Chicken Police News

Once the development of Chicken Police ramped up, we soon discussed our options for trade shows and conferences for 2019. Based in Budapest as an indie team this meant that our focus was mainly on Europe. Browsing through the calendar Reboot Develop Blue (in Croatia) caught our eyes.

It’s close (8-9 hr drive), it’s small but growing (ideal for a first introduction of the game), it’s industry only (not exactly open to the general public) which meant that we can show our game to other developers in a well contained space. Also some publishers are present and we could even participate at the Indie Awards there.

Last but not least pricing was very friendly, getting an indie exhibition desk and tickets (including accommodation and meals) Is affordable for even the smallest teams. So we got really excited and started to prepare for the first appearance of The Wild Gentlemen and of course the main course: Chicken Police.



Since assets for a new location just got complete (The Czar Club) we knew we wanted to build the demo around it. Okay, but how should we make a trade show demo of an adventure game which heavily relies on long conversations? Obviously attendees won’t have hours to play through the demo, nor will we be able to present to more than 8-10 people a day (bear in mind we only got a small desk space with enough room for one machine).

Our small but decorative space at Reboot Develop Blue 2019

The plan was to build a demo that cuts to the chase, present the player at around 30% of the game, puts them in action. A lot of conversation, dialogues and features were removed or disabled in order to ensure that the actual gameplay wouldn’t last over 20 minutes. Yet, still shows enough in terms of visuals, music and - of course - gameplay.

At this point Reboot was probably only weeks away, so we had a lot of work ahead of us, but it set a great goal. Also somewhere around this time we had to apply for the Indie Awards. Unfortunately we had to apply with a really old, single-room, boring demo as this shiny new one wasn’t ready yet. We believe this is probably one of the reasons we didn’t win any awards, but more on that later.

So, with weeks left the stress was building up (though the good one, which pushes you further to step over your boundaries and succeed in the end). The whole team was really working as one machine, everyone was really efficient and basically we were all surprised how nicely it is all coming together. In the meantime we were juggling with a lot of other things, too. Some still had (have) their daytime jobs, the main development also needed to progress, also our appearance (shirts, dressing our desk, stickers, posters, business cards, etc, etc.) had to be dealt with. It’s a lot of overhead for a small indie team but vital for a games conference.



As days were passing by and we were getting closer and closer to the ‘final’ build of the Reboot Demo we tried to focus on the trip also. It was decided that we’d take my SUV as it’s the most spacious vehicle in the team. The ‘core team’, Bánk, Péter, Zoli and myself plus the car fully loaded with luggage and stuff for the show.



Come 10th of April I picked up Péter and Zoli at 4:30 AM in Budapest and the journey began to Dubrovnik. Along the route we picked up Bánk. The weather was rubbish, once we left Hungary it was raining heavily almost until we arrived at the venue. For some reason Waze detoured us from the highway so we had the chance to drive through some flooded areas. It really added to the adventure feel.

While the weather wasn’t great, the scenery was truly amazing!



Between 3 and 4PM we pulled up at Sheraton Hotel where the event took place. We unpacked, picked our spot (it turned out to be perfect for visibility) and went back to our hotel for some rest. I believe we still did some small bug fixes and a new build - well, when the team is together there’s always things to improve on.

Bánk, Péter and myself (Tamás) still tweaking in the hotel room

The next morning we arrived and set up our little desk area and were quite proud about it. It stood out as most teams only bought a laptop and nothing else. We haven’t even started our demo machine when we already had interest and that was just the beginning.

We all love the concept and realisation of Chicken Police but it was eye watering to experience that complete strangers also like your work. In many cases passers-by had the ‘What the F did I just saw?” on their faces but sooner or later they came back and either had a conversation about the game or - in most cases - they played the demo. And they liked it! Even those who don’t like adventure games told us that they still love the style and story and how it comes together in a neat package... It was very emotional for us in many ways.

Truly emotional

The second day brought more and more visitors, even some who had already visited the day before, but this time they’ve brought a friend or colleague so they can also check it out. There was networking also going on, some people came from publishers, or even speakers (thank you Kate Edwards once again) played through our demo and gave us a little on-site feedback. It was truly amazing, and still is, we cherish those moments. The day passed by, we were quite tired - but still wanted to sort out an issue in the evening. This night we also went to a really expensive restaurant and spent a small fortune there on seafood. It wasn’t really our plan but places were either crowded or closed, so we had no choice. It was a great, but expensive evening.



