Untimely Hidden: Patara is coming to Steam Next Fest this June 9-16! Want to help time agent Jaxon clean up objects disrupting the space-time continuum? Then play our free demo during Next Fest! We look forward to your comments on our Discord channelːsteamhappyː
Requirements: Complementing the visual style of the game Reflecting the emotional mode of the designed universe. To adapt the instruments and the tunes of the period in an innovative way To convey the musical understanding of the era A music that is pleasant to listen to but not
Requirements:
Step 1. Understanding the Game and the Story
A significant part of any narration or presentation is provided auditorily. That's why sound choices greatly affect the enjoyment of games. At the same time, it is very important to understand the time in which the game took place and the flow of the story. I can say that this was the thing I paid the most attention to in this project, in which I was the sound designer and composer; Being able to create balanced sounds and compositions that the player will enjoy and support the telling of the story.
Step 2. Sound effects and Ambience
This issue was relatively easy for me because after understanding the art design and storytelling, I could easily decide how realistic or how descriptive the sounds should be. For most of the sound effects, I recorded the objects' own voices as foleys.
Step 3. Narration and Dialogues
Looking at the appearance of the characters, we decided that talking in gibberish would suit them very well. We had to do many different dubbings and experimenting in the studio to find a cute voice-over that could reflect the characters. In the next stage, the necessary modifications to the voices were applied to the designed structure of the characters. In this way, everyone in the world could have an idea of what was being said, thanks to the intonation of the voice actors (supported with subtitles).
Step 4. Musical Compositions of the Game
When I started the work on the soundtrack, I didn't realize how serious it would get. The music in my mind was mostly music accompanying the actor. However, when I dived deep into the project, in line with the ideas that came to my mind, we came up with a piece that we are very proud of. I tried to compose compositions using the instruments used in Patara and the surrounding regions during the period in which the game takes place. Our game has a total of one main menu music and four in-game tracks. However, as I mentioned, one of these songs in particularly is very valuable to us, because it was a composition in which almost everyone in the team had a hand.
We performed the reading of this work, for which we used a heroic poem from the Ancient Greek poet Sappho, based on Cambridge University research. It was a lucky coincidence for us that Özge, the beloved wife of Eser from our team, was in the Greek music choir. Thanks to that, we used Özge's voice in the lead vocal recordings. In this piece, which I composed and arranged, my vocals were also used, in many different tones :) We also used the vocals of our team's programmer Bora. In this way, we turned it into a composition performed by a large crowd. I can say that it is one of the projects I enjoy most. I hope you enjoy listening to it too. :)
And the Music continues...
This was Sound Designer and Composer Engin speaking, in the next DevLog, our Programmer Bora will talk about the programming process and experiences.
How do we look? Requirements: - Easy and fast to draw - Easy to animate - Clear and understandable - Era accurate - Cute and charming Step 1) Choose a Perspective It was fairly easy for us to choose it because since we are a small team and I’m the only in-game asset artist, we ne
Requirements:
- Easy and fast to draw
- Easy to animate
- Clear and understandable
- Era accurate
- Cute and charming
Step 1) Choose a Perspective
It was fairly easy for us to choose it because since we are a small team and I’m the only in-game asset artist, we needed our assets to be reusable, so this immediately eliminated the three-point perspective layout. We could either choose a one-point perspective where we look at the scenery head on or an isometric perspective. Isometric made the most sense since we wanted a large map that is accurate to Patara.
Step 2) Decide on Line Art
We wanted a natural look but since it's a hidden object game we needed our assets to be easily readable so even though not using line art would make it look more natural we decided on using line art. But since we wanted a more natural look, we decided to avoid using line tool to create perfect lines, this would preserve the hand drawn look and make things look flawed and therefore natural. I also decided to break the line art in some places so that it would give more texture to the assets.
