connection they would simply fail to load. That raises the accessibility bar a bit, but players without Internet access are getting fewer and fewer every day.

These are some of the main reasons we went with online distribution. Is it too intrusive? Do you fear you might lose your game?

Feel free to voice your opinion in the comments.

Cheers,

- a

Independent Games Festival

2011-01-04T05:57:00.000-08:00

We just heard word that The Dream Machine is a 2011 IGF Main Competition Finalists! So it looks like we'll be going to San Francisco in the end of February! If you plan on going to GDC, don't hesitate in stopping by our little demo station!

This was the second time we entered the game into the competition. Last year we didn't get nominated for anything, but the judges provided solid constructive feedback, which really helped us hone in on the games week spots. A year later we submitted a much more polished, much better game and this with much better results.

We've been quietly chipping away at this game for two years now. A crazy undertaking, some might say, but reading the kind words of players, and getting this kind of news, strengthens our belief that it's all been worth it.

Speaking for myself, this has been the hardest, most challenging thing I've ever undertaken – but also the most gratifying. A big sloppy Thank You hug to everyone who's egged us on along the way!

Cheers,

- a

PayPal

2010-12-19T04:07:00.000-08:00

Right now we're looking into offering alternatives to PayPal to those of you who – like us – don't happen to agree with their handling of the WikiLeaks case.

It will be while until we have an alternative payment system up and running, though, so for now I guess PayPal will have to suffice.

If you have already bought the game through PayPal, don't worry, changing or adding another payment method won't affect your purchase.

Cheers,

- a

We have lift-off!

2010-12-14T11:19:00.000-08:00

One...

2010-12-14T10:48:00.000-08:00

Two...

2010-12-14T10:27:00.000-08:00

Three...

2010-12-14T10:10:00.000-08:00

Any day now...

2010-12-13T03:14:00.000-08:00

Sorry about the lack of updates, but we've been busy getting the new website done. Right now we're tinkering with the last minute polish, so it's not live yet. Though it may look similar to the old one, the functionality has actually gotten a complete and much needed overhaul.

So what's different, you ask? Well, for one, the Store menu option is now accessible, so you can actually buy the game! If you do, you'll get immediate access to the second Chapter of The Dream Machine, so you can finally find out what's on the other side of that door...

We have also implemented the system that saves your progress, inventory and settings to the cloud, so you can play the game from any computer. The cloud save system has actually been running parallel to the old cookie based system for a while now, in order to minimize any possible transitional friction. Hopefully you won't even realize that something is different at all.

With this bad boy out the door (tomorrow most likely), we can finally turn our full attention to the latter chapters of the game; which are looking really good so far.

We can't wait to hear what you think of Chapter 2!

Cheers,

- a

Why the game won't be free

2010-11-20T01:58:00.000-08:00

It dawned on us that we haven't really made any clear statement as to whether the game will cost money or be free. So in the interest of clearing things up a bit, here's the model we're currently considering:

The first chapter will be released for free, to give everyone a fair chance to try the game and see if they like it. The following four chapters will cost money, however if you pre-order them before the game is released you will get them at a discounted price. The system for pre-ordering will come online sometime next week hopefully. Pre-ordering the game will let you play the second chapter immediately.

Though we'd like to release the game for free, we simply can't afford it. We're only two guys working from our homes. We don't have any investors or publishers backing us up. We've been working on The Dream Machine for almost two years now, and we've put a lot of time and soul into making it.

We'd also put the money we hopefully make into working on another game like this. So if you like this type of game, why not vote with your money and support the makers? If you don't support this type of niche games, they will vanish and be replaced by bland same-y shooter clones, like Call of Honor™, Medal of Duty™ and Modern Halo™.

In an effort to make everybody happy, we will release the game as cheaply as we possibly can. That is the best we can do without going bankrupt. If you'd like to chime in on what you think is a fair price, feel free to do so in the comments. We will keep your opinion in mind as we decide on the final price point.

More about that next week.

Cheers,

– a

Would you buy a used car from these guys?

2010-11-12T00:29:00.000-08:00

Just a quick heads-up to say that development on Chapter 2 is almost complete, and we're gearing up to launch the first two chapters in the coming weeks. It's a frightening – but very exciting – prospect. We've been working on this beast for two years now, and being at a stage where it's time to release it into the world, makes us feel like nervous parents seeing their kid off to their first day of school.

The beta testing of Chapter 2 is now over and we thank everybody who helped us break the game! There's still some minor tweaks to fix, but the bulk of the chapter is robust.

We also had the chance to talk a bit about the game when we where in Texas. If you feel like hearing what we have to say, you can find a stellar write-up/video interview here:

IndiePub interviews The Dream Machine team

Cheers,

– a

Don't mess with Texas!

2010-10-11T02:29:00.000-07:00

The Dream Machine won in the Best Art category at IndiePubs 3rd Independent Game Developers' Competition! Thanks to everyone involved!

Jury's motivation: "The Dream Machine was chosen for Best Art due to the meticulous detail that went in to every object and landscape in the game. Even the smallest element, from the wet grains of sand, to the uneven floorboards, or even the cracks in the ancient stone pieces, adds volumes to the narrative and immersion presented to the player. By using an art form rarely seen in games and presenting it in a masterful manner, it is no wonder that The Dream Machine has earned the award for Best Art."

Seen above is the stellar Hitbox Team, who walked away with the Grand Prize for their superb game Dustforce! Congrats to Woodley and his team on a well-deserved win! Just seeing that photo makes us all warm and fuzzy inside!

You can read about – and play – all the finalists here.

Cheers,

– a

Match made in heaven

2010-09-20T22:59:00.000-07:00

Some of the Photoshop wizards over at Eurogamer made this sweet little mash-up image with Morton and Meatboy for a recent article. And boy, don't they look good together?

