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Mr. Kimura Builds a New Level for DREADLINE.

Mr. Kimura Builds a New Level for DREADLINE.

Level building is a very organic process. I start by sorting through online and print reference, and doing some drawings to get a feel for the architecture, and how it might work for our game. I’m not interested in accurately re-creating historical places. I want the space to be recognizable, but the last thing we want in this game is to be bound by the facts.

Once I have a basic idea what the architectural vibe of the level is going to be, it’s time to consider the larger picture. Is it going to be primarily interiors or exteriors? Will it be hilly, or flat? Doors? Fences? There are all kinds of ways to shape spaces to create tactical interest, as well as all kinds of ways to visually represent what those spaces are.

For this level, inspired by the 1657 Great Fire of Meireki, I wanted to create smooth transitions between interior and exterior spaces. I’m often struggling with the boring, but handy conventions of traditional dungeon-crawling. Turning hallways into bridges over water, and walls into trees is one way to make the space more engaging.

The level map serves multiple functions. It’s a freeform way to develop a decorative object vocabulary for the level, show scale, show how spaces are interconnected, and as a visual concept that can give me a real feel for what the level is supposed to look like. I used this sprawling drawing as a basis for drawing all of the world’s textures, like stony paths, grass, fences, walls, and trees. Even as I’m working in 3d, I’m constantly referring back to the original drawings. They keep the level feeling fresh, as I’m forced to find ways to reconcile what’s going on in a drawing with how I can really make it work in 3d space.

It’s always incredibly gratifying when it goes into our engine for the first time, and I get to run our little monsters all around, and explore it from that fresh perspective. It’s even better once it’s filled with hapless humans to kick around.

Please check out our Kickstarter campaign for DREADLINE, now in progress!

kickstarter.com/projects/eeriecanal/dreadline

Thank you for your support.

New Shot

Just a little screenshot of stuff we’ve been working on. A Cart with some still unfinished walls and stuff.

Rock Paper Shotgun!

RPS just put up an interview with me, Aaron, and Arthur. There are also 2 new screenshots. Check it out here!

-Bryn

Forums Are Up!

Click on the tab in the upper right corner! Introduce yourself. Let us know what kind of calamities we should cover for the game, or just let us know who you are.

A new interview with me and Steve popped up today. Check it out!

Evidently, I’m a “her.” That’s cool.

-Bryn

Monster Morality

I have been a bit surprised by the shock that some people have felt towards our trailer in regards to the content and violence. Here are a few comments from random sites:

—–

‘And you may say “jesus, it’s a game, you moral bore!” to which I would respond by suggesting maybe it’d be a good joke to photoshop pictures of children being mutilated by Jesus’ disciples using iron mauls and tack them to a church’s bulletin board.’

‘What? Seriously? Talk about bad taste and extreme disrespect.’

‘It just seems like it’s in bad taste, even doing the titanic one.’

—–

The internet being what it is, I guess I’m not surprised by much… but a game like ours that is taking a humorous (albeit dark) take on some events in history is, in my opinion, at most mid-level when it comes to depicting violence. There are games out there that depict wars we (the US) are currently fighting, that try to enlist our current youth into the armed forces by killing people, or just plain depict violence in a far more accurate way than our teaser did.

It’s a strange world we live in where someone will play a shooter based on actual events and kill people for a number of hours, then watch a teaser with cartoon violence in an obvious alternate reality, and get offended. Have we become so accustomed to gritty near-photorealistic violence that it takes some cute cartoons getting hurt to pull our heart strings? I hope not.

We knew a number of aspects about our game would be polarizing. I’m just surprised it’s the morality that people are questioning.

- Bryn

DREADLINE Teaser Is Out!

After working like crazy for the past two weeks on it, we are releasing the Dreadline Teaser today! We’ll post it here in a while after it gets sent out, and hopefully picked up, by a number of gaming sites.

If you’re here because of the trailer, and feel like following us, then check us out on facebook and twitter.

