TLD Pilot Chapter Premiere!

Hi everybody! 

Today the Pilot Chapter of The Last Door goes live! Our little baby monster is going to see the light of day and we’re having a special live event to commemorate this special moment with all of you. 

The whole team is going to be there talking about the present and future of The Last Door. There’ll be a chatroom and a few cool surprises that we’ve prepared.

http://en.twitch.tv/thegamekitchen (20:00 GMT)

After the event, the new website will be up and running at www.thelastdoor.com. You can log in with your old settings (email address/password) or create an entirely new user. For existing users, we recommend you changing your name and surname, but it’s really up to you. 

To get you started, let’s talk about the new user profile page. Here, among other things, you can redeem your Kickstarter rewards by clicking on “Goodies”. If, for whatever reason, they don’t show up, you have to link your user to your KS address manually. Follow the instructions on screen and we’ll send you an email, click on the confirmation link inside and you’ll be good to go! The rest of the sections are pretty self-explanatory - there are many new features waiting for you so take your time to explore the website.

Let the world know about TLD!

And finally, we’d like to thank all of you who have helped us in the past retweeting and sharing our news and/or making Youtube videos of The Last Door. We really appreciate your honest, uninterested help and we hope the Pilot Chapter could live up to your expectations. 

We need one final effort from ALL of you. Now it’s the perfect time to make some noise! Share your thoughts about the Last Door, tell your friends and family about it, or even make a Let’s Play Youtube video - anything goes! The more people learn about the game, the higher the chances of getting the following chapters funded. Our mysterious journey is far from being over so let’s make it happen! 

See you tonight!!

Sprint Report #2 and #3

Our last two meetings have been extremely fruitful in terms of content production. Each team member is giving out a hundred per cent in their respective fields of work. During each presentation, the rest of the team was paying close attention to keep up with the new developments.

Script and design:

We’ve made some rough schematic designs for all rooms and scenes of the game. These placeholders, as they are known, are extremely useful when used internally for debugging and testing while the art team finishes up the backgrounds that will be included in the game. Also, placeholders give programmers a more graphic sense of the final result.

Art:

Meanwhile, the art team was working on “the real deal”. After two weeks of conceptualisation and pixel drawing, they have finished all of the backgrounds for the pilot chapter! In the following trailer you can get a first glimpse of all these new localizations:

Also, we’ve drawn the entire set of inventory items, most of the background objects and some new material for the website.

Programming:

We’ve run several tests in different areas in order to refine and debug memory usage. Significant improvements have been made to the following aspects:

• Main character navigation.
• Scenes with scroll.
• Audio management.

Also, we’ve implemented many of the puzzles that came out of Sprint 1, and now it is possible to create a local savegame.

Web:

The design of the new website is at its final stage. Chapter navigation and the brand new user profile are now operational. There are other important options that have been implemented, such as Paypal integration, intended for those of you who missed out on the Kickstarter campaign. We’ve also included a new “goodies” section where our backers will find access to their rewards.

Next Week

Most of the team will spend what’s left until beta launch assembling final gameplay to keep up with the daily production. Meanwhile, the rest will be working on the following tasks, among other things:

• Lighting and shadow improvements.
• Sound and music implementation.

To our ARG players out there

First of all, let me say that we're incredibly amazed by your level of commitment and dedication to the ARG, guys. Some of you have asked us about giving some directions. You should know that we are aware of your doubts and all of your questions are getting to the team. That said, the lack of feedback in our end is intentional, but please do not let it frustrate you! From the very beginning this was meant to be a community-based mystery that you have to solve on your own, only with each other's help. Keep trying and you'll find the solution, as you always have. You're really close to the end now!

Thank you!

Sprint #1 Meeting Report

This week, Reid Harris asked us on Twitter:

Our team works using a production method called “Scrum” that is especially indicated for videogame creation, for a lot of reasons. One of them is getting together between each development cycle or “sprint”. These cycles traditionally last for a month, and that’s how we did it. In these meetings, the team makes a presentation on how the project is coming along in every aspect. The purpose of this “demo” is twofold. First and more importantly, it allows us to present a clear vision of how the project is progressing to our “investors” (hey, that’s you backers and future players of the game!). It also works so that all of us, who have been working on our own areas of the game, may look at the project from a higher standpoint. Then the following day, now that we’re all together and have a better understanding of the game's progress, we meticulously plan the next development cycle, the reality of the project and any other circumstances.

Usually, if life allows us to, the whole team like to gather for these meetings. So, at the end of the last week we examined the first cycle’s progress of the project and thoroughly planned the next one. Now, we’d like to share these developments with you.

Project Development

Script and design:

We’ve worked a lot on the script of the Pilot Chapter. We had to create new characters, describe the rooms where the game takes place, and write a much detailed account of all the possible interactions between characters, objects, and scenarios. After putting a lot of thought into it, we designed all the puzzles of the first chapter.

Last, but not least, we were able to plan and lay out all the assets that we’ll need for chapter One: backgrounds, characters and animated objects, inventory icons, sound effects, etc.

Art:

We’ve drawn some conceptual art for most locations of the Pilot Chapter. Also, we’ve refined our pixel art style. As a result, we now use a slightly higher resolution to make up for a larger visible area.

Programming:

Using the basic structure of the playable prologue of the crowdfunding campaign, we’ve programmed a new logic engine that will accommodate a larger amount of playable content:

• New logic language to define scenes, items, interactions and cutscenes.
• Improvements on the animation system of objects and characters.
• Optimization of loading times.
• Enhanced mouse control.
• New inventory system.

We designed a new website for the game and started off working on basic features like:

• Full user profile: all your typical functions (and they’re a lot!) like changing and recovering your password and modifying your personal info.
• Link your Kickstarter account to gain access to your rewards.

Other news:

We are currently planning to add a community manager to the team in the next few days. Our goal is to offer you a better and clearer vision of the whole process, and make your wait much more enjoyable until the game launch, and for the next chapters too. Soon, we will have some material to show you and we need someone to take care of you personally and help us infuse your valued opinion into the game’s DNA.

What lies ahead

As we mentioned in our last update, our goal is to launch an exclusive beta version for backers (25£ or more) by the end of this month. Luckily, most of the doubts and uncertainties were solved during January, and now it’s only a matter of “mass-producing” the elements that will be in the first chapter. This is similar to what happens between the “pre-production” and “production” stages that is typical of traditional videogame development.

So to make sure we make it on time, from now on we’ve decided to make one-week-long “sprints” instead of a month, up until the official release of chapter One. Production rhythm will surely be a bit frantic, but that’s exactly what the team think it needs.

During this week-long cycle, or Sprint #2 as we know it, we will be tackling the next issues:

• We’ll draw pixel sketches of all backgrounds.
• We’ll build a full-chapter, sort-of roadmap of all the different areas of the game so that it can be “traversed” from beginning to end.
• We’ll design an area for the website that will allow chapter navigation in the style of a webcomic.

About the ARG

A closing note for those of you who are playing the ARG to let you know that the clues to continue the game are still there! As always, please use comments of Update #9 to discuss your progress. Enjoy!

That’s all for us from now. We hope you found this update report to your liking and we invite you to send us your questions and doubts using the comments section. We’ll be happy to answer!

Thank you!