They look so happy, so tranquil! Can you hear the slow jam playing in the background? Or the sound of Morton tapping his little feet to the rhythm? I swear, any second now they'll burst into song. Their voices will be as clear as a crystal gently washed by spring dew.

If you want to read said article – which we recommend since it's really good – you can find it here:

Eurogamer's The Dream Machine interview

Hug the universe!

2010-09-17T07:58:00.000-07:00

Through an awesome stroke of good fortune, we've been nominated for an award in the 3rd indiePub developers' contest! We feel deeply honored and look forward to going to the ceremony at GDC Online in Austin, TX in the beginning of October.

If you plan on attending, swing by the IndiePub booth and hang out with us a bit. Erik is the tall blond fellow with the shifty gaze. Anders is the short, brown haired biker/outlaw type standing next to him.

Aside from answering questions about The Dream Machine, we both enjoy dancing slowly and amorously for money.

We also enjoy it when people buy us drinks.

Hell Week Survived 2

2010-09-03T11:17:00.000-07:00

We just pulled through another crunch period to get Chapter 2 finished. It wasn't as grueling as the last one, but working around the clock for extended periods of time does leave you drained and whimpering. The good news is however that sitting on our hard drives right now is a feature complete, fully playable version of Chapter 2.

Sure, it's still a bit rough and buggy in places, but for an early playable it's also surprisingly solid.

In the coming week we'll play test the crap out of it, before turning our full attention to Chapters 3 & 4. We will need some help with the testing, so if you feel like helping us out, don't be shy to give us a shout in the comments section or on our Facebook page. It won't be an open beta like Chapter 1 was (there's only a limited amount of beta keys), but if you're willing to play the game a couple of times and try to break it in whatever way you can, you're A-OK in our books.

In other – slightly related – news, the voting for the IndiePub competition is now over. We hope we win, because it would help us a lot. But, more than that, we hope you had a chance to play some of the entered games!

And if you're wondering why Erik hasn't written in a while, it's due to the fact that he just became a father.

Cheers,

– a

IndiePub Competition

2010-08-27T10:03:00.000-07:00

Just a quick heads-up about our latest progress. Some of the assets are starting to come online as you can see from the screenshot above, and they look stunning to say the least!

We're sure most of you agree.

But we also got the impression that some of you aren't quite as thrilled about our decision to turn the game into a standard, run-of-the-mill shooter – and now we'd like to give you guys a chance to change our minds!

If you go the IndiePub Competition page and vote for your favorite game, along with a runner-up, we promise not to redesign the game, but instead keep it a pure point'n'click love fest, like god intended.

The New Deal

2010-08-17T02:52:00.000-07:00

If you're wondering why the game is taking so long, it's basically down to the fact that we just recently decided to completely overhaul the design and make a straight first person shooter out of it instead.

After studying the numbers, it turns out that that is the most lucrative genre nowadays, and who are we to argue with good business interests? Let's milk this teet dry, before hopping on the next money printing train! Who cares if we beat the market to a pulp with bland same-y action clones?

So here it is: the new story revealed!

The plot now revolves around a futuristic space marine, named Cutter Blade, sent on a mission to shot everything that moves. You have undergone years of psycho-chemical conditioning and rigorous training in order to be able to masturbate pure fury out of the nozzle of any weapon on earth! These are desperate times, you see, the Orks are attacking, and the only thing standing between the planet and its imminent destruction – is you.

Also, our online multiplayer component features a soon-to-be-industry-standard "Pay Per Bullet"-micro transaction system™! If you're really accurate with your head shots, you don't have to pay as much as your noob friends. Hell yeah!

Homophobic, racist and gender based slurs all give you discounts to the price. The more you spew – the less you pay! With a sweet "Sailor Talk"-achievement™ awarded to the most vitriolic tongue on the server!

We will also have an unlockable mode that turns the Orks into zombies or nazis! Or perhaps a spicy combination of the two – the Nazi Zombie! "Coming back from the dead to ethnically cleanse the living!" Man, this game just writes itself! Give us another day or two and we'll be able to cram ninjas and pirates into this bad boy as well!

So what plastic peripheral will be required to play, you ask? The answer is as simple as it is brilliant: every last one! 3D-glasses are a given! The full Rockband™ instrument lineup! A Wiimote™ plus the WiiFit board, used during the aerobics mini-game! A Singstar™ mic (or equivalent headset) used for shouting expletives at opponents! The PlayStation™ Move! And lastly a Kinect™ camera, so you can force your child to pretend getting face-licked by the Nazi Zombies! Cringeworthy moments of fun for the whole family!

Rest assured that the game will end on a hugely unsatisfying cliffhanger, so we can hook you into buying DLC extensions for the rest of your life. It's all part of the experience! Who needs closure when you can be spoon fed irrelevant exposition that "deepens" the "story"?

Are you as excited as we are?! Let's give it up for Cutter Blade!

The Early Days

2010-07-21T04:48:00.000-07:00

The idea of building a game out of clay and cardboard came from Erik. I was very skeptical at first, knowing the highly iterative nature of game development. Having to build static sets would force me to pre-plan far more than I was used to, which I didn't feel comfortable doing.

But Erik persisted and, in order to convince me, whipped up these four test environments more or less overnight – painted and all.

As you can see, a lot has happened since then. We don't use primary colors in the way Erik did in some of these tests, instead opting for a more muted desaturated color scheme. And our shape language ended up being much more straight and angular.

But for a brief proof-of-concept I thought they where damn charming, and after seeing what could be done, I jumped on board. So this is actually the embryo to The Dream Machine.

At this stage, Erik was working as the Producer for various commercials in Gothenburg and I was hired as an Art Director for a games studio in Malmö. Neither of us was very happy about our work situations and saw this project as a chance to get back to the early days, when we worked out of sheer mad determination and passion.

