Pawns

Gamex

2010-11-21T08:04:00.000-08:00

Hello again!
The Pawns-team is now back from Gamex! We managed to get a lot of good players to try our game and get attention to our school. I forgot my new camera, so these are taken with my cellphone, sorry for the bad lighting...

Some friends playing Pawns

The booth

..with the lights on

I even had some time to play, this is my work of art using the new wii-drawboard.

And mikael got some freestuff!

We were intervjued by several media, like gameplayer and GT. Gamex is a great place for trying games and meeting people, so if you live in sweden, you can't miss it!

Benjamin Knopman writes about Pawns

Pawns is nr 3 on best of Gamex

Pawns at Gamex

2010-10-21T09:55:00.000-07:00

Now Sweden has a chance to try out Pawns again! We will be at Kistadmässan for Gamex, Swedens gameshow.

We'll be by our school, Gotland Univercity. So if you're in stockholm, don't forget to come by!

Back from Germany!

2010-09-10T11:55:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures from germany, from our booth!

before we left, trying to get everything into a nice box

Ruben is using ducttape...

Our booth without visitors...

Posing in front of the booth

And here's a booth with visitors!

A lot of people played Pawns, and we got a lot of nice comments from people who liked our graphic style! We went to represent our school aswell, and a journalist from dealspawn, Jonathan Lester, wrote a very nice and charming article about us here.

We are currently writing a post-mortem (where you state what went right/wrong), but otherwise Pawns is on a stand still. We will most likely have representatives on this years Gamex, Swedens first gameshow!

Pawns going south

2010-08-04T05:46:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!
Are you having a hot summer? Gotland has had an very hot july with many hours of sun =)

Speaking of july, Pawns was displayed at almedalsveckan this year. Almedalsveckan is a big political forum where many important people (followed by journalists) come to Gotland to share their political views and interests. We had a little booth at our schools' motion capture studio where you could drop-in and play the "best of GGA".

We have also gotten our own little space at our departments website.

Our school also gave us the opportunity to go to GamesCom 2010! If you're there, make sure you find the giant "G" and come try out Pawns! If you're at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) Europe in Cologne, come have a chat!

If not, don't worry, I'll update with lots of nice pictures for you!

Award-winning Pawns!

2010-06-13T15:35:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

We have had our exhibition at GGA (Gotland Game Awards) 2010 and it was spectacular! Everyone pushed as much as possible during those last days (weeks, actually), and we got it all working.

Here, Micke even had to get his "thinking cap" on (it was later decorated with a "unicorn horn" on the top). Esteban and Ruben did exellent jobs while cosplaying, in the suit that I, my girlfriend, Ruben and Esteban built. This one is very early stage..

Here's Ruben in his mask, painting on the soldiers weapon.

Not painted, but assembled suit of armor!

Newly painted and left to dry in the sun. This was one of the last things we did before we left the office and took an early day, big days awaited on GGA!

Here are some pictures from when we built our booth. You can't really see it of course, but this wheel is actually spinning! (amazing.).

Here's Ruben and Esteban in their awesome cosplay costumes (and our booth in the background)!Here, Ruben and Esteban tried Abzolium.

We sneaked over to Victorious Skies and put our poster on their wall. Sadly they noticed, despite our ninja-skills.

Esteban showed true bravery and got up on stage in front of the jury and explained our game, what we wanted and even answered some difficult questions from the jury.

Here, we were waiting with some anticipation for the award ceremony.

We must have made a good impression, because we got the honorary "Award for human rights"!

The motivation: "The UNICEF and the University of Gotland give an award to the student or group of students who, in a talented and intelligent way, have worked to counter discrimination and further human rights in a game."

This years GGA was defiently a blast, we even got to see a lasershow! The rest of GGA can be read about almost everywhere, like here and here. The ceremony and party lasted until morning and Visby is even more beautiful during a summer morning!

Thank you everyone for checking out our booth, our game and blog, and have a nice summer!

