Swarte Geart, Blacksmith of Arum, Cross of the Dutchman

Oh and here are two more microscopic sneak-preview shots, enjoy :-)

Click for a high-res screenshot

Longtime followers of this blog might remember this one: the ‘floaticles’ are back! As you can read in this article, floaticles are essentially particles that are a bit smarter than your average particle; they increase the spatial awareness effect that makes you feel as if you’re walking through a cloud of floaticles.

In the middle of the square, some mist can be seen which will be added to other locations in the game as well, like over water and farmland. These veils of low hanging mist are a common sight in the Netherlands and some people find it quite spooky. It’s not a coincidence that this mist is also called ‘Witte Wieven‘, who are white spirits from Dutch mythology. Nowadays the mist is just a nuisance to many car drivers though.

Pretty sweet, don’t you think?

Controls and level design

This is probably the biggest change for the game. Instead of a ’3rd person’ view in which the character and camera are controlled independently, the camera will be in a fixed position now. This allows us to design the levels according to the camera position, which makes for a more cinematic and user friendly gaming experience. Compared to the old build of Cross of the Dutchman, the levels will be more compact which allows us to focus more on details.

Pier’s farm

Animations and feedback

As chopping up enemies will be Greate Pier’s main activity, combat has to be spot on. We’re aiming for shorter and more powerful blows, that will result in a better feel of real impact. Moreover, the feedback you get as a player when you take or strike a blow will be improved. The combination of these improvements will result in the player feeling much more emerged in the battles.

Story telling

From the very start of the project, it has always been our goal to tell the legend of Great Pier through the game. The cool thing about video games is that you can tell a story in so many ways. One of these ways that we’re adding  is POI (Points Of Interests). This means that the player can call upon background information on the 16th century, as they happen in the game. For example how people dealt with crime, architecture, food, you name it. To help us with this, we’re happy that Ate Grypstra, the writer of the Cross of the Dutchman novel,will join us once more!

Graphics

Greate Pier might be a farmer, and when you piss him off  he can be a brute. But even brutes want to look good. We will give the game a better look with more contrast and brighter colors, as seen in the picture below. There will also be day and night scenes!

The old and the new. (click for large image)

So you started working on Cross of the Dutchman again. Excited?

Of Course! It took a whole lot of blood, sweat and tears to build the demo and it really sucked that we had to halt all production on it. So when we heard the news that we could start development again, it was awesome. This opportunity also means we get to streamline some stuff we encountered building the demo, so it’s all for the better!

Why did you decide to change Piers appearance? What was wrong with the old model?

When playing the demo, one of the problems we faced was that Grutte Pier didn’t really feel… “grutte (great)”  enough. His character design felt a little too light on his legs and didn’t communicate the way we wanted. Because you see, Pier was a huge brute, slaying his enemies with ease. So when we started development again, one of the first things we wanted to do was redesign Pier. No major changes, he remains the rugged bearded man he was, just a lot more built as a real farmer with brute strength.

Loads of new designs were made. We picked the one on the right.

What is the design process like?

(Pascal): I started by analyzing the current model and write down what was wrong with it, after that I draw a couple of different body types in a more realistic style, while keeping in mind the human anatomy and stretch and deform it in places where it was needed. When I was happy with his “naked” body (say what!? – editor) I designed a couple of different outfits and hair/beard styles. A couple of us voted for the best outfits and we mixed and matched some parts. The funny thing is though, that we ended up with a look that was almost identical to the old design. I guess we did something right after all.

When the design was final, Ronald had the job to translate the design to 3D. Our first Pier model was straight low-poly, which meant I had to paint all of the details on his clothing and such. To put it simple, our model ended up being too flat and not interesting enough. This time he went for a high-poly model, where he could model in all of the details. With the high detail model finished you can bake all the important details into a lower detail model which will actually ‘run’ in the game.

This process also helps with material definition, like the metal shoulder plates and the leather and cloth he’s wearing. We’re still designing a new sword with the same principles, making sure the materials are much more convincing.

