Developer Diary 7

This last week was a bit strange for the lot of us, I've somehow got the feeling we haven't been to school much at all. We did get some work done though. Rene finally managed to make an awesome walking animation (you go boy!). Lars finished the inventory, which looks awesome. We managed to retrieve our previously lost voice samples (thank goodness, I was starting to fear I'd have to do it all over again). Daryll was working very hard all week (and as usual, making us feel like slackers. Curse you Daryll!) , cleaning up the code.

Robert was primarily Daryll's bitch and happily and diligently  did the tasks that were bestowed upon him.

And me? Well I was sick on Monday, and the next days I spent on literally picking Nathan apart to make him ready for Rene to animate, which made my eyes hurt from concentration! No pain, no gain huh.

Daryll and I have also been busy starting a project for next period. If it were possible, I would have preferred to stay in Quark forever. But sadly, some of us must leave and others will go on an internship, Daryll and me will be the only ones left. Brainstorming for a new project is always a lot of fun though, and I'm hoping that I can do another self started project again, since they're so much more motivating and much more fun than the ones our school offers.

Oh don't worry though, Quark is staying together in other ways. Because we all really really like working with each other (and find each other's presence not unstimulating either) we decided to do a project together outside the boundaries of school. Yes you shall still hear of Quark, our era is long from over!

Okay, back on topic.

Last week, we were also very much looking forward to celebrate Sinterklaas together (Awesome Dutch holiday, google it).

Robert was kind enough to offer his home for this occasion and in a very Quarky fashion we spent almost the entire day on designing a whole game out of it.

It was genuinely awesome, everyone of us brought wrapped presents and the goal of the game was basically to win the presents you wanted to have and to get rid of the ones you didn't. Hilarity and chaos ensued! I found it great fun to see what everyone brought, unpacking the presents was also awesome. Nils for instance, managed to make a baseball bat look like a kite in wrapping paper, kudos to you Nils! I want to thank you guys again for the fun time I've had, there are literally no words to describe this evening in English. 

Greetings, Hanny

Developer Diary 6

Today is our first day at school this week! Not because we were lazy bastards, but because we held a personal Gamejam! We harassed Hanny's mother by occupying her house, and killing her bandwith, resulting in massive delays on the network. Strangely enough, at the end of the Jam, she thanked us! I guess we must've done something right, but it's still quite strange. But then again, who are we to doubt the person who so selflessly surrendered her house to a bunch of very loud and annoying gamedesigners. So, THANK YOU! We really enjoyed it a lot, and your hospitality was tremendous! Strangely enough we actually got some work done! Placeholder art was placed into the game, along with an almost finished inventory. Area transitions were improved, a lot of concepting was done, backgrounds were greatly improved and a whole lot more. Ofcourse there were also diversions, such as League of Legends, Trackmania and Safari (Yes, the drink!) All in all it was a pretty succesfull gamejam.

Last week on friday, we got a nice surprise. Classified finally decided to pay the ransom for their bunny. They brought a large metal briefcase filled with cash! Each terrorist should get somewere around 2650 euro's each! We accepted it, so we can give it to the terrorists. We are now greatly anticipating the safe return of the bunny, as are Classified, I'm sure. Let us all hope he has not been harmed. Nasty terrorists!

-  Lars out!

Developer Diary 5

Are there no moral boundaries to some people? Is it necessary to go out of your way to make someone's life more difficult than it already is? Rituals are sacred and should never be messed with. It's hard for me to find the words to describe this terrible injustice that has been done to us...  so I'll give it a try later on in this article.

With rage still flowing through my veins I'll try and give you a short explanation of what we have produced as a group. The first things that come to mind are the awesome voice-overs that have been recorded this week. Honestly, when faced with a problem, call Daryll. With an expertise for solving problems second only to MacGyver, Daryll quickly had the audio-studio running. Young Nathan never sounded more alive with Hanny giving him a nice British accent. Smashing.