Based on these rough tests and a story treatment, we managed to acquire some money in order to produce a proof-of-concept demo. And the rest, as they naggingly like to say, is history.

And since I'm in a nagging mood: don't forget, the open BETA testing for chapter 1 is still running. If you'd like to participate, just go to http://www.thedreammachine.se/game.html and click the pink "Beta Sign-up" button. That'll give you full, instant access to the first chapter.

We hope you enjoy playing the game!

Cheers,

- a

Second Beta Crunch

2010-07-05T02:03:00.000-07:00

Erik just put the final touches on our most ambitious build to date, and it's glorious. We wish we could show you more, but we don't want to spoil it.

We're still working hard on the gameplay for Chapter 2 and assets for coming attractions. I guess you could say we've entered crunch to get the second chapter feature complete.

The open BETA testing for chapter 1 is still running. If you'd like to participate, just go to http://www.thedreammachine.se/game.html and click the pink "Beta Sign-up" button. That'll give you full, instant access to the first chapter.

In the interest of full disclosure, we have a system running discreetly in the background, that registers statistics for how many players actually solve any given puzzle in the game. If we note that we have a significant drop anywhere, we can add clues or re-think the problem entirely. We want the game to be challenging, but if we lose 30% of our players on one puzzle, we have to do something about it.

We also note different interactions the player attempts, that we didn't think of. If enough people try to use, say, the baby oil with the apartment key, we go in and write a response for that. Our hope is that, in the end, every possible interaction will have a proper response, instead of the boring default "That doesn't seem to work".

So even if you don't take the time to send us detailed bug rapports, you are in fact helping us make the game better just by playing.

And we thank you for that.

Cheers,

- a

BETA testers wanted!

2010-06-12T13:08:00.000-07:00

We've been accepting BETA testers for a while now, but it just dawned on me that we'd never made any sort of official announcement about it. I apologize for that, and a bunch of other, non-related stuff.

I guess I'm in an apologetic mood.

First and foremost, I want to apologize to my father for having laughed derisively at the issue of The Phantom he bought me when I was about ten years old. I was heavily into Lucky Luke and Asterix at the time, and The Phantom -- although I knew fully well was his favorite childhood comics hero -- just seemed a bit "meh" to me. I'm sorry about that. Laughing at someones heartfelt gift is never OK. And I've learned to accept gifts more gracefully since then.

There are more things I'd like to get off my chest, but time is running out and I need to get going.

If you'd like to participate in the BETA testing of Chapter 1, just go to http://www.thedreammachine.se/game.html and click the pink "Beta Sign-up" button. When you login in, you'll get full, instant access to the first chapter of the game.

I hope you'll enjoy it. And don't be shy to tell us if you don't.

Cheers,

- a

New trailer!

2010-05-31T10:30:00.000-07:00

We just released another trailer for your viewing pleasure! We mainly produced it to give you something to do while you're waiting for Victor to return from that strange, unearthly dimension.

It contains some material lifted straight out of Chapter 2, so if you want your playing experience to be 100% unspoiled, you might want to watch with one or both eyes closed.

As with our last trailer, music was again provided by one of the most chill dudes we've ever met: the stupendously great Anthony Lledo.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH!

Cheers,

- a

All kinds of great!

2010-05-23T05:17:00.000-07:00

We've been sending out some of our leftover masks to friends around the world, and this photo is the first to return to us. We are hoping more will show up in the coming weeks.

We also got some attention from IndieGames.com recently (here). It's not much new if you've already seen the Game Reactor interview, but its still appreciated.

An as always, join our Facebook group. It's all kinds of great!

Cheers,

- a

Have you seen this man?

2010-05-11T08:27:00.000-07:00

Victor just sent us an alarming SMS: From what we can gather, he's managed to get himself stuck in some kind of freaky twilight realm, halfway between Super Mario Galaxy, Tetris and German Expressionism. Apparently, the laws of physics in this place are fickle at best, and he doubts that the commute system – if he could manage to find a bus stop – would be on schedule.

The indigenous population doesn't seem to offer much help either. If you have any words of advice on how he could get out of there or how he might befriend the locals, please submit them in the comments section bellow. He also mentions that he only had an egg salad sandwich for lunch, so any recommendations for a clean, reasonably priced vegetarian restaurant would be greatly appreciated.

This alerts us to the fact that the game's tentative May release date might be in jeopardy. So until our leading man returns, the game will have to be indeterminately on hold.

We'll try to keep you posted as this situation unfolds. Our thoughts right now go out to his family.

Cheers,

- a

PS: Proper authorities have been notified.

Thank you Nordic Game!

2010-05-04T08:27:00.000-07:00

We just got back from the Nordic Game conference, which was an utter blast! Lots of great people and interesting seminars (which we unfortunately didn't have much time to attend). Huge thanks to the brilliant Nordic Game crew, who made it all happen!

People seemed to enjoy our little booth, which we took great care in making as cozy and inviting as we could.

The entire first chapter was proudly on display, for those who wanted to try the game out for themselves. We also edited a new trailer for the conference, which we'll post here shortly. Aside from being better than the first one, it shows some teasing morsels from Chapter 2...

We also brought a set from the game, so people could see what these bad boys actually look like.

We get a lot of blank stares when we try to explain that we actually build the game by hand out of clay and cardboard, so having this diorama to show people really helped!

If you look carefully, you'll notice that some of the props are slightly out of scale with the others. That's because achieving the level of detail we want on such a small scale requires the fingers of an elf. In this case the Victrola and the desk lamp are built to twice the scale and have to be reduced in Photoshop afterwards.

Erik also made this beautiful display of (nearly) all the characters in the game. They're all made out of clay, which is then painted by hand before the computer wizardry takes over.

