Journal Special: So you want to be a Game Developer?

This past year, there seems to have been an increased amount of pessimism and negativity in the fangame community. Most complaints have been along the lines of: "It's been x years! Why isn't the game done yet?!" Rather than giving the same mundane response over and over, a far better idea is to visually show how much hard work actually goes into making a game like The Silver Lining.

Starting in 2008, each month I'll be discussing a particular piece of our game in great detail -- from design to implementation. By the end of the journal special, you will have a much greater understanding and appreciation for the entire development process. Click the image below to get started:



Neil Rodrigues
Web Director
The Silver Lining

For the past month, we've been working harder than ever on the production of the game. We set a milestone date of Oct 1st where we said we'd implement and/or complete 9 scenes. The team has been doing a great job. We've met approximately 90% of our target! This in itself is quite remarkable because we haven't had this much team productivity since 2005, during the development of the demo for Vivendi. Our plan from this point forward is to complete and finalize 8 scenes every month.

In order to ensure that the game gets completed as soon as possible, we have made the decision to cut back on promotional media and activities. Michael Bright and I are currently occupied working with the production team and thus no longer have time to respond to public inquiries regarding the current status of the game.

For the most up-to-date information about progress and development, please check the Journal regularly. However, I cannot promise there will be any site updates from this point onwards. If there are, they will be displayed on our Home page under "What's New". Once we are ready to release the game, the release date will be publicly announced on our site and by e-mail via our Newsletter. It will not be announced any earlier, so please do not even bother asking.

If you have any other questions/comments regarding these decisions, please address them to: feedback@tsl-game.com Any inquiry or complaint made elsewhere will not be responded to.


Neil Rodrigues
Assistant Web Director
The Silver Lining

Recently several of the directors met up in New York. I first met with Richard Flores (Art Director) in Montreal, Canada, and then we both drove down to Albany, NY where Cesar Bittar (Project Director) currently resides. From there, we travelled down to Queens to meet with Michael Fortunato (Assistant Art Director), where Rich and I stayed for almost a week. We then all went back up to Albany and stayed at Cesar's place for the weekend. We were also able to meet with artists Jon Stoll and John Leopold that same weekend, albeit shortly.

It was my first time meeting these guys in real life, and it was a lot of fun! Even though I hadn't met any of them before in person, we have known each other for 4 years through e-mail & MSN. Mike is definitely more wacky and hilarious in real life than over MSN, Rich is a cool & laid-back guy and Cesar is... Cesar. Actually, Cesar was shockingly less annoying in-person than he is online!

There's quite a difference between working in-person and working online. Getting caught up on all the latest bugs while sipping an ice cap at Tim Hortons, working on user interfaces while one of Mike's roommates plays XBox 360, and of course late-night director meetings at Applebee's! That was definitely an interesting experience: a basket of fries, chicken fingers & riblets on one side, and an Excel spreadsheet with prioritized assignments on the other. Yes, we did a few "working dinners".

Our primary reason for the meeting was to get away from all real-life distractions and get some solid work done on the game. Rich brought his entire desktop computer with him (monitor and all), I brought my laptop, and Mike had his laptop and numerous electronic devices (which really came in handy since Cez doesn't have a router). It was MUCH easier to work in-person rather than remotely. Rather than typing to describe something in detail along with screenshots, all you had to do is point to the screen and say "this" and everyone would know exactly what you're talking about.

We then looked over several DVD's of work that the team had already completed in the past. There were so many videos that I had never seen before! It's easy to forget how much hard work went into this game over the years. After we had done this, we immediately decided to go through each scene and mark down what is done and what still needs work. We also experimented with some camera features, and found a new way of exploring each scene that really immerses the player into the game. Then we went through every task left to be done, prioritized them, and decided who to assign them to. We discovered a better way to coordinate team efforts, and decided to test our plan out immediately.

Cesar, Rich and I each worked on the very first scene of the game, which appears in both Chapter 1 and Chapter 2. Cesar worked on adding and modifying narration dialogues, and setting up dialogue cameras. I worked on adding conversation topics, lipsync, and music. Rich worked on exporting characters, set cameras and fixing the set & other objects in the scene. Because we were working on different parts of the same scene, it was easy to divide-and-conquer. By the end of the day, even though there were still a few bugs, we were able to see how everything meshed together. Trying to accomplish this same feat online would have taken at least a week or two due to all the communication overhead. In real life, it just took one day. The scene went from 20% to about 80% complete in just a matter of hours.