/The Pawns team (+ Mikko and Thommy, who are not present on the picture)

(btw, sorry for the late update, we had some problems with log-in on blogger)

One more week until GGA!

2010-05-31T10:13:00.000-07:00

This time it's been a while!

It's the very last week now, and we have some things that need fixing, besides tweaking and bug fixing. The last part of the first level is to be implemented, and it looks like we'll have a boss battle too!

Here are some nice screenshots from the game (klick on them for a larger image):

Last two weeks:
All the art is done and tileable, Ruben has done a very good job, we even had time to put in some nice effects like a fountain and rain! Our music composer Mikko Jokela was working with us last week, so now the music it done as well as all the sound effects.

I have been working on the win/loose screen and alex is doing particle effects for them. Our teaser and trailer is done too, here's the teaser (you should probably watch them on youtube for a larger view):

And here's the trailer:

Esteban has been busy with his speech for GGA and making a nice presentation for it. Our programmers have been working a lot too, so now you can play two levels and win/loose. We have an intro and a menu, and of course some really fun gameplay!

Simon and Esteban have almost completed the third part, and all the enemies are in the game.

Week 19

2010-05-16T04:43:00.001-07:00

We now have an alfa version of our game!

This week we have worked a LOT. Long hours and hard work have, however, have given us an alfa! We now have two characters with working powers (including animations), enemies that attack them, gameover-screen, support for sound and gui and it all works with xbox controllers!
Esteban and I redid the schedule after getting feedback from our mentors and now we know what to do and when to do it.
It was our cleaning week this week at the office, so now it's all nice here and the dust bunnies have been chased away (for now).

This week:
With the handiwork of Simon and Esteban we have made the first part of the first level (1/3), and we are working on the second part (it should be done later today).
Jonatan have finished the main characters animations and remade the lancer and the ranger animations. Ruben gave them a new look, so it all looks much better now. The ranger shoots a big bullet, while the lancer runs chases the enemies and tries to attack them. Here are some ranger animations:

And some from the other main character:

Ruben have done a lot of minor things this week, like water, a watchtower, the skies, the power-animations and the grass that is supposed to be in the very front of the camera, giving more depth to the level. Alexander have been cleaning animations, tiling pictures and made some particle effects. Here's the finished tree:

The teaser and trailer layout are now worked out, but we don't have the specifications so we can't start doing them just yet. Jonatan have made the first and last part in 3D.

I have been making posters, like these ones:

After tiling the background layers I have been game-testing and fixing minor things like speed, gravitation and controls. I am currently remaking the GUI (adding pictures of the characters and health-bars).

Our other programmer was away this week, so mikael have been fixing the powers, the camera, the ranger (so he can attack now), a game over screen and, of course, fixing bugs.

Week 18

2010-05-09T06:15:00.000-07:00

This week we have an official first playable! Here'a a screenshot:

This is the version we displayed for our mentors.

Our programmers put in two players, some of the powers and some enemies. For next wednesday, we should have all the powers and combinations, and a win/lose condition.

This week:
Like mentioned, the programmers made our first playable. They all have their powers and some of them can be combined. Simon made spritesheets for animations and added them too.

Ruben and I cleaned and resized some images for our booth (for GGA). He continued working on the background for the city-part of the level, while I did concepts for powers and the teaser.

Alex and I tiled the painting that Ruben did so we can start building the level.

Jonatan animated one of the main characters, so he's almost done. Ruben remade two of our enemies, so their animations have to be remade.

Esteban is working on a picture that will be on the main menu and on our posters. He held two presentations this week, one where we showed our first playable for our mentor, Troels, and one where we discussed balancing and the powers of the characters with Gorm.

For now, the players will have two powers each that can be combined, and "hold down for a more powerful power" will have to wait, since the balance of the game is the most important thing right now.

Update on the other group:

Week 17

2010-05-02T01:43:00.000-07:00

This week you get some nice pictures!
This is from our first office (Jonatan, Alex & Simon):

But we changed out little room with a smaller group, so now we have a room that we think was a conference room...