As we mentioned in an earlier post, this gives them the distinct hand made look we were going for: retaining all the little beautiful imperfections that comes for free when you do something by hand.

We also managed to get some generous press coverage for the game, from various sources. Having worked on this game for over a year – mainly from our homes – seeing it on display in magazines like Game Reactor feels beyond surreal.

Hopefully some more will crop up as the week progresses. We'll add those as we find them. Drop us a line if you've seen one we haven't.

Eurogamer preview (Swedish)

Gamereactor summary (English)

Stray Dog Strut preview (English)

Gamasutra (English)

To round things off, this ilomilo post sums it up pretty well

This just in:

A video interview with Game Reactor

All in all, we had stupendously fun at the Nordic Game conference, and hope we can return for future iterations. We are humbled by the effort it takes to make something like this happen, and would like to thank everybody involved once again (especially Emma, whom we secretly love).

All photos courtesy of the brilliant Oscar Wemmert!

Cheers,

– a

Production & Co

2010-04-22T12:37:00.000-07:00

I just found a slew of photos we took during the early months of production. If memory serves, most of these images are from early 2009. Erik had just secured some funds for a proof-of-concept game/movie mix project and I had just resigned from my job. That's basically how it all started.

Since we already had an adventure game engine up and running, we figured why settle for a proof-of-concept demo? Why not just take the money and launch full scale production straight away?

Since we knew we wanted to build the game by hand to a large extent, we set up shop at Erik's former business partner, Mikael Lindblom, in his stop motion studio at Dockhus Animation.

This is Mikael working hard on one of the games basement locations. This precise location has changed quite a lot since then, so don't worry, we're not spoiling anything for you.

This is basically how we set up most of our locations: three walls and a floor. No point in putting in a ceiling since it would not be seen by the player – and would also make lighting the set very difficult.

Setting up shop at an existing stop motion studio had the advantage of most of the equipment already being in place. Having to buy lights/rigs/dimmers/cameras/etc. would quickly have eaten up the entire budget. (Film grade lights are worth their weight in gold.)

I spent most of the early days writing the design document for Chapters 1 & 2. This was made extra nerve-wracking since Erik and Mikael where already hard at work building sets – usually faster than I could write the scenes. Any drastic changes and the whole set would have to be re-worked after the fact.

To a large extent we circumvented a lot of potential problems by setting the game in an apartment building. This way, Erik and Mikael could start building rooms by the functions they where supposed to have (a kitchen, a toilet etc.) and start working in the details once I knew specifically what the room needed to contain for gameplay purposes.

This turned out surprisingly well, even though we had to retrace our steps on some of the sets.

The characters also started out in a similarly vague fashion. In our early discussions they where basically ciphers, reduced to one or two characteristics: "shady old man", "disabled black guy" etc. Then we started fleshing them out once the process demanded it.

The handsome young fella behind the clay figurine is Erik by the way.

This is one of my favorite sets in the entire game: The dead tree.

This photo was taken over a year ago. Yeah, we have been working on this project for more than a year now. What started out as a proof-of-concept demo evolved into... something else.

In less than a month we'll be releasing the first Chapter for you to try out. We're getting ready to send our baby out into the real world.

And we're dying to hear what you think...

Cheers,

- a

New Preview!

2010-04-22T04:36:00.000-07:00

Our friend Bryson just posted a nice little preview about the game over at his blog. Check out what he thinks of the game here: The Dream Machine Preview

(The image above is from his brilliantly charming game LUV Tank.)

Nordic Game Conference

2010-04-14T01:35:00.000-07:00

We'll be displaying the game at the Nordic Game Conference. If you plan to attend, don't hesitate stopping by for a demo of the game. Ample piles of clay will be available, so you can get down and dirty - and perhaps find your inner child again.

Erik's the tall blond guy with glasses. Tickle him and he'll tell you all his secrets. Anders is the short, shifty looking fellow who'll make a grab for your purse (or murse) once you turn your back.

Both enjoy it when people buy them drinks.

http://nordicgame.com/

Autistic Revelations

2010-04-06T13:22:00.000-07:00

I put some extra effort into some of the The Dream Machine: Chapter 2 props. I build them 50% larger so they look nice for the required close-ups. We have a general rule of thumb when creating a TDM set: 70% of the stuff should look great by itself, but give the remaining 30% that extra polish and attention to detail.

I can't talk too much about the purpose of this strange contraption, but it will crop up in Chapter 2, and will be even more important in Chapters 3 and 4. The base for the dial is made out of a Swedish 1 krona coin. I'm not entirely satisfied with the above paint and design. I'll await Anders' final decision.

On a related note: I curse the day we decided to go all the way creating a game made entirely out of clay and dirt. I have... unhealthy dreams of simple vector graphics and lovely 3D objects dancing in front of me.

But remember, whatever they tell you in school: having autistic tendencies can be a resourceful trait later in life...

And, please join us on Facebook

Stay tuned folks,

- Erik

Easter Promises

2010-04-03T14:59:00.000-07:00

The Easter Bunny brought me this peculiar egg the other day. Hope you enjoy it...

Happy Easter!
-Erik and Anders

Meet Mr Morton

2010-03-15T01:21:00.000-07:00

As we mentioned in a previous post, the game takes place in a quiet, unassuming apartment building. In the game, you play as Victor Neff, who just moved to a new city with his pregnant wife.

A realtor service put them in contact with an elderly gentleman, named Felix Morton, who owned an apartment estate with a vacant flat. After very cursory inquiries, Mr Morton decided they could have the flat - and that, as they say, was that.

Mr Morton enjoys listening to moody jazz on an old cone grammophone and goes through a pack of Gauloises Brunes a day.

He also has something to hide.