The best part of all is that we committed our changes to our Subversion central repository as soon as they were functional; meaning everyone on the team was able to see the work we did immediately. This made it very easy for them to play-test the scene, view the same bugs we did, and dive right in to pick up exactly where we left off. If we didn't have a central repository, only one person would have the most up-to-date build of the game at a time, and there would be constant synchronization problems due to people not always having the latest version of things.

It was really great to finally meet other people on our team, but it was also fulfilling to see that much of the game has been completed. In the past, we've been working on pieces of the game all over, and while there was no doubt that progress was being made, from a direction point of view it made it very difficult to measure overall progress. Now our plan is to work as a whole to complete the game from the order the user plays the game in, which in turn makes progress easier to see, and testing easier to do. With this shift in organization, it is much clearer to visually see where we stand and it makes it easy to prioritize tasks that still need to get done.

Neil Rodrigues
Assistant Web Director
The Silver Lining

It’s been quite a while since we've posted in these journals. It’s been something I've wanted to do but could never find the time.

There has been some very strong chatter on the forums of late. Some of you are slowly starting to lose faith in ever seeing TSL come to life. I honestly can't blame you for that. TSL has been in development in some form or another for 7 years now. It’s had its highs and lows, and those of us who have been working on it for so long can't really remember a time when our lives existed without it.

And though things have slowed down, it’s not without reason. I lost my mother to cancer this past holiday season. Our Assistant Art Director Michael Fotunato's grandmother passed away recently as well. My co-director Cesar Bittar has been working 12 hour days at Activision. Saydmell Salazar recently married and settled in the United States. Other team members are searching for employment or wrapping up their university degrees.

To those of you who voiced their concern about the viability of TSL, I say THANK YOU. Your messages have actually inspired our team to regain some of the momentum we lost. It has reminded us of the importance of the game we promised and how it rekindled the desire to relive an era from our youth.

As Art Director on this project I've had the privilege to help steer the game in the visual direction it’s taken. We found great inspiration in the original artwork from the King's Quest series. The artists of the time always found ways to break new ground with every instalment. I still remember seeing KQII in stunning EGA 16 Color graphics and was left breathless (up to that point my KQ experience was limited to 4 Color CGA). I hope we will be able to bring you the same feeling with TSL by finally bringing Graham to life in 3D like never before. Our talented artists have been continually refining their craft, bringing a hand-painted feel to a 3D world. Every screenshot brings us more and more refined detail as shown in our screenshot recently displayed during the Christmas season here.

On the technical front I'd like to say that we've managed to tackle several key issues that were recently plaguing us. A classic case of the writing department leaving the programmers and artists scratching their heads and wondering as to how we’d pull it off.

This project has always proved challenging and continues to do so on a daily basis. Maybe that’s why most of us have stuck around for so long. We get on each others’ nerves, sometimes we want to strangle one another but overall the people on this team are a very talented bunch who I adore working with.

Thank you to the fans, thank you to the team, and thank you to all others who just landed here by mistake.

Richard Flores
Art Director
The Silver Lining

Struggling for Perfection

Hi everyone!

This is my first journal entry, and I hope there will be more to come.

It's been just about a year since we completed the Vivendi demo. It's also been about a year since I assumed the role of Programming Director. And what a year it has been! The successful revival of the project, all the media coverage and the amazing feedback on the public demo has been an amazing experience. Getting back on track with the full game after the shutdown issues were resolved was a more difficult process than we expected, but supported by all these wonderful things that happened to us in the meantime, we got the ball rolling again. And it's quite a ball to keep in motion! The full reality of this struck me only after taking on a director's position. It's not only a matter of getting things done, it's a matter of helping everyone else to get things done too.

Already when we were working on the Vivendi demo, which later became the public demo with a few small modifications, it was obvious to us that some components of the game engine simply would not "cut it" as the platform to run the full game on. It was acceptable for the demo, with its limited number of scenes and functionality, but the system requirements and other limitations were already becoming a problem. We simply had to take a step back and rework some things before we had what we needed to base Shadows on. This was one of the reasons why it took some time to get back on track with the game.

This last year, we have updated several parts of the engine, replacing and adding various systems. We've also reworked and developed new tools to help us transfer the art, music and other important components into the game. But we have not only settled for improving the existing features. This year, we've aimed even higher than we did when we were working on the demo. The fan feedback has helped us to see what people liked about the game and what we needed to do better, and with the confidence of an overall positive response we have taken on the massive challenge that completing this game is with new energy.

