The House of Tesla News

Are you excited to see what's new in The House of Tesla? We certainly hope so because we have some good news for you! You can now download the Demo of our upcoming game and play through the first, tutorial chapter.

Or you can join our talented concept artists, Sarianne and Alina, or our no less talented 3D artists Matěj and Fazil, and watch them play through the demo during our Developers Play live stream.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3171940/

Don't forget to add The House of Tesla to your Wishlist!

Hello everyone!

The new Dev Log just landed on The House of Da Vinci VR Steam page. There, Richard, our software architect and technical artist will tell you a little bit about the first research phase and technological decisions we needed to make before we went trough with making a VR game.

Feel free to head on to The House of Da Vinci VR Steam page and wishlist and/or follow the game to see more info as it comes out!

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2948310/view/4571804614849466109

Hello everyone!
Today I will be talking (writing?) about Gamescom. So, what is it? In case you don’t know, Gamescom is a large trade fair for video games. It is currently the largest fair of its kind and it is held every year in Cologne, Germany. If you are going, you can find us in hall 10 (Hall 10.2 | F010 E019), so feel free to drop by, chat with us a little, try our demo, and get some cool merch. Wait a minute. Did I say demo? As in a playable demo? Yes, I did! And that’s a big part of what I want to talk about.



Attending Gamescom is certainly an undertaking and during the week we are there our progress will definitely slow down - but the hardest part about our preparations is making a demo version of our game. We talked about some of our processes before, the ideas, design, concept art, prototyping, creation of 3d assets, and making animatics. But there is more - like programming, testing, and polishing. These are all phases that our game has to go through to be in a playable state. To make a demo we need to choose a part of the game and prioritize it going through all the phases, which requires great effort from all of our departments and can be quite complex logistically.



On the other hand, it allows us to try all the ideas we had on a practical level and make adjustments based on feedback from real players, so it definitely has its bright side. In the last few months, we had to shift our focus from the big picture (making designs for all the chapters and slowly building up our progress game-wide) to fully polishing the first, tutorial chapter. Designers needed to shift their focus from brainstorming to testing and polishing, 3d artists from making prototypes to finishing assets and making textures, and concept artists from making concepts to creating various documents and paintings that you’ll be able to see in-game.



Of course, some parts of the demo are not the same as you’ll be able to experience in the final game. Visual effects for one are only an approximation of our final vision and will require a lot more work before the final release.

And it has another bright side I haven’t mentioned! You might be wondering what to do if you wanna try The House of Tesla, but do not plan to attend Gamescom. Well, you’ll need to wait a bit (boo, I know). But maybe not that long. A demo for Steam is in the works. It needs some polishing, some magic work with lighting, finalizing assets for the main menu, and some work on the aforementioned visual effects and after that, it's going straight to our Steam page.



I look forward to seeing you at Gamescom and/or later in the comment section and collecting all your feedback and notes!

Viktor
Lead Designer of The House of Tesla
Blue Brain Games

Good morning people!

Some of you are asking for details about our upcoming VR game and for those of you, I have great news! Our Creative Director Peter has written a devlog about the ideas that brought the project to life. This is only the first of several devlogs that will be published in the coming few months before the release of the game.

In this one, you'll get some background on the project and how it actually came to be. You can also see some cool photos, screenshots, and some concept art. So what are you waiting for? Click bellow and read, wishlist and all that jazz!

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2948310/view/4360132260989260330

Hi there!

After some devlogs by my lovely colleagues, it’s time for another delve into the development process with the design department.
If you’ve been paying attention you went from early puzzle prototypes, different concepts, and then tying it all up into a single style or vision with completion of the 3d assets. If we were just making a 3d environment without any interactivity that would be it. However, games are all about interactivity.

You need different controllers, levers, and ways to interact with the puzzles and they all need to be able to react to the player’s input and affect the environment in a believable way. And that's when programming, as a vital part of any gaming project, comes into play. But how do they know what each interaction should be like? They need a baseline. Something that will show them what, how, and when should be happening (without a designer standing behind their backs, nagging). That finally brings me to today’s theme: animatics✨🦄✨!



What is an animatic? In general, animatic is a series of images or short videos that are made to convey planned features, or a feeling a piece of audiovisual art should portray. In our case, it is a bit more specific. Our animatics use prototypes of 3d assets and animations of any active objects and aim to show the full workings of any one puzzle and scene.



Finished animatics help designers to finally see what their ideas look like after all the iterations and changes, tweak the workings and mechanisms of the puzzles (this of course requires cooperation with the 3d artist who made the prototypes in the first place), and convey their ideas about interactions and causalities in the game world to the coders who then use the animatic as a baseline of how should things behave.



You can picture our animatic as a playthrough video made before the game is finished. It focuses on all things the player can interact with and follows his every step through the chapter, every stage, every zoom, every puzzle as well as any extra interactions that are not necessary for the completion of the game.



Making animatics often requires cooperation across all of our departments and helps us iron out a lot of potential issues. To show you a small glimpse of what our animatics look like (and maybe to get a chuckle out of you), Lucka, one of our designers and the specialist on animatics for The House of Tesla created this gif for you.



And that's my cue until next month when we will talk about Gamescom, our preparations for an event like this, and what goes into making a playable demo.

Viktor
Lead Designer of The House of Tesla
Blue Brain Games