Showing posts with label games. Show all posts
Learn More on Dragon Age 3 Inquisition Cd Key
Dragon age inquisition was introduced by Mark Darrah. This game will be introduced at the end of 2014. This will be built on new RPG engine using 3 technologies as a foundation. This enables Bio Ware to deliver high expansive world with better visual and more reactivity to player choice. This game is also done with customized features. This article will guide you with different features that are available in Dragon Age 3 Inquisition. One of them is the Combat which takes place in a real time environment but with strategic control options. The player acts as a party leader and at any point of time can freeze the action and enters a tactical view. This allows him to take in what is happening from any angle & assign allies to specific tasks. The player can take direct control of the party member in the battle. This game will change completely the way the players will fight dragons. When you are attacking the dragon, you should not hit all of them. You need to hit just its legs or its wing and that should matter a lot. It should matter where you are hitting the dragon. There eye multiple kinds of dragon with varieties of breath attacks and elemental attacks. The difference in elements and properties of the dragon will inform how the players should approach them from a combat point of view.
What characters are included in the game?
Just like the original dragon age, there are different party members who converse throughout the travel. Bio Ware has the largest cast of characters in the game. There are some new characters that are involved like Dorian who is a homosexual male who identifies as their 1st male character. This is a game of scale. Parties are made of prominent personalities in the universe& characters spend more time like setting up camps & fortifying strongholds at different areas. The world master system will allow your actions to impact the game universe. The players hunting pattern will affect the animal population in the zone. Mounts are introduced including horses & exotic mode of transportation. The crafting system will allow customization of armor and weapons. Characters will have direct control on shaping the abilities, tactics and attributes of their party.
How do the enemies take part in the game?
The enemies of dragon age 3 inquisition cdkey will operate with the coordinated team work, protect the zone of control and utilize the environment. Some of the known animals are Templars, mages and dragons. Fight against large enemies will allow you to target individual limbs for optimal damage.
What characters are included in the game?
Just like the original dragon age, there are different party members who converse throughout the travel. Bio Ware has the largest cast of characters in the game. There are some new characters that are involved like Dorian who is a homosexual male who identifies as their 1st male character. This is a game of scale. Parties are made of prominent personalities in the universe& characters spend more time like setting up camps & fortifying strongholds at different areas. The world master system will allow your actions to impact the game universe. The players hunting pattern will affect the animal population in the zone. Mounts are introduced including horses & exotic mode of transportation. The crafting system will allow customization of armor and weapons. Characters will have direct control on shaping the abilities, tactics and attributes of their party.
How do the enemies take part in the game?
The enemies of dragon age 3 inquisition cdkey will operate with the coordinated team work, protect the zone of control and utilize the environment. Some of the known animals are Templars, mages and dragons. Fight against large enemies will allow you to target individual limbs for optimal damage.
Winx Club Games
Winx Club is an Italian animated television series directed, created, and produced by Iginio Straffi and his company Rainbow S.r.l. It is part of the larger Winx Club franchise. The series is the first Italian cartoon to be sold in the U.S. According to Iginio Straffi's website, "Winx Club is an action and fantasy show combined with comedic elements. In the mystical dimension of Magix, three special schools educate modern fairies, ambitious witches and supernatural warriors, and wizards from all over the magical universe.
The show features Bloom and her six best friends (Stella, Musa, Tecna, Flora, Layla and Roxy) and her elder sister (Daphne) is situated mainly in the magical universe and on Earth. They call themselves "the Winx Club" and go on many adventures together. Throughout the story, they discover new and much stronger fairy transformations and magical powers, battle against evil and support Bloom as she tries to discover her origins helped by her best and closest friends.
Protagonists
Bloom, the fairy of the Dragon Flame. While she originally thought she was only a simple Earth girl, she was actually revealed to be the last survivor and princess of the planet Domino that was destroyed by evil forces sixteen years before the series began. Her love interest and boyfriend is Sky. Bloom is closer to Stella out of everyone in the Winx.
Stella, the fairy of the shining sun. She is the crown princess of the world Solaria, and was the first one to meet and befriend Bloom and caused her to embrace her fairy powers. Her love interest and boyfriend is Brandon. Stella can do fashion spells.
Musa, the fairy of music. She is from planet Melody, the world of all music. Her boyfriend is Riven.
Tecna, the fairy of technology. She is from planet Zenith, the realm of technology. Her boyfriend is Timmy.
Flora, the fairy of nature. She is from planet Lynphea, the world of nature. Her boyfriend is Helia.
Aisha (or Layla), the fairy of waves. She is from the world Andros, where she is the princess and officially joined the group in the second season. Her first boyfriend was Nabu who died and her second boyfriend is Roy.
Roxy, the fairy of animals. She was the last terrestrial fairy of Earth and is currently studying at Alfea College in order to become a full-fledged fairy of animals and eventual Guardian fairy of her home world. She is the daughter of Morgana, the previous Queen of the terrestrial fairies and the Crown Princess of Tir Nan Og, the Earth fairies main world. She is randomly shown in the fifth and sixth season in places such as Alfea, at parties and on Earth.
