Ragdoll is one of the mechanics that we decided to focus on since the very beginning. Quite obviously, Body of Evidence had to have some kind of decent mechanics when it comes to moving the dead bodies around.
In our creation the bodies are behaving exactly like "rag dolls", and yes, I am not using the word "realistic" on purpose. You see... the human body is a complicated construction which we didn't really get to know well enough to make its behavior perfect.
At least it wasn't that hard to start, Unity already had all the needed elements for this aspect, and we've found an asset that connected these elements pretty well:
Of course, we could just use those tools and leave it as it is, but as I've already mentioned, it was all just kind of "semi-realistic", and the outcome was a bit random at times.
Knowing that, we had to (I mean "I HAD TO") work on each and every model a little, as we also had to add bleeding and some scripts controlling it. So even though going through all the bodies in the game was a very tedious process, we had to take care of it.
Fortunatelly, we did not use a fully automatic solution (exceptionally) to deal with this problem. Why is this a good thing? Well... the default ragdoll settings are a bit... loose.
- Reach your shoulders with your toes? No problem!
- Knees capable of a full rotation?? YEP!
- Twist your head 180 degrees??? Hell yea!
Not cool.
Honestly, these were some extreme cases which didn't really happen too often, but it was still a bit worrying.
We decided to make the bodies a little bit "stiffer", to make them behave in a more natural way (ya know... rigor mortis and stuff), and to make it somewhat harder for the player (heh) to put them where he wanted to.
The results were... not perfect but not as weird as they could be, it all worked just fine.
Body of Evidence Devlog: Music
Today I will talk about something that you cannot see, but you can hear.
Yep... music.
The soundtracks for the game were produced by a composer going by the name Draco Nared.
You might already know this guy, as he also worked on the music for games like Agony, Lust for Darkness, Phantaruka, and even House Flipper. (even tho the music shouldn't be dragging too much attention in that game)
Gotta admit, this guy is really good, just listen to some of his work:
http://draconared.com/
http://soundcloud.com/draco-nared/tracks
The process of creating already started during the production of our teaser. We didn't have too much stuff to show Draco what kind of track we wanted, we only knew we needed a short piece of music that would fit the unique style of BoE. Fortunatelly Draco only needed a couple of key words, and came up with some solid stuff:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUpGZ7NWjNE
Then came the time for our first full tracks for the game. We introduced Draco to the game (srsly what we had back then shouldn't be called a game but whatever), and described what kind of music we wanted to include in there - and that was enough.
Also, a new idea popped up - we decided that every track is going to have 3 versions, calm, neutral and dynamic. Then we wanted to play them depending on how much time the player has left to complete the order.
Additionally the volume on each of those would also increase depending on the time left for the objective. Here are some volume graphs to visualise this:
If it comes to the whole "dynamic" nature of our soundtracks, you will have to check it on your own ;). All I wanna say is that the best way to check out specific tracks is to either pause the game, or play a mission without a time limit in it, so that you can analize the music endlessly.
There is also some music that is not affected by any aspects of the game - the main menu and credits tracks, and also one that is hidden (not too deep, just look for it!). These were actually created in the end, and are not included in the game yet, so you will have to wait till the official release to enjoy them :)
Body of Evidence Devlog: The Story of "SC Ropewalker"
It all started a long time ago, during the second or third month of our work, when we desperately needed some new levels. That's when we realized that the game has to contain more than just flats or houses requiring a cleanup.
We had to come up with something fresh, but also something that would fit the game's theme.
The main question was, what else can you find in a typical big city? One of the initial answers - a metro station! We instantly thought that it was a viable idea, so we decided to throw it in.
The backstory... we'll figure it out later, for now, we need a body, and maybe an NPC involved in the whole story. Unfortunately, somebody came up with a "genius" idea, that this NPC is going to lead the player to the body after a quick chat. What's the problem you might ask?
Well, let me remind you that the game is being created by just three of us. Our past experience... Yeaaah... not too much of it, we are still learning even as you read this.
Anyway, let's move on... the problems!
First of all, we already have a ready walking animation, and it looks quite nice. Great! Now, all we gotta do is turn the NPC in the right direction, and let him go forward in the direction of the body.
Even the smallest mistake regarding the turn angle will result in a failure.
The NPC has to walk in a straight line... but it seems the animation doesn't really want to cooperate with us here. It just doesn't work this way.
These problems, believe me, are quite simple and easy to get through, for someone who knows what he's doing... hah.
