The last month passed quite slowly and we realized how necessary professional tools really are for the high quality results that we as a team wish for.

Concept Art
There was some progress in the concept art area, but it’s going very slowly. The creation of game quality graphics as we imagine them, is very time consuming by traditional means.
At the moment we rely entirely on pencil and paper. Every draft is a quick sketch which is then drawn in higher detail and scanned after completion. This gives us the first digital version of the drawing. It’s still a long way to game graphics that we can actually work with.
The scans need to be revised digitally. Imprecisions caused by the scanning process need to be fixed, image areas need to be redrawn, light and shadow of the scene needs to be highlighted.
We have the black and white version of the drawing in digital form now. The next step is adding color.
In this process the scene is digitally redrawn in color. No other step of the graphic design process shows more clearly how much faster it would be to work directly on the PC using a pen display.

The whole process needs to be repeated for different layers of the environments, animated and interactive objects need to be created seperately and put into the scenery accordingly.
It’s not uncommon that steps need to be repeated due to technical or design reasons, when changes are necessary.

At this point I would like to thank Gavia very much for her hard work. She does not only create very high quality and atmospheric drawings for the project, but she does it with patience for every comment and suggestion of change, despite many other commitments. She really pushes the creative process forward.

I wish we had the finanical means to afford a pen display, that would allow us to draw directly on the screen in color and save many of these work steps, to save time in the design process. For now all we can do is carry on the way we do and hope for more donations. Every contribution brings us a bit further.

Game Design & Writing
The progress in the areas of concept art, writing and game design are linked closely at the moment and have a lot of influence on each other.
A new draft brings a lot of new thoughts to writing and game design as well. A new idea in writing that flows into the game design is an influence for new drafts of characters and environments, too.
In the last months we focussed especially on the beginning of the game and the connection to the novel. At the same time we learned a lot about our main character and a few side characters of the game.
We want to create a living, atmospheric world, which includes the novel and game. Of course there is a lot more happening in this already quite complex world than we can convey by traditional storytelling.
We have to focus our storytelling on a part of the whole story.
But even those things that we don’t tell are important for the whole picture and need to be imagined and written.
It helps us to get a better understanding for the world, its inhabitants and it communicates to the player in many forms.
For example by the design of the characters, the game world or by indications in dialogues or comments of the main charactrer.
These many tiny details and pieces of background information don’t make the main story, but they are a very important subconcious part of it and help to create living characters and a believable world for them to interact with.

Regards, Starcat.

I also want to thank all the bidders of our support auction very much, especially Torben Harms for his very generous support. I’m glad about every fan we can get excited about our work, and who is willing to support our project. No matter how much someone wants to donate, it always means a huge step forward for Eerievale, and is also a sign of personal acknowledgement to us.
Regrettably, we have to rely on your support to finish the game. Of course, we are doing our best to get by with our current equipment, but in the long run it will get increasingly difficult and take more and more time. In order to deliver high quality results, professional equipment is required to support the developing process accordingly, and to exploit our ideas in the best possible way.
At the moment, we are in the middle of the concept-art phase and are defining the look of the game.
More than that: The main characters are gaining depth and together with the character designs, background stories, important locations for the game, and much more is created. It is always very exciting to see how small ideas can provide the basis for something bigger. Through our work within the team, we currently make good progress.
The drawings of the last couple of weeks are very promising and detailed, but in order to use them as graphics for the game, they have to be digitally redrawn. In order to reach the same style and level of detail the pen display would be badly required.
But right now, I am happy that the auction was so well received.
During the last couple of weeks, we had another idea that we are pursuing right now and that will surely be interesting for all of you. Hopefully we will be able to surprise you all.