The show features Bloom and her six best friends (Stella, Musa, Tecna, Flora, Layla and Roxy) and her elder sister (Daphne) is situated mainly in the magical universe and on Earth. They call themselves "the Winx Club" and go on many adventures together. Throughout the story, they discover new and much stronger fairy transformations and magical powers, battle against evil and support Bloom as she tries to discover her origins helped by her best and closest friends.
Protagonists
Bloom, the fairy of the Dragon Flame. While she originally thought she was only a simple Earth girl, she was actually revealed to be the last survivor and princess of the planet Domino that was destroyed by evil forces sixteen years before the series began. Her love interest and boyfriend is Sky. Bloom is closer to Stella out of everyone in the Winx.
Stella, the fairy of the shining sun. She is the crown princess of the world Solaria, and was the first one to meet and befriend Bloom and caused her to embrace her fairy powers. Her love interest and boyfriend is Brandon. Stella can do fashion spells.
Musa, the fairy of music. She is from planet Melody, the world of all music. Her boyfriend is Riven.
Tecna, the fairy of technology. She is from planet Zenith, the realm of technology. Her boyfriend is Timmy.
Flora, the fairy of nature. She is from planet Lynphea, the world of nature. Her boyfriend is Helia.
Aisha (or Layla), the fairy of waves. She is from the world Andros, where she is the princess and officially joined the group in the second season. Her first boyfriend was Nabu who died and her second boyfriend is Roy.
Roxy, the fairy of animals. She was the last terrestrial fairy of Earth and is currently studying at Alfea College in order to become a full-fledged fairy of animals and eventual Guardian fairy of her home world. She is the daughter of Morgana, the previous Queen of the terrestrial fairies and the Crown Princess of Tir Nan Og, the Earth fairies main world. She is randomly shown in the fifth and sixth season in places such as Alfea, at parties and on Earth.
The BeautiFun Team Stories - Lourdes Nicolich (Artist) Part II/II
Link to Part I/II.
With videogames I discovered a new medium that was really special and thrilling, they let me choose my own path and take control of a character in amazing fantasy worlds! I started thinking about how much I would love to be able of creating those universes someday.
As I was telling you before, when I was between 8 and 10 years-old I played Super Nintendo games like Donkey Kong Country or Aladdin. Those, aside of being really funny, had a superb art that inspired my drawings a lot by the time. Also I loved drawing landscapes of the nature, I had to be good at it, since some schoolmates accused me of copying/cheating because they didn't believe I could be able to paint them all by myself.
So I continued painting by pure hobby and inspiration, all of this followed by passion of someday becoming a game artist. I learned some Corel Draw in my free time and wrote short fairytales, that I also illustrated. You may think I studied arts since very young, but I got a little bit misguided and did a human-sciences bachelor in high school. But afterwards I was quite strongly determined to go after my dream of being an artist and with a lot of effort I passed the entrance test for Fine Arts University.
Jesús: What did you enjoy the most learning at the University?
I loved animation subject, the teacher was Josep María Blanco, a brilliant professional. Also natural drawing inspired by human models was something I deeply enjoyed. Thanks to graphic design I reinforced my critical sense about texts styles, paragraphs, etc. I also remember how much I critizised some games that didn't take care of those issues.
Jesús: I see you are quite perfectionist and are rather curious personality, right?
Yeah, I think we all are quite perfectionists at BeatutiFun Games. As a proof, in Nihilumbra you can see the smooth and well-finished texts of the game, the typography is really carefully selected for each language. But I'm still learning to be satisfied with a certain degree of perfection, because all the extremes are bad.
Jesús: And what happened after the university? Did you finally started make videogames?
Not really, its a bit weird because, in spite I focused on learning everything I thought could be useful to make games, but somehow lost track and I ended up working in the graphic design area for web, multimedia applications and advertising. After working during a stint on several companies, I was wondering what happened with my passion for doing art for videogames. And what a coincidence that one day I received a letter from the University where they informed about a videogame Masters Degree. That was a true temptation and the only thing that kept me back from signing up was the really high price. But my parents ended up convincing me, they told me that it could be paid in installments and, combining their help with some money that I earned working, we managed to pay it; so there I went, learning how to do art for videogames!
Jesús: How was your experience with the Video-game Masters Degree?
I started the course thinking absolutely in positive, trying to learn as much as possible, especially about the technical side of how video games were made, that was amazing for me. And also the technological side was my weakest point in my curriculum after I did my Fine Arts studies. Also I enjoyed very much attending conferences by industry professionals who came around to share their experience with us. There I had also the chance to meet great people, with the same tastes than me, and as a consequence of this, some of us ended up founding BeautiFun Games.
Jesús: What can you tell us about the game you developed at the Master, "Once Upon a Night"?
It was a game we based on experimentation, trying out different ideas each member of the group had. The game aesthetics were very important, since we had two worlds, the dreamy and the nightmarish, it was a challenge to keep the art of each world different and related at the same time. I got the idea of how to change the appearance of the environment from dreamy to nightmarish and vice-versa from watching a seaweed that reacted by hiding when it was touched. The programmers played with the shaders to try to change the textures progressively and in a stylized way. It was quite a complex project for beginners like us, when we tought a problem/bug was solved, another issue emerged somewhere else. Also I found fascinating how things were done internally in our game, we learned a lot from other commercial games and how they solved those problems. As an example, I remember we studied Alan Wake and how it used the flashlight in each position and situation, and also how commercial games tried to avoid or dissimulate tiling.