The baked result is then ready for Pascal to texture. After that, it’s time to make the character come to life! Which basicly means animations. This is always the most time consuming part of production for artists, it’s a lot of trial and error ‘till you get something cool.

3D model of the new Pier

What is interesting about creating a character like Pier?

Several reasons really. Designing a character who is both good and evil at the same time is always a challenge. He was a simple farmer, a family man. But at the same time, he turned into a fearless killing machine. He was a hero to the Frisian people, but he was a villain to the Dutch. These extremes create an interesting contrast and it is a challenge to convey those two aspects into one character. The other reason is, a lot of people already know who he was because of his appearances in television series, old paintings, drawings, and writings. Because of that, a lot of people already see Grutte Pier in a certain way. So to create a design that is acceptable, believable, and recognizable as Pier, was one of the challenging aspects of the process. Looking at old drawings and painting from the same era really helped with the design of his clothing and hair/facial hair style.

Can you tell us something about animations?

When changing the model we also discarded all of the animations. The motion capture data we had was really, really cool to look at, but it just didn’t work ingame. It felt weak and slow and wasn’t what we aimed for. So we decided to go back to square one, we analyzed other action games and came up with a really cool new system with really powerful animations. They might not be entirely era correct, but it works like a charm!

3D models of the new(left) and the old (right) Pier.

We can really give the player the feeling of being a brute now, being bigger and stronger than anyone else. And that’s what we’re really going for and what this game needs. So every change we made is for the better.

Are you happy with the result and why?

Yes, we are! All the changes we’ve made so far ended up being huge improvements and I can’t wait to start working on the actual gameplay to see him run across the fields chopping Dutchmen to pieces!

However, in the last month, we have been able to secure a small budget that allows us the breathe new life in Cross of the Dutchman. It means that we are now (very) actively back in development! The good thing I guess is that we will be able to continue the project, and make sure it gets finished. The downside is that the budget is not substantial enough to allow us to put everything into the game we had imagined in the first place. Err, let me rephrase that, we will make a LOT of changes to the game that will allow us to finish the project within budget this time.

So let’s talk about two of the major topics that are about to change.

#1 – Episodic Content
The new budget allows us to finish a part of Piers’ story, but not all of it. We have therefore decided to develop an episode of the story instead of the entire storyline at once. We intend to offer the episode at a reasonable price, allowing us to gather new funds and develop future episodes. We are working closely with a friend and contributor to the project to make sure the content for the first episode is top-notch!

#2 – Changes to gameplay
Basically, we will have to simplify the game, by quite a bit. This involves changing the controls, the way environments are presented, the way enemies behave and the way quests are presented to the player. Lots of new articles are underway about the changes we have in mind.

From now on, we will have lots to talk about, meaning regular updates to the blog, so check back soon for more information!

Why do we need a partner? Well, we’ve been working on CotD for a long time, and it’s been the largest investment our little studio has ever made. The “problem” is that we were able to dedicate two, three, maybe four people at one time to the project. It gets you a long way, but in order to finish the game, and make it the best it can be, we know we need the effort of the entire team for a couple of months to make it happen. This is (unfortunately) something that is not possible with our own financial means.

In the past couple of months, we have been talking to different parties, but we have come to the conclusion that nothing is going to happen anytime soon. In this light, we’ll also offer the people with pending book pre-orders the Frisian version or a refund. That’s it for the bad news.

The good news is, we’re taking the project in a new direction, and we’re not giving up.

Soon (and with soon, I mean in the next couple of weeks) you will be able to download the Cross of the Dutchman demo for yourself. We plan to crowdfund the remainder of the development in a way very similar to the Kickstarter campaign. However, this time, we are taking smaller steps. When we are able to fund a month of development time, we will create a new part of the story and the game world, and release it instantly.

For now, we invite you over to our forums to discuss our plans of releasing this demo. You can help us by sharing your ideas or examples about how to turn our luck around for CotD, and create something we can be proud of.

Steven

Hi to all the readers of this blog! A couple of weeks ago Bram’s marketing internship at Triangle Studios ended. But there’s no reason to stay sad because I’m the new guy to fill the gap! My name is Steven, the new intern who will keep you informed about everything concerning Cross of the Dutchman and other projects at Triangle Studios.

