Book of Unwritten Tales -- now in English & for Mac!

lithander · Post by **lithander** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 2:49 pm

Finally the marketing guys gave green light to show some material of our current project.

We, the small game studio KING Art, are currently working on our first big commercial project: Book of Unwritten Tales. It's going to be a classic 2.5D adventure game in the tradition of games like Simon the Sorcerer, Monkey Island or Discworld but with (hopefully) state of the art presentation. It's planned to be released at the end of march (2009) in Germany. [s]There are also plans to release Bout in non-german speaking countries but at the moment I can't say when and where that might happen.[/s]

UPDATE It's done.

An english-language version will be published by Lace Mamba and is available on our new website for pre-order. And there's a demo you should try if you want to see the game in action.

One of our three main characters watching his mechanical flying fish soaring through the families burrow!

...and a long journey later at his audience with the arch mage.

If you like the screenshots you can find more stuff at the games newly launched website http://www.unwritten-tales.com/

Oh, we got all the modern stuff marketing stuff! Just like the big guys.

Facebook
Youtube Channel
RPS Hands-On (that actually made me proud)
Seems, we don't have twitter. Or I cand find it... :/

And last but not least we've prequel. Not in english yet - that's planned for 2012 - but it just got released in germany. Called "The Book of Unwritten Tales: Die Vieh Chroniken" featuring Nate and his "Critter". It got pretty good ratings from the critics (but not quite as good as the first game) so let's hope players will like it.

Let me conclude with my personal favorite marketing gag: The critter unboxing the Collectors Edition of "The Book of Unwritten Tales" that includes both the original game, the prequel and a couple of extras:
[youtube]zAC_V-0eIDA[/youtube]
<3

BRAINLESS · Post by **BRAINLESS** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 2:57 pm

JeDi · Post by **JeDi** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 3:29 pm

This really looks great. Congratulations!

Could you give us some more details about the game architecture? Like libraries used next to Ogre, art work-flow etc.

cdleonard · Post by **cdleonard** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 3:47 pm

The screenshots look like they were drawn by hand; they're really good.

You must have a lot of artwork for that. Do you still write shaders and .material files by hand or did you do something smarter? Also, how do your artists get to preview their work?

Highway · Post by **Highway** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 4:22 pm

this is definitely state of the art in the adventure genre, looks gorgeous!
I'm looking forward to see this game finished.

Post by **Assaf Raman** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 4:25 pm

BRAINLESS wrote:Wow!

I agree.

steelx · Post by **steelx** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 4:27 pm

just a a word Awesome, the graphics are amazing i want to try this game, congrats.

Injector · Post by **Injector** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 4:30 pm

I really like the art style. Great stuff!

JTheysen · Post by **JTheysen** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 4:48 pm

Injector wrote:I really like the art style. Great stuff!

Thank's! And we got mummies, too

I'm looking forward to see your new adventure on the GC!

Post by **sinbad** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 4:49 pm

Wow, really impressive production values!

Am I right in assuming that the backgrounds are pre-rendered and the characters and other dynamic objects are realtime? I have to say that in the first shot especially I find it hard to see the seam between the two!

Post by **Praetor** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 4:55 pm

Really great job. It has a lovely feel to it. Your art direction is superb. The setting in the first screenshot reminded a little bit of Beyond Good and Evil. That's a good thing.

Angel38 · Post by **Angel38** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 4:58 pm

Wowww. is a great job man.

Congratulations.

chmod · Post by **chmod** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 6:21 pm

Very nice looking game! Has a very stylistic feel much like the Lucasarts games of old.

spookyboo · Post by **spookyboo** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 6:24 pm

Excellent!

oddrose · Post by **oddrose** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 6:52 pm

Cool! Like the video:)

marshmonkey · Post by **marshmonkey** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 7:06 pm

beautiful art, especially the lighting.

jorrit5477 · Post by **jorrit5477** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 7:34 pm

Praetor wrote:Really great job. It has a lovely feel to it. Your art direction is superb. The setting in the first screenshot reminded a little bit of Beyond Good and Evil. That's a good thing.