Jesús: How did you met the different components of BeautiFun Games?
I met Aniol because we shared the same passion about game development process. We were both curious about all the aspects needed, since our goal was to be able to make a complete game. In fact I was the first person who encouraged Aniol it would be a great idea to create a videogame company, he liked it and after the Masters Degree he surprised everyone from our group with the company creation purposal, and finally here we are!
Jesús: What were the key factors for defining the artistic aspect of Nihilumbra?
I clearly remember when Kevin and Aniol came one day with several game ideas, and then Kevin explained the idea of Nihilumbra. I started to imagine many things about how that world would be, the amazing journey the player would live. He had the monsters design very clear in his mind and I quickly shaped in my mind the main aspect for the landscapes. The world Kevin had in mind at the beginning was designed to emphasize the use of the paintings, so it lacked colors, the characters were silhouettes, quite Limbo-esque. But I thought that the player should be able to feel the inmensity of the world like Born feels it, and also perceive colors, at least a bit, in some way, so I suggested the usage of expressiveness and plasticity of painting to illustrate the scenarios. Born is a character that begins his existence at the beginning of the game. He is not capable of fully understanding the world that surrounds him. He’s especially fascinated with the colors that he finds, but he can’t really assimilate them properly, like he was colorblind. I thought that we could represent that giving the colors a special importance in the backgrounds while keeping them desaturated, so every world Born visits is somehow pervaded with the predominant color of that world (blue with frozen cliffs, green with the living forest, etc). I took Kevin’s initial idea and developed it so the art fitted with Born, the story and the atmosphere. In the following images you can see a few concept arts Kevin showed to the team to start thinking about how the game should look like.
Jesús: Are you especially proud of something in particular in the artistic aspect of the game?
I loved that I didn't need to change a lot of things we did on the original Photoshop concepts to what was finally included in the final game (textures, etc). This is something I really appreciate and I thank our dear programmers because they did a great effort to make it possible.
And now we are finishing the interview, can you tell me a good quality of each member of the team, and a good and a bad quality of yourself?
Aniol is very analitic and persevering, loves to look at things from every possible aspect.
Pol is a really patient guy, I remember that I loved the particle, weather and special effects he did at Nihilumbra. He is also good at estimating the time that a technical task will take.
Kevin is always in the journey of self-improvement, he plays tons of games to analyze them and try to learn from their good and bad design choices.
Suey is a really down to Earth guy and always loves to work the extra mile, improving the performance of the game code.
Jordi is a very passionate guy, super perfectionist and critic with his own work (also with others' work, but always auto-critic himself first). I like how he likes to learn new things by himself and love the day to day routine, when we share thoughts and cooperate the best we can.
Jesús is very perservering, love how he likes to learn from everything and also very good talking and getting to know people.
And about me, I can say some of my virtues are I'm persevering and also put tons of effort into making everything as perfect as possible. Those virtues can turn into weak points when they go too far, so I try to learn to say "stop improving something that's already very good", and also while most of the time I'm optimistic and cheerful, I have to control my bad-temper from time to time.
Jesús: Thinking about the near future, what can you tell us about Megamagic?
Megamagic story is not as abstract and philosophical as Nihilumbra’s, also at an artistic level it presents a lot of new challenges. My work on the game is focused on environments and backgrounds, in this case the game is really happy and colourful. Conceptually I like how crazy it is, the mixture of very different cultural influences, films, cartoons, comics, etc. I really love the freedom I have to create things from my own imagination.
Tag :
artist,
beautifun,
games,
lourdes,
masters,
Megamagic,
nicolich,
Nihilumbra,
once upon a night,
videogame,
BeautiFun Weekly: News and Discoveries Ep.7
Nihilumbra available at Gaming For Good.
Now you can get Nihilumbra (and also the great Spanish indie Unepic) at Gaming For Good An Athene's initiative where all the money from sold games goes directly to the NGO Save the Children!
Vía @BeautiFunGames
Back in December I had the chance to play Daniel Benmergui's Storyteller, a game where your goal is to freely craft your own stories, only limited by having a certain set of characters and objects that you should handle in order to reach a conclusion. Definitely Storytelling has a lot of potential, it's quite innovative, but also very complex from the development side. Daniel is working really hard create a streamlined experience through the different situations that player has to face. Recently Daniel announced on Storyteller's webpage:
"It happened that recently I decided to take a week to make a small game and thus "Ernesto RPG" was born. After releasing it into the wild, I realized that there might be upsides to turning it into a tiny commercial game:
It will take my designer mind off of Storyteller for a while, allowing me to go back to it from a different perspective.
Releasing commercially means Ernesto will have to go through the same releasing pipeline that Storyteller will have to go through; by then, I will be more experienced. Ernesto reminded me how I felt when I started with Storyteller.
I have been in a very good mood since I started it."
