Kick up the arse of the law: Making of Hector: Badge of Carnage
Point and flush
Hector, the misanthropic detective inspector of the Badge of Carnage titles, is one of the striking characters of recent iOS gaming.
Originated as the star of a planned animated series (still unfulfilled), his quirky flaws and general grumpiness demonstrate attention to detail that's lavished on few game characters; hence his appeal, despite the sometimes overwhelming morass of toilet humour.
We caught up with Richard Morss of developer Straandlooper to find out more about Hector's gestation, the recent release of episodes 2 and 3, and the studio's future plans.
Pocket Gamer: Can you give us some background about Straandlooper?Richard Morss: Straandlooper was founded in 2008 by me and Alastair McIlwain, with Tim Bryans, to develop produce and market IP in digital animation.
We kicked off by funding a development slate which created the linear version of Hector and two shorts, Small Tragedies (our collection of animated lifestyle disasters), a comedy called Schroedinger's Cat that's to be developed into a new game shortly, and a couple of other ideas we have as-yet been unable to progress.
Small Tragedies has sold to TV in Russia, and the concept has also been licensed for financial education. Our next step is to make more films to fulfill the market potential of the show, and we're currently working on the finance.
The first Hector game seemed to divide the audience between hardcore adventure gamers who loved it, and others who found it too hard. Did that feedback change your approach for the future games?Not really. We set out to make a point-and-click adventure game, partnered with Telltale, who are renowned for adventure games, and very much stuck to our guns.
Do you think the humour is too UK-centric and did you have any issues in terms of age rating?
I think the so-called Britishness of the piece is what appeals, but apart from the accents I don't think it is actually that 'British'.
While there's no point in us pretending to be other than what we are - a small British indie - inevitably our sensibility is affected by TV and all sorts of other global influences. The game's writers and lead creatives Dean Burke (its creator) and Kevin Beimers are from Northern Ireland and Canada respectively, so I would say the humour is pretty well universal, if tending to the toilet!
We realised we were not making a children's game and marketed it accordingly, so the age rating has not been an issue for us.
Why did you decide to publish with Telltale?Well, it asked! And thanks to its background with the games to which Hector in his somewhat idiosyncratic way was intended as a homage, it's absolutely the right company to handle the property.
How much of the Hector story was planned when you were making the first game?The whole story was mapped out in outline. The detail was filled in later.
There was a big gap between Ep1 and Eps 2 and 3. Was there any particular reason for that?People tend to forget the F word - Finance. Producing games costs a lot of dosh, and as a very small indie we simply did not have the finance to plunge straight into production with the other games.
We were extremely lucky to have interest from Telltale. Deal negotiation between us took about five months, and then we were able to crack on with the production of the two new games, from February 2011 onwards.
Presumably making a game like Hector is heavy on art and lighter on programming. What so of development processes do you use?The first game - self published - was heavy on both since Kevin Beimers not only co-wrote the scripts but also devised, built and programmed a game engine, while Dean designed all the characters and backgrounds.
The general process is writing, followed by design, voice recording, digital asset creation, game animation, programming the cut screen animation, general programming and then voice pick ups, audio dub and music.
Can you give a rough breakdown of the development time and any significant tools you used?The dividing line between development and production is moot. We turned around the two new Hector games in six months, and though there was a lot of pre-existing design from the first game, there was still a large amount of original material to create for each game.
Backgrounds were created in Photoshop and animation/compositing was in After Effects. Programming for 2 and 3 was in Telltale's bespoke Tool.
Were there any features that didn't work or that you didn't have time/resources to complete?The voice record was not as high quality as we would have liked; however the finance available and sheer amount of dialogue made using an external studio impracticable.
Some reviews say it sounded as though it was recorded in a tin can. If only we could have afforded tin.
What were the biggest obstacles you had to overcome?The second two games were the first major projects we had undertaken as a virtual studio, so one of the issues was the logistics of making sure everyone was up to speed on what was going on, and that the central repository of material was kept up to date.
It's also very different working collaboratively at a distance from a number of the team, as well as building a relationship with a partner on the other side of the world.
Having said that, thanks to the sterling efforts of the team led by Messers Burke and Beimers, we did deliver on time and to budget so it kind of worked.
What part of Hectors Ep2 and Ep3 are you most happy with?Personally I love the way the central relationship between Hector and Lambert developed and the fact that it's possible to play Lambert at the beginning. I also think the puzzles are stronger in the later games.
What most surprised you about the audience feedback?I think we knew the game was funny and felt good about it, but the sheer quantity of positive responses has been extremely exciting.
It's also good that there are some real clunkers out there who were not at pleased by anything at all we did.
What's next for Straandlooper?We're about to enter into a new development phase. This will include a variety of content: hopefully a new game for the partnership with Telltale if it likes it; some new shareable animated vignettes we plan to publish on the App Store; and much more.
If the three Hector games prove successful, we also hope to produce more Hector stuff, not least a digital feature as a companion piece to the games. This has a script and a production structure (sort of) in place and now only requires the balm of money to enable it to happen.
Thanks to Richard for his time.You can find out more about Straandlooper via its website.