Super Mover Galaxy

2010-03-01T12:52:00.000-08:00

Hi folks,

I just found this gorgeous mock-up that our 3D Animation Anders Dahlström did late last year. It's a slightly tweaked version of the mover who's helping Victor and Alicia get settled in their new flat. He looks reliable, doesn't he? What could possibly go wrong with a guy like that moving your furniture?

Production on the game has started picking up pace again after a small hurdle, and we're currently accepting beta testers, if you'd like to participate.

Stay tuned for more information on where to sign-up.

Cheers,

- a

Jay Is Games Nomination

2010-01-06T12:32:00.000-08:00

The Dream Machine-Demo is nominated in the Jay Is Games "Best of 2009" competition. Swing by and vote if you feel like it. You'll find the nominated games here.

Love.

Join the Facebook group!

2010-01-03T01:53:00.000-08:00

Another way to keep updated with the project is to join our Facebook group. You'll find it here: The Dream Machine

I'm pretty happy about 2010 so far. Got some laundry done yesterday. Just found a recipe for a nice casserole that I'm considering making later today. On the minus side, I'm running a bit of a cold and Sweden is freakishly chilly and dark this time of the year.

How about your 2010?

Napalm Sticks to Kids

2009-12-30T06:33:00.000-08:00

Like Erik said in his previous post: it's that time of the year where we collectively lean back in our comfortable easy chairs, and try to look back at past events in an attempt to gauge if we were beneficially or detrimentally affected by them. And what better way to do this than in the easy-to-digest form of a Top 5 list?

So without further ado, here is my highly subjective list of "The Top 5 Adventure Games that Affected Me the Most".

Monkey Island 1 & 2
These games are principally the reason why I'm making games today. I've yet to see a better marriage between story and gameplay than these two games, one feeding the other in subtle non-intrusive ways.

And no, I don't care much for the sequels. I think they misunderstood just about every aspect of why the first two games were great. Sure, they are funny and enjoyable games, but in Monkey Island 1 & 2 there is always a lining of darkness undermining the humor, making the experience strangely unsettling in a brilliant way.

Sanitarium
It's easy to overlook Sanitarium: it wasn't marketed much and was overshadowed by Tim Schafer's magnum opus Grim Fandango, released the same year. And sure, it's a flawed master piece: the control scheme is very annoying at times, but it still contains some of the most haunting scenes I've ever come across in games. Playing hide and seek with deformed children at the beginning of the game; haunting a young grieving couple as the ghost of their recently departed daughter; the agonized screams of other patients being caught in the burning mental institution. Clearly designed by a very morbid person -- and all the better for it!

Loom
Not widely included among the LucasArts' Top 5 but possibly the game that left me feeling the most drained and depressed upon completion. And I mean that in a good way, like the empty feeling you get after completing a huge undertaking. Also contains moments of somber, poignant brilliance, like when you come across the body of a young smith apprentice whom you've "accidentally" killed, seeing his ghost rise to confront you about what you did.

Also -- and this is a side note -- what happened to the "audio drama" tapes that you could listen to while installing the game? It was a great way to set the stage before actually playing. I miss those days...

A scan of Datormagazin's review here (in Swedish). And whoever is behind this great site (with magazine scans from the 80's and 90's), you have my deepest thanks!

Another World (known as Out of This World in the US)
While technically more "action-adventure" than straight-up "adventure", this is one of my favorite games of all-time, and certainly another example of games that leave you emotionally drained upon completion (in a good way).

I include this on the list as I couldn't decide which of the Delphine Software adventure games I consider the best. I consider them each a flawed masterpiece: the beautiful (but pixel huntingly frustrating) Future Wars; the great spy adventure (minus the useless action sequences) Operation Stealth; and the intriguing murder mystery Cruise for a Corpse. Another World is the only one I still feel awed by. Especially considering that it was all basically done by one freakishly talented guy.

Space Quest III
This isn't the best adventure game out there. While highly entertaining in that trademark sadistic Sierra way, it kind of felt like a waste of great potential. The whole narrative was a bit of an inside joke; the arcade moments aren't all that great; and once out in free space, you'd discover that there was only like three planets to go to (each of them pretty shallow experience-wise).

Still, I didn't hesitate putting it on the list. Why you ask? Well, during a vacation with my family in 1990, I unwisely only brought one piece of reading material with me: a copy of the Swedish game magazine Datormagazin, containing Göran Fröjdh's glowing 5 out of 5 review of Space Quest III. For two weeks I obsessively stared at the featured pictures of space bars and lava planets, imagining all the adventures that could be had there.

A few years later, when I finally got to try it out at a friend's place, it unsurprisingly failed to live up to my expectations. But for me, during those two weeks in Germany -- free to imagine whatever I wanted -- it was the best game ever.

I hope you have a terrific time celebrating the new year.

Cheers,

- a

Yet another list at the end of the Year

2009-12-29T15:03:00.000-08:00

Dear friends!
Since we´re moving into a new decade I couldn´t resist posting a list of my top 5 games that I´ve spent the most time with for the past 10 yrs. Some of the games mentioned are just so darn good that I have to play them over and over again while others´s just a good excuse to kill some time while commuting, just before bedtime, etc etc...

So here goes:

5. Theif II (PC)
4. Half Life 2 and the following trilogy (PC)
3. Resident Evil 4 (NGC)
2. Final fantasy Tactics A2 (NDS)
And finally the charming but not necessarily brilliant as my no. 1
1. Advance Wars 2: Blach hole rising (GBA) I don´t dare to count the hours I´ve spent with AW 2 it would be a... shocking sum.

Honorary mention: Perfect Dark, Counter Strike Zero/Source, Zelda Windwaker, Halo 1-2 and Fable.

You have a list for us?? Come on and post it...

Bye for now.
-Erik

Merry christmas & Happy Holiday!