Ernesto is Daniel's side project, a free pixelated click-based RPG where you guide the destiny of an explorer through dungeons filled with unexpected dangers, but also with power-ups to help you to survive. The game is pretty addictive, and Daniel is improving it up to the point he said it will be released commercially. Give it a chance if you have some free time, is really addicting!
Vía @JesusFabre
Pokemon Evoas. A promising fan-made Pokémon Game.
From now and then we see some fan-made games based on very well known franchises. Today we have Pokémon Evoas, as the author, th3sharkk says:
"Evoas makes a lot of changes to the standard pokemon gameplay formula, with a focus on making battles more strategic and exciting."
The game is not only using the trademark Pokémon, it also takes art and sound assets from it. So that means Nintendo may take down the project any time... let's see. Meanwhile you can give it a try here.
Vía @truguers
If you haven't heard about Watermelon Games, maybe if I tell you about Pier Solar it would be more familiar to you. The Canadian studio is now about to release their next title for the Sega Mega Drive, under the name Project Y there are lots of passion from developers and also many fans, who invested and helped to shape the game into its present form. The gameplay is a mixture between a Beat'em all with RPG elements (what they call an RPB). Recently has been some controversy since some people accused them of getting too much inspiration from Streets of Rage, but they quickly denied such suppositions. They said the influences on Project Y were very diverse and they aren't going after cloning any classic title.
Here is the game context, taken from the game's site:
"ProjectY takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, set in an Asian high-tech metropolis. The last survivors of the nuclear war are divided into several classes, where the most powerful have the others by the balls. This has divided the governing bodies into several fractions, where ethnic mafias and a corrupt corporation are just a few of them! As you can see, this story is filled with many possible scenarios. It will demand lots of exploring and several playthroughs to get everything out of it."
Vía @BeautiFunGames
Impressive concept arts released after WARHAMMER: Age of Reckoning gets closed.
Sadly Warhammer Online servers were shutdown last December 18th, slightly more than five years left many gamers with a deep feeling of losing. As a tribute, Youtube user warhammerbp has created this amazing video, where you can contemplate its huge worlds, majestic creatures, and massive battles.
Also, one of the game artists called daaken, who worked on the title since 2007, posted many of the artworks he did for the game on his website, you can find them here:
Via @desgastada
Random stuff of the week:
Take it as a reward for reaching to the end of the post.
Vía @AniolAlcaraz
Here you can check out our previous issue of BeautiFun Weekly: News and Discoveries.
Here you can check out our previous issue of BeautiFun Weekly: News and Discoveries.
Tag :
athene,
daaken,
daniel benmergui,
ernesto,
evoas,
fan-made,
games,
gaming for good,
homage,
Nihilumbra,
online,
pokemon,
Project Y,
rpg,
storyteller,
warhammer,
watermelon,
The BeautiFun Team Stories - Aniol Alcaraz (Producer and programmer) - Part II / II
Link to Part I/II.
Jesús: How do you see the game industry at the moment in relation to the kind of games we are making at BeautiFun Games?
Aniol: About the videogame industry, I have to say at the beginning we were a bit skeptical about how successfully commercial an indie game could be. Everyone was talking about casual and social gaming for mobile and Facebook, but after our experience with Nihilumbra (that's making a game we would love to play as traditional videogame players), things changed very favorably! Now we trust that keeping our efforts and passion, we can make our own road as part of this vibrant indie scene.
J: Nowadays, BeautiFun Games has grown and added three members more, so it almost doubled its size since it was funded, back in early 2011. How those changes have affected your roles at the company and what are the biggest challenges you faced?
A: I started to work as a producer without noticing that "producer" was the name for that kind of task. Focused on coordinating everyone's work so we all can get all done with the least possible delay. I also make sure that the result has the level of quality needed. More than order "what" we have to do, my main task is about the "how" we have to do it and what to change in order to get it on time.
About challenges, as programmer, I think one of the most difficult situations we had to face happened while developing Nihilumbra. Firstly getting used to work with the tech capabilities of a cellphone, since we couldn't read the textures from scenarios pixel by pixel, we had to sort-of invent a method using tables in RAM memory. After this issue was solved, we had to program the game physics and also create a realistic "painting effect" when the player touched the screen. The painting effect was specially tricky, since we had to recur to use polygons to represent paint stains, also those polygons had to be small enough in a way when the user is painting close to any surface border, there won't be any stain "half floating" where that border ends. Something curious that not many people know is that we had to add a limit to the amount of painting you had in the game. The purpose of this feature was to avoid a potential performance slowdown if the player started painting -filling with polygons- on all the surface available.
A: Surely we could have chosen an easier path to go and try to avoid facing those challenges, but in the end we followed the hard path since we believed that those features were sort of unique and nobody had technically created such experience with a touching device until that moment. In addition, the gameplay demanded it and it made full sense to all of us. Finally, we got our effort rewarded with good sales, and it was not only because of the technical achievements in the game, I believe it was thanks to the combination of great art, level design and narrative.
J: Aniol explained me some concrete dares he and the other two programmers in the team (Pol and Suey) had to solve, but trying to go for a more general question regarding programming, I ask him what part he loves the most of this side of his work.