As an example of this, one of our latest improvements to the game is a dialogue system with new features. In the demo you can see how characters play a set of generic animations during dialogues. This gives an acceptable illusion of them talking to each other, but as you've probably noticed, their mouths do not move in sync with what they are saying and there are other timing-related problems as well. While this might still have been acceptable in the full game, we simply decided that we could do better! That decision surely delayed the release date a bit, but when seeing the result, I think you'll agree that it was worth it. With the help of a 3rd party development tool that was affordable to us, we have been able to add full lipsync to our characters. In layman's terms that means dialogues don't look like badly dubbed foreign movies anymore. And not only that, we've added facial expression animations too, so that we can easily trigger "feelings" to the lines in our script. Thus, our characters can now "act" to reflect the voice actor performances and better bring the script to life the way it was envisioned. It's a small component of the game, but one of those details that are very important to enhance the gaming experience. I hope to be able to demostrate this system to you all in upcoming preview videos, as it's looking really cool in action!

Of course it takes some care to know just how high you should aim. There's always room to improvement, and no matter how good the game gets there will always be ideas that we had to leave on the "cutting room floor" and various compromises that we aren't too happy with, but that we know were necessary in the end to actually get anything completed. That's just a natural part of game development (and with almost everything else in life too when you think about it). It's about balancing your ambitions with good judgement when it comes to practical limitations. That was very much the case with the demo, which needed to be completed quickly in order to convince VU Games that we were not just a lot of hot air but could actually make a decent game. The challenge is even greater now, and we are constantly reminded of simple facts like that we are not professionals in this industry, that we are spread all over the globe, that we have no budget, that we have an actual life on the side of this (well, at least some of the others tell me they do) and so on... Many would claim that we are crazy to keep going. Well, they may be right, but if this is what craziness is like then I don't mind being a little crazy. I don't mind at all!

Petter Holmberg
Programming Director
The Silver Lining

TSL Evolution

2006 has been quite the year for The Silver Lining. As the best Christmas present we could ever hope for in December 2005, our game was granted official legal permission from Vivendi Games to continue development, after being shut down two months prior due to a Cease and Desist request. The main thing that Vivendi wanted us to do was to change our game title. In order to be legal, no longer could we be known as "King's Quest IX"�, "KQIX"�, or "KQ9"�. However, considering this was the only thing Vivendi requested, we were ready to evolve.

After being known by approximately 60,000 people (if not more) as "KQIX"�, and after branding everything both inside our site and out with those letters, we in PR knew that this would be quite a challenge. It took us 5 months to finally finish redoing our website, in order to properly and officially evolve on May 31, 2006. With the change of name also came a change of style and class. Many people complimented our new design before we could even ask them for feedback, and others who were normally quick to criticize were literally left speechless.

This project as a whole changed from a fun hobby to a serious and now legitimate career, with unlimited opportunities awaiting us just beyond the horizon. If you've visited the Phoenix Online Studios site, you'll notice that our motto is: "Adversity is the foundation of virtue"�. Some people have asked me why we chose this particular proverb. It is symbolic for a lot of things. First of all, when Vivendi approached us and asked us to shut down, we never gave up hope. In fact, both the team and fans worldwide worked even harder to prove that we will overcome this somehow. Secondly, it represents the basic plot of our game. The Royal Family of Daventry is always faced with some form of adversity, but they never cower in fear. Instead, Graham, Alexander and Rosella take on the heavy burden of conquering evil, otherwise all hope is lost. Finally, the motto represents life in general. We are all faced with hardships, but nothing is too difficult or impossible when you have the passion and drive to succeed.

In this same vein, our project has just succeeded in accomplishing a huge milestone. On July 30, 2006, we released our first public demo worldwide. Our game has been largely anticipated for over 4 years. While some may have lost hope when they realized we would no longer able to meet our planned winter release date; we were able to take everyone by surprise and meet it four months later. The demo is now far more stable, smooth and playable than the one we sent to Vivendi back in November 2005; even though the gameplay is essentially the same.

Our project will continue to evolve, in ways that we never thought possible or could even imagine, but we will never forget our past. This is the whole idea behind the two Evolution wallpapers. Each photo illustrates the process used for all art assets that go into our game: sketch, 2D colour, 3D model, 3D texture. This evolutionary process that Graham and Shadrack have gone through represent years of design, rework, adjustments, alteration and finalization, before we declare work as acceptable, with respect to our quality standards. Many other companies do not do this due to lack of time and money, and as an unfortunate result, their customers become unsatisfied with aspects of the final product. Sadly, by that time it is too late.