2009-12-24T13:48:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to wish you all a very merry christmas! We've made this special X-mas version of Victor just for you.

Next year will be exciting indeed. In January we'll be able to give you a launch date for the first episode of TDM (hooray). During the coming months we'll be quite occupied with the development of the remaining episodes of TDM thanks to the money awarded to us from Nordic game (see previous post). So stay tuned folks, the adventure continues.

And again: Thanks for your thoughts and comments so far.

Y'all have a nice holiday. See you next year.

-Erik and Anders

The Dream Machine awarded funds!

2009-12-14T06:19:00.000-08:00

If you're following the blog, you'll be happy to know that the outstanding people at Nordic Game awarded us funds to continue development of the game. This really helps out a lot and gives us the financial stamina to keep making this game the whole-hog full-blast unforgettable experience it deserves to be.

You can read all about it HERE.

These last few days, we've mostly been working on engine updates, and since code makes for boring visuals, I'll post an image of my work station in stead. The picture was taken over a year ago, so it doesn't look exactly like this. But as far as writing and coding the game, this is pretty much where it happens.

Again, big thanks to Nordic Game for helping us out!

A New Life in a New Town

2009-11-27T01:29:00.000-08:00

Though we want you to discover the story for yourself, we can at least give you a brief idea of the backstory and setting for the game.

In the game, you play as Victor Neff, a guy who's just moved to the big city with his wife, Alicia. They used to live in a smaller town, but with the economic recession, job opportunities started to dry up and with a baby on the way they really couldn't risk unemployment.

Though caring and outgoing, Victor isn't exactly an ambitious guy. Up until now he's led a pretty comfortable life. He's long nurtured a dream about making a name for himself in the music industry, but aside from buying a guitar and learning a few chords, he hasn't actively tried to pursue it. While waiting for the "timing" to be right, he's been working in the office of a company manufacturing farming equipment. A job he got since the boss was a friend of his parents.

Lately the company has been having financial difficulties, and when Victor got an advance notice about his department possibly getting axed, he and Alicia decided to move to a new city -- with better prospects -- and start life anew.

The game begins the morning after they arrived to their new home. While trying to get settled in, they soon discover that all is not as it seems in the quiet, unassuming apartment building...

Character generation

2009-11-23T10:47:00.000-08:00

Finalizing the design of the character was only the beginning of the process of getting the characters into the game. After Erik had built and painted the finished clay figurine, the characters had to be processed through quite an array of steps before you could actually interact with them.

In order to transpose the nice hand painted texture onto a 3D mesh, we photographed each character from a number of different angles.

From these reference pictures our modeler, Anders Dahlström, created a 3D approximation of the figurine, using a composite of the various photographs as a texture map to wrap around the mesh.

With a complete model, he could then start animating the character. Since we largely plan on distributing the game online, file size budgets forced us to be quite restrictive when it came to animation. Basically each character had a still pose, a walk cycle (double step), an interaction animation and a pick up animation. That's it. These then had to be rendered from 5-8 different camera angles depending on how symmetrical the character design was.

Victor's little funky brush hair made him completely asymmetrical and therefore we had to render him from 8 different angles, but for most other characters 5 proved sufficient.

Since the characters have to travel through a large number of different lighting conditions, we had to experiment quite a lot with how to blend the different render passes. In the end we settled on the four layers you can see above, but starting out we had a few more. They're each blended with the underlying layer in unique ways, and finding the right way to mix them required a lot of trial and error.

To help us out with this, we posed the different variations in a number of different lighting conditions to see which one worked best generally. Just glancing at them they look very similar, but if you study them carefully you start to notice subtle differences in how they're lit.

Compositing them together required a combination of After Effects work and Photoshop. We used After Effects to blend the different layers and crop the images as tightly as possible.

Sometimes the rendering left some edge artifacts, but that could easily be removed with a Photoshop batch process that also reduced the characters to their final size.

Once all the rendering work had been completed we moved on to the exceedingly boring phase of editing all the 300 separate images (for each character), before chopping them up into the 8x4 animation slots we use in the game. But once all this was done and the actor system took control, seeing them walk around and interact in the game was a pure joy and we soon forgot how trite and laborious the journey to get them this far had been.

Cheers,

- a

PS: I'm not entirely up to speed with 3D lingua franca. If you spot an error in the post, don't hesitate to point it out in a comment and I'll stare at it sternly until it goes away.

Business As Usual...

2009-11-17T08:57:00.000-08:00

After the intense experience of completing the first chapter of The Dream Machine for the IGF competition our workload has reverted to a more agreeable pace. Right now we're re-working some of the features in the first chapter of The Dream Machine that we always felt needed a bit more love & attention.

This post will briefly describe a typical situation where we decide to change some graphical elements in order to make the world of The Dream Machine more coherent...

We had some challenges early on in the production trying to find the right look for some of the areas in the game. In order to get everything up and running, we had to build quite a lot in a very short time span. At the time we didn't have any detailed design documents, and built most of it by ear. Most of this worked out fine, but we had to rush some of the environments in order to be able to build others. The kitchen was one of these environments that we felt was a bit too rough.

We couldn't re-shoot the entire set, since pieces of it had been misplaced while moving out of the old studio. Instead, Anders suggested that we only redo certain parts of the image. The floor, for instance, could simply be overhauled using a single 4x4 tile piece (see picture above). This single piece was then duplicated in Photoshop and replaced the old kitchen floor, which felt bland and disproportionate to the characters. We went with a more classical look for the kitchen using black and white tile.

Furthermore: During our playtests we noticed that every player would try to interact with the fridge. Which stands to reason, since if you present a large interactive looking object in a room, people will expect to be able to do something with it. Not allowing them is kind of like placing a piece of candy in front of a child and say that they can't eat it. Our first fridge was cut out of a single piece of Styrofoam, and couldn't be opened. Re-dressing the location, I had to build a new fridge with an inside and a door that could open (see picture above).