Our Animator has also been hard at work, as concetrated as Daryll in his special zone, slowly working towards creating a full animation for our main character. Mad props to René for working extremely hard and focussed, the only distraction being a short Harry Potter discussion(He's in Gryffindor). This week Lars was mostly confined to his house, having gone through an epic operation that would leave even Steve-O disgusted. He did however manage to visit school on Friday to deliver a much needed Pie, which we are extremely grateful for. It's also further proof to my theory that Pieday transcends any physical boundaries.

Myself I've been cramming the intro story into a 1:30 minute long monologue, which was anything but an easy task. Thankfully I was helped by amazing feedback from many of the Quark members. Daryll continued improving the core gameplay, now adding a way our character can walk through the environments without him going anywhere we don't want to(a sewer drainage comes to mind). Hanny and Nils have also been making great progress with the characters and environments respectively. Being a programmer myself I know fuck-all of any graphical terms to use, suffice it to say that what has been made can be considered awesome.

The second half of our Friday was spent most curiously creating a threatening letter to an other group within our minor. For repeatedly messing up our well-respected Fail-o-Meter we have declared war on Classified. In secret we have captured a fugitive bunny we suspect to be of great value to their group. He is now being held in a secure location and is to be tortured and interrogated. Unfortunately we have yet to retract any useful information from him but I have no doubt that will happen in the near future. To let Classified know their bunny is being held captive we have posted the threatening letter with an awe-inspiring photo of ourselves the terrorists as can be seen above. All we have to do now is wait for a response from Classified. From there on we'll see how the war will progress. After all you never know how a cow catches a rabbit.

-      Robert

Developer Diary 4

A lot has happened since the Diary of last week. The production, graphically and technically went along very smoothly. The audio had a small fallback during the recordings of the voice-over for our young Nathan, but I will get on that later.

Firstly thumbs up for our Lead Programmer Daryll and his sidekick, programmer Robert. Daryll has made great progress this week. He has amazed me, as the planner of Quark, with his commitment (working almost every night till at least 10pm) to get the things he promised to work on this week done in time. But I will certainly not forget to give my compliments to Robert. Last week he was still very busy typing storylines and monologues, now he made a switch to writing a whole different “cake” (and no, it’s not a lie). Instead writing wholy correct English sentences, he now only writes “if else” statements to tell the mouse, what to do, in-game, if the player clicks on it for longer than a second.

Hanny made a lot of progress as well on her eading post of the Graphical part of the game. She made charactersheets of young and old Nathan. Also, for young Nathan, she made a first conceptual ready-to-animate version so I can, as animator, bring young Nathan to life. Nils has made a great progress with the environments for the first puzzle. Lars had a bit non-Quark scheduled agenda this week, so we haven’t seen him much at school or at our Quark-table. Even though he has put work into graphical production this week, we do miss the joy and laughters he always brings.

As said earlier audio had a slight fallback. Our audio artists, Nils en Daryll, couldn’t record the voice-over for young Nathan. So poor Hanny had prepared herself for her big role as Nathan for nothing (this also happened to a certain boy from Pallet Town).

At the beginning of the week we had a consult with the boss of a certain famous game company (and former teacher) and he had heard news of the puppetshow act we gave a while back. He adviced us to take advantage of our ability to come up with weird, unusual things which ultimately result in original, one of a kind results.

Even though our group is small, and consists only of 6 members, the structure of who is responsible for what is complex. So a so called “Bitch flowchart” has been brought into existance. Thanks to that it’s easier to see and know who is responsible for which part of making our game and (most importantly) who has to listen to who (yes, multiple times people have to listen to themselves, as they are their own lead and bitch)

All in all every Quark-member gave it their all, so far possible, to make this week as productive as possible.

Well so far the Developer Diary for this week. I hope you could follow all above, and if not, please reread it all again :P


EDIT:  René would also like to thank Robert very much for taking the time to check his Diary for any spelling errors and correct them.

René

Developer diary 3

Developer diary 3

Some time has passed since our last developer diary and thus it is time for the third developer diary.

We have been rather busy. We have decided our goals for the near future and will work on a puzzle per period of a sprint.

This week was all about getting towards production. We’ve been quite busy on the multiple aspects of the designs. We have achieved quite a lot this week and although only two of us received a more honorable place in the Fail-O-Meter (also known by the more motivating name as the “dit-kan-beter-meter”), we all did a tremendous good job.