Top: Mikael, a happy programmer, Simon and Alex, the jacks-of-all-trades
Second from top: Esteban, lead designer who hates the camera and Jonatan, beeing "smexy" as he would say
Third from top: Ruben, our artist
and last, there's me, Nina, the producer!
We share our office with another group (who also shares two of our members). Their artist did an illustration of what our games would look like together:

This week:
The programmers changed direction, so Thommy is now working on our menu and Mikael is doing the powers that Thommy did before. Simon has been promoted to junior programmer and he managed to get our pictures into the game! We celebrated with a picture.

The particle effects program, milkshake, broke down this week, so Alex and I got Jonatan to teach us the animation program. Jonatan continued animating the book-menu and rigged the general. Alex animated three civilians (they are going to run around on the screen).

Esteban held a presentation for Troels and Gorm, one of the co-founders of Nordic Game. None of them had anything to comment on our design, which we take as a good sign!

Ruben finished drawing a well and a water tower and he is now working on a gate. He was unfortunately was sick the most part of this week. I did some polishing on the NG logo and did the paper-frame for the game. Esteban decided to redo the design on the menu,
Here's a mock-up made by Esteban:

Week 16

2010-04-26T01:09:00.000-07:00

This week
Ruben finished drawing different civilian characters, Alex cleaned them and Simon found sounds for them. Ruben started working on some of the interactive objects, more exactly a water tower that the players can tip over.
Jonatan finished the animations for the stone character and started on the wood-character.
The programmers continued working on the powers for the characters, the menu and we now have enemies spawning and attacking.
Esteban and I made a powerpoint and he held a presentation for Troels, who is responsible for our course. Like before, we didn't get much criticism on our game, more on how to present it. Both Ruben and I were sick this week and Esteban was away, so a lot of work time was lost while waiting for answers from others.

New office!

2010-04-20T06:18:00.000-07:00

So,we just got our new office today and even if the wireless died today, we are happy to have our own space.
Here are some animations that Jonathan just finished:Ruben got an OK from Esteban, and here's the general. He doesn't actually fight himself, he just comes in, point at the players and send in his armies.

Our lead programmer is back! He added two enemies to the game today, hopefully we'll have a test-ready game at the end of the month. We are behind on schedule on the programming side, but they are confident.
Jonathan and I are working hard on trying to animate and make the menu look nice. It will be animated in 3D and have some finishing touches in 2D. Here's a test render:

And as a final, here's a fake screen shot from the game:

Week 15

2010-04-18T03:22:00.000-07:00

This week we had two presentations. One for Annika Fogelgren and one for Ernest Adams. Annica is a former student and one of our mentors for the course "Big Game". She gave us a lot of good criticism on how to present our work, but didn't have anything to say about the game in general. She was worried about our lack of programmers and gave us some tips about how to motivate our group.

Ernest Adams is a Game Design and Production Consultant that HGO hires to help the students make better designed games. He liked our idea and even said it was good design. He also said that we were a bit overconfident about how many features we wanted to have in the game, but after listening to the other groups we were more realistic. He was a bit worried about our lack of programmers (we are starting to see a pattern here).

We are still waiting for internet in our office, so we are still working in the university's rooms. We managed to persuade them to get a HD monitor for testing.
This week...
Ruben finished the main characters this week and he is now continuing on with the "general". He has established a good work flow now, so each character takes about three days to do.
Jonatan has finished cleaning and rigging one of the characters and he started to animate it. The animation, run and ide are finished so far. It took some time to clean because of last minute decisions (and a day of illness).

Simon did most of the sound effects for the boss and he powers for the avatars. Alexander did a lot of persistant particle effects, like smoke, water, dust and some for the stone character. He can't do as much as he wants because our lead programmer is absent he can't get the help he needs.
Esteban did some concepts for civilians and line art for the pause menu. I, Nina, finished the logo and pause menu and came up with some ideas with Esteban on how to show the "current selection" in the menu.
The programmers are not here at the moment. The volcanic eruption on Iceland prevents all flying, so he couldn't get here on schedule. He'll be here on Tuesday, or so we all hope.