On the third day we were a bit more relaxed - or too tired. It went by in a similar fashion as the first two, however, we had a bit more experience on how to handle anyone who’s interested. What to tell them, what to show them and how to aid them if they needed help during the demo. It is worth to mention that due to our surprise most of the players played the demo until the end. And most of them played it without using the cheat card we prepared which had some clues on how to progress in the demo.



Also the indie awards ceremony was on this final day and we were excited to see if the - may we call it - ‘hype’ over Chicken Police translated into any awards or not. As we sat down in the main hall and the ceremony began our excitement slowly washed off. We soon realised that probably the awards was primarily based on the video footage sent during application - which in our case was our very first internal demo with very basic functionality from six months before Reboot. But it was also a relief for us. It meant that we are heading in the right direction and we knew - and still know - that Chicken Police only gets better.

We still have a long road ahead of ourselves in terms of features and content and a lot of polish which should give the looks and feel another boost. It’s going to be amazing!

Closing ceremony

Another important aspect of the whole Reboot experience was meeting fellow Hungarian indie teams (check out their games below!). It was great to help and comfort each other. Huge thanks for Vargus and Moss Destruction teams!

Also a very big thanks goes out to Attila Szantner. I bumped into Attila on the first day and we instantly had a good chat. From there on it really felt like He was part of our team at Reboot. He visits many trade shows, conferences and - by being a speaker himself - knows many of the speakers and conference organisers. This also helped to raise some attention to Chicken Police and steer some of the prominent people at Reboot to our desk. Attila - by the way - brings science to MMO games, so if you like MMOs then check out his project as it’s really interesting: http://mmos.ch/



I recommend it to any indie developer, it’s a great event for first timers also.

What’s next ? Gamescom, baby! Yes, it’s a huge one compared to Reboot but we are gearing up for the challenge. Expect an even bigger, even shinier demo and many surprises at The Wild Gentlemen booth and check out Chicken Police for yourself.

We thoroughly enjoyed the whole event.

- Tamás

Check out thiese amazing games of our fellow Hungarians:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/909660/Vagrus__The_Riven_Realms/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/876220/Moss_Destruction/

Thanks for your attention, folks!
Stay tuned and don't forget to spread the word:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1084640/Chicken_Police/

————

Find our previous updates here:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1084640/announcements/detail/1593626866167457845
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1084640/announcements/detail/1593626866163172456
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1084640/announcements/detail/1586870834670163962
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1084640/announcements/detail/1586870834659213636
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1084640/announcements/detail/1589121999170324421

This time Péter, our programmer, talks about the birth of the project, the first steps and the overall beauty of his work.



Péter - I like to be around the birth of something - or someone. It’s a very special moment that can’t be repeated and rarely happens during a lifetime. I had the luck to be around the birth of this project, and I’m very grateful for this opportunity.



Every newborn project starts with careful planning. Ours is no different - we had to pick the right tools and the right people for the project to meet both our time and budget constraints. For every little challenge we had to opt for the most efficient solution that brings us closest to our goal. Surely, down the road, it’s inevitable to make compromises, but if we choose our tools and methods wisely -in the most creative way-, we can spare a lot of time and budget that can be spent on anything else, in favor for the game to give more to the player. As we’re a small team, we not only had to search for the best and most affordable tools, but match the tool to fit each members skills / abilities, and most importantly to reduce or kill repetitive manual tasks from our pipeline.



Lazy programmers tend to automate the smallest tasks that are repeating more than a few times, and that laziness proves to be the best time saver every time. Building up and optimizing the best workflow for each problem was and is the most challenging part of development. Work amounting weeks can depend on a single decision, and that applies to every aspect, from deciding on how to take our photos to how to edit localized texts.



At the beginning, we didn’t even think too much about the game engine, because it was obvious that Unity would be the perfect fit. It enables us to work parallel even on early prototypes and blockouts leaving time for the artists to work out the details. This way, every asset can be replaced any time later. This helps us a lot with not just planning and iterations, but testing out game mechanics and killing bugs in the earliest stages. Everyone on the team feels comfortable with the engine so we’re definitely sticking with it.



