Koko Throwbacks

Hello fellow sleuths! I've been perusing the Internet Archive (as usual) and have come across a very neat little tidbit that I had to share.

Back in 2007, HeR was working on Nancy Drew: Legend of the Crystal Skull. They had a company blog called the "Dare to Play Blog" where they made a fascinating post about the development of CRY. I assume Robert Riedl wrote the post, but I've honestly got no clue who actually wrote it. Take a read of this:

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Friday, July 27, 2007
We've never shown you the top secret design documents that help everyone keep track of the game universe, but I think I found something that I can share. It's only a tiny part of a scene, but nonetheless, I thought it might be interesting to future game designers. Below is a description of the scene. You'll see that it's fairly descriptive and must include what happens every time the player clicks on the hotspot. It also needs define how the action affects the rest of the game.:

The first time that player clicks on a bar, it'll go in her inventory, which she will bring to R. The second (and any subsequent) time that the player clicks on the bars, we'll see a CU of a bar and then a CU of the bar open (with sfx) and then a fade out to a shot of the bar gone (but wrapper still there) and various ND eating sounds. Then we'll return to the initial shot of all the bars. Rinse and repeat!

ART - these are instructions to the artists for what they need to draw. You'd be suprised how many pieces of art the artists need to come up with for each stage of the animation.
Need CU of bar all wrapped up
Need CU of bar unwrapped
Need CU of bar unwrapped but bar gone (eaten)

Hehe - this sounds like fun! Can you figure out what it is?

Next time we'll go over other parts:
DEVELOPMENT
PRODUCTION
LOCAL
DESIGN
VO

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I find stuff like this super interesting. The person who wrote this really explained how much work goes into something very simple. For anyone who's wondering exactly what scene this is, take a look at the video clip below!

As a follow up to this post, HeR went one to explain other areas of development briefly, yet in a fascinating way. Check this out:

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Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Behind the Scenes, part II
continued from Part I

DEVELOPMENT - these are things that require programmers to write new code for actions that haven't happened before, usually puzzles or complicated scene swapping.

PRODUCTION - this tells the people who actually put the scenes together about the logic - the IF this THEN do that part of the game.
Allow P to eat as many bars as desired
Randomize eating sfx

LOCALIZATION - the games are translated into Russian and French, sometimes there are text changes that need to be made in the actual game in addition to the voice overs.

DESIGN - things that can happen in the universe of the game
Consider making Nancy ill after X amount of bars eaten
Consider having Henry remark that Nancy's face is breaking out (in Eavesdropping) after ND eats X bars.
Consider a Meta Game Award for eating lots of chocolate.

VOICE-OVERS - lines that voice actors/actresses need to record
Need 7 variations of eating
{eating sounds}Mm... Yum... Oh, yeah...
{eating sounds}Yum… Gosh these things are good...
{eating sounds}Mm mm mmm...

So there you go - one very simple scene. Imagine how much work the designers need to do for complicated puzzles and multiple interactions with an object! And then they have to keep everything straight without mixing up one idea with another. Pretty amazing huh? No wonder it takes us so long to create a game. :)

PS. Good job to everyone who guessed she was eating a candy bar!

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How cool is that?? I think it's amazing to hear about what happened behind the scenes to make things happen and work the way they did. Is there anything else you've ever wondered about behind the scenes? I made three videos on the behind the scenes workings at HeR that explained how they used the make the games. You can view those videos here!

Until next time!

​Huw