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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" - Oliver Franzke
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
This first episode is primarily about the launch of the Kickstarter campaign. We’ve said before that no one was expecting the Kickstarter to be so successful, and when things really took off we found ourselves scrambling to capture as much as possible. The story of starting the project had become just as important as the project itself.
Tim talks about his creative process and brings in other game developers to get feedback on what they would like to see. Later time talks a bit about his initial ideas that will be the foundation for the Double Fine Adventure game.
As we near the end of pre-production of the game, the team has begun to take shape. And because Double Fine works on multiple projects simultaneously, putting a new team together actually means recruiting from within the company itself. This episode of the documentary will introduce you to that process and to some of the key team members.
Double Fine HQ recently played host to a creative extravaganza of unimaginable breadth and majesty: the Double Fine Adventure Art Jam. This event saw the powerful artistic forces of Scott Campbell, Nathan “Bagel” Stapley, Peter Chan, and Lee Petty join together to conceptualize new worlds, characters, and inventions. And to kill a whole lot of trees. You saw some of the fruits of their labor in the last update, which included artwork based on backer ideas. Now, witness the event itself, and visit the artists’ far-flung homes, in the most geographically ambitious documentary episode yet.
A gaggle of Double Fine folk recently got back from an extremely excellent PAX showing, and despite being our first time as an exhibitor at a major gaming event, it couldn’t have gone better. We showed off some of the documentary, appeared on a couple of panels, and spent the whole weekend meeting awesome backers and fans at our booth. Tim and Ron wrote their names a lot. For more on our expo shenanigans, enjoy the latest episode of the Double Fine Action Cast, which covers PAX as well as our new game Middle Manager of Justice: http://www.doublefine.com/dfactioncast During one of the panels, we teased bits of Episode 5, but only you, our valued backers, can see the entire thing in its full-length glory. This episode marks a crucial moment in the development of the game as we move from pre-production and planning into true production, with all of the trials and tribulations that brings.
In last month’s update, you saw some of the creative and production challenges arising from the game’s heavy reliance on the unique artwork of Nathan “Bagel” Stapley. This month, the team finally reaches its full size, and steps are made to address those issues with the help of new staff: longtime Double Fine artist Levi Ryken and two new art interns.
Things may be looking bleak in this episode, but don’t worry, Tim has an inspiring message for everyone at the end of this update.
We know it’s been longer than usual since the last episode, but the wait is finally over and we don’t think it will disappoint. It’s been really busy around here lately, with multiple games shipping in the last couple months, and preparations ongoing for events like PAX East and GDC. The game has been ramping up and the team size has continued to increase, and we’re finally starting our PR campaign for the game—so far, there’s actually not been much public non-backer information released about the game at all. The first real trailer is in the works now. Plus, we finally showed Reds off to the rest of the studio! Having the game get far enough along that it could actually be played by non-team members was a big milestone. You’ll see all this and more in Episode 8: “Adventure Games Are Not Dead.”
Tim is invited to host the annual Game Developers Choice awards during an industry conference in San Francisco. The Reds team crunches to prepare the first trailer that will premier the game and it's new title to the world.
The team is revitalized by the response to the trailer premier at GDC, but a new challenge rears its head that splits the opinions of management.
As a plan for release is settled the team is under pressure to hit the date while a mountain of work still remains. A visit to composer Peter McConnell's home outside the city reveals his inspirations and approach to the games score.
Voices are put to the many eccentric characters of Broken Age by a cast of new and old friends. The animation team seeks help from outside the studio to complete Broken Age's hours of cutscenes.
Peter McConnell's music is brought to life by the Melbourne symphony orchestra. Extensive internal testing reveals mixed feedback on the games puzzles and cutscenes, and stress builds as the clock ticks towards release.
Audio and visual effects teams feel the crunch on the eve of the release of part one, while last minute decisions continue to be made in regards to the business plan moving forward.
Behold, the first post-Act 1 launch Double Fine Adventure episode. This one follows the time from the backer release of Act 1 all the way up through the public release. It does get into spoilery territory with discussion of the Act 1 ending, so if you’re holding off on playing through the first act until the Act 2 is complete, you should stay away from this and all future documentary episodes as well (though you really should go play it!).
In this episode we explore the aftermath of Act 1’s release, the work the team put into the iPad version, and pre-production for the second half of the game…
The team is working hard on the new content for Act 2 of Broken Age, but everything rests on Tim being able to finish all his writing tasks under a tight deadline. Double Fine says goodbye to a longtime friend who's contributions to the project will be sorely missed.
This time we follow the team as they work on Vella’s half of Act 2, as well as the finale of the game. As Tim pushes the team towards a December release, scheduling complications threaten to derail those plans…
Our adventures aren’t over quite yet, and a new episode of the Double Fine Adventure is here to prove it. This one is pretty emotional, and runs from the end of last year until a few weeks ago, covering layoffs, hate campaigns, and crunching until you get sick. There’s still one more episode to go before the series comes to a close though!
After three years of development the team is finished with Broken Age and moving on to new projects. We look back at the experience as a whole and question what the project means to the studio and the games industry on a larger scale. A special package arrives that symbolizes the end of the adventure.
