Chicken Police News

Is Gronkh chicken enough?! We're super excited to see Gronkh playing Chicken Police, collecting clues and info about the shady characters of Clawville. This will be a thrilling, unique noir-live experience in german only! https://www.twitch.tv/gronkh

Every German Let’s Player, Streamer and Gamer knows him: Germany’s most famous let's player, Gronkh. We are thrilled to announce that TODAY, August 14th, there will be a unique HandyGames exclusive live showcase on Twitch, packed with a wide range of our indie titles and never seen before content. Watch, comment, play, and be there, LIVE!



Live Let's Play Event, Indie Games Night, Gronkh vs. HandyGames, whatever you want to call it: Tune in! Join the (German) show on Gronkh’s channel on Twitch! on August 14, 2020, at 6pm German time. Let's go!

We proudly announce that Chicken Police - Paint it RED! will be fully voiced, which means that 100% of our lines of all the 30+ characters in the game will have professional voice-over.

[h2]Check out the first footage from the studio:[/h2]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

The recordings were made in OM UK, in the studio that brought us the voices of The Wolf Among Us, Horizon Zero Dawn, Deponia series, Timesplitters series, Tales of Monkey Island series, and many more.

We were truly honored to be able to work with such a team and with such a fantastic cast!
We have more than 30 characters in the game, so what you see in the video is just a little portion of the amazing cast of voices we have.

If you like what you see - and hear - don't forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook, folks!

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

The Wild Gentlemen Team

We’ve been very excited about one particular character for some time now, as he is going to stick out like a sore thumb. Please welcome one of the two insects that you’ll be able to see in Chicken Police!




“As mentioned above, Zoli (our character artist) and I have been looking forward to working on the Fly, because he’s such a different character! He sticks out visually, is in a unique situation compared to the rest of the cast (not going to spoil anything though), and animating him was quite a challenge!”
- Alex

Usually, our characters strike different poses for different situations, but that wasn’t the case this time. The fly proved to be challenging not because of his pose count (since he only has a single one), but the sheer number of layers that make him up. As a comparison, our average character is dissected into about 12-13 parts per state – that number in our Fly’s case was 57.




In an earlier developer diary, we talked about what goes into preparing a character for animation. To bring the character to life, however, its separated body parts have to leave Photoshop and enter Unity to have its body re-assembled.

The first step is adding all the layers to an empty shell that will be the core of the character. Then, you have to create the parent-child structure of the parts (e.g. the hand will be the forearm’s child, and the upper arm will be the forearm’s parent). This is usually a fairly straightforward task due to the low number of layers involved. However, in the Fly’s case, every single finger was added separately because of the nature of his animation, since there would be a greater focus on his hands than ever before.

“Once all that was out of the way, I moved on to setting the layer order for each part individually. This is an important step, because the parent-child layout is not the same as the order in which order the images should be rendered – you have to go from the topmost layer all the way to the bottom and give every single layer its very own number. It was a nightmare.”
- Alex

With the (layer) order restored, Alex can then move on to the fun part: animation!



[previewyoutube]FlyProcess.mp4[/previewyoutube]

Characters like the Fly are always welcome, as they bring a much-needed diversity, breaking up the usual formula that’s already more or less muscle memory for Zoli and Alex.
Thank you once again for reading all the way to the end. Keep your eyes peeled for more of these awesome Clawville-dwellers coming your way, and don’t forget to wishlist Chicken Police!

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

The main purpose of our Gamescom visit was not only to connect with the visitors and showcase our demo, but to negotiate with publishers of course. Yes, a Gamescom booth is quite expensive to pay, so for a self-funded, small team, it is quite risky. (Not to mention travel, accommodation, meals, other expenses.)

As we mentioned in the first part of the this post, the game was tried at the event by somewhere between 800 and 1000 people and the feedback was extremely positive. (Almost suspiciously positive I have to say...!) Perhaps more importantly, we exchanged a lot of business cards and, of course, received a lot of useful feedback on the game.



Four of us went to the event so two of us could attend the pre-arranged meetings with the publishers, while the other two team members ensured that everything goes well at our booth.


The discussions with the publishers were quite instructive, and surprisingly smooth and friendly even with the biggest of them (where we felt like really small fry...). What we noticed was that everyone was (really) interested in our game and wherever we went, people were quite enthusiastic about us, the team, the game and our ideas.

Publishers' time is precious and relatively little. What's more, Gamescom was overwhelming and very crowded, so we had to be fast, concise and confident. But we never really felt like we were rushed - not at all! Everyone was relaxed and friendly, and fortunately, it wasn't just out of politeness, as all the publishers we talked to have been continuing to negotiate with us ever since.

That wouldn't have happened without Gamescom, so after the talks were over, we were 100% sure it was very much worth the attendance!


To our surprise, the stand and the game itself were so striking that the German and the Hungarian TV also made interviews with us, several smaller and bigger German, English, Italian and Russian magazines asked for interviews as well, and one of the most exciting: with Rocket Beans TV we had the opportunity to do a demo showcase, streamed live from the event.

