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Private Notes
The world of video game design is a mysterious one. What really happens behind the closed doors of a development studio is often unknown, unappreciated, or misunderstood. And the bigger the studio, the more tightly shut its door tends to be. With this project, we're taking that door off its hinges and inviting you into the world of Double Fine Productions, the first major studio to fully finance their next game with a Kickstarter campaign and develop it in the public eye.
Humorous outtakes from our Kickstarter pitch video with Tim Schafer. Oh, you actors! So silly.
The Kickstarter project has gone better than expected. Tim briefly talks about what this means for the project.
Tim Schafer shares details on Kickstarter Backer rewards, both old and new!
Tim and Double Fine engineer Oliver humorously explain how our friends abroad can back this Kickstarter project.
Tim Schafer answers some questions from DFA's Kickstarter backers.
A few weeks prior to launching his record-shattering Kickstarter campaign for a new Point-n-Click Graphic Adventure game, Tim Schafer sat down with his old boss and mentor, Ron Gilbert. Together, they look back on the genre they helped define and discussed what they did right, where they went wrong, and how they'll do things differently moving forward with the new game.
Tim Schafer, Nathan Martz, and Oliver Franzke from Double Fine describe why Moai was the best technology choice for their upcoming adventure game, Double Fine Adventure.
We just finished putting the finishing touches on the first teaser trailer for the newly-named Broken Age (formerly Reds, even more formerly Double Fine Adventure). In just a few hours, it will be shown for the first time at the end of the Game Developers Choice Awards hosted by Tim.
Remember when we asked you to submit videos of yourselves talking about the Double Fine Adventure campaign and what it means to you? Well, on June 13 at 10am Pacific Time (5pm GMT) at the Horizon indie event run by Venus Patrol, we will be debuting “Double Fine’s 90,000 Friends,” 2 Player Productions’ creation based on those videos!
Art Director Lee Petty takes us through the making of the Broken Age Teaser Trailer.
Anna Kipnis recently gave talk at GDC Europe entitled Dialog Systems in Double Fine Games and this is a recording of this very speech! This will give a broad overview of how dialog gets into a Double Fine game, from the moment a line is written to hearing and seeing the line in the engine, even in a foreign tongue. It focuses on the technology required to make it possible, as well as some useful approaches, including examples of dynamic dialog systems.
"Welcome friends of registers and cache-lines.
I was invited to this year’s GDC Europe to talk a little bit about our tech and how we are approaching the platform diversity issue. The core of the problem is that Broken Age will have to work great on beefy PCs as well as weaker mobile devices. If you read some of the other forum posts you probably already noticed that a lot of our tech and art decisions were made with platform diversity in mind.
Before I went to Köln I did a test run here in the office and 2 Player Productions filmed the whole thing. But wait there is even more good news! GDC already released the official slides and you can download them for free from the Vault. So feel free to grab the talk slides if you want to follow along.
So sit back, relax and enjoy the presentation"
Bonus associated with Episode 3
The PAX Panel Series Highlights Video (Bonus associated with Episode 4)
Tim reminisces about the early days of his career at LucasArts.
Tim takes us through his stack of notebooks from previous projects like Grim Fandango, Brütal Legend, and Full Throttle.
Tim dusting is off his classic adventure “Day of the Tentacle”. Tim didn’t have time to play through the whole game, but we’re still bringing you 40 minutes worth of development insights and foggy memories from the days at Lucas Arts.
In this Sidequest, art director Lee Petty recounts his history as a gamer, 3D artist, and designer at Double Fine Productions. Lee joined Double Fine during work on Brutal Legend and has since contributed to a number of projects.
Today we bring to you another thrilling Sidequest video in which you get to know more about a specific member of the Reds team.
The subject this time is Anna Kipnis, senior gameplay programmer. Anna joined Double Fine during the production of Psychonauts and has since contributed to nearly every title the studio released. Along with stories about the start and growth of Double Fine, she’ll share her own personal journey of how her family left the USSR as refugees and brought her to the US at a young age.
For this Sidequest installment we’re taking a trip with Tim through the ScummVm time machine to revisit his 1995 hit “Full Throttle”. It’s a solid hour of classic gaming insight (punctuated with the occasional fuzzy memory), so sit back and enjoy the ride through the barren expanse with Tim and Ben.
In this installment of the DFA Sidequest videos we look at Brandon Dillon, Senior Programmer here at Double Fine, and how his love of Adventure games as a youngster led him to very interesting opportunities working in the video games industry from a young age, to a fascinating hobby project, then landing at Double Fine and being selected to work on the Adventure project.
