Blog post #21 : 2018 ends and 2019 starts. Like that happened.

It was an amazing 2018 and yeah, we haven’t had done too much with Peace Quarter, but we did get a chance to do a customer project which ate all the time.

But I also mean that we are financially stable at the moment (at least for now) so not too shabby. But for this year, Peace Quarter is going to be on our mind.

We have been taking part in local game jams and one of them particularly was a good one, because we won it and that lead us to make a pilot for local project. Which is also the customer project I was writing about there. And that pretty much took a huge amount of time in our fall, but it’s now over happily and it went well.

And not only that, but our graphic artist has been active and done amazing work though out the year, and side note that she has also started her thesis that is going to have a part of concept for new possible project we would love to work on some day. So she’s been busy. 

 

http://www.rx3studio.com/roosarasanen/

And there’s a lucky chance that we could or would port GemFall Workforce inc. into iOS because we have a possibility to do that now. 

YouTube // Rx3 Studio

GemFall Workforce Inc. - Harkness' Shift (Now available. See description)

And maybe do a better trailer because that’s with the old music and now a days we have music by Pauli Ondruska on the game that’s also available to listen on YouTube and SoundCloud.

YouTube // Rx3 Studio

GemFall's Work Anthem

Other stuff was those game jams, part of our team was on Peliviikko and we pretty much failed to make the Peace Quarter. But it’s happening. Because we want to. 

YouTube // Rx3 Studio

Peace Quarter Teaser Trailer August 2017

And Global Game Jam is also dawning on us so that's something that our team is looking forward. And hey, maybe we get those short stories once I (olenbluu here) start to look through the story files and other shenanigans and see if I have something to share. 

_Rx3

Blog post #19: End of the year is dawning to all of us.

It's been a while, but there's more than just alpha demo to be happy about this fall. And more to now that we have managed to squeeze out the alpha demo and we found out a lot of things that didn’t work and things that did work. For the first, it was going to be demo, but we ended up making an alpha, which was way better for our small team and we get to test some ideas and really iterate.  

Like Harkness' movement, which is now partially free and partially 2D, and then we faced into problem about the walls. And now Harkness can be seen through some walls. So it's a nice silhouette. Glad we made some rework with Harkness' design and overall shape.

Gyostage
We were happy to be part of this year's Gyostage here in Kuopio. And we get to really try out VR so that was great. Wish we have something more to show and playtest the next year, but overall, it was great.

Nordic Game Week / Peliviikko
Also, we were invited to take part in Kuopio Peliviikko that is part of Nordic Game Week (which in part is part of International Game Week. It's like the Inception, which is a good movie, you should watch it). 

But nevertheless, it was a great way to be part of local gaming culture and IGDA Kuopio is going to make more for the next year's events. We had plans to make the alpha demo for this event, but because some technical difficulties we barely made it, and even that was just a pre-alpha we reworked for wider playtest.

Our graphic team making last adjustments to the alpha demo.

We get to see Kuopio based video game cover band Sinfinian on stage and that was cool.

‎Junction
Part of our team, @olenbluu to be exact took part in Junction 2017 and it was a blast. 

'I was pretty much on new territory because I ended up doing more graphic than I have ever done to any playable demo of ours. It was truly a learning experience for me and I hope I get to do more work with Blender and Krita and maybe be more use for our graphical designer @dicenete in future projects.'

If you're interested the prototype made in Junction and full team credits can be found from https://devpost.com/software/no_name_team-project


And of course Finland celebrated 100years of Independence. Our local IGDA had pre-holiday party and so many things happened this year that it’s impossible to even start listing everything great in this year for us.

Holidays are still coming (you cannot stop them) and we're drafting the schedule again, learned a lot from this alpha demo phase (we changed some of the movement choices and made some tweaks on control, like mentioned) but nevertheless we're happy with the way things are going at this rate and most of all, we are all feeling confident about Peace Quarter being the game we are proud to make.

Happy holidays from all of Rx3 Team

_Rx3 Team

Blog post #17; Teaser trailer special.

Harkness in harm's way.

Teaser trailer for the upcoming adventure game. We're so proud to finally be able to bring it to public and show you what we have been doing all in the silence.

And now we have the teaser trailer ready for you.

And we want to thank everybody involved.

There's no backing out now.

_ Rx3 Team

Blog Post #14: New office, new team member and new Harkness

We finally got our foot in the solid ground (almost) and had ourselves an office space. Basically a second-floor room from one of our team mates home. We’re joking all the time that we’re like reversed basement developers, attic developers. But one cannot argue that it’s easier to do stuff when all of us can locate in the same space for couple of hours in a day. We also got a new member for our team, he’s going do our sound effects, all those WHIP, CRASH, BUM and PHAU noises we need. Which is pretty neat.

If interested, you should check both of our sound and music talents from they respective channels from soundcloud:

Pauli Ondruska

Adam Al-Sawad

We have also been talking about making the landing page for the game, teaser and demo. Probably we’re going to make an early gameplay teaser or something for the landing page when it will initially launch. We earmarked 21th this month for it, but like always life happens when you least expect it. Probably we crunch again in the last night. With Oh My Kitties we really tried to avoid it, but ended up doing the crunch anyway.

Harknes also got redesign and new 3D model.

"At first I wanted to find the shape for hybrids in general - even though NPC hybrids are way different than Harkness, they now share the same basic shape. After that I made the unique silhouette for Harkness that made him Harkness." - Dicenete 

"This is the first silhouette i made for Harkness, and as you can see, it is more MEH than the one in redesign. This one doesn't have the basic shapes" - Dicenete

At the moment we’re doing groundwork and doing necessary code and new graphics for levels which means that we’re on our way with the game environment building. Things are again happening so fast for the development that it feels pretty optimistic that we get the game ready and it will look good. And it’s a great feeling to have.

