Weekly Journal - Approaching our next update and PAX East 2017

Hi everyone,

Another big week for us as we finish up work on the next update. We’ll be on bug fixes only from Monday onward, so expect a date for the next update hopefully next week!

Next week, 6 people from the team will be going down to Boston to attend PAX East 2017. We won’t have a booth but we will be walking around the convention wearing our WHF T-shirts, so if you see us, don’t hesitate to say Hi!

We will also be having a gathering on Thursday March 9th at 7:30PM at the 6B Lounge in Boston, to talk We Happy Few and hopefully meet some of you guys. Don’t be shy and come have a drink with us! (must be over 21).

This week’s video features Sarah, one of our Concept Artists/Illustrators. She takes you behind the scenes of the signage around Wellington Wells and jokes about venereal diseases.

Design Team

Adam

I’ve been working on finalizing several encounters, as we lock things down for the next update. Hoard House has a ton of new VO and animations plugged in. The Church of Simon Says is as polished as it can be! Murder House is… well… I’ve been playing Resident Evil 7 a lot.

Oh, and I also fixed up the bridges so you have to actually interact to spawn into the next island (airlocked). This is important because it allows us to have more control over when loading occurs, meaning that we’ll be able to optimize loading better in the future. I also balanced the loot drops for encounters in the first Village island and some of the first Garden District island (and the bobbies!).

Art Team

Marc-André

This week I have done a myriad of small tasks. I transitioned our environment art assets folder and backups to a new computer. I updated the lighting, signs, textures, layout of some rooms of the House of Curious Behaviours. I finished working on the level art of a depressed musician’s house and backyard. I spent a bit of time going through Jira to fix some bugs. I also started to sculpt the dig spot mesh, since the one we have currently in the game is horrid. This is an opportunity for me to dive into sculpting organic meshes, which is something I haven’t had the chance to do a lot. New signs from Sarah have been implemented into the game.

As we’re in the last stretch for the current sprint, this week was mostly about putting last-minute stuff in so the art of all of my encounters feels coherent and, very importantly, finished.

Sarah

Hey y'all, busy week! It was the last chance for the team to pump out a bunch of last minute items for the update, including lots of art. This week I made icons, little gameplay relevant signs (such as "go over there" and "don't f*cking touch that"), you know, the usual. I also had a nice chance to give this poster some love!

This is going in Nick Lightbearer's house. I thought it might be cool to show you guys how it evolved, rather than just show the money shot. The first image is a screenshot of a staged pose that I asked JR to set up in Unreal. From there, I adjusted the lighting and colour balance, carefully touched up his face and hair, sexed up his eyes with some last-night's-eyeliner à la Steve Tyler, and gave him a lil' pout. Throw in Lisa's headlines, and voila, you've got yourself a trash mag.

Oh yeah, I was also featured in the weekly video talking about signage! I would say "Sorry, Mom!" for the tasteless joke at the end, but there's no sense pretending that kind of talk wasn't openly encouraged in my house growing up. Hi, mum!

Narrative Team

Alex

We have now, finally, at the last minute, got everything recorded for this sprint, including at least seven little old ladies for Hoard House. Guess how many actors? Have a listen when the update comes and tell me how many you think there are.

As I mentioned last week, I did a massive casting session for a character named Ed MacMillan, affectionately known around the office as Meat Boy. (Obviously he is in no way an homage to anyone associated with the game Super Meat Boy.)

I found an amazing actor, Joe Sims, who has won all sorts of awards for his radio work.

(I didn’t know he’d won awards until we cast him. I generally ignore CVs when I’m casting voices. It takes much less time to listen to a voice reel and decide whether the actor is inhabiting the roles he plays.)

Joe will break your heart, I hope, as Meat Boy. He’s also assorted bookies, bobbies, lads and soldiers. We had fun.

In other news, affordances.

Affordances is a fancy word for “things look like you’re supposed to use them a certain way.” I read a great book by Don Norman called The Design of Everyday Things. It’s about doors that you can’t figure out whether to push or pull on them, and how to design things so they’re intuitive. It’s actually super helpful for game design. You might dig it.

Well, we put some phone booths in the game, because, you know, iconic. Can’t have Britain without red telephone boxes.

But then you guys said, “We want to pick up the phones and hear something.”

So we put some voices on the phone. And a baseball game between the Dublin Dukes and the New York Yankees.

But then you guys said, “There’s voices, but there’s no gameplay.” Gosh, you people are demanding.

So Lisa and I came up with a story and some gameplay for the phone booths. It won’t be in this update, but maybe it will be in the next. So I hope y’all feel the love.

Animation Team

J.R.

Hey guys! This week was spent on a bit of everything, aiming for the end of the sprint. Nick Lightbearer is done, with fixed cameras, sound and VFX. Also he finally has facial animation (for those of you who pointed out that he didn't in our previous video!), and let's not forget his dashing new outfit! Otherwise I worked on many NPC conversations, namely for an encounter we like to call "The Butcher". And finally, I once asked Cary for some props to sell a “potential” broken leg... and she delivered.

So, for your viewing pleasure, here is a--somewhat disturbing--clip starring our poor delivery boy.

Have a lovely week-end. Enjoy your legs while you can!

Vincent

Well, the next encounters are coming along nicely… One of the characters you’ll have to deal with has had a pretty bad day!

As you can see, this week I did a very small bit of texture work, in between animations and integrations, to give some uniqueness to that poor lady. Can’t wait for you to find out more about her little story. Spoilers: something isn’t quite right with her.

Have a great weekend!

Compulsion Games

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