2010-04-13T02:07:00.001-07:00

A quick update with some pictures, these are running animations for the lancer:

art by Ruben Johansson, animations by Jonatan Hagström and finishing touch by Esteban Soto.

Week 14

2010-04-11T07:34:00.000-07:00

Hi there,
my name is Nina Moritz and I am the Producer for the upcoming co-op game "Pawns"! Northern Gate is the name of our group.

The assignment:
We have nine weeks to finish the game, then we are going to show the game on the Gotland Game Awards on the 7-9 june.

The game:Our game is called Pawns and it is a 2D scrolling two player game. Its main focus is co-op and teamwork. You play as a creature of nature and fight back the humans that are trying to cut down the last forest. To your help you have been given powers of nature that you can combine with a friend for more awesome powers.
The visual style is a mix of steampunk and aquarellpainting, as if you were playing on a canvas or in a book.
The game is made for the xbox 360.The team members creating this game are:
Nina Moritz, Producer and interface designer, can be found on Linkedin and Deviantart. I just do the "things that someone have to do".
Esteban Soto, Lead designer and Art director, was art director for Chubby Chase Race. He has some of his art at Deviantart. Practically everything must go trough Esteban before getting a "OK".
Ruben Johansson, Enviromental and Character artist has his portfolio at Deviantart. He was lead artist for the arcade game Shoofly. He does most of the art in the game, mainly the in-game art.
Alexander Oltner, Sprite artist and Level designer. He does all the particle effects and has been somewhat of a jack-of-all-trades.
Simon Öhman, Lead level designer and Sound engineer. He did the level design with alex and he's good at finding things that work.
Jonatan Hagström, 2D animator, he has some of his art at Deviantart. He's actually a 3D artist but we make him do animations for us anyway.
Mikael Gullberg, Lead Programmer. He does the backbone of the game.
Tommy Siverman, Senior Programmer. He does all the important features, like using powers and main characters.
and last, Mikko Jokela, who is creating the music for this game. He did the music for Shoofly and a 2D game called Pavor Nocturnus aswell.

So far we have...
We started this project when this school-year started, but we only met once a week. While working on the concept some of our teammembers decided to work on a new game, so Mikael and Jonatan are currently working on a second project, a 3D game called "Victorious Skies".
The concept was finished (with all pictures and such) by Christmas, and we have been working as much as we can on it, even if we had other courses that had to take priority.

This week:
This week we changed our engine to "IceCream", which is a open source 2D engine for XNA. We also completed our sketches for the booth that we are going to show our game in on GGA.
We (Nina) decided on a new schedule where we work 8 hours a day, including saturdays, so we can be done on time. Philippe from DungeonCrawl came with the great news that we were going to get an office space next week, so now there won't have to be any confusion about where to be and when and so on.
Some of the members took a longer easterholiday so a lot of time got lost... But we presented the game for our mentor and he seemed pleased with how far we had gotten.
So, the programmers changed the engine to IceCream, so everything should go much smoother now. Hopefully.
Simon did lots of sound effects, for the enemies and main characters.Ruben was gone the whole normal work-week, but he finished the "charger" and he is working on making one of the main characters easier to animate.Jonatan made animations for the charger and cleaned previously made animations.
Alexander learned a new program for making particle effects and he made some environmental effects (like rain and smoke).
Esteban ran around as usual and made decisions, and helping everyone with their tasks. He held a presentation and he's working on making it even better! He and I finished up the booth as well.

So what did I do? Besides creating this blog (and our facebook page) I remade our entire schedule and booked a meeting so we could get feedback on our booth. I finished the logo and started tuning on the menu, with the help of Esteban. Sneak-peek:Looking good!
So even though we didn't have as much time as we wanted this week we made a lot of important decisions and managed to get some OK's from Esteban. Check in next weekend for the next update!