Here is a little more information about Dreadline. We’ve been working on it for about 6 months now, and it’s starting to look really cool. (You can see it in the last few seconds of our trailer.) Our Titanic level is pretty playable, but not polished yet to a point that we want to show people. You can control your team of monsters, run around the ship, and just generally rip people to shreds. It’s pretty awesome. We still have a long way to go as far as content, more characters, and finishing up some of the game systems. We’re really pumped about where we are with it right now though, and can’t wait to release some more screenshots and videos.

We’d love to hear what you think of the teaser, and thoughts/questions you might have about the game. Feel free to contact me at bb (at) eerie – canal . com.

- Bryn

 

 

Animation System Rewrite!

Another post only a programmer could love… I’ve known for a long time that I had to rewrite my animation system. I cut a few corners so that I could share code between the animations and the special effects and the game scripts. The problem was, it wasn’t very optimal for a number of reasons. (memory, cache misses, load times, etc.) So, yesterday I decided to go for it and completely rewrite the entire system. I was a bit worried, but it actually was a lot easier than I had hoped. Additionally, Steve can start adding animations to the world, instead of just the characters in the game. Sweet!

I can’t really show how the code is different, so here’s a picture of Candice Lupus doing a backflip (using the new animation system.)

Ghost Drawings

Ghost Drawings from Steven Kimura on Vimeo.

How We Came Up With the Concept of “Dreadline”

When Steve and I started talking a few months ago about making a game, I had a vague concept of what I thought would be cool.  I am really into Starcraft and Diablo, but find less time than I used to to play.  So, more often than not, I’ll turn on my Xbox and play a few quick games of NBA Jam before getting back to work.  So, I thought it would be great to try to mix the genres a bit.  (huh?!)  It would be kind of like a team based ARPG game that was based on speed running through dungeons.  That way, I could get the gameplay that I love, but not have to put 10 hours in at any given time.  So, with that in mind, I started putting my ideas together.

I wrote up some fiction about a Tolkien-style world that had modernized with the humans becoming the dominant species.  They did so not on the battlefield, but through fine lawyering and modern technology.  Unable to keep up, the other species fell by the wayside.  Most monsters now lived in zoos or on reservations.  I think I made the elves into some form of hippy race that kept going to burning man festivals or something.

It all came to an abrupt halt when Steve mentioned that the characters I was creating were really unlikeable.  He was totally right.  Who wants to play the role of a dominant species who runs around like genocidal maniacs, killing those with no chance to fight back?  The general story cracked me up, but we needed to do better.

One night Steve, Matt Derby, and I were hanging out at a bar in Cambridge, MA.  We came up with this bonkers idea of playing monsters who kill humans (which is cooler already), but not just any humans.  They only kill humans that are going to die already, due to some form of terrible accident or calamity.  It was so dark, but really funny too.  We decided that the monsters would travel to these calamities in a time machine, further strengthening the fiction of repeatedly speed running levels.  When we were still laughing about it the next day, we knew we were on to something.

I’ve been working on AAA titles in the games industry for over 10 years now, and I LOVE being able to work on a piece of fiction that no big studio would touch because it’s so out there.  We don’t have marketing departments testing it against different demographics, or lawyers getting really nervous.  Maybe that’s a bad thing, but I’m digging it right now.

-Bryn

Hey! What’s up?!

We’re just launching Eerie-Canal.com right now. This is my (Bryn), and Steve’s new indie game studio and we’re pretty psyched. We’ve been working for a number of months on a new game called “Dreadline” and it’s been tons of fun. We’ll be talking a lot more about this game on the site in the upcoming months. There will probably be highs and lows, times we’re excited, and times we want to kill ourselves. That’s game development, and it will probably be interesting to watch.

So, who are we and why should you care? We’re just two dudes that have worked in the games industry since about 1998. (Yikes!) We’ve worked on some big titles like System Shock 2, Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Bioshock, and Titan Quest, and have worked on a game that was turned into a Bollywood video.

Keep checking back, follow us on twitter, facebook, or send us your frustration about every video game having bald space marines in them.  We’ll probably write back.

-Bryn