We started development by defining the core entities and their relationships. We knew there would be a lot of scenery that would include characters that could have items, dialogs, etc. so it was clear that we had to visualize their relationships in order to bring order to chaos. Once we sketched the hierarchy, the world we were trying to create started to make sense programmatically. Unity makes it easy to create and test different scenes, but we had to build a system around them, that manages the scenes and the things we want to keep persistent, so we designed all the managers for each requirement. Once those worked, we finalized the principles on how we’d edit, store and load all the game data. Then we came up with an idea about how the interrogation should work, but didn’t know yet, how we’ll store all the data. Until then, it seemed like a regular transactional database would do the trick, but managing hierarchical data needs more. So we searched for alternatives, and quickly ended up with a graph database that would match our needs best.



OrientDB provided a lot of client libraries, and we managed to work out an easy way to sync all the data to our Unity project with a single cick in the editor.



At the earliest stage it’s always important to avoid reinventing the wheel as todays development skills are much more about the ability to solve problems by binding existing tools together to match the criteria, than to sit down and spend weeks for implementing something that already exists. The assembling process is similar to playing a game, so we’re already amusing ourselves during the making. Actually it is a lot of fun, and not just that: we’re collaborating in a very democrative way with the team, and that helps us to harness the creativity of each member that somehow always pushes us forward. The tools we’re using to collaborate also make our lives much easier. The list ranges from the obvious Google product stack, Slack, cloud data drive, issue tracking and our own editor, which is built around the graph database. We also have a custom made build server, that creates daily builds in the background and notifies every member upon build completion. This allows us to follow up about the latest developments without any hassle.



Most of us work remotely -we’re more comfortable to manage our time this way- and as we’re also spread across the country (even multiple countries), we use a broad range of collaboration tools, so we can deliver and even crunch occasionally like regular teams do, working under the same roof. There are times though, when it’s best to come together, as sometimes it’s more efficient to sort out creative problems in person.



- Péter

Thanks for your attention, folks!
Stay tuned and don't forget to spread the word:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1084640/Chicken_Police/

Find our previous updates here:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1084640/announcements/detail/1593626866163172456
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1084640/announcements/detail/1586870834670163962
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1084640/announcements/detail/1586870834659213636
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1084640/announcements/detail/1589121999170324421

As you probably know, Chicken Police is a Noir adventure game. Our newest favorite, home-made genre definition for it is "Orwellesque Buddycop Noir Advenutre", in which the NOIR plays the most important role.

So in this diary we will talk about the genre of film-noir and the effect it has on the game.



We all know what a noir is. As soon as we hear the word, the dark alley, the never ending rain, the stripes that the moonlight paints in the dusty office and, of course, the burned-out investigators and the dangerous, beautiful women will jump on us.

Well, all of this is of course present in Chicken Police, but we dug a little deeper when we discovered the peculiarities of style, and we were digging so deep that our writer Bánk had lost his relationship with reality for a little while...



"During the creation of the story, I watched about 70 noir films. 74, to be accurate. Somehow each of them had an effect on me, although I should rather say the style and its elements, archetypes, different writing techniques and other catches burned into my skin and my mind. Before, I would watch noir superficially... I considered it a loose, cool style that I like, but I quickly realized that it was an extremely complex and deep genre, waiting to have its secrets fully discovered.



My undisputed favorites are The Big Sleep, Gilda, Detour, In a Lonley Place, The Killing, Double Indemnity, and Murder, My Sweet, but It would take me forever if I wanted to list all the movies that added something to the game in the end. It soon became clear that noir is not jut the above-mentioned pale outlines...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWIuKcyuesg
The all-pervading scent of sin, the hopelessness and immorality, the tensions and relationships between the characters are what make this genre so unique to me.

Crime is never the centerpiece!

Noir is about those whose lives have been stamped by sin. The protagonists and characters always get the main focus instead of the action. From this point of view, the film-noir is much more a drama and a psycho-thriller than a crime movie.

And it is more philosophical than some loose moral doctrine.



But not only the black and white film-noirs influenced me in writing the story and the characters.

Chicken Police is a buddy cop-noir, with two main protagonists, Sonny Featherland and Marty McChicken. The strange chemistry between the protagonists is one of the most important elements of the story and character development.