With our game, development does not end with release. We care about our fans by releasing software patches to fix critical and non-critical defects. We listen to constructive feedback, and respond accordingly. We offer aide and support to anyone that seeks it. There are many large-scale commercial companies that do not perform these basic things even today. This is why I firmly believe the entire game industry is in desperate need of its own evolution. Otherwise, it will take a team like ours to show the world how quality products are meant to be made.

Neil Rodrigues
Assistant Web Director
The Silver Lining

A couple of months ago we received an email from some guy who had written some King's Quest books in the past. When I heard this, my heart raced in excitement. I knew well who it was: Peter Spear, author of the King's Quest Companions.

As I read the email on, I just could not believe my eyes. He had been asked to write a book on our project. I will be honest and say I started jumping around the room. It is hard to digest how far we have gotten during this past year. Whether last year my preoccupation was to get an artist to finish an assignment, ever since the whole Cease & Desist issue, we have been bombarded with interviews, invitations, lawyers and legal contracts, business propositions, television coverage offers, and now this, a book: a BOOK about The Silver Lining!

I am sure that we have been this lucky, and have the blessings of such a great fanbase, because we have stood firm to our beliefs against all odds. We have a goal, a much defined one, and we have not taken our minds (and hearts) off it. And we are crazy! We do what not even commercial companies do. Release a single? C'mon! But you know what? We do this because we love our fans, and go through the great pain of going extraordinary lengths and driving everyone crazy to get it ready for the birthday so you guys can listen to it. Yes, we are that crazy!

The Silver Lining is our second home. We have been brought together in many wonderful ways. A month ago, and after 4 years of talking over the net, I finally got the chance of meeting Say, and our journey through the states started, as we drove from Miami to Orlando, few from there to Phoenix, and then flew again to San Jose.

But let me go back a little, before I continue the story. Peter Spear is one of the nicest persons you will ever know. He has that laid-back aura around him (like most writers) and is, of course, full of great stories about his past endeavors with Sierra. Our first phone conversation lasted over one hour, in which he told me incredible stories about Ken, Roberta and Sierra-On-Line.

So, when we got to San Jose, I told Say "hey, we should call Peter Spear and meet"�. Within a day we were set. We were to meet in Mill Valley for lunch the following day.

San Francisco has that power around it that enthralls anyone who sets his eyes for the first time on it. Of course, we got lost on our way to Mill Valley, but we were early, and did not really care about getting lost in such an amazing city. Scary one too if you are the driver! Absurdly steep hills that will not let you see the next intersection until you actually reach it!

And then, after driving around the city and its Victorian architecture houses for a while, suddenly, out of the blue, there was the Golden Gate Bridge in all of its splendors. A tower of brilliance in its fiery red. We crossed it, left San Francisco behind and adventured into Mill Valley, a city lost somewhere among the mountains.

Yes, of course we got lost again, but Peter rescued us. We went into downtown, and into a very nice Italian restaurant (where people were going crazy because Italy was playing semi-finals that day). We sat outside the restaurant, so that we could actually talk, and oh, yes, we talked. I could tell you everything we talked about, but I don't think I actually have the time to write it all, but I promise to post some pics after Say hands them over.

Next, after the restaurant, we went driving around in Peter's truck. He took us through some of the most amazing views I have ever seen. And such dangerous paths (curvy as hell; we had to stop every now and then because I was getting dizzy). One of such stops was his house, and when we entered his office, which is next to his house, you can imagine I was like a kid in a candy store after he pulled out design after design of a King's Quest game. I was in heaven!

And finally, he dropped us off in downtown, and we took our car and went to see the fireworks in the bay (it was 4th of July) with another of the Silver Lining's team members, Gilbert Martinez. A very nice way to end such a nice day.

So yes, Neil told me that I had to write a report on the status of The Silver Lining, but I really did not want to bore you with numbers. You most probably will have the demo installed in your computer by the time you read this, and you can see that, yes, we are working on it! We are working crazy on it. But it will still take more time. It is very hard when you only work on weekends and some hours a day, but we are getting there, and we have released the demo so you know we are not bluffing you. There is a lot more done than what you will play now, and I can assure you that when we finally release it, it will be more than worth the wait.

With that, I need to go get some sleep.

I really hope you enjoy the demo, and enjoy our little vision of Roberta's incredible work. Dust your cap off, remember old friends, and happy adventuring!