Some of the big breakthroughs, consist of real designs and concept art of not one, but three characters! Some even from different point of views (usable for in game content). This really makes our story and thus our game come to live for, well at least ourselves. Hanny must be pointed out here for her (noticeable) enjoyment in this week’s work of creating these multiple characters. This attitude and of course the pleasure from Hanny her side just kicks the atmosphere up a notch.

Our lead programmer; Daryll is really getting into a harmonious way of programming. If you happen to have the chance to observe us you will clearly note that there is always some commotion around. Yet there will always be at least the one calm and devoted programmer, working overtime on the important duty he has chosen to do. I can safely say that we have quite become even fonder of our new Quark members Daryll and Hanny.

Daryll and me have had the honors of beginning with audio this week. The audio freaks inside of us got the upper hand as we entered the big audio studio. I would have imagined it probably looked like two kids in a candy store.  I imagine that not everyone was as pleased as us, with our discovery of this beautiful place of opportunities. This because the drums were thoroughly tested by the three of us (the third person being Robert which had quite a good share in making of noise ).

Besides the needed (Quark-ish) goofing around we have done quite our share in the audio design/production. We recorded multiple voice over samples (rather long ones too) and created an awesome soundtrack.

The first great object designs, for use in the in game inventory, also made their first appearance. Several very distinctive and impressive objects were made as a perfect base for many more to come. This was also done in a fast pace.

I also worked on the first real environment to start creating a world that would live. A world where a player would and could feel the appropriate emotions combined with the urge to puzzle with it. The designs are in place and this will also be further explored as we will do a complete ambiance check next week.

All in all we made a great start in designing and producing to achieve our ambitious sprint goals at the end of next week. The motivation, ambition and willpower are sensible in the air. I can feel this becoming something potentially big.

-Nils

Meet Nathan

Hello everyone, meet Nathan.

Nathan is 36 years old and our main protagonist of the story, he looks like quite a regular fellow right?
You're very right, he is a normal guy who's happy with his job and loves his wife and children very much. For the most part, our hero is quite content with his life.
But Nathan also carries a great burden with him, a burden most people luckily never have to carry. Nathan is afraid of the dark.
And not in the "haha that's funny" kind of way either, this fear is rooted deep inside his core and because of it he can't function completely. He tried though, he tried very hard all of his life.
But recently something happened, something terrible and because of his fear he couldn't do anything about it. This incident was the turning point for our protagonist, and he decided he couldn't live like this anymore. So he took the brave step to overcome this big fear, with the help of a psychologist.

This is Nathan when he was younger, isn't he adorable..awwh. Little Nathan has -like most children-   a wild imagination and is quite adventurous when he wants to be, but he can also be a bit shy sometimes.

Well, you've officially met Nathan and now that you know a bit about him we can finish this post.


Happy Trails!

- Hanny

I'm making a post here, huge succes!

The title of this post says it all! The sheer awesomeness of our project and team effort, were appriciated today by our assessors. Yes, we had a mid term assessment, and we did real good! Even our, by sickness, absent member Hanny got her points! Our assessors seemed awfully impressed by our excellent concept, based on rock solid research. For that, we all received at least 6 EC's (Europian Credits) on expert level for our concept. I think it would be right to say that we are going to face a few months of hard work, really hard work. I am, however, convinced that if we go on like we have these past 2ish months, we have very little to worry about!

I would like to thank and compliment all my fellow Quarky's, and wish them a lot of fun and toi toi toi for the rest of this project!

Also I would like to thank and compliment two people in particular. Hanny and Daryll, the both of you are a blessing to our project! You were relative newcomers in Quark, but you have proven time after time, that you are immensely enthousiastic about our project, even though you were not involved in the early concepting. This does not seem to have mattered much to you, because you have contributed so much to our game! You have proven time and time again that you were obviously destined to join the ranks of Quark, and that you truly fit in. If I had a hat on right now, I would take it off for you. I think I speak for everyone when I say that I am very happy to have the both of you! 

Thank you!

Yes, it IS hard to overstate my satisfaction!

                                                                  

-Lars out.