RSS Feed Dev diary number eleven : Cake story

Original Blog Post...
Hello Internet!

So yesterday was François’s birthday. There was much rejoicing, and some incredibly talented friends of ours created one of the most awesome cake I’ve ever seen in person. Combine that with the birthday of François’ wife, Julie-Édith which was earlier this week, our workspace was filled with so many people that writing a simple blog post became pretty much impossible.

I can say without hesitation that the cake was just as delicious as it was beautiful. Thank you La Forge à Gâteaux!

Progress report

This week was spent squashing dozens of bugs, and implementing a cinematic & event-driven engine. The goal here is to facilitate gameplay capture for an upcoming gameplay trailer. Basically, we build a simple scripting language that allows us to generate short scenarios by spawning characters in specific locations and giving them orders at precise times. The idea is to create an engine that can repeat hand built scenarios over and over again and allowing real-time modification of those scenarios. With this we can capture video of complex scenes that would be impossible to film if the player has to command the characters manually. The engine includes a camera animation import system that lets us create complex camera movements in 3d Studio Max, and importing them in the game engine.
In short, at a simple click of a button, groups of characters appear and act out precise actions. During that time, a hand-animated camera films the whole scene. With this we can create live cutscenes, which will help us creating a really nice looking gameplay trailer.
On the bug-fixing front, we stumbled upon a whole lot of them, and thankfully managed to fix most of them. We are still crippled with a few memory leaks, but hopefully we’ll fix them in the coming week.
Here’s a comparison of this week’s milestones document versus last week’s:

Green = Good

Sauropod is making a video

On the Kickstarter front, we’ve been working on two things:
This weekend, we are filming our frontpage video, in which for the first time, you’ll see us talking in front of a camera. Let’s say we’re not entirely comfortable doing this but we think that it will be a important part in convincing people to help us with the Kickstarter. Needless to say we are putting “Les bouchées double” (redoubling our efforts) in creating the best video possible.

Here we are with our friends from Ko-op mode, writing the video script, and learning how to use this monster of a camera.

Secondly, in order to host a Kickstarter, we’ve had to spend the week on the phone, talking to a wide array of people. We needed to open bank accounts, incorporate Sauropod studio, talk to lawyers and accountants, and basically ensure that IF any money ever comes our way, we wouldn’t get double-taxed or go to jail.

Anyway, we have to cut this week’s blog a bit short. We are incredibly busy with everything we’ve talked about above, 7 days per week simply isn’t enough sometimes.
Let’s just say that things are going incredibly well, and that I can already see the end of the tunnel. I can’t wait to show you what we’ve got!


Soundtrack of the week



Sometimes, I need something simple to take my mind off complicated things. Lali Puna‘s music does exactly that.

See you next week!
Team Sauropod

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Cool...I hope he just implied that the game is out soon.

I hope that there will be a video next friday <3

The cake is a lie!

What cannon camera is that?

Just curious (since my brother has the 550D) :3

Shut up and take my money!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (and gimme the game) seriously though, Ill pay like 10-30 bucks on this.

Ah one of my friends had one of them... Shame he went through a park and had all his lenses and the camera stolen...

Oh yeah (my brother bought a Cannon 550D for £500 at christmas) its a gorgeous camera. :3

Though the 7D is really good for Photos :3

With each passing dev diary I get more and more excited!!!

I hope castle story comes out soon I am really impatient.

Sure you'll get moneys from me guys. You shall has promotion on YouTube....

Can't wait to see the kickstater video!