I am just as enthusiastic as you are about Cross of the Dutchman, so please feel free to take part in discussions, ask questions at the forum or in the comments below. If you wish to know a bit more about me quickly rush to my profile in the ‘Meet the Developers’ section.

T(om)hanks!

All good things come to an end. It probably has been said way to often. But today is a valid day to use it, as it’s Bram’s last day at Triangle. He boosted the Cross of the Dutchman community with lots of posts when he started his marketing internship back in september 2012.

Bram mostly worked on the Cross of the Dutchman community, wrote articles, did interviews, set out a social media strategy and replied to anyone who had questions. We were very happy to have him on board as he took a lot of work out of our hands. As a non Frisian he easily integrated in to the Frisian culture, he might even have learned some Frisian words. Oant sjen!

Thanks for everything Bram,
it was a hell of a ride!

We couldn’t let the opportunity pass to give him a Frisian boxershort :)

From 2013 on, every two months or so, we drop everything we’re doing and start a fresh two-day Game Jam, resulting in a playable prototype that will be available to everyone to play.

And you can follow everything! During the Protocannon Jams we have our intern (me, in fact) running around, taking pictures of everything and putting them on the live blog at Protocannon.com. You can even talk to us in our very own chat room during the Jams if you’d like!

Getting excited? Be sure to check it out in the next couple of days!

Many things happened to Cross of the Dutchman in 2012. The three most important ones we think are the Kickstarter campaign, the Cross of the Dutchman novel we released and the demo we’ve created. In this article we elaborate on these things.

Let’s start with a look at the website. The number of members more than doubled to a total of 131. In September I joined the studio with writing new articles for the blog as my primary task. This resulted in a more steady flow of articles and a higher average of articles per week.

The visitor number crossofthedutchman.com in 2012 (Graph by Google Analytics)

The first thing to notice in the graph are the two big spikes in visitor numbers. The first one is from January 24, the date we released the teaser trailer of Cross of the Dutchman. The second big spike is from May 2, the second day of our Kickstarter campaign. Over the year 2012 we’ve had 20.816 unique visitors, who generated over 114 thousand page views and spend a little over 3 minutes on average on our site. Over 38% of the visitors returned ate least once at some point during the year.

Kickstarter

One of the important things that happened in 2012 was the Kickstarter campaign we did in May. Unfortunately we didn’t reach our goal, but it absolutely gave us a lot of media attention that helped us spread the word about Cross of the Dutchman. It also made us think really hard about how to continue the project, which led to new ideas to cover the cost of developing the game. More on that later.

The Novel

First announced during the Kickstarter campaign, the novel finally launched in November. Starting with the Frisian version, which is now available for purchase. The announced Dutch and English versions however are a bit postponed. We have agreed with our publisher to release those once the game is ready. So rest assured, they’re not cancelled! The writing has even been finished, we just don’t have a date for them. Yet!

The Demo

In September we announced a new sprint that worked to finishing a demo. This demo was finished early October. But maybe you wonder: “Why hasn’t it been released to the public yet? It’s been almost three months!” Well, releasing the demo to the public as soon as possible was actually our first idea, but that plan changed. You might remember Remco going to GDC Online in October to “do some important business stuff”. We weren’t kidding. That important business stuff was in fact Cross of the Dutchman! Armed with a laptop with the freshly made CotD demo he went to the conference to look for potential investors and let them play the demo. And they were interested! That was really good news for us, but it’s also the reason we haven’t been able to release the demo just yet. We want to give the interested parties the chance to check out the demo exclusively, allowing them to come up with a plan on how the game would fit their portfolio, and how they would be able to do proper marketing for it.

So, that was our 2012 in a nutshell! We hope we’ve clarified how things are standing, especially with the book and the game. Let’s hope that the new year will be the year that we can finally finish Cross of the Dutchman and release the story of Great Pier to the people.

]]> http://www.crossofthedutchman.com/2013/01/2012-review-kickstarters-novels-demos/feed/ 5