Bye for now,
Gavia

The first Eerievale support auction was a big success!
It surpassed our expectations when the signed limited edition of the rare Atari Jaguar game Lost Treasures (bundled with the standard edition) raised amazing 126 Euros for the project.
In the name of the whole team I want to thank the winning bidder Torben Harms very very much for his excitement for Eerievale and his generous contribution to support novel and game.
Of course he earned his place in the “Hall of Fame” as well.
In total we have raised 6,91% of the amount needed to purchase the Pen Display we need to create higher quality character and background art in less time.
I would like to underline, that every small donation gets us a bit further, too. There is no limitation and many small contributions can accomplish a lot for us and the project as well. We are happy about every support we can get.

Regards, Starcat.

Recently I found an unsold copy of Lost Treasures (limited ejagfest edition), when looking through a part of my Jaguar collection.
I never offered this copy for sale back in 2006 when I heard people had problems to boot the ejagfest release on some CD units, due to a problem with the encryption track on the disc. Only some CD units refused to boot the disc and a bypass cart would probably fix it.

Long story short: I decided to put a special and very rare copy of it up for auction.
It’s the only signed copy (box and cd), sealed and numbered (37/48).
To be on the save side, I will also include a standard edition Lost Treasures, which should work fine. So collectors won’t even have to open the shrinkwrap of the limited edition. The game content is the same.

The release features about 30 work in progress binaries and prototypes of games I had been working on until 2005. Many of which are playable such as the scrolling shooter Star Alliance or the 2004 Eerievale tech demo. Some prototypes are even close to being complete such as the arcade/puzzle game Jagworm.

All money that is earned with the auction is put right into the development of Eerievale.

The ebay auction will start on 1st July and run for ten days. Ebay Link

This is your chance to add a unique item to your collection, enjoy a rare Jaguar release and do your part to support the future of a promising new independent game!

Regards, Starcat.

Today we have some interesting news for you again.

The world of Eerievale is a complex place with many characters, locations and strands of plot. Some of them are told by the novels, others are told by the game.
For those of you, who appreciate a good book and like to immerse themselves deep into a story, this alone will be great news and something to look forward to.

So far, the adventure game was intended to continue the story of the novel. This however, would mean the multiple volumes of the novel would have to be finished before the development of the game can really start. As the plot of the game relates the plot, happenings and characters of the novel.

No matter which way you turn it, Eerievale is a whole. It is novel and game.
As an adventure lover, who enjoys a good book just as much as picking up the gamepad or the mouse, I’m very excited about the deep connection between game world and plot of novel and game, which we have already accomplished by now.
I have not seen anything like this before to a similar extend within a game.
In my opinion this is exactly how it should be and there is no shortcut to completing the development of Eerievale. It takes time, but will be well worth it.

Now, I’m not just writing a novel, but I’m also a game designer. As such, not only the high quality and authenticity to the novel is important to me, but also to work as efficiently as possible and achieve steady progress. Especially as this is an independent project. So there was a little problem ahead of us with the game.

Fortunately Gavia had a great idea, which will turn out to be a great surprise to fans of Eerievale. It will be revealed once we are far enough with it.
Anyway, this idea lead to the solution to our problem and immediately pushed progress of the project quite a bit forward.

We are now taking the development of Eerievale step by step. The game will span across several chapters and the first chapter takes place a while after the first volume of the novel. By doing this, we can continue right where we stand and work on the game.
At the same time, this helps the team to get much more insight into the world we are creating, which is a big advantage, too.

Thank you very much for your interest and keep in mind to come back again soon, to read the latest news.

Regards, Starcat.

Although slightly delayed, we want to take the chance to thank our first supporters.
Special thanks go out to Vasiliy R. for his donation and his enthusiasm for both game and novel.
We appreciate it very much and look at it as a sign of recognition and hope that we will be able to cover our running costs at some point.

Every donation is a great help to us, even small amounts sum up to achieve something great.
We would also like to clarify that paypal donations are very welcome. The possibility to donate using money transfers is just an alternative, allowing a bit more of the donated amount to meet its goal, as paypal charges fees.

All future supporters will (upon wish) be rewarded with a place in the Hall of Fame in our support section.

Regards, Starcat.