Sonny is an old, tired, burnt-out rooster while Marty still feels at the top. Once they were some kind of celebrity-cops, who were mockingly called Chicken Police. But with time, the nickname quickly gained a new meaning and the public almost worshiped them (even a series of books were written about them), and Clawville's criminals even winced at the name: Chicken Police.

But it was almost ten years ago and Sonny is counting the days until his retirement when a strange lady visits his office with an even stranger case.

Everything starts here, and Sonny soon realizes that Chicken Police has to come back together!



Though the relationship between Sonny and Marty is continuous chafing on the surface, the many hardships, adventures and horrors that they have previously experienced has forged their relationship almost to a brotherly one, and inseparable.

Their "love-hate" relationship will be one of the player's most significant entry points into the characters and the world of the Wilderness.

During the writing of the game, the most exciting part was always the development of their dialogues because of their special, deep and humorous relationship.

Meanwhile, the infinitely dark and unprecedented mood of Noir stretches over the story as a great contrast and background.



I've never had the opportunity to work with such exciting and versatile materials before, so it is not surprising that while I was working on the first game, I could outline the story of four possible sequels and several spin-off games.

But that's the future...
There is a game we have to finish first! ;) "

- Bánk

In our next diary enty, we will dive deep into the mysteries of coding and programming.

So stay tuned, folks and have a beautiful weekend!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1084640/Chicken_Police/

Find our previous updates here:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1084640/announcements/detail/1586870834670163962
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1084640/announcements/detail/1586870834659213636
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1084640/announcements/detail/1589121999170324421

You've already seen how we create our characters in our previous dev blog so, this time we'd like to tell you about how they are came to life and set in motion.
Our 2D animator, Alex told us how he does it.

Say hello to Dr. Reginald B. Bubo:





https://youtu.be/V7NoI71ttV8
“Animation, in my opinion, is somewhere between the artistic and technical sides of game development. Your aim as an animator is to create appealing movement, but at the same time, you have to make sure that you are using the right tools. All of our characters are animated in-engine, which can be somewhat limiting at times, but it’s restrictions that really push your problem-solving skills.”

The first step towards a moving a character is the separation of its body parts. The amount of time required to complete a character’s texture sheet depends on the number and nature of poses involved.

Watch a sped up recording of Dr. Bubo’s “dissection:”

https://youtu.be/Bs2QZyWi3hw
“Does a sharp edge work here, or should it be blurry? Where’s the pivot point of this specific part? After some practice, your brain adjusts to see where and how you have to cut to enable motion that doesn’t reveal that you are basically rotating sheets of paper on top of one another.”
- Alex

Painting is an essential skill for this task, as parts that were covered before the separation must be filled in to be viewable on their own - otherwise, you’d see double in some areas during the animation!

The whole process showcased above has to be repeated for each different pose, with little exception. Since we work with two views per character, heads only have to be taken apart twice. In some cases, we can get away with using parts from a previous pose as well, reducing the texture space required. It’s a game of finding the right balance between aesthetics and optimization.



“Following the disassembly, the character is reassembled in-engine, and it’s ready to be animated! Being a ‘middleman’ between artist and programmer, I try to do a bit of everything: finding ways to enrich the visuals, writing tools to speed up processes wherever possible, experimenting with new techniques to help enhance the performance of the game etc.”
- Alex



Alex uses Photoshop to prepare our characters for animation in Unity3D, a Wacom Intuos 5 Pro L (Touch) tablet to paint, and a vertical mouse to avoid wrist pain.



Thank you for reading our post. Every week, we will arrive with new, exciting blog posts from the making of Chicken Police, so it's worth following us.



See you next time, folks!
And don't forget to Wishlist Chicken Police. ;)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1084640/Chicken_Police/

Find our previous updates here:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1084640/announcements/detail/1586870834659213636
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1084640/announcements/detail/1589121999170324421

Bánk, the project's writer-director gathered for us which games were especially influential in creating Chicken Police's story, world and characters. They might not come as a surprise, but the reasons are. ;) If you read the arcticle, you will become a little bit closer to the spirit of Chicken Police.

Bánk "I wanted to be a videogame developer since my childhood. Among other things, these games were the ones that eventually drove me to this fantastic journey and even played a huge role in the development of Chicken Police."