A: I specially enjoy the starting and closing of projects. To create a solid technical base, and then polishing the details during last weeks of the development.
J: Can you go a bit into detail about what it means to create a solid technical base?
A: A videogame project is subject to many changes, that means you may need to adapt the implementation of some parts of the game depending on the variable needs of an artist, the game designer or even the musician. So to try to diminish the negative impact those changes have, as a programmer you have to code in a very tricky and strategic way with the goal of making your code as reusable as possible. This hability is very important here at BeautiFun Games, because our projects main direction are driven by the artists and designers, more than the programmers.
J: About Nihilumbra, is there an impressive moment for you when you look back at the first months after launch?
A: We received messages from people telling it was the best iOS game they ever played, that was mind-blowing. Also we got great comments about the PC version, something amazing who nobody expected was a fanart by a Russian fan called "~Nemesis~fierce", it mixes both universes from Nihilumbra and Journey! It is been a true honor to be compared with ThatGameCompany's masterpiece.
We try to leave a mark in gamers, like those movies you remember for a long time, if we achieve that, that will be a success.
J: I would also like to know how did you (the four funding members) met each other?
A: About Pol, as I explained before, I met him before thanks to our shared fondness for poker, but it was a coincidence that he also entered the same Videogame Development Course as me. In that same course I met Lourdes and Kevin... for the final project Pol went to work with Kevin's group and Lourdes was in the same working group as me. So it was only a matter of time until the core team of BeautiFun Games was born.
J: Now you know the members of the team after a few years of hard work, I would like our fans to start knowing them too. So what is better than asking you about a good quality of each one?
A: Kevin always gets his way. That's not a bad thing, because I always put a lot of spokes on his wheels, and consequently we end up approving only the best of his ideas.
Pol is always making your day easier, he hasn't only good mood, he also knows when is the best time to use it.
Suey works hard as hell, always running the extra mile to make a project go forward.
Lourdes is kind of a mother for everybody. I know it may seem weird to you, but its somehow like that. Aside of working really hard, she also takes care of the whole team. Something that makes her unique is that she is very versatile, working with the same passion on scenarios or an options menu.
Jordi is the fastests hand in the painting western! In a very short time he can draw something amazing.
And lastly you, Jesús, I think one of your best qualities is to be insistent and always wanting to get to the heart of each matter. I think that is a very good, since your job is to be like an explorer, somebody who stays alert about what we can do to spread the word out about our games and the studio, and at the same time putting an eye on the community to get feedback about how the world feels about us.
J: And what about your good and bad qualities?
A: I would say I work too much and also some people from the team tell me I have the bad habit of being tedious because I always remind them what is left to do. But I need to be like that, to try to establish a discipline that can be valid for everybody and some common rules in the team. This is the only way that, in the end, the processes will be streamlined. So my bad quality can be also my best one, since the purpose of that insistence is always to facilitate the work to others.
J: Before ending this interview, I don't want to miss the chance of asking what can you tell about our next game, Megamagic?
A: I can say we are going to showcase a few things about the game this March. Megamagic is nothing like Nihilumbra, well, somehow yes, since magic powers will be key. Gameplay-wise, it is going to be a mixture of action-RPG Zelda-like games and strategy mechanics... and also tons of awesome Magic! Won't be as dark and depressing as Nihilumbra, but we can warantee that the same "spirit" will somehow remain there. As it happened with Nihilumbra, we want to make the game accesible to all kinds of audiences. From the beginning, we will consider the casual and the hardcore gamer experience. Sorry, I cannot say many more things at the moment.
J: How much involvement will have the community in Megamagic?
A: Nihilumbra was a closed title, and we don't discard a sequel at the moment. With Megamagic we are creating a world that we can expand in this and future games, so all the feedback we get along the development process will be used to try to improve the experience.
The BeautiFun Team Stories - Aniol Alcaraz (Producer and programmer) - Part I / II
Today we start a series of in-depth interviews called "The BeautiFun Team Stories" in which members of BeautiFun Games will be talking about their past, present and future from quite a personal perspective. Jesús Fabre, our community and PR guy, will be doing and publishing one of them per week. So lets start with Aniol Alcaraz, our producer and one of our programmers, talking about how BeautiFun Games started, back in 2011.
Aniol: At the beginning we were only four people, and our most important goal was developing Nihilumbra, so we put all our efforts in that task. We needed an extra artist so hired Freya Horn, and that new addition to the team changed a bit the rhythm of our daily work. Somedays she came to the office, where we commisioned her the tasks she had to do and the rest of the days she was drawing at her own art studio.
When Nihilumbra's development was in the final stages, we thought our workload was slowing down, but no! We needed to prepare all the marketing material, send out press releases, answer tons of emails, etc. It was a super busy time! Then we started to work on our new project, and in paralel we were porting Nihilumbra to other platforms. Now with the recent success on Steam Holiday Sales and having our next project Megamagic on track, we can say the studio is enjoying one of its best moments ever! We proved ourselves we can make a living out of our games, and that makes us really excited about what this 2014 holds for us!
