Friday, December 21, 2012

The Horror is weird & Jesus fly on a cloud


Hola, Christmas is here and we wanted to share this game art and this amazing animated gif with all the people of China.

Chico: Who cares about Christmas? The end of the world is here! Sálvese quien pueda!

Yes but don't be afraid Chico, I think this is the Parousia.

Chico: What?!

The second coming of Lord Jesus Christ to our planet... flying in the sky... risen in a cloud... I'm not kidding... soooo lets talk about Catequesis meanwhile we wait looking at the sky.


Chico: Ok. Great art pal, it is really weird.

Gracias, I relied on the work of Maruo and Junji Ito, this two mangakas represent what I told the last week, the weird japanese touch, this sick way to see the fear. Sometimes I read occidental creators talking about the fear, the classic less is more, if you don't show the monster to the player/viewer, he will be more scared, imagining the horrors hidden in the dark. I don't totally agree with that, it's a fact. But I'd like to complement this with two more facts, the "not understand" and the "collective unconscious".



Chico: Wait, this is like a lot of cultures around the world have the same perception of god?

Yes, and this a perfect example of both concepts my dear Chico. In one side we have the symbols written in our mind like serial, the survival of our specie give us fear of the blood, dark, fangs, claws or spiders and snakes. In the other side we have the things that we can't understand. This two concepts forge the elements of fear, and mixed with the concept of "don't show the monster" can be really powerful in horror. But, what happen when I want to give a step into the dark? keep the fear, or show the monster? I know how to show it, and I will tell you...

Chico: When?

Well... OH MY GOOoooOOOoooOD! Jesus flying rise on a cloud!



Friday, December 14, 2012

Survival Horror Story II: The Pain of Spain.

Yeah, I had to write the story of Catequesis in two weeks... ok, it isn't the Quixote, but I did a good structure and defined characters to put the project on tracks. A French producer gave me money to start with the production of the best scary film ever.

Chico: Are you drunk? Stop lying to me and tell me the story of Catequesis!

Yes, I mean, no, the other day I said that the story is ultra important in this game, if I tell you all the plot... sorry, you will have to make an idea with the synopsis written somewhere. But I can tell you about the style & references.


Well, I'm a audiovisual creator, with experience in weird-mystery-scary shortfilms (take a look www.videoclubmisterio.com) so I'm a great fan of surrealism of Lynch, (by the way Spain have a great surrealist artist too) I love the new flesh of Cronenberg too, and I have a Japanese mind, with the weird-sick view of Nippon culture, so I put a great example with Deadly Premonition, a deformed copy of Resident Evil and Twin Peaks, with surreal touch of humour and a really great story. Lovecraft is a constant, you can't put monsters in your story and not talk about Lovecraft...

Chico: Looks interesting but what's the last picture?

It is Jesus, amigo mio. A mix between Lynch and Japanese culture is not difficult, so I wanted to put a little Spanish touch. I love the history and I can talk a lot of the Spanish history, we are a country who embrace the religion like no other in Europe, we use it to unify our country and control others countries too... for example the Spanish Inquisition were present in every corner of Europe and America. So the religion deformed Spanish culture in every aspect...  I want to put some of this in my game. 

 


Chico: The Spanish are always the bad guys in movies. Black, obscure, traditional, greedy, with intrigues and machinations, plundering the Americas in the name of church...

Yes, I love it. So for this reason I wanted to name this game "Catequesis", with the expression in Spanish.

Chico: Ok, sounds cool for me, and even gives some kind of bad feeling the word...

In my head is like Telequinesis but in religion (n_n')

Chico: mmm... or so. Then this word means something in the game right? And are the hero of Catequesis Spanish? Too blond for it...

Daniel isn't Spanish, he is the good guy so... But I will tell you more things in the next post. Saludos!

Friday, December 7, 2012

Catequesis Tech Inside #1

Hi there, Maxime here, developer of Catequesis.
For my first post, I'll talk a bit of what's under the hood of the Catequesis project.

I'm a Java developer so Java is the language used in every components of the Catequesis project. It's definitely a good choice for targeting Desktop and Android ( and even web, but this is another topic ). Java is a rather modern language, that can run on many platform. It's object oriented (which is really great for games) , has a really huge ecosystem, and focus more on productivity than performances ( which is good enough for a 2D game ).



The Catequesis project is composed by: 

  1. The game itself. Android code and Desktop code differs on some specific platform related issue, but most of the code is the same between the 2 platforms. That's a huge advantage. 
  2. The editor : We got a great map editor that allows us to create maps the way we want without requiring any code knowledge. 
  3. Tools : There are some inside tools dedicated to automation of dull tasks. 
  4. People : us, basically. I should have put people on the first point though !

A question that we're often asked is : "Which framework do you use?" followed by "Really ?! But why did you have to recode everything rather than using a game framework ?".
You have already guessed that, in Catequesis, everything is home-made. My game framework is something I started to develop 3 years ago, for fun. I wished to learn how to use OpenGL. At that time I decided to build a little game that leads to the creation of Tales of Pocoro.
In 3 years, the engine got bigger and better. It's not that hard to code, but just take time to read, experiment and implement. 

When Francisco asked me to develop Catequesis, I already had my own engine, with a light editor. So, for me it was easier and more interesting to use my own tools and improve them rather than starting from scratch using a game framework.



For a more technical approach, for my fellow developers, here are some random facts:
  • The editor is full Java, and uses Swing.
  • The game uses JOGL, a library from Jogamp, that allow Java use OpenGL in a very low level way, pretty much the same way you can use OpenGL on Android ( which is really convenient ).
  • On the desktop, the sound is handled by JOAL, another library from Jogamp ( love you guys <3 ).
  • Every library we use is open-source.
  • All the content of the game is home-made too

If you have questions regarding this, do not hesitate to ask in a comment. I'll be glad to answer.


Maxime.