Early October Extrude Interactive got commissioned to do a game themed around the hit tv-series CSI by Kanal5 (Sweden). So we had to go ahead and do it in swedish, although it feels like a heresy.
We figured that we'd make an old style drag and drop game with a bit of a twist. The interface is based around a toolbox / actionbox with wich you interact with the crime-scene or your suspects / evidence. Every action updates the interface and feeds you back results i.e. DNA-test results, Questioning logs and so forth. When you got enough to book somebody, your performance will be evaluated.
This game was released on December 5 / 06 and currently it contains one case to solve. Work is nearly completed on case 2 and case number 3 & 4 is under heavy writing.
Work on this game has surely been interesting. There was a programming challenge in building a cross-referring system that checked all the evidence and interacted with the state of the game that i almost banged the skin off my forehead on. And then there was the 0-Euro budget for photography that had to be overcome. So I had to develop some kind of trick to make my photos feel like high-end production photographs. Here are some examples:
At the start of each case theres an intro-sequence containing 4-5 photographs. Image on top is from the first case where the owner of a small transport company is murdered. My boss had some ties with people that worked in a similar environment, so we found this setting perfect. This photo is shot with a Nikon D200 digital camera with a Sigma 17-35mm 2.8-4 lens at: ISO 400, No flash, 1/30s @ f/2.8. Got lucky I could hold my hand steady enough.
Punched up the contrast / shadows / saturation and fooled the camera raw plugin that i was photographing tungsten lights, when in fact not (as you can see) to get that green feeling. Also added some vinjetting to close the image up and pull out the important details.
This trick is used constantly throughout production to keep the mood constant. Sometimes the white balancing is modified to get a different color-sceme.
For the interface we bought a lot of stock photograpy available from StockExchange and Stockxpert. Those sites are invaluable. All the icons are almost 3 times bigger than the original so that they keep absolute maximal sharpness. A lot of retouching, and i mean a lot was done.
Then there was the matter of getting suspects to pose for camera. At first people where relatively unwilling, so my boss and some of his aquaintances posed for the first. This changed later when the game was official, now theres no trouble in getting people to pose at all.
As you can see alot can be done with minimal resources if you take the time to retouch everything thoroughly.
Same trick here as in the crime scene photos. A lot of contrasts.
All in all, hope you found some of this interesting.