GRIM FANDANGO – For Love and Bones

Grim is everything! It was maybe the most definitive gaming experience of my childhood, and also turned out to be one of the most determinate experiences of my adulthood too. Amazing characters, endlessly exciting and insane story, simply... everything about it! For a long time I only had the demo version of the game, which I've completed about 10-15 times if not more.
I didn't even understand the text completely. I learned English from video games and then I was less than a beginner. So I came back to it again and again and I understood more and more every time. Not just the text, but what the game really wants to say.

Grim taught me that no matter how great your setting and your story is, the characters are always the most important! - That's why I've created my own character generation formula (which I use ever since), and Grim, among others, made me fell in love irrevocably with the noir genre, and movies like Gilda, The Big Sleep, Double Indemnity or (the actually not even noir) Casablanca.

Oh and Manny's adventure also taught me that music is one of the most important elements of moody games like these. "Un dos tres cuatro... ta ta taaaaa!"
Huge heartfelt thanks to Tim Schafer, Peter McConnell and Tony Plana amongst many others...



L.A. NOIRE – The Golden Boy

Not even a question. By the time this game came out, noir was already one of my favorite genres. L.A. Noir was not only an almost perfect story with a fantastic mood, but the definitive investigating simulator. Unfortunately the project was bleeding from a few wounds, but it still inspired us immensely. So, huge respect and thank you, Team Bondi!



POLICENAUTS AND SNATCHER – Neon lights and buddy-cop noir

Both of them are amazing detective games in Mr. Kojima's unique storytelling, featuring real, alive characters (and incredibly funny dialogues at times). Policenauts is closer to my heart because of the buddy-cop theme, which Chicken Police also borrowed in the end. Actually it's Lethal Weapon in sci-fi version, and it's hard to come up with anything cooler than that...

Furthermore these games' gameplay is similar to what we created, with dialogues and interrogation being in the focus. Cult classics, that's true, but still undeservedly ignored. (REMASTER, anyone??)



BLADE RUNNER – Do the androids dream of good videogames?

When I first saw it as a child, it made my brain explode (it still does even today, when I get back to it from time to time). It was a little bit of adventure and a little bit of action, and the "camera-photo" riddles were almost surreal, the like I've never seen again ever since. (If you know about something similar, tell me!)

It was a groundbreaking game! To be honest... I never finished it because of some sort of bug, but it was still an unforgettable experience. I also LOVE the original novel by Philip K. Dick, and the movie version is very close to my heart too, so it's a no brainer BR is in my top games. (and yes, Deckard was an andorid!)



ALAN WAKE – "Previously on Alan Wake"

Another undeservedly ignored game. It masterfully twists the literary topoi of classic pulp-horror novels and their movie versions. Simply a forgotten masterpiece. I've completed it a thousand times, and - when I'll have time to play anything -, I'm sure I'm going to reach for it again.
"Previously on Alan Wake" I'm never going to get this sentence out of my head.



SAM & MAX HIT THE ROAD – Total mindfukk

Shame or not, I've only run into this game in my adulthood. I started to play with it at the insistence of our programmer, Péter, and its humour, breakings of the fourth wall and the two main characters blew my mind.

I'm still trying to recover from it, with more or less success... (probably less)



+1 BIOSHOCK - Would You Kindly?

There's Bioshock and there's everything else...Narrative design, writing, characters, setting, music, mood. Bioshock is one of a kind. Whatever game I'm working on or will be in the future, Bioshock will always affect me one way or another. I'll have to shake hands with Ken levine once.



"Maybe the most important thing is that the mood and the atmosphere must be coherent. In creating narrative games, you must pay attention to a lot of things that the player maybe won't even notice (or will be affected only subconsciously), but all in all I believe everything stands on the characters, who we'll learn to love or hate in order to be breathing with them within the world they live in.

It all depends on whether you, the player, want to know, is the character have a life outside of the game? If the answer is yes, you, as a writer, did your job well. "

- Bánk



In a later developer diary post, Bánk will elaborate on how he builds his characters and their world, and even unveil his "top secret" character generation formula.

Until then we'll be back with lots and lots of exciting developer posts, soon for example we'll talk about character animation with our animator, Alex.

Stay tuned, folks and don't forget to spread the word: The Chicken Police is coming... ;)

The Wild Gentlemen



And don't forget to Wishlist Chicken Police, folks. ;)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1084640/Chicken_Police/

Find our previous updates here:

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1084640/announcements/detail/1589121999170324421