As much as we loved the green fridge, it had to go in order to allow for more interactivity.

Almost final result above. Better? Any comments?

There are some elements yet to be added to the foreground and Anders will probably work his magic with Photoshop tweaking details here and there, since some stuff would be very difficult to do in an entirely analogue way. But when you mess around in Photoshop too much you risk losing the all-important hand made quality, so we try to keep the re-touching as low-key as possible.

OK, that's it for now. The development is progressing in a very promising way, and hopefully we'll have some good news for you in a week or two.

Thanks for your comments and input! Tell us what you think! Take care and stay tuned folks...

- Erik

PS: They mentioned The Dream Machine in diygamer.com last week. You can read about it here.

Hell Week Survived!

2009-11-03T06:55:00.000-08:00

If You're following the progress on the game, You'll be happy to know that both Erik and I survived the beta crunch week. Sitting on our hard drives is now a feature complete, fully playable version of the elusive Chapter 1.

In the coming week we'll playtest the crap out of it, before moving onwards to the aptly named Chapter 2. Hopefully that'll go a hell of a lot smoother, considering that all the heavy lifting, programming-wise and story-wise, is now established.

As a little teasing morsel, we leave you with the full line-up of characters in Chapter 1. Standing in the middle is the lead character, Victor Neff, and to the far left is his wife, Alicia. But what about those vague blurs next to them? Could they have any significance or are they just a random assortment of pixels? More will be revealed soon.

Stay tuned...

Beta Crunch Mode

2009-10-27T01:59:00.000-07:00

So we've officially entered Beta Crunch Mode with The Dream Machine - Chapter 1. We're trying our darnedest to get it done for the Independent Game Festival, and so far it's looking good. Not great mind you. A lot of assets have yet to be delivered and whole chunks of dialogue has not been written. But for every placeholder graphic we swap for a real one, for every line of code we add, things slowly start to congeal into a somewhat coherent whole.

This might turn into a game after all.

A new trailer!

2009-10-22T08:29:00.000-07:00

We thought we'd celebrate relocating to a new server by publishing a brand new trailer for the game! It's a rough cut, that we'll re-edit in the comming week, but tell us what you think so far.

Check out the TRAILER!

The music is a placeholder piece generously donated to us by the ingenious composer Anthony Lledo. Check out more of his work here:

http://www.anthonylledo.com/

Sorry about the downtime!

2009-10-22T08:21:00.001-07:00

Our hosting server caught the swine flu and we had to take it out back and shoot it. Them's the breaks I guess. With a new server up and running, we're pressing on trying to get the game done.

We'll try to enter it into IGF this year and the deadline is Nov 1st. It will be quite tight, but work on the characters has progressed nicely. Now we'll just have to write a ton of dialogue and finalize design on the last elusive puzzle. And some other exciting stuff that we look forward to telling you about in the coming weeks.

The picture above is me working on the animations for one of the characters. It's a tedious, labor intensive process (that I'll post about in a few days). But once you see the characters moving around in the game world, it's definitely worth it!

A small token of appreciation...

2009-10-04T14:23:00.000-07:00

We have received some positive feedback over the last couple of days since we launched the TDM Blog. As a result of this we´ll show you this sneak peek of one of the charcters you´ll encounter in the upcoming episode of TDM. Please let us introduce the girlfriend of Victor Neff: Alicia.

Right now our 3D (Maya) guy is rigging this character and we´ll soon be able to show some early animation tests...

We get really excited when you send us e-mails. Please feel free to send us those comments/questions if you have any...

Thank you!
-Erik and Anders

Designing Victor

2009-09-30T00:56:00.000-07:00

We started designing the characters surprisingly late during preproduction. The reason for that was that we didn't really know how we'd get them into the game. We knew we wanted to retain the hand made clay look throughout, but the techniques at our disposal each came with a different set of advantages/disadvantages.

Stop motion animation would certainly allow us to keep the look of the material, and the animation would keep all the nice little quirky imperfections that comes for free when you do stuff by hand. But having to manually lay bare over 200 individual frames (per character), just seemed too labor intensive.

Lighting the puppet would also be a bit of a chance taking, since the main character has to travel through a number of very different lighting conditions. If we found out that the lighting didn't work once the character was in the game, we would basically have to start over from scratch, reanimating and relighting.

3D-animation solved both those problems but we weren't certain that it would allow us to retain the right material look we wanted. 3D has a tendency to look too clean and generically lifeless.

The two sketches above where both done by Mikael Lindbom from Dockhus Animation. They depict the games main characters Victor and Alicia Neff. Mikael did them early on, just to get the character design ball rolling. And though stellar drawings, the design was a bit too cute and cartoony. The themes in The Dream Machine have quite a dark slant to them, and cute characters with big heads would seem a bit out of place.

On a joking whim, he drew Victor to look like me (Anders). And though I have to admit, there are some similarities, I would never, ever wear a polo neck.

Wanting to steer away from the overly cute expression, we started toying with the idea that every character in the game wore a mask. We didn't have a rationale for it, except for the fact that both Erik and I are very fascinated by masks.

We were hoping that the players would just accept it as a rule of the game universe, that everyone wore masks. But that turned out not to be the case.

We wanted to go for an expressive, stylized look for the characters, reducing their features to bare bones geometric shapes. Erik (who did all designs for the characters) did the early test above, and though it has a lot of merits, it came off as too off-puttingly strange; its featureless face a bit too hard to relate to for this to be a suitable design for the lead character.

But we -- being of the opinion that it's better to err on the side of surreal and creepy rather than opting for something blandly cute -- felt that this was a step in the right direction.

