Originally we wanted to surprise you, but then things moved around, for exciting reasons we will tell you about in the next update! But in the end this resulted in us posting this update so much later than we wanted to, and for that we apologise.
But we do come bearing good news! We’re still on track for the digital release window of Q3, and we think that the game is looking really amazing with the last touch-ups we were able to add, thanks to all of you.
In addition to things heating up, we’re also announcing a wind down of our late backing option on PledgeManager - so please check that you're happy with your selections, and finish your surveys if you haven't yet! Friday August 9th will be its last day.
We thought it would be interesting to describe some of the development progress, and what has consumed our attention over the last few months...
DEVELOPMENT UPDATES
One of the interesting challenges of bringing the game to 4K has been to determine how to resolve issues that we didn’t foresee!
HERE'S NOT LOOKING AT YOU, KID
In the original resolution we make visual assumptions that no longer work in 4K. For example, in low resolution, George’s eyes are composed of a couple of suggestive pixels. Redrawn at 4K, we can now see clearly where George is looking - and if George doesn’t look directly at the character to whom he is taking, then the exchange looks cold and disconnected.
This threw up a predicament because normally George is looking straight ahead at characters, but sometimes he is looking down - as is the case when George speaks to Chantelle. One of our early commitments was that players would be able to fluidly jump between the original and Reforged at the press of a button - and these animations play from the same set which have defined lengths, each with a fixed number of frames.
So when George is talking, how do we make George look ahead or down depending on who he is talking to?
Let’s say a specific interaction has a “talk animation” consisting of 10 frames. These 10 frames are played by referring to situation-specific subfolders. Adding conditional logic to the game, our programmers and animation team came up with a plan to create subfolders inside those subfolders, where the animation team would then add frames for specific contexts.
This means that now every generic interaction George has in Reforged can refer to a matching overwrite set, preserving the original number of total frames dictated by the specific interaction. George also binks now, which all together makes a significant difference in such a high resolution. Yet one you’d only notice if it was missing…
NEVER BEFORE SEEN ORIGINAL CONTENT
We have previously highlighted that there were fully voiced George lines that were never played in the original game, for a variety of reasons, most commonly because the logic was flawed. There are only a few lines, but they feel special to encounter, especially if you thought there wasn’t anything left to discover.
So to those of you who think you know this game inside out, there are a couple of interactions, pieces of dialogue and George’s inner monologue, and even a previously locked-into-cutscene area you’ll now get to explore. Some of these you might happen upon here and there, and others only unlock once you’ve played through the game!
And if that’s just not the game you remember, and you like things how they were, you’ll be able to easily turn this bonus content off in the settings menu.
DYNAMIC SHADOWS IN A 2D GAME
In high resolution, it became immediately clear that without shadows, the characters risk looking like they are floating above the ground. So Andy wrote code to project 2D sprites to look like 3D shadows that can be cast in any direction depending on the direction of the light source. Whilst this is very clever, it does leave room for shadow errors. Our art team is currently going through each screen, adjusting and optimising the way that shadows are cast. According to Andy, who like most programmers, is overall quite understated “the technique we’re using has no right to look as good as often as it does” and we hope to show it off more down the line!
A HARD LESSON ON WHEN TO REFER TO WHICH “ORIGINAL”
Backgrounds were originally drawn in pencil by Eoghan Cahill and Neil Breen who had previously been senior layout artists at the Don Bluth Studios in Dublin. We considered those original layouts to be the ‘canon’ - so when the painted screens differed, we found ourselves in a quandary.
One example would be the Museum, where the original line art depicted a knight statue, but the colourist had painted an Egyptian statue instead. When making the decision to go back to the original line art layouts for Reforged the knight was painted. Not a big deal though, and we doubted anyone would even notice...
Ah 🙃 Right, of course… Thankfully we caught that George actually refers to the statue in game, describing it as a "statue from Ancient Egypt", so that’s what it looks like once again.
And there are so many other elements that might seem trivial, but together will ensure that Broken Sword - Shadow of the Templars: Reforged fulfils its full potential. We have loved working on this game, and are hugely proud of how it looks and plays, and we hope that you will feel that this extra work has been worth it.