You can view it here:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]




The experience was overwhelming! The event was huge, in both its physical size and significance. (In 4 days, we couldn't even see the half of the event, maybe a quarter of it!) There were fantastic indie teams, many of us were friends and there are people we have been in contact with ever since. It was a soul-raising experience for sure!



But most importantly, we had a good deal of negotiations (this was the business part), and of course, we were able to put a smile on the face of a huge amount of players (that was the emotional part). It was fantastic to see the "glitter" in the players' eyes that replaced the initial shock of the chicken-headed detectives... Of course, it was really tiring to stand, talk, negotiate, pack and start the next day again, doing 10-12 hours of work a day (the camping didn't help) - so, yes, we died a bit, but in the end, we felt like it was well worth it.



If we can give some advice to those small and independent teams who are planning to go next year, give Gamescom a chance because even though the organization left something to be desired, the event itself, the huge and grateful audience and the fact that "everyone is there who matters" is definitely worth the fatigue.

If you have a specific question, contact us, we will help you as best we can!

So we'll see you there next year?

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

And don't forget to wishlist the game:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1084640/Chicken_Police/

Gamescom is a huge event. Even for big games and publishers, not to mention a small, self-funded indie game like ours.
In any case, we had to take action because we knew that no matter how expensive and risky Gamescom is, it would be a luxury to let the opportunity pass us by, because of the presence of the best publishers and many potential players. So, we decided to go for it and as a result, we’ve experienced one of the hardest but most rewarding weeks of our lives.

Now, we’re gonna tell you what it was like, with all its ups and downs...

ON THE ROAD

The journey from Hungary to Cologne is 12-14 hours long, so we set off on the 18th to arrive early on the 19th, arrange the accommodation and have our exhibitor stand ready, which was going to be quite special.
The trip was almost uneventful, except for the hotel where we slept for one night, as it was hauntingly similar to the buildings of cheap teen horror movies, where the lonely owner (who was also the doorman and server) seemed to have weird, murderous desires behind his never-ending smile... But of course, It was just our wild imagination, and it was our last good sleep for a long time to come in a locked room and a soft bed. Because from then on, we were tenting at the Gamescom camp! (The reasons for our camping were Cologne’s horrendous prices and our late booking, but we looked at it as an adventure rather than a curse. At least at that time...)



By the time we reached the venue, we had all been hurting everywhere and were quite distressed. But as soon as we saw the enormously huge complex and then our booth, all our bad feelings disappeared.
Well... at least for a little while...

A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS...

Yeah of course... It wasn't that easy.
First, we had to get to the Gamescom campsite, where we queued for about an hour and a half. After finally getting in, we had to find a place to set up our giant tent that our producer, Tamás, had acquired just for the occasion and none of us had seen before.



There would have been nothing wrong with this, but we were running out of time because, in theory, exhibitors were only allowed to be at the Gamescom site unpacking and setting up their stands until 6 PM. At half-past four, our writer, Bánk, was still untangling the tent stretchers...



Finally, we succeeded. At least it was standing... We rushed back to the Gamescom site to build our exhibiting booth. However, the booth was quite different in design (and look) from the one on the pictures we had received from the organizers. So much for our plans…



We were panicked enough, but if there is something typical of Hungarians, it is that we always get ourselves out of sticky situations. We had no choice.



The booth eventually became quite homely. It had framed pictures, a new floor, and even (as well as we could manage) wallpaper. We had imagined it a little nicer, but it turned out that people liked our humble booth, as many kept praising it.



Phew... that was only day -1.
Finally, we ate at Subway and got back to the camp, to our tent where we tried to sleep, but if you have been to Gamescom Camp you may know that it's not that easy...!

DAY ZERO - IT'S HAPPENING!

We walked a good 3.5 km from the campsite to the site in the morning. It was day zero, where only the press and the industry were allowed to attend, so we didn't expect a big spike. But luckily, we were wrong...



Our booth was quite big among the indie titles and we had 4 machines set up for the players. Two (stronger) main machines and two "backups," but to our great satisfaction, our booth was full almost all the time. That is, the game was constantly rolling on 4 machines, and the level of interest just caught us off guard.



WHAT THE CLUCK?!

Perhaps the most surprising and amusing thing was that most people who walked past our booth felt the need to say CHICKEN POLICE?! out loud. Undoubtedly, the booth and the trailer on the big TV screen were enough to attract the players, so we got the "WHAT THE F...!" sentence (or look) a few hundred times during the event.




WHY IT'S WORTH IT?

It is very important to note that Gamescom is one of the best of all the expos if you want to build a professional relationship. The very first day we received a huge number of business cards from sponsors, publishers, localization teams, artists, sound designers, translators, etc... But these are just the first steps. To make sure that you leave the event with success, it is worth arranging 3-4-5 meetings at least in advance. We have done so and fortunately; we can say that we have closed the event successfully!



But there were many things that we had to live through till then, as you’ll be able to read in Part 2 of this post.

TO BE CONTINUED...

So if you are curious about the best places in beautiful Cologne, advanced camping and expo survival techniques, how to give an almost great interview twice a day, and most importantly: our publisher negotiation experience, be sure to check out our next post as well!



Have a nice week, folks!

And dont forget to hit Wishlist:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1084640/Chicken_Police/