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| Nihilumbra's BeautiFun Games team back in 2011 |
Jesús: To manage an indie studio is a very hard task, not only in financial terms, also when it comes about coordinating the work of several and very different people. All of this in the middle of an industry that's constantly changing. BeautiFun Games was funded in March 2011, but they didn't know if it could be profitable until now, almost three years later...
A: Nihilumbra was expected to be finished in four months, but we didn't fully closed the project until the fourteenth! That was because we were unexperienced, but also its a proof of our philosophy as studio and an important factor that has brought us to be still here today: try to polish things to the maximum until we are truly satisfied with the result.
J: But, how to team up such a group of dedicated, self-exigent and hardworking people? Aniol explains me that, after finishing his videogame development Masters, he was really interested in creating something of his own, and eventually living out of it. So he went around to every classmate looking for the ones who also wanted to develop their own titles. Somehow he "recruited" a group of around fifteen students who met up each week to try to shape a game.
A: After some weeks of meetings, most people started to leave for several reasons. Ones found a job, others started to lose interest, and finally we were four people left, but still had the big problem that is the lack time to develop any full game with no money. Then I suggested I could invest my own savings to kickstart the studio. That phrase was something nobody was expecting, but as they gladly accepted, I did what I promised and in a month BeautiFun Games was born. Only four people composed the team: Pol, Kevin, Lourdes and me. We were quite lucky since we started seriously as studio once we had covered almost every position we needed, and also we were filled with lots of passion and dedication!
J: Aniol is now 28 years old, and Nihilumbra is the first commercial game with his name on the credits. Before that came to be, he did a Computer Science Degree and a Videogame Masters Degree. Something not many people know is that, during his Masters, he developed a prototype called "Once Upon a Night" along with Lourdes Nicolich (our art director and one of the studio founders) and also three other people, it was their final project.
A: "Once Upon a Night" was an ambitious project, clearly remember it was a hell of a work when we tried to close it. We used Ogre Engine, coding was done in C++, we had AI, shaders, I think they were too many new things to deal with at the same time! The main hurdle we faced during that project was the lack of coordination and timing. In addition, and as an advice to students that may be reading this, I would recommend everyone who is doing a game development course to always experiment with new ideas, and when it comes the time to create a full game, try to work on the features that can showcase your skills the better.
Also, one curious thing I discovered in that course was the role of the game designer and how important the design is as a discipline on its own. I clearly remember when Kevin (our writer and game designer) came up with a full design of a game he had been working at home, and that later became "The Creature".
While doing the MD course, one of the most important things I learned was how to technically polish a project and prepare it to reach the market. Also I enjoyed -aside of the game programming related subjects-, the 3D design and animation classes, in spite of not being my area. As programmer and producer it's always beneficial to know how this works in order to adapt yourself in the best possible way to the particular difficulties that can emerge.
J: As our conversation evolves, I keep discovering more interesting things about Aniol's past that help me understanding his present. Now I wonder about his hobbies and how they could have influenced other aspects of his life, like his professional career. So lets keep going back in time and learn something about ... card games!
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| Source: Tiendaitaca.com |
A: Since I was a very young kid I loved to play card games and board games. Was pretty good at one in particular called Magic, so started to participate in several qualifier tournaments for the World Cup. If you were good enough and got in, they flew you to the States to play with the best players worldwide, that was really a great experience!
J: Researching on the web, I even found that Aniol was not only a card game player, he also contributed to create a board game along with other two friends (Joel Calafell and Omar Sagol) called "El Mundo de Águila Roja", that was inspired in a famous Spanish TV Series. After asking him, he explains me that, at the beginning, they were supposed only to playtest the game, but ended up making a new one instead. All thanks to their passion for Magic...
A: Then a few close friends noticed that some Magic players were jumping into Poker, and convinced me to try it along with them. The first thought that came to my mind was that negative and dark image we all have from movies of mafia guys smoky rooms. But I started reading some books and found out it could be done if I practiced a lot. So decided to try it seriously and after a few months our team was progressing quite well in the tournaments. Up to the point that we earned quite a good money and even found an sponsor that covered all the costs to be in the European Poker Series, live tournaments... so I kept playing until I started the videogame development Masters Degree.
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| Source: PKPQ.com |
I want to remark that Poker is hard, you need lots of practice, and also enjoy playing it is a must if you want to win. I kept studying my Computer Science degree and playing Poker, until I finished my degree, and a bit later I decided I didn't want to play Poker for all my life, as wasn't enjoying as much as when I started and also didn't win or lose anything that year. In Magic, every now and then you can see new cards being released, but in Poker, in spite of being a deep and complex game, there was a point where it was too repetitive for me. So I started losing the enthusiasm, and in consequence decided it was better to quit and take on new challenges.
A: Challenges like videogame development. That said, the investment BeautiFun Games received was thanks to Aniol's success in Poker. But he strongly discourages anyone from following his path to fund their games.
I know it is hard to find funding for your game. You need to find out how to convince your potential investors to believe in your project and that, if they put money, its gonna make them get enough profits in return. Easy to say but hard to do, but never impossible, Aniol admits.
J: Next thing Aniol tells me is that he is not very aware of the decisions he took along his life, he always kept doing what he loved, and tried to do its best with the tools he had.
