9 Clues: The Secret of Serpent Creek News

Irony Curtain: From Matryoshka with Love is a game full of different characters talking to each other. In fact, some puzzles can be solved only by choosing the right dialogue option. That’s why in today’s episode of Behind the Irony Curtain we’d like to tell you more about the process of creating dialogues in our game.

Writing dialogues is just the beginning of the process. There are over 5471 lines of text in Irony Curtain and every one of them needs to be properly inserted into the game, to make sure all characters say exactly what Game Designer wants, in the exact time and place.



Here’s how it looks in Irony Curtain:

1. Every game character usually has more than one dialogue line. One of the ways to operate it is to use logical TRUE/FALSE flags. These flags helps us determine the state of knowledge of a specific character or whether an event of which the character speaks has already taken place.

2. Each dialogue is built in the editor as a separate “tree” consisting of successive “nodes” connected with each other by lines defining the order in which the dialogue of the character appears.

3. To be honest, “writing” dialogues is just filling the form fields. It looks more or less like this:

• Create a new dialogue in the editor and give it a name. Then inform Level Designer about the circumstances in which it should be launched (eg. when Evans checks on the Prisoner);
  
• Create the first Node (a red dot on the editor screen) and enter the necessary information (into the form on the right side of the screen):
  
  
  
  
  1. Who is talking
     
  2. The Dialogue text (or several dialogues if they should be drawn)
     
  3. (Optional) The Dialogue text when repeating the talk
     
  4. (Optional) If the dialogue happens not on the location but on zoom – whose head and on which side should it be displayed
     
  5. (Optional) Text display time (it’s useful when testing the game without recorded Voice Overs which determine the text display time in the finished game)
     
  6. Where the text should appear on the screen (e.g. over the character or over the radio speaker)
     
  7. (Optional) Actions to be made before or after the dialogue (e.g. acquiring an item or activating a logic flag “character X already knows about Y")
     
  
  
  
• Create another dialogue node and fill it in
  
• Connect the first node with the second one
  
• Rinse & Repeat ;)
  

4. After creating the entire “tree” for all the dialogues we generate so-called “keys”. Keys consist of the location number, dialogue name, text position in the tree and the first letter specifying the character.



5. Thanks to this we can assign a specific Key to a Node, and not just the text. All texts with Keys can be saved to a shared Excel sheet with different languages. As a result, the different language versions of the game have the appropriate dialogues.



That is all in this episode of Behind the Irony Curtain. We hope you enjoyed it and don't forget to add Irony Curtain to wishlist!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/866190/Irony_Curtain_From_Matryoshka_with_Love

Comrades!

Today we’d like to introduce you to our process of making a stop-motion animation. In one of the previous updates, we’ve explained what stop-motion animation is and why are we using it in our game.


This is how we prepare each asset:

1. The whole process starts with the Game Designer. They prepare a documentation with all animations needed for the specific part of the game. There are several types of animations for example: idle animation, talking, specific animation for beginning or end of the conversation and custom animation.



2. Then the animator prepares everything that was requested in the specification in an animation software (we use Toon Boom Harmony for that). First comes the rough sketch, then the more detailed lineart and some colors and shadows at the end.







3. When the animation is ready, the animator exports each frame as a separate file. Our animations have usually 80 frames on average, so it’s a lot of files to export! Those files are put into our inhouse tool that does all the magic – cropps them, sets the frame’s size and creates a file that manages animating all the cropped images.

4. Now it’s time for the Level Designer. They use the graph you see below (a kind of a state diagram) to control which animation should be used in which state (e.g., idle or end of the conversation) by referencing the files generated during step 3.



And that's all! Don't forget to add Irony Curtain to wishlist to stay updated!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/866190/Irony_Curtain_From_Matryoshka_with_Love/

There are dark secrets that have an annoying tendency to crawl back into the light, escaping oblivion. But there is also Sarah Pennington, the most skilled agent of the ever-watching Secret Order, who is there to face them.

The Secret Order 7: Shadow Breach will be available at a discount for 7 days after the launch.


http://store.steampowered.com/app/1004860/The_Secret_Order_7_Shadow_Breach/

Hello fAM! We have fantastic news! We've been nominated in the prestigious Aggie Awards by the redaction of Adventure Gamers. Aggie Awards are an award for adventure games for merits in several categories from concept, art direction, and story, to the adventure game of the year.

This year's nominations have been released and My Brother Rabbit has been nominated in two categories - "Best Graphic Design" and "Best Sound Effects"! We're very happy and very proud that our work has been appreciated!

If you'd like to know more about the whimsical artwork of My Brother Rabbit, you can read up on Gamasutra - Daniel Gizicki has written a nice article on the art of My Brother Rabbit.

If you'd rather just indulge in the visuals, you can head over to either Luke Sałata's instagram or AM's own IG.

You can support us in the Reader's Choice awards by voting for for us at the voting page - we're superexcited about this, and hope you're too!

Comrades!

Before we announce some more details about the Irony Curtain: From Matryoshka with Love (which you can still add to wishlist by the way), we have something very special for classic adventure games fans!

Although Matryoshkans love potatoes the most, there’s also one more thing close to our hearts. It’s eggs. Easter eggs to be exact.

Irony Curtain is set in the 50s, but we did our best to spice it up a little with pop culture references from modern movies, comics, games and classic point & clicks. It’s kind of mandatory thing when creating the classic adventure game.

Overall, we keep the balance between the story and the references, and there are places you will have a hard time finding them, but sometimes we literally go crazy with Easter eggs in some locations.

Just look at the screenshot below and try to find all the references we’ve hidden there. There’s also a hint under spoiler below:




ANSWERS:
1. key in the shape of Sauron's Eye
2. shape of the island from Monkey Island
3. sketch of a key game from Machinarium
4. crow from Enigmatis 2
5. Pirates of the Carribean key
6. Konami Code


The medals are more monothematic because they are all inspired by the works of one studio. Can you guess what every one of them refers to?





Don't forget to add Irony Curtain to wishlist!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/866190/Irony_Curtain_From_Matryoshka_with_Love/