Mad Orange and Daedalic Entertainment have announced that Daedalic is to bring Face Noir, the dark murder mystery adventure from the Italian developer, to Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

Daedalic will publish a fully-localized German edition at retail and digital outlets with a release date to be announced soon.

Our e-mail box has been recently overwhelmed (apart from a good quantity of viagra and travel ads and strange proposals of financial investments on South Asian countries) by e-mails asking info about FaceNoir development. Unfortunately we can’t answer anybody personally so I’m using this post both to thanks everybody for the interest around the game and reassuring about production development which is proceeding at a tight schedule with good results. The news blackout (let’s call it like that) is mainly due to the contacts we are keeping with publishers, which usually requires a bit of discretion until everything is arranged.

Anyway, waiting for more massive contents to share with our “followers”, we are proud to show here the first official image of Jack Del Nero.

Among the thousands of files regarding Face Noir`s graphics, design, sound and so on and so forth, there is a peculiar folder in my computer. It`s name is obsolete data and it contains all those files I don`t need to use anymore; it`s some sort of cellar inside which I put away the most disparate objects that otherwise would be tossed out, were it not that I feel some attachment for them by now.

The oldest file is dated September 29th, 2008, over two years ago. At that time I was still taking a Videogame Design course at the IED – I want to take the chance to greet Cangini who was coordinator of the course in that year – and in my mind there was nothing barely resembling Face Noir as it is today. My project used to be called EGA (Eniac`s Great Adventure, a title given by Claudio a.k.a. SideUp of Adventure’s Planet). There was no plot, no design documents, virtually nothing but the will to try my hand at the development of a Video Game – and it is a will that I believe about the 80% of people reading this post share with me.
Graphics were rather essential and basic, dialogues trivial. There was only me working on EGA, but Marco a.k.a. Azrael eventually joined the party and with his arrival everything became more serious: we were now able to program! We chose Wintermute Engine as Game Engine; decent graphic adventures using this engine had been released shortly before and it seemed to be what we were in need for.
The following months were spent with me thinking up utterly elaborate ways to use Wintermute and Marco going crazy in the attempt to realize them somehow, instead of simply replying “no, it can`t be done!”. As a result, we boast about having innovative game mechanics as dynamic puzzles, a thinking modality, 3D inventory and much more.

The EGA experience showed us that it was possible to make up something interesting. In the second half of 2009 we decided to mean business by creating a Video Game matching up to those graphic adventures that made us love the genre.
The plot needed to be improved, graphics had to recall the dull atmosphere of the Noir genre and dialogues had to become rough. Face Noir was born.

…to be continued.

The image above shows the improvement of Face Noir`s graphics from the first sketch of the office to the definitive scene you can find in the game.

At the moment, only a slight part of Face Noir`s development takes place in its head office – we are mainly talking about finishing touches that require a direct contact among developers.

Most of the work is in fact realized through online collaboration. The main disadvantage in such a working method is that one can`t give an immediate response to what is being done. Let`s make an example: when a Model Maker – the one who realizes tridimensional models – creates a character, he has to send it to the Editor. When such model has been inserted in the game, it is necessary to send everything back to the Model Maker and, obviously, to the Project Manager, in order to check if the in-game result is suitable.
I think it`s clear enough that a lot of time is thus wasted from a step to the next, and let`s also say that it`s quiet infrequent that everything is acceptable in one go :)

In order to reduce development times and keep the good quality of the game, we have created three different application programs – or tools – which use the same engine of the game.

The first one is a 3D models Viewer in Microsoft X format. In brief, it allows seeing how a 3D model – a character for example – is going to be seen in the game engine. This way, it is possible to test various animations and settings, loading a screen directly from the game – both the 2D background and the 3D model for an exact 2.5D rendering -, moving inside the 3D model and create particle effects such as rain, snow, fog etc.

As regards the second tool, I can`t really enter into details. It deals with some particular settings of the inventory that I hope we can show you soon.

The last “born” regards the creation of videos that you will be able to see in-game. It allows us to insert images, texts and visual effects as rotation, zoom and so on, as well as set their times.
It`s clear that, despite these three tools, it is impossible to replace fully a direct work on the game engine. Nonetheless, they allow Graphic Designers as well as the Project Manager to see immediately the final result and correct possible mistakes. The result is that a great part of the material I receive for the assembling procedure is already final or needs minor retouches. A thing that saves us a lot of time :)

P.S.: Here http://forum.dead-code.org/index.php?topic=3490.0 you can find a non-updated version of the model viewer tool.

Post available soon in English.