Our graphic artist started playing FFXV, because narrative writer made her.


_Rx3 Team

Blog Post #13: New tech demo plan

How we must make hard cuts to designs and ideas we love. Not only in Peace Quarter, but also in other projects too. But especially in Peace Quarter. We would love to fill it with everything we love and thought in the first place.

But, not everything is usable or even clever to put in your work. It may seem like it is the best thing ever, but like they say in writing, 'kill your darlings'. It doesn't necessary mean that the idea is bad, it just, you cannot do everything even if you like to do. Like, at the moment, our graphic designer is pretty convinced she will make new model for Harkness and visit Harkness design with new eyes.

But famous ‘kill your darlings’ example is closer than we would like to admit. We had this idea that Harkness would repair things along the way. He still does, but at that moment we thought we would introduce three key ways to repair, fix/build/connect. We had them all figured out. For what you would use them and how they would affect the surrounding world.

But that didn't even last for our first tech demo, we took those ideas away and instead left only repair.

In tech demo we had our core mechanics displayed. TSUP, MTV and teleports. (And in a note of tech demo we’re on our way to make a new tech demo, showcasing new Harkness model and little from the first playable level, Finite Horizon. You can follow for more news from here or from any of our social media, we tend to be happy we’re able to do the next tech demo.)

We were happy with all of the core mechanics we had in the first tech demo. But we decided to merge some of them together to make it more simpler and hopefully easier for players to grasp the idea. It’s always hard to start guessing how much too much or too little, and middle-ground is harder to find that you would think in the start. 

We see how good we did once the new tech demo is completed and we get some feedback.

_Rx3 Team

Blog Post #11: Exhibition and Oh My, Kitties + other news

Our promo art for Peace Quarter (PeaceQ) is part of Design Week Kuopio. We also got Oh My, Kitties fully released and then we also are working on a workshop for local happening. 

Which also raises the question would we need Instagram account for BTS stuff for our game development. I myself like the idea of making the development more open. But, then again, it’s always something more to do that just game development. Maybe we need it, maybe we won’t. Anyway, it has been amazing to get our promo to the exhibition and it looks great printed even though we had no chance to sent the real print file. Anyhow, our talented Dicenete is so proud.

We also got Oh My, Kitties full release on Google Play. I can say that even though we really though we could dodge the last evening crunch, we still ended up fixing sound effects and cut scenes just the night before. With GemFall Workforce Inc. we kind of decided that we would never fall victim for last night crunch plague, but I guess it’s just something that happens. And you can arm yourself against it, but it’s just something you should be aware of that the last night before deadline is always the best time to work. I don’t know why… Productive deadline symptom.

And on the other note, we also got chance to be part of local happening and are reading a demo for workshop we’re having there about narrative and visuals and how find them. It’s like storytelling approach to video games and we’re making a brief demo of a walking simulator game just called Turnip Princess now.  Idea is to walk through our creative process from narrative ideas to scripts to visuals and finally how it all comes together in interactive media of video games.

Right now, our team is also caught up playing Persona 5 and Overwatch Uprising. And Final Fantasy XIV free return campaign is also here so, that’s nice. And, a bit inconvenient when you should be doing stuff.  But hey, you learn writing by reading, so you learn making games by playing games. (Disclaimer: Both need also learning skills, but you get the idea… And an excuse to read or play.)

_ Rx3 Team

Special Blog Post #10: New promo art.

And here it is. Our first promo art. Gaze your eyes on fine art made by our amazing Dicenete. The art is also going to be possibly part of local Design Week exhibition so we're really happy about that. And probably telling you as soon as we know.


Harkness is gazing over Sektor City while enjoying his old cup of joe.

_Rx3 Team

Blog post #6: Let's talk about Harkness

Our concepting really started from the idea of a mobile game. Simple idea that we made into this story-driven game that we’re now making. When the concepting shifted towards more story-driven game, we made clear line (5 levels) we were going to use. But that’s pretty much a different story, for different post. Now is time to talk about Harkness.

Our beloved main character, Harkness, senior worker in GemFall Wokrforce Inc.

There has been a lot of different Harkness' along the way. First, we have this idea of protagonist being 80's manly man who walks away from the explosion. You know the type if you have seen any of movies with explosions and sweat. Or lately seen Kung Fury. All concept idea was to make the story and setting really over the top. We don't know that happened, but we shifted away from that idea.

Then came the Harkness we have now. Some things from the early concept idea were still there. He is just working there, making his living and his basically sort of lone wolf type of worker. But Harkness became more of an everyday man. This Harkness (Harkness 2.0) has evolved, but not so roughly as Harkness 1.0 (80's hero).

Like, if you look Harkness in our concept designs, he has his priorities straight. Coffee before anything else. (Well, the mug might be from his co-worker or default mug in GemFall Workforce Inc.)

by Dicenete 

So, we have heavily moved for more story-driven game so, like in last blog, we have face the need for more world-building and humane characters. Now we must care about the characters and make sure that player cares about them too. All this affects the pacing of the game, the narrative and even our game design choices. (I'm not saying cool looking hero action isn't cared for and in some cases made so perfectly that they are awesome, it's just a different kind of narrative choice that rely on different things.)

We have to make Harkness’ design that in mind. And we also need to focus on his story arc and try to bring that to the design of his character.

And about that Harkness helmet, that was inspired by Power Rangers. Here are some concept we had for it.

By Dicenete

And finally, you can see Harkness finalized design in GemFall Workforce Inc mobile game. We may do some changes along the way, to sharpen the design and character, but this is what we have now. And it's pretty finalized. And we like him. Harkness is cool.

Harkness starting his normal work day in GemFall Workforce Inc.

_Rx3 Team