Step 3) Colors and Shading
This is a hidden object game so our players will be really focused on the screen and search for the objects. To prevent eye strain, we decided to avoid extremely bright and vivid colors, keeping our colors more muted but still lively. So next thing to decide as shading, we tried different shading and texturing methods where our assets were shaded more realistically and had stronger textures. But even though we liked some of the concepts we decided not to use them since it was more time consuming to create assets that way and we need a ton of assets. We also needed to reuse assets and sometimes flip them so that they can fit in different places so harsh lighting with strong contrast would look weird and unnatural when flipped. So we decided to go with simple cell shading where only one plain of the object would get a shadow and we added details and textures with hatch lines.
Step 4) Characters
We wanted our characters to be cute, charming and easy to animate. So we made chubby sort of chibi looking characters with big oval eyes and noodle arms. We argued about giving them other facial features aside from just to eyes but adding eyebrows, nose and mouth only took away from their cute childlike innocent looks.
Step 5) Companion
We needed a companion to guide us through our journey, give us hints and above all be a pal, so we started working on KronoDex. This somehow became the most dividing subject for the team (i never should’ve shown them all the concepts) no one liked the same design. After we decided on a general concept, we looked for ways to make the KronoDex part of the UI, but this came with its own challenges since we needed it to work not only on pc but also on console and mobile. After we ironed out all the kinks KronoDex took its final form!
And the quest continues….
This was the Lead Artist Batu speaking, in the next DevLog our sound designer Engin will be talking about his side of this adventure.
Thank you all so much for following our journey and supporting us, hope to see you soon! :3
Mission: Design a Cute Little Game ːsteamhappyː Requirements: Easy to code Easy to animate Everyone can play Can be turned into a series Fits to a genre but has a unique thing Step 1. Choose a genre This part was a piece of cake actually. I love hidden object games since the days
Mission:
Design a Cute Little Game ːsteamhappyː
Requirements:
Step 1. Choose a genre
This part was a piece of cake actually. I love hidden object games since the days when we had to play them with a pen and book and it meets all the requirements. How hard can it be to adapt a pencil-and-paper game into a video game, right? I guess we’ll see :)
Step 2. Give it a background story that is easy to convey
I don't feel the lack of story when I play hidden object games, but when it is there, it makes them unique. That’s why we wanted to give a little story and a lovable character for players to engage.
I wrote down 7 different concepts and read them to the team. Everyone immediately choose the same one and that was my days of thinking gone down the drain because it was my first idea and it was also my favorite too, I don't know why I bothered to write the others. We were not a teenager mutant who couldn’t control his power and made weird things happen to the city for us to find and fix. Or we were not an old witch who tries to find and hide everything related to magic before the inquisitors arrive to the village. We were a brave, silly time agent who collects modern-day objects in some ancient city because of the mess his hot arch-nemesis created. I mean, imagine a Roman emperor in his blue-jeans! That’s hilarious.
Step 3. Determine the setting
We decided to choose a real ancient site so we could use it as a reference, like the Roman Forum in Rome. So I started to dive into it, found its maps, lists of buildings and their purposes, documentaries, 3d reconstruction models, its chronology, population over time, families, what they eat, how they pee, which colors do they use… Then at some point, being able to find so much information with so little effort made me think that it was over-used. Then it hit me, why was I using a place that everyone knows and has been covered many times, when there are plenty of places we are quite familiar with but less well known? Then I turned to one of my favorite archeological sites in our country: Patara!
Patara was the port city of the Lykian civilization and the archeological site was a relatively new discovery. This was a good thing, but it quickly turned into a problem: very little had been written about it. I couldn't find what I was looking for on the internet, so I went on a book hunt -no complaints at all.
After studying the books (and smelling the pages) written by the excavation team, we were able to build a basic 3D model of the city as it was in the 2nd century. Then I studied their architecture, fauna, clothing, food, art, daily life, and examined the excavation inventories of the university that carried out the excavation, found examples of their pottery, daily tools, statues…
And the adventure continues…
This was Creative Director Nian speaking, in the next DevLog our lead artist Batu will talk about the concept and character design processes.
Thank you so much for following our development quest and being a part of it, hope to see you soon! <3