I cannot find the concrete reason why I decided to start studying Computer Science... As I loved games, I always loved computers too. When I was 13 or 14 years old (that's around 1999), I remember having developed a website where I posted game reviews. Also, due to my passion for videogames, I started to learn programming since my dream was to create my own game. I developed my own version of Mastermind, the problem was that I didn't know function parameters existed and it was quite harder than it could have been! -Aniol laughs- the programmers reading this surely will know how needlessly hard that was.
J: He recognizes to me that sometimes he starts projects that are too ambitious, being unaware about if he is gonna be able to finish them. But, in spite sometimes he can regret it, he always tries his best to finish what he starts and have something that he is proud of as result. Now I'm curious to know more about Aniol's gaming history. So I start asking him about how it started...
A: Videogames entered my life thanks to a Game Boy with two cartridges: Tetris and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2, both of them really good! I also had a Nintendo 64. I remember Super Mario 64 was one of the games I was more impressed with. I loved those 3D graphics and how fluid everything was handled on screen, even today the game keeps its charm unbelievably well. But if there is a game from my youth that left me the most memorable times, it undoubtedly is Super Smash Bros and its multiplayer mode. You can imagine how exciting and disputed every match was when I played with my friends, whom I also played Magic and Poker with. That was real rivalry!
Maybe, after the titles I said, you can think I was a big Nintendo fan, but not really! For example, I never had a Super Nintendo, since I was enjoying my Mega Drive. I remember playing Sonic games a lot, specially Sonic & Knuckles with Sonic 3 (by the way, at the office we still listen to Sonic music, Chemical Plant FTW!). Remember the originality and freshness of Dynamite Headdy or Streets of Rage with its amazing multiplayer. Also I had a PSX, where I played gems like Wipeout, with its amazing soundtrack that fits perfectly with the frantic gameplay and it's futuristic universe. More games I truly enjoyed are Final Fantasy VII, Tekken, I can tell you I like practically every game genre, as long as the game is well made!
J: How much influence those classics you played during childhood has on the games you are developing now?
A: My background as a gamer helps me a lot, makes it easier to visualize if something I program will work once added to the game. Also, like everyone, I have game ideas. Here at BeautiFun we listen to Kevin's (sometimes crazy) game ideas and then everyone of us adds his personal touch to the main purposal.
J: Curiously, Aniol is not the only Magic and Poker player in our team...
J: Curiously, Aniol is not the only Magic and Poker player in our team...
A: The first BeautiFun team member I met was Pol Urós, back at the university. We knew each other from Magic and Poker circles, since he was an amateur player. He recognized me from a Magic website (recently Aniol had won the Spanish Magic championships) and one day he approached while I was at the faculty snack bar and we have a good friendship since then.
J: Is it something usual to do this transition from Magic to Poker?
Well, it is really not so usual. There are many other players who come from other games, like Chess, Backgammon, and for example, I remember that one of the best players back in the days was ElkY, who was really good at Starcraft. He liked Poker and started playing professionally, back then Poker was more profitable than games at the time, and also the skills were similar (high degrees of willpower and discipline). Now the egaming scene is much more important than it was 3 years ago and there are pro-gamers that can make a living out of it since the awards are much bigger. Playing Poker is not much different than playing a videogame professionally, you have to be very analytical and adapt to the other opponents, so it was attractive to professionals from other areas of gaming.
You can get in touch with Aniol on Twitter, he is @AniolAlcaraz
[The rest of this interview is available in Part II, where Aniol talks about the hardest technical challenges at Nihilumbra, and also will give us his feedback about the rest of the team and our future project, Megamagic.]
Tag :
alcaraz,
aniol,
beautifun,
cerdà,
computer science,
elky,
game boy,
game design,
games,
kevin,
lourdes,
magic,
megadrive,
memories,
nicolich,
nintendo 64,
poker,
pol,
the creature,
urós,
BeautiFun Weekly: News and Discoveries Ep.6
Broken Age - Act 1 is out for backers!
Everybody freaked out when we saw the huge amount of cash that Tim Schafer got on his famous kickstarter campaign. Some people were extremely happy with the result, others were suspicious. Tim Schafer was like this:
But now finally we have the chance to try with our own hands and see with our own eyes what have been happening inside Double Fine. I can't imagine how hard must have been to carry the burden of having so many people expecting so much from your project. They had to do a great game, or get ready for the internet's punishment.
All this was in my mind when I started playing Broken Age a couple of days ago. And I fell in love with it in ten minutes. It's just beautiful. The dialogues are funny in that special Schafer way, and the plot seems really intriguing to me. It has a cute, cuddling, happy aesthetic with a somehow twisted and even creepy plot inside, something that reminds me a bit of Adventure Time (wich can only be good).
Right now I can't say anything deeper: I haven't played enough. But it's a game that my girlfriend is going to love as much as me, and that doesn't happen often. For god's sake, it's like watching a Disney movie. The good ones, I mean. I hope it has songs. That would be awesome.