These early designs, for some of the other characters in the game, where a lot closer to our intent. But ultimately came off as stylistically a bit too diverse, running a strange gambit between reduced expressionism to the comically cartoony.

Another one of Erik's early tests for the main character. Those of you familiar with 3D animation can probably tell by the pose that by this stage we'd decided to go 3D.

In order to retain the look of the clay material, the character would still have to be built and painted by hand. From a series of turnaround photographs our 3D modeler would try to faithfully recreate the shape of the clay figure and apply a UV map lifted from the photos.

Everybody we showed this early test render to had a similar reaction: "It looks nice, but why is he wearing a mask?" The mask, instead of being suggestively creepy as intended, ended up being a distraction for the viewer. And we soon decided to tone it down.

Honing in on a more final shape, Erik added more features to make the character a bit easier to relate to. The main character in the game, Victor Neff, is supposed to be in his early 30's, so the design just seemed a bit too young.

We also wanted to subtly hint Victor's belonging to the electronic music scene by giving him a nice synth hair-do.

Adding a few years and reducing the overall shape of his face to the simple geometrical triangle, landed us very close to what actually turned out to be the final design for Victor.

Now the only problem that remained was: how do we paint him?

Both Erik and I are huge fans of the movie Blade Runner, and having just seen The Final Cut at our local cinema, it struck us that Harrison Ford wears just about the best looking shirt ever made in that movie.

Not so sure about the tie, though...

And voila! Some work on the detailing and a nice coat of paint later, we had us our leading man!

The Dream Machine

2009-09-28T04:08:00.001-07:00

This is a blog about game The Dream Machine.

We've been toying around with the idea that it might be useful to have a little news feed about the development of the game.

Play the demo here:

http://www.thedreammachine.se/

We live in Sweden!

2009-09-26T14:38:00.000-07:00

We (the core team of TDM) feel that we have to shed some light over our present situation.
Both of us are from Sweden (gasp!), but we don't live in the same town (see picture).
Anders lives in the south of Sweden in Malmö (close to Copenhagen, Denmark) and Erik in Gothenburg, 300 km north of him. This means that we spend a lot of time talking on the phone...

Creating the world of TDM

2009-09-26T13:31:00.000-07:00

Most of the stuff in TDM is handmade. The materials we use are: modelling clay, super sculpey, mdf board, cardboard, plaster, acrylic paint etc etc. The character I´m working on above is Mr Morton (the landlord). I´ll show more of him later on (with Anders permission).

Look how neat and tidy!!! If you can identify the three most imortant items for anyone interested in building miniature sets/props/characters I´ll... ehh... give you... a special prize!

This picture shows the set up for Neff´s bed room. I control the camera (canon 400D) from my computer and it usually requires 20-30 test photos before I´m satisfied. Then I´ll send it to Anders and hopefully he approves my creative effort and the Photoshop magic begins...

and Ta daa.... Final result. The god rays from the window is added as well as all the boxes scattered in the bed room. We can show/tell more of the process described in this post if there´s any interest. Please let us know in that case. Next post will reveal how the characters of TDM are made and animated. Stay tuned...

Finding the look

2009-09-26T00:35:00.000-07:00

This is usually how it starts: a simple vector drawing illustrating the basic layout of the scene and the props involved. In the best case scenario, this is the stage where most changes occur, since redrawing is a lot easier than rebuilding/repainting/relighting etc.

The vector sketches I make usually aren't this detailed either, but since this was the first location we made, a bit more effort was spent during the planning phase.

The little grey box character got reused from another game to provide a rough scale reference.

The first couple of mock-ups we built followed the tone of the original sketch quite closely in that they tried to retain the reduced, faceted look of the vector drawing. We soon decided to oust that in favour of a more painterly, textured look.

The island was made out of styrofoam, given some rough love treatment with a sandpaper. It proved hard to light and didn't take to painting as well as we'd hoped.

The rest is made out of painted pieces of super sculpey clay.

Swapping the styrofoam for a layer of Super Sculpey immediately improved the look of the game. The various dents and rough spots proved more interesting to look at and with a coat of paint, turned out to be a far better approximation of the sandy beach we were going for.

Still, the surface lacked the volume the styrofoam added, and squinting, the dirty yellow color kind of made it look like cat sick on a piece of cardboard.

The happy compromise: a base made out of styrofoam with a coating of Super Sculpey on top, provided the best of both worlds. We retained the volume of the foam, while still providing that nice look of hand sculpted clay.

We also decided to lower the camera angle so to be more in the eye level of the characters. This in order to get a bit closer to them, so the player could see what they did and looked like, and hopefully relate to them more easily.

Going for a bit more realism, we ousted the stylized placement of stones and added a rougher texture to the island.

Up until this stage, we hadn't actually decided on how to do the water, but building it and animating it by hand just seemed a bit too labor intensive, compared to doing it in post-production. So we added the blue base to the island to make compositing between the built/digital elements easier.

The first rough composite we made: the elements were all in place, but we weren't happy with the tone of the image. The gradient ocean proved too clean and digital looking for what we were going for.

This image is an example of the technique called vignetting. By placing objects at the edge of the screen, we hint that the world continues beyond the frame, without actually having to build it.

Wanting to open the game on a slightly off-setting, portentous note, we added storm clouds to the background. Though we tried to tweak it, the gradient ocean still stood out like a sore thumb, ruining the illusion of depth.

The final shot. A tighter crop in order to get a closer view of the action and a lower horizon for added drama. Replaced the crappy gradient water and switched the vaguely stormy sky for a moodier more tempestuous one.

We did some experimentation with animating the water using Ken Perlin's famous noise algorithm, but applying a displacement filter on such a large surface proved a bit too much for Flash to render in real-time. The effect can still be seen, albeit on a much smaller scale, in the reflection of the shipwreck to the right.