A Vampyre Story: A Bat's Tale News

[p]Hey everyone![/p][p][/p][p]The spooky season is upon us, the most important month to all the vampires 🧛‍♀️ and bats 🦇 and ghosts 👻 and gargoyles and... well, all of the monsters! And so we decided to open the curtains ✨ behind Mona and Froderick's upcoming journey and have a chat with you about the development of A Vampyre Story: A Bat's Tale! 😎[/p][p][/p][p]We'll be hosting a Q&A session on October 28, 2025 at PDT 11 AM / CET 7 PM on our Discord server! Join us for a fun time 🎉 Prepare your questions beforehand, feel free to leave them in the comments or bring them to the liveshow! 🌟[/p][p][/p][p]Join our Discord server![/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]See you soon![/p][p]Autumn Moon Games & Tag of Joy 💜[/p]

[p]Hello, adventurers! 👋[/p][p][/p][p]How has your summer been going? ☀️ Enjoying the sunshine or are you already anticipating the rainy autumn evenings?🍂[/p][p][/p][p]We've rested a little but never truly stopped working. And now we're here to share another insight into our development process! Today let's talk about the most beautiful part of the game – the art made by Bill Tiller himself! ✨[/p][p][/p][p]A Vampyre Story has been known for its gorgeous and detailed backgrounds and we feel that in the new game it will reach an even higher level! But what exactly is the process of a scene coming to life? 🖌️[/p][p][/p][p]It all starts with the game design document that details the scene and what needs to be in it – all the hotspots, entrances and such. Then the first thing to do is to create lineart of the scene to include all the necessary elements, space them out properly, but also make the scene look fun. Let's take a look at an example, shall we? Here you can see the lineart of one upcoming scene in the new game – the Weasel News print shop 📰:[/p][p][/p][p]Once all the details are in order, it's time to create the atmosphere for the scene 🧡. Here's how the Weasel News looks with the right warm evening atmosphere:[/p][p][/p][p]And then it's time to color all the details! 🎨 Bill Tiller has an amazing eye for details and the backgrounds created are just so stunning, the whole team is in awe every time we see a new one come to life![/p][p][/p][p]And here's how the final Weasel News scene looks:[/p][p][/p][p]Once the background is finished, and all the layers are in order, it goes on to become a 3D scene. We told you more about it in a previous update, so check that out if you're interested: [dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][p]We are so excited to share more and more about the game as we work on it! Let us know what you want to see more of next 😉[/p][p][/p][p]Don't forget to follow us on Facebook and join our Discord to stay up to date on all the news![/p][p][/p][p]Have a great last week of summer and we'll see you in autumn with the next update! 🎃[/p][p]Autumn Moon Games & Tag of Joy 💜[/p]

[p]Hi everybody! 👋[/p][p][/p][p]It's been calm on the outside, but pretty hot here on the inside 🔥 We've been hard at work tweaking the game design to make it the best experience we can deliver. And we've been painting the backgrounds and modeling the characters too.[/p][p][/p][p]When this game was conceived a long time ago, some assets had been developed for it. Which is great, because we have some concepts and models that we can use as blueprints. But, sadly, even though the models were nice back then, a lot of time has passed and they have become outdated (plus we are perfectionists and want everything to look great 🤭). So we basically have to model and texture all characters from scratch, even if some of them were already made back in the day. But that makes for an interesting topic! And so this time we'll talk about our character modeling process and compare them with the original models.[/p][p][/p][p]First of all, we make a base model, which we could use for 3D sculpting – in some cases we are able to use the original model for that base. In the sculpting stage we add all kinds of details – basically make a pretty model without caring about polygons and such. During this process we are also going back to the original concepts and trying to make the models look as close to them as possible. Here's how a couple of character sculpts look:[/p][p][/p][p]Then we need to make a low-polygon model, which will be usable in the game in real-time. Sometimes we update the original model, sometimes we need to make a new one. Here are low-polygon versions of the two characters:[/p][p][/p][p]When we have all that, we can then "bake" all the details from the sculpt onto the low-polygon model. Since the in-game model has much less polygons, all those details go into textures (namely, color, normal, metallic, glossiness, ambient occlusion, which all add up to how the final surface looks and feels). Finally, here's a comparison between the original models and the finished ones we have now:[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]It's especially important for us to have all the extra details, since we have quite a few close up dialogues and cinematics.[/p][p][/p][p]Next time we’ll talk about how our backgrounds materialize (unless a more exciting topic pops up 😅). Stay tuned, you won’t have to wait for the next update for so long, pinky promise! 🤙 Speaking of, what intrigues you the most about the making of A Vampyre Story? What do you want to hear more about? Let us know and we'll see if we can deliver!

Make sure to follow us on Facebook and join our Discord to stay up to date on all the news! We also plan to host some events on Discord, perhaps a Q&A with the team (including Bill Tiller himself)! Stay tuned for more information on that 😉[/p][p][/p][p]Ghoulish Wishes,[/p][p]Autumn Moon Games & Tag of Joy 💜[/p]

Hey all! 👋

As we continue to work on the game, we continue to want to share the process with you! There are all kinds of ins and outs that happen under the hood and behind the curtains to make the game look pretty, so we decided to share the more interesting aspects here once in a while. Today let's dive into the secret of how 2D becomes 3D!

In this game we paint backgrounds in 2D 🎨, but use 3D characters, which gives us the ability to have more camera angles and use character animations in more varying scenarios. So this time we'll tell you about how we turn Bill's beautiful paintings into actual 3D environments, and what perks we get out of that.

So, where do we start? Right! First and foremost, Bill paints a pretty scene with all the important objects in separate layers. Then we take the image and try to figure out where a camera would be if it were a real world environment. 🤔 That includes the camera's position, direction and view angle (or field of view). This is slightly challenging, because the world is painted with all kinds of twisty shapes, which makes it so unique, but also hard to align with the real world rules. When that is done, we go over each object in the scene and recreate their shapes in 3D and project their pictures on them. In the end, the scene looks identical to the initial picture from the camera's perspective, BUT that's where the magic happens ✨. This is what we have in the game engine:



When we have a 3D scene like that, we can actually move the camera when the characters move around or when the players moves the cursor, concentrating their attention on different parts of the screen. This creates a nice parallax effect and makes the world much livelier 🚶‍♀️:



In addition to that, the 3D characters can actually walk around in that newly constructed 3D world. That gives us the ability to have real-time lights and shadows between characters and 2D backgrounds, which really blends them together. All kinds of extra effects become possible and more convincing too – lightrays ☀️, dust, falling snow, smoke and so on. See how she receives light from the surroundings and casts dynamic shadows on the environment:



Phew, hope that wasn't too heavy on the technicalities! 😅

What else is new with us? ⭐

If you've missed it, check out this awesome video, put together by Tomasz just before the New Year, where Bill talks about our project and our plans for the future, together with many other adventure game developers who share their holiday greetings too! ✨

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

One of Tag of Joy founders, Šarūnas, joined the latest Scene World Magazine podcast to talk about his journey from the fan-made Broken Sword 2.5 to Tag of Joy, Crowns And Pawns and now the upcoming A Vampyre Story: A Bat's Tale! Give it a listen 🎧

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Also, if you're a console player, Tag of Joy has some news about our previous point and click adventure, Crowns and Pawns: Kingdom of Deceit! The game is coming to the Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and Sony’s PS4/PS5 on February 27! 🥳 Mark the date!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1125910/Crowns_and_Pawns_Kingdom_of_Deceit/

Have a Monstrous Day,
Autumn Moon Games & Tag of Joy 💜