Then, someone calculated that we will be able to create 10 (TEN!) working levels in a single MONTH. We really had to take care of the issues, and we didn't have too much time on our hands.
Alrighty! A script that checks if the NPC is walking in a perfectly straight line and manually moves him instead of trusting the animation should be good! Done! Oh wait... it doesn't look too natural (just look at the legs).
Whatever, we will fix that later! For now, it goes to the "TO DO" list (yes it's the same list that includes stuff like "I'll go to the gym tomorrow" or "I'll start studying hard next week"), someone will surely keep that in mind, right?
Time flies, and a couple of months later, SUDDENLY we remembered about all this... we just simply forgot about it. WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT?
More problems! No one really remembers what's up with the scripts so we either have to start over...
OR!
We can just say that the guy is a big fan of a tightrope walking club called "SC Ropewalker" (where everyone walks "this" way), create a proper logo and add some graffiti to make it look legit. Now, guess what we've chosen? Yup...
A Reference to Dialogues
At a certain moment, we realized that giving the player all the information he needs before the mission starts is possible, but not that easy and definitely doesn't feel natural.
Actually, it happened almost at the beginning of our work
Our first idea...?
Let's give a big round of applause to Mr. Telephone:
To be honest, we planned the telephone to be just a temporary solution, but... oh well... it worked so why get rid of it? Anyway, knowing how things go, replacing it with something different would take ages. (not that it's hard to do, it would just remain on the "to do" list forever)
In this case, we just wanted to give the player all the information he needed for the tutorial, and somehow avoid doing it through a massive wall of text. Now... to take it to the next level, we had to create a system that would more or less take care of how the dialogues work.
"Well, there is a Unity asset that does just that!"
Oh yeah, I remember these words. If there IS a ready solution, and people say it's not that bad, it has to work right?
At least in theory!
I mean... it looks pretty good and does its job.
That is till we had to play around it a little bit (if I remember correctly, it was about to trigger off a particular code after a conversation). The documentation didn't help us too much either.
I screamed a lot (ask the rest of the crew). If I had to describe everything I went through... the censorship wouldn't allow that.
And the worst part is, that there were no alternatives. We fought... and oh man... the scars are still visible.
Criticising other's work is not my point. (not here at least)
I'm just criticising my own.
Eventually, it was pretty cool that we had a dialogue system. We had to use it for something more than just talking to a phone right? What about adding some NPCs? We knew it was just a matter of time. Surprisingly, it wasn't even hard to do (unless the NPC has to move... SC Ropewalker...)
Okay so now we have some NPCs talking to the player... it would be nice to let him respond though.
And here we faced yet another problem. You see... there is one person who is present in all of the dialogues... yes that's Mark, the main character!
As I've mentioned in one of the earlier submits, there are 3 people involved in the project.
And they all work on different in-game levels
And if they work on a level, they also write the dialogues.
And if they write the dialogues, they also write the lines for the main character.
And while writing the lines for Mark... they also form his personality through them.
Because of that, when playing the game you can notice three, a bit different personalities of our protagonist. From one order to another, he switches between being a vibrant enthusiast, a self-aware cynic, and a lover of questionable humour. At least it's clearly visible for me...
THEORETICALLY one of us could just remake the dialogues to keep everything consistent.
OR we could just let it be and count on the in-game events to explain this "anomaly" well enough.
All I can say is that I polished the dialogues here and there, only to make them feel more natural (cuz who the hell answers with a 3 sentence epic to a simple "hi"?)
Lighting and performance improvements
It's been a while, and we have some news for you!
Mainly, we’ve got some info on lighting and performance improvements and some news about new in-game stuff.
Light sources
We feel like the mood of Body of Evidence really relies on the proper light setting. We want you to fully enjoy the unique style of the game. We tried out a few different methods of creating an optimal light environment and we found that there were some problems connected to keeping the system requirements as low as possible while managing to get stable and satisfactory fps, even on weaker PC setups. We experienced issues with high poly objects that massively affected performance when trying to generate precise dynamic shadows. This kept us experimenting with the light sources and we also had to compromise a bit on brightness. Finally, we got to the point where we captured the vibe of the game quite well, while also keeping the system requirements to a minimum.
3D models
We aim at keeping the models simple and fitting, but we don't want to make them super low poly, as they could look a bit off and irksome. Also, we always take the performance factor into consideration.