REVOLUTION UPDATES
All in all, it’s been a busy and dedicated few weeks, with all hands on board. Here are some non development highlights we want to share;
BROKEN SWORD 5 KICKSTARTER GOODIES
Earlier this month we handed over the contents of the re-emerged Broken Sword 5 Kickstarter storage unit to a distribution partner, who will now take individual stock, work with us on packaging, and once the time comes; shipping! Our aim is to sync up the shipping of the BS5 Kickstarter Goodies with the Collector's Editions and Reforged Add-Ons.
CHARLES GRADUATED
Well technically he was awarded an Honorary Master of Arts degree by Leeds Arts University in the Royal Armouries during the University’s recent graduation ceremonies.
The University’s alumni include some really interesting creative minds, including Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore and Damien Hurst. He gave a touching speech andyou can read more about it here!
EDGE Magazine: Full Circle
An incredible in-depth interview, and a really unique photoshoot.
We don’t want to give too much away, but encourage everyone to give this a read either online, or in their beautiful monthly issued magazine.
THERE IS SO MUCH MORE WE WISH WE COULD TALK ABOUT,
that we’re not ready to share just yet. But let’s just say Charles is brushing up on his German… Danke schön! Thank you for your continued patience, and all the love you've shown us and this game over the decades. It truly means the world.
Torru85 escribió:Os comparto el último update del Broken Sword Reforged que nos han mandado hoy.Originally we wanted to surprise you, but then things moved around, for exciting reasons we will tell you about in the next update! But in the end this resulted in us posting this update so much later than we wanted to, and for that we apologise.
But we do come bearing good news! We’re still on track for the digital release window of Q3, and we think that the game is looking really amazing with the last touch-ups we were able to add, thanks to all of you.
In addition to things heating up, we’re also announcing a wind down of our late backing option on PledgeManager - so please check that you're happy with your selections, and finish your surveys if you haven't yet! Friday August 9th will be its last day.
We thought it would be interesting to describe some of the development progress, and what has consumed our attention over the last few months...
DEVELOPMENT UPDATES
One of the interesting challenges of bringing the game to 4K has been to determine how to resolve issues that we didn’t foresee!
HERE'S NOT LOOKING AT YOU, KID
In the original resolution we make visual assumptions that no longer work in 4K. For example, in low resolution, George’s eyes are composed of a couple of suggestive pixels. Redrawn at 4K, we can now see clearly where George is looking - and if George doesn’t look directly at the character to whom he is taking, then the exchange looks cold and disconnected.
This threw up a predicament because normally George is looking straight ahead at characters, but sometimes he is looking down - as is the case when George speaks to Chantelle. One of our early commitments was that players would be able to fluidly jump between the original and Reforged at the press of a button - and these animations play from the same set which have defined lengths, each with a fixed number of frames.
So when George is talking, how do we make George look ahead or down depending on who he is talking to?
Let’s say a specific interaction has a “talk animation” consisting of 10 frames. These 10 frames are played by referring to situation-specific subfolders. Adding conditional logic to the game, our programmers and animation team came up with a plan to create subfolders inside those subfolders, where the animation team would then add frames for specific contexts.
This means that now every generic interaction George has in Reforged can refer to a matching overwrite set, preserving the original number of total frames dictated by the specific interaction. George also binks now, which all together makes a significant difference in such a high resolution. Yet one you’d only notice if it was missing…
NEVER BEFORE SEEN ORIGINAL CONTENT
We have previously highlighted that there were fully voiced George lines that were never played in the original game, for a variety of reasons, most commonly because the logic was flawed. There are only a few lines, but they feel special to encounter, especially if you thought there wasn’t anything left to discover.
So to those of you who think you know this game inside out, there are a couple of interactions, pieces of dialogue and George’s inner monologue, and even a previously locked-into-cutscene area you’ll now get to explore. Some of these you might happen upon here and there, and others only unlock once you’ve played through the game!
And if that’s just not the game you remember, and you like things how they were, you’ll be able to easily turn this bonus content off in the settings menu.
DYNAMIC SHADOWS IN A 2D GAME
In high resolution, it became immediately clear that without shadows, the characters risk looking like they are floating above the ground. So Andy wrote code to project 2D sprites to look like 3D shadows that can be cast in any direction depending on the direction of the light source. Whilst this is very clever, it does leave room for shadow errors. Our art team is currently going through each screen, adjusting and optimising the way that shadows are cast. According to Andy, who like most programmers, is overall quite understated “the technique we’re using has no right to look as good as often as it does” and we hope to show it off more down the line!
