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My name is Jonas Hüsges. I am a project manager at Daedalic Entertainment and supervise the project "Memoria".
The continuation of "Chains of Satinav".
I am Kevin Mentz and the lead game designer and author of "Memoria".
My name is Tim Haneberg and I was involved in the game design as well.
I am Carolin Simon, 27 years old, and the lead graphics designer for the 3D elements.
My name is Manuel Vormwald and I was in charge of the 2D team.
My name is Sascha Draeger and I do the voice acting for the German Geron.
I am Yoshi and I did the voice acting for Fahi, a travelling merchant .
"So, are you ready?" "I am ready"
An idea only gets you so far - it all depends on the final results the idea spawns.
That's why the programmers and, above all, also the art department are so important. The graphic artists who create a lively atmosphere, full of colour, create the game.
Especially with the backgrounds, you get a lot of detailed information on how the Game Designer imagines a specific scene.
About what happens in the screen, which riddles have to be solved, which items are to be found on screen, how everything works.
Every single mode of each item, like 'open door' and 'closed door' has to be taken into account.
With all this information you start your project and try to create a beautiful artwork, much like an oil painting.
It can be quite hard to incorporate the desired functionality in the way the Game Designer wants. That's quite a feat at times.
There are some immensely beautiful screens which make you want to stop to admire the view.
I got a concept art for Sadja from Simone, our Lead Art Director at Daedalic. She designed the reference which I placed next to my screen and after which I modeled in Z-Brush.
I started out with a rather rough model and implanted more and more details during my work.
I tried to stick to the concept as close as possible the concept but sometimes that's rather hard because you can't turn the original and check what Sadja looks like at an angle.
At that point you have make your own impression on the project.
After the whole thing is modeled you have to texturise it. Z-Brush has that lovely feature where you can place a 2D texture on your model and copy from that.
Of course that only works in the same perspective that the original came in, the rest you have to paint yourself.
Before Sadja is ready for any ingame action, able to walk or ready for a complete animation, many additional hours of work are involved.
The base model takes about two to three days. But you also have to recreate the whole thing in a low-polygon version.
This has to be done because the high-polygon version with 10 Mio. polygons is of no use when doing animations.
Everything has to be rebuild with re-maps, you have to bake the textures, etc. This sounds rather complicated with so much specific vocab.
The next step is to rig everything. And after that you can start on the animations -- the whole process takes about two to three weeks.
Rigging means that you build a skeleton for the 3D figure; we call that figure 'the mesh'.
It works basically like a human skeleton: there are bones which you place at a specific location in the mesh.
Therefore specific points on the mesh correspond with a specific bone. The rig then knows which points in the mesh it has to deform when I move a specific bone.
This is how you animate characters.
The cutscenes for Memoria are a bit different from the ones in the first game.
"Chains of Satinav" used these woodcut-style travel cutscenes, since they were perfect to explain how Geron and Nuri got from one setting to the next.
In the new game we use ingame cutscenes because they go together with the story and create a decorous atmosphere.
Ingame cutscenes are named that way because they happen on ingame screens which were created for the game itself.
Camera projection offers the possibility of rather stylish camera dives which import a 3D feeling. You don't have to recreate everything in 3D but only model roughly.
A 2D texture that was created for the game can be projected on this rough imitation and due to the bent areas it looks like you can move around the edges.
This creates the impression that the textures are no longer flat and you can go partially around the pillars, for example.
There are limits to that, naturally, because the texture ends at some point.
But in a limited application that works just fine and makes it possible to achieve great effects without too much work.
Another beautiful aspect is that you can reuse the manually drawn 2D textures again.
Stylistically, we had to keep the first part in mind. Many things were already set in stone -- like the general background style or the way characters are fashioned.
There will also be a lot more 3D characters because we noticed that they are easier to animate. Especially perspective changes are much better in 3D.
The close-ups got polished quite a bit as well. While the first part remained rather static there.
As this was also a feedback message we got a lot, the close-ups now feature many facial expressions and animations.
They are really lovely now. This is 2D of course and a lot of it was done in 'After Effects'. We used small, almost miniature movements to create a much livelier atmosphere.
A relatively small amount of material was used from the first part. We imported some central Andergastian screens, like the marketplace.
However changed into another season so that other stuff happens onscreen.
In extension some buildings can now be entered, like the tavern. And some structures were changed quite a bit, like the Academy of Magic.
While the first part featured it completely destroyed, at night and in the middle of winter, "Memoria" shows it during daylight and stunningly rebuilt.
Each background depends on the amount of gameplay elements it has to contain.
When the Game Designer imagines many different actions in the screen, which means lots of different object modes, the concept alone for one single screen can take up to a week.
It might take a while till the Game Designer is satisfied with the final outcome, till you find a common denominator for the screen.
In the beginning you sketch everything according to his vision -- things like:
here I imagine the statue and the character X should be placed in this position with his sword just so. Etc., so that he can walk to the halberd over there...
When that is done you create an appealing screen, picturesque and like a painting. An artwork that works for art's sake and includes functionality, too.
Luckily there are also screens that have a rather scarce description. Something along the lines of:
You walk across the screen and enjoy the scenery while picking up item X. These are a lot of fun and a way to express oneself.
This stage takes about 5 days to three weeks, depending on complexity.
One of the best features in the game is the labyrinth, which is composed of a multitude of screens.
We had to think about a concept where we didn't have to paint 70 screens because one single background can take a week to produce.
What I did was that I created many different layers and used them like a construction kit. Layers with many trees in the foreground, hills and slopes in the background.
Many different types of plants in layers and all this arranged into pleasing compositions.
After a while I had 70 screens which gradually become infused with thicker fog so that you can't see a thing in the end.
Every landscape looks the same but is indeed different, that's what we wanted to achieve.
Because in a maze you get lost because everything looks rather similar and lose orientation quickly.
There are also many Easter eggs so it's worth to get lost.
"If I follow the wrong trail, I may never find my way back..."
We also included many people who work at Daedalic in the game, that's something we often do.
On the one hand it's more realistic when you work with a real model and on the other hand people like to be represented in the game.
Fans of the Dark Eye universe can look forward to the game, as some locations mentioned have never been illustrated or shown before.
There's a small scribble of Drakonia somewhere but that's only a small village for monks and seems to ignore the description completely.
Now there's an epic Drakonia, and the flying fortress (Keshal Rhi) , which was never shown before.
We stick to the rules and have a huge pile of books that explain what we can do and what we cannot do.
"I'll find a way out of here, and if you help me, I'll take you with me".