To help ride out the wait for episode 8 of the DFA series we have another sidequest here for you. This one will take you into the past of Double Fine’s Lead Animator Ray Crook. Just a word of warning, this sidequest has a few movie clips serving as examples of Ray’s early influences that some might find gory or scary. Hide your eyes! Or at least, don’t let your parents catch you watching it.
This one is an old interview with Designer for the now titled “Broken Age”, Lead Designer for “The Cave”, and Project Lead for the Amnesia Fortnight prototype “Spacebase DF-9”, JP LeBreton, that took place in April 2012, back during the filming of Episode 2: A Promise of Infinite Possibility. Here he talks about his history in the industry, working with design heroes, his time with and the nostalgia of adventure games, his perception of design mechanics, and growing the medium of video games.
This interview was also from before “The Cave” was even announced, so JP refers to it several times as “Ron’s Project”, so keep that in mind and I hope you enjoy.
This time we take a look at Oliver Franzke, Lead Programmer of Broken Age, and his journey through the industry, starting with learning programming on an old East German computer, creating 3D models in his teens, graphics research work in college, then to programming professionally among a variety of companies. He also shares about his time at LucasArts, pushing their creativity, and working on the Monkey Island Special Editions, then coming to Double Fine and eventually working with Tim on Broken Age. He was even a backer of the project as well!
We sat down with Animator on Broken Age, Dave Gardner, and with his exuberant energy and great stories we couldn’t help but give you nearly an hour worth of quality non-stop chatter from him!
Here’s a short Sidequest of material from composer Peter McConnell’s interview that didn’t make it into Episode 11. There’s an extended look at his home studio and a few of his favorite instruments, backstories on his musical influences and career path to LucasArts, and a few more teases from the score in Shay’s world.
Everyone’s favorite uber-talented, super-passionate, legend of video game voice, Khris Brown, is back with a whole Sidequest of her own! With years and years of experience dating all the way back to working with Tim at LucasArts, you can be sure there are lots of fun stories to be told! ENJOY!
This sidequest follows Broken Age Lead Sound Designer, Camden Stoddard, who won hearts of backers worldwide through his dedication and long hours during the final days of Act 1 development. ENJOY!:
To help tide over the time until the next episode, the 2 Player guys have put together a bunch of videos of Tim playing through some of his old Lucas Arts titles. The latest in this series is a look at the first hour of his last game at Lucas, Grim Fandango, which is obviously totally awesome and should be watched straight away
After exploring the members of the Broken Age development team, we thought it would be nice to switch gears and cover the business side of the project. Justin Bailey just celebrated his two year anniversary with the company and since he’s been featured so prominently in the Double Fine Adventure documentary, we thought it was time to have a chat with him…
We’re celebrating our 15th Sidequest with Broken Age team member Ben Peck! The new episode of the documentary saw an increase in screen time for Ben so we figured it was time to get to know this mysterious programmer a little better…
A discussion with Double Fine’s VP of Development, Matt Hansen with some good words of wisdom for anyone looking to turn their passion for games into a career.
Senior Producer Malena Annable tells her story of coming up through the early days of Lucasarts and the path that brought her to find her true calling with Double Fine.
Filmed during production of "Double Fine Adventure," the makers of Grim Fandango discuss the development of the beloved adventure game and how Double Fine Productions plans to release the original classic to a contemporary audience.
The Grim Fandango Remastered team begins development following the game's show-stopping announcement at E3 2014.
Watch as the team works on Grim Fandango Remastered's new updated visuals, reunites with old friends for the director's commentary sessions, and records new live music with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra!
Grim Fandango composer Peter McConnell discusses the process of remastering the soundtrack for this beloved Adventure game classic. Grim Fandango's epic story of four years in the life (or death) of Manny Calavera, travel agent to the dead, has been remastered to look, sound, and control even better than when it won GameSpot's Game of the Year award upon it's original launch. Grim Fandango still stands as a classic of the genre, with unforgettable characters and unique combination of film noir and Mexican folklore.
Originally released by LucasArts in 1993 as a sequel to Ron Gilbert’s ground breaking Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle is a mind-bending, time travel, cartoon puzzle adventure game in which three unlikely friends work together to prevent an evil mutated purple tentacle from taking over the world!
Now, over twenty years later, Day of the Tentacle is back in a remastered edition that features all new hand-drawn, high resolution artwork, with remastered audio, music and sound effects (which the original 90s marketing blurb described as ‘zany!’)
Players are able to switch back and forth between classic and remastered modes, and mix and match audio, graphics and user interface to their heart's desire. We’ve also included a concept art browser, and recorded a commentary track with the game’s original creators Tim Schafer, Dave Grossman, Larry Ahern, Peter Chan, Peter McConnell and Clint Bajakian.
Day of the Tentacle was Tim Schafer’s first game as co-project lead, and a much beloved cu