Additional items
As you may have noticed, there aren’t too many chatty or... alive people in the game, so we are doing our best to include elements that illuminate the storyline and the game's lore here and there. Keep your eye out for them!
Know your culprits #3: Langusta
Body of Evidence is not a one man job. We're a team of passionate individuals who love playing and making video games. Each and every one of us has his own hobbies and interests but the interactive medium of gaming lies deep inside our hearts. It gathers us together and inspires us to create our own digital experiences.
We’ve already shared some fun stories from the world of Body of Evidence. Now we want to introduce ourselves – one culprit at a time!
Our third gang member is... a bit special. He has a kind of grotesque humor which we don't quite understand very often. He also doesn't like to share his identity with the world. He told us to call him Langusta as a pseudonym for this text. He likes cheese - like all Langustas do. That's not common knowledge, you know? It's their main nutrient. Our Langusta is also kinda useful. He likes to crash our game,
And in the meantime please check out Body of Evidence's website to stay up to date with any important information!
The body disposal girl
Meet Hannah, aka YogsLomadia. She loves video games and making videos of games as well. We love her too, as she has become quite the dead body disposal specialist lately. She's really friggin' good at it! She may even try to open up her own little branch of our gory business. Nevertheless, we’d like to show off her accomplishments. Check them out by clicking on one of the links below:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=a12CzDEENZg
https://youtube.com/watch?v=gJhV8ULXlfI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IELnRjVAeeo
For more information on Body of Evidence check out the game's website and stay up to date with any future announcements!
Know your culprits #2: Kacper aka Gazdek
Body of Evidence is not a one man job. We're a team of passionate individuals who love playing and making video games. Each and every one of us has his own hobbies and interests but the interactive medium of gaming lies deep inside our hearts. It gathers us together and inspires us to create our own digital experiences.
We’ve already shared some fun stories from the world of Body of Evidence. Now we want to introduce ourselves – one culprit at a time!
Our next team member is Kacper aka Gazdek. His superpower is being a borderline pessimist. He's doing whatever he can to ensure the story bits that are written by other devs are holding up together with the overall script. He also yells at us a lot. Sometimes he even threatens us. But without him we'd probably fall to pieces sooner than later. Kacper's the one binding us! However, his main responsibility on the team is lighting up the game. Like, literally - he manages the light sources so the graphics look good. He's great at camouflaging minor visual imperfections. He prefers subtlety over straightforwardness because, in his mind, it takes away some of the fun.
Gazdek also has both feet on the ground - more than anyone on our team. He's super aware about how much work it takes to design a game that pleases the players and he strives for perfection - one step at a time.
For more facts and trivia about our team, and especially for our upcoming dead body disposal game – please add Body of Evidence to your wishlist and stay up to date with further announcements!
Know your culprits #1: Jakub aka Xibuk
Body of Evidence is not a one man job. We're a team of passionate individuals who love playing and making video games. Each and every one of us has his own hobbies and interests but the interactive medium of gaming lies deep inside our hearts. It gathers us together and inspires us to create our own digital experiences.
We’ve already shared some fun stories from the world of Body of Evidence. Now we want to introduce ourselves – one culprit at a time!
Let's start with our main Game Designer – Kuba, aka Xibuk. We have no idea where his weird surname came from but at this point we're too scared to ask. If anything seems off in the game or seems too abstract for its own sake – blame him! Some of the pop-culture references, like those lifted straight from Fight Club, were his idea. He loves Marquez – especially his “Hundred Years of Solitude”. Oh yes, and let's not forget he's still a student! He’s also a brown belt in Kyokushin Karate and a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive veteran. And he has worked for CERN, so if a Half-Life-like situation ever develops, we're gonna be alright. Probably.
For more facts and trivia about our team, and especially our upcoming dead body disposal game – please add Body of Evidence to your wishlist to stay up to date with further announcements!
See before you buy
Hello there, partner! Although the future is now, and we can easily order all the necessary dead body disposal tools and materials on the internet, now we can do it in person. Like, going to the store by foot. Can you believe that? I have no clue how that works legally but hey, as much as I like the convenience of ordering stuff online, I also like to see and touch the products that land in my shopping basket. Even if I'm buying body bags or sponges. Don't judge me!
Anyway! I highly recommend that we try and visit War-Mart (love this name) on the first possible occasion. Maybe we can also hear some rumours while wisiting the store? Who knows?
After shopping, don't forget to add Body of Evidence to your wishlist to stay up to date with all the important announcements.