A HARD LESSON ON WHEN TO REFER TO WHICH “ORIGINAL”
Backgrounds were originally drawn in pencil by Eoghan Cahill and Neil Breen who had previously been senior layout artists at the Don Bluth Studios in Dublin. We considered those original layouts to be the ‘canon’ - so when the painted screens differed, we found ourselves in a quandary.
One example would be the Museum, where the original line art depicted a knight statue, but the colourist had painted an Egyptian statue instead. When making the decision to go back to the original line art layouts for Reforged the knight was painted. Not a big deal though, and we doubted anyone would even notice...
Ah 🙃 Right, of course… Thankfully we caught that George actually refers to the statue in game, describing it as a "statue from Ancient Egypt", so that’s what it looks like once again.
And there are so many other elements that might seem trivial, but together will ensure that Broken Sword - Shadow of the Templars: Reforged fulfils its full potential. We have loved working on this game, and are hugely proud of how it looks and plays, and we hope that you will feel that this extra work has been worth it.
REVOLUTION UPDATES
All in all, it’s been a busy and dedicated few weeks, with all hands on board. Here are some non development highlights we want to share;
BROKEN SWORD 5 KICKSTARTER GOODIES
Earlier this month we handed over the contents of the re-emerged Broken Sword 5 Kickstarter storage unit to a distribution partner, who will now take individual stock, work with us on packaging, and once the time comes; shipping! Our aim is to sync up the shipping of the BS5 Kickstarter Goodies with the Collector's Editions and Reforged Add-Ons.
CHARLES GRADUATED
Well technically he was awarded an Honorary Master of Arts degree by Leeds Arts University in the Royal Armouries during the University’s recent graduation ceremonies.
The University’s alumni include some really interesting creative minds, including Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore and Damien Hurst. He gave a touching speech andyou can read more about it here!
EDGE Magazine: Full Circle
An incredible in-depth interview, and a really unique photoshoot.
We don’t want to give too much away, but encourage everyone to give this a read either online, or in their beautiful monthly issued magazine.
THERE IS SO MUCH MORE WE WISH WE COULD TALK ABOUT,
that we’re not ready to share just yet. But let’s just say Charles is brushing up on his German… Danke schön! Thank you for your continued patience, and all the love you've shown us and this game over the decades. It truly means the world.
) y me fui directo a ScummVM a la versión clásica por eso mismo.
![[toctoc]](/images/smilies/nuevos2/rompiendo.gif "machacando")
![[rtfm]](/images/smilies/rtfm.gif "Lee!")
LonelySoulGamer escribió:Esta en portada pero bueno:
Ha tenido los santos cojones de poner el final del juego en el trailer. Eres joven y quieres probar las aventuras gráficas, tooooma spoiler. Aunque para que nos vamos a engañar, las nuevas generaciones pasan del género totalmente.
![[bye]](/images/smilies/nuevos2/adio.gif "adios")
katatsumuri escribió:3 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT® - A COMEDY GRAPHIC ADVENTURE https://store.steampowered.com/app/8325 ... Adventure/
En una carrera contrarreloj, Betty se embarca en una emocionante aventura repleta de comedia para desenmarañar una conspiración que empieza con una explosión y termina a tres minutos para medianoche.
La verdad que tiene buena pinta, lo único que no me gusta es el puntero, no pega con el apartado visual, creo que otro puntero hubiera quedado mucho mejor.
![[beer]](/images/smilies/nuevos2/brindando.gif "brindis")
katatsumuri escribió:FRAN BOW https://store.steampowered.com/agecheck/app/362680/
Fran Bow es un juego de aventuras espeluznante que cuenta la historia de Fran, una joven que lucha contra un trastorno mental y un destino injusto. Después de presenciar la espantosa y misteriosa pérdida de sus padres, encontrados desmembrados en su casa, Fran se adentra en el bosque, junto con su único amigo, el Sr. Midnight, un gato negro que Fran había recibido previamente como regalo de sus padres.