That's a good thing indeed, and you are right. Looking fantastic!

ldb · Post by **ldb** » Tue Aug 05, 2008 2:24 am

I don't post often, but man...

WOW

The artwork, the music -- the entire package -- is absolutely amazing.

Raketenmann · Post by **Raketenmann** » Tue Aug 05, 2008 7:52 am

Wohoo, it's just great to read all those nice replys and to see that you share our excitement.

JeDi wrote:Could you give us some more details about the game architecture? Like libraries used next to Ogre, art work-flow etc.

Of course i can't explain the whole architecture in a quick reply, but if you have sepcial questions, i will try to give an answer. For the libraries there
is nothing special: OpenAL does the noise, lua keeps it going and ParticleUniverse moves some billboards.

cdleonard wrote:The screenshots look like they were drawn by hand; they're really good.
You must have a lot of artwork for that. Do you still write shaders and .material files by hand or did you do something smarter?
Also, how do your artists get to preview their work?

sinbad wrote:Am I right in assuming that the backgrounds are pre-rendered and the characters and other dynamic objects are realtime?

That's right, the backgrounds are first modelled in high-poly from conceptart. The textures are hand-drawn, which gives the look cdleonard talks about.
The scene is then rendered and sometimes gets a little paint-over. 3D Entities are then put into the scene and get some special shaders from us to allow
our artists to use all the nifty things they are used to.

sinbad wrote:I have to say that in the first shot especially I find it hard to see the seam between the two!

That was our overall goal and it is especially nice to here this way it seems to be accomplished

A small breakdown of the first image:
- Background is pre-rendered
- Wilbur and the Flying Mechano-Fish(R) are realtime as well as two of the levers (because they are animated) and the Mechano-Stairway(R) in the lower right
- the cog wheels in the upper left are not realtime, but animated too
- the alchemy-lab in the front is painted

I hope we may share some moving pictures soon, because animations and realtime lighting are another feature we feel quite proud about.

Wish he was pre-rendered, not realtime: Raketenmann

SunSailor · Post by **SunSailor** » Tue Aug 05, 2008 8:56 am

Great work and a pleasant surprise. Maybe you can tell us a bit about your staff structure, when you say "small game studio"?

lithander · Post by **lithander** » Tue Aug 05, 2008 9:45 am

SunSailor wrote:Great work and a pleasant surprise. Maybe you can tell us a bit about your staff structure, when you say "small game studio"?

KING Art used to focus mainly on BLOCKED and smaller flash games but they always wanted to make "real" games. Towards the end of college Raketenmann and me started to work with KingArt on a hexagon turn based strategy game Battle Worlds Kronos. Sadly the project is put on hold atm but as a reference it helped to make a publishing deal for an adventure game.

When Raketenmann and me graduated from college last summer we got hired full time and started working on our adventure engine and the accompaning tools like a prototype editor and a tool that provides an interface for content integration while playing the actual game. Thats the coding side of things. The content is done partially inhouse partially by freelancers. Boss #1 has been writing the story and filling the producer role. Boss #2 is working with our tools to create the actual game. Our inhouse artist (1337) is creating the characters, textures, lighting etc... concept art, background art and animation is done by 4 external freelancers. Sound & Music is done by an external team too.

Comparing with other teams we're quite small, rareley having more then 6 people in our office at the same time and Bout isn't the only project for most of them. For everyone involved this is the first time we work on a big commercial gameproject so we're quite pleasently surprised it's going all so smooth... and thats why I said "small" team.

lonewolff · Post by **lonewolff** » Tue Aug 05, 2008 11:04 am

Nice work. This looks awesome!

leonardoaraujo.santos · Tue Aug 05, 2008 2:24 pm

Very good man!

triton · Post by **triton** » Tue Aug 05, 2008 5:21 pm

Amazing! Do you need a beta tester?

Nauk · Post by **Nauk** » Wed Aug 06, 2008 11:10 am

stunning visuals, me wants