Via @truguers
Grab it Magazine
Some weeks ago we got an email from Chris Stead, found ar Grab it Magazine, an iPad Magazine focused indie games and indie developers. I took my time to check it out and really found very useful information, also the information is showcased using quite stylized and intuitive interface. Also read more about interesting games like Simogo's Device 6 and République by Camuflaj and Logan. You can try the first issue for free and give your feedback to the editors.
Via @JesusFabre
Eggnogg: A Nidhogg parody
This week we saw the launching of Nidhogg, one of the most anticipated indie games in the last years, the game was shown for the first time in 2010 and also won the IGF Nuovo Award in 2011. With those precedents and being a cult favorite even before reaching the market, we can't get surprised to see this free parody by Madgarden we discovered thanks to IndieStatik. It is not exactly like the original, but it gives a similar vibe.
Via @JesusFabre
This week I discovered a site called Objective Game Reviews, it is full of sarcastic humor, you start seeing it when reading their About section. And then it goes on if you go reading the game reviews.
For years, gamers have called for reviews to be more objective. Every few months, there is some controversy about a new game that got a score that was too high or too low. Gamers blame the opinions of those who write reviews. Game journalists have their own ideas about what makes a game good or bad, and these ideas influence the score they give to games.
Here at Objective Game Reviews, you can finally read a review without worrying about the opinion of the author. So, go ahead! Browse our reviews and discover a new game you will love!Via @JesusFabre
Scorpion's Pride: A local Spanish soccer team anthem that may sound familiar to you.
What you are about to listen is the Orihuela Soccer Club Official Anthem, and maybe you will find out some similarities with Zelda Theme and also Castlevania SOTN Dance of Gold song. Surely it is pure coincidence, but for us its something worth to remark. This anthem sounds a bit game-ish!
Via @AniolAlcaraz
JAASS: Jordi's Acrobatic Art Style Showcase.
(Try to imagine what he can hold in his head when he is not working - on Megamagic -)
Here you can check out our previous issue of BeautiFun Weekly: News and Discoveries.
Tag :
anthem,
broken age,
double fine productions,
eggnogg,
games,
gaming press,
grab it,
humour,
indies,
magazine,
mobile,
nidhogg,
objective game reviews,
orihuela,
parody,
press,
soccer,
Merry Christmas from BeautiFun Games! (surprise inside!)
From the whole BeautiFun Games team, we all wish you a Happy Christmas and the best for this upcoming year!
We send a huge THANK YOU for the support you all gave to us along this year. Hope you enjoy what we are preparing for 2014!
Now here is our surprise: you can purchase our Nihilumbra with a 75% discount at GreenMan Gaming, so go for it! you won't find more awesomeness for less money!
BeautiFun Weekly: News and Discoveries Ep.4
Indie Survival Guide
Last Friday Kevin Cerdà did a speech about game design at the UAB, an university from Barcelona. He talked about his career as a developer while giving the audience some useful advices about how to survive in the dangerous videogame world while riding a shark. The speech was in spanish, though.
We have to give special thanks to the guys from Brauni Studio, a low cost studio from Barcelona, that came to the speech to record it with two cameras, a good microphone and a lot of patience (they had to be standing up for two hours to record it). Actually, it's not the first time that we collaborate with them: they were the guys that did the awesome greenlight tráiler for Nihilumbra.
via Kevin
German Developer Awards 2013
Last week, the 10th German Developer Awards were celebrated. We were happy to see that a couple of friend studios won a prize there. We are talking about Studio Fizbin, who won the Best Family game award with their great graphic adventure: "The Inner World"; and Threaks, who won The Best Serious Game and the Best Game Design award with "Beatbuddy".
Wolf Lang from Threaks and Alexander Pieper from Studio Fizbin.
They both made a huge mistake adding Kevin on Facebook.
We would also like to mention another winner of the ceremony: the computerspiele museum from Berlin. It's a really cool museum that we recommend to everyone who likes videogames. It's not so big, but it's filled with interesting stuff. You should absolutely go there and play with their PainStation a little bit.
via Jesús
Nihilumbra on 20 Minutos
The 12th of December, BeautiFun Games was mentioned in an article on a Spanish newspaper called 20 Minutos. It's really cool because it's a free newspaper that everyone reads on the train. You can see the article (in spanish, of course) in the page 14 on this link.
VideoGame Maps
We've found this website. You should visit it. Now. It's absolutely amazing.
On this site, you'll find the original maps of thousands of games from a lot of different consoles. Just go now and check it. As a reference I'll leave here a map from the second Streets of Rage just because it's cool.
The most epic wedding ever
Adam Bohn, founder of Artix Entertainment (the creators of Adventure Quest) stars in the most epic wedding ever seen by mankind. When the priest asks if someone has any objections with the wedding, a character from their own game appears and Adam has to fight with him. Right there. With swords. We don't want to spoil you the video, but let's just say that we hope that the bride didn't get pissed; because she can't be in the spotlight when a bunch of ninjas breaks in a wedding.
Tag :
20 minutos,
awards,
classic,
consejos,
desarrollo,
developer,
games,
german,
guia,
indie,
inner world,
Kevin Cerdà,
levels,
marketing,
newspaper,
supervivencia,
video,
video game maps,