Cesar Bittar
Project Director
The Silver Lining

Phoenix Online Studios Future Projects

POS is currently evaluating which direction to take, and for our future we foresee original creations. TSL has given us a great lead being our mentor in the entertainment world, beginning from an underground project into something that has competed with mainstream commercial games in articles and interviews. We're very pleased with the trust and support that has been provided to us; therefore we believe that producing Shadows is just the beginning for us. We want to keep on working and enhancing what the TSL community is because you believed in us and now we believe in you.

Our first original attempt came way back when Haven was created. We didn't expect it to become so well accepted from the fans, and eventually it has picked up throughout time. Haven includes a compilation of what the TSL community has created:

-FOU! is a webcomic which is portrayed vertically and periodically, showing special moments as well as personal events that do occur within those special forum moments. Selected forum members have been selected to have pets. Obviously, they become popular when their owners' status is active within the community. The pets become a reflection of the members, and therefore a whole virtual community world develops.

-SUPAH DUPAH ALMIGHTY COOKIE is a comic strip that was born from within the die-hard fans of the TSL Forum and from our eternal obsession towards candy. It's a wise cookie which provides wisdom to all forumers. This special project also takes participation from fans because the cookie travels around the world, therefore we could use artwork from our fans as collaborative, while letting them be featured. We are also accepting ideas from quotes or any words of advice that could be transformed into a witty trick that might make it part of the whole theme.

Unconsciously, these became the very first original POS projects which might lead others. They were born from the community TO the community. What we seek in this opportunity is for fans to welcome them because they are part of them, so eventually we could organize it in order to make it grow into the market. This year is most likely the one for us to start portraying more of what POS is looking for. We thrive for big things but we've got to get somewhere first. For now, we shall start with small projects looking for self investment. Obviously, we're still open to investors but due to time and our obligations towards TSL development, as well as our legal attachment to VU, it might keep us time constrained, until money won't be a problem but just part of the process.


Saydmell Salazar
PR & Web Director
The Silver Lining Development Team

Hello, guys and gals!

It's been a while since I made any entries to this journal, and part of the reason is because there has been so much going on around the project that it's hard for any of us to keep up!

Although they are old news by now, we are all still in awe of what happened during last fall. What you guys did was incredibly amazing and not only it was a new entry in the history of videogames, but also you made the game more a part of each one of you. In this sense, we truly owe you this game!

We keep on getting more and more stuff especially out for you guys. A new redesigned site and there's a lot more coming.

There has been so much going on with interviews, and legal processes and actual development that we have been up to our necks with work. Putting the game together is like a puzzle in itself. There are so many pieces that all interconnect and you have to find the right balance between all of them. Add to that fact that we are extremely perfectionists when putting it all together, and keep on revamping the look. If you thought the characters looked good, then go take a look at the new wallpapers we made for you. I still can't believe how pretty Rosella is now!

So, yes! We may be taking a little more of time because we want everything polished up to the max. Like I said, all the pieces are in, we are just scripting and plowing through it all. And we still keep on hitting some walls and finding some set-backs but we are doing our best, we promise you! Hey, after all, if Final Fantasy XII took 5 years in the making with their millions of dollar budget, you can't really blame us, can you?

So, all in all, hold on. The few people that have played the demos so far are extremely impressed of what we have been putting together. I will quote Peter Spear (Author of the King's Quest Companion) when he told me in a phone chat (off the top of my head) that he was extremely impressed and really enthusiastic about what we had put together. He mentioned that he had somehow lost hope in the modern adventure game so he went with low expectations into this, but that he found himself completely blown away. He said that had captured everything King's Quest was about and took it a step further into the right direction.

So, yes, we believe we have something really solid in here and we are really dying to let you in into the universe of The Silver Lining. We are doing our best to piece it all together as soon as we can so we can get our first beta. It's just a little longer, hang in there!

Cesar Bittar
Project Director
The Silver Lining

To all the KQ fans,

I was the first to receive the news that Vivendi Universal wanted to shut us down. I felt a thousand bricks falling over me when the email landed on my inbox. At the moment, I was unclear of what to do. How to explain the hundreds of people who have put so much of their time and effort in the creation of this that it was going to come to an end, especially when we were so close to the finishing line? How to explain the fans that KQIX was going to cease to exist?

But, Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining indeed. While I am not happy to see that the project has been shut down, the overall response is just overwhelming and amazing. Since the news broke last Thursday, I have been receiving emails non-stop from everyone around showing us their unconditional support. This is simply awe inspiring and, as the Director of this project, I could not ask for more. My heart has been touched innumerous times over the past 48 hours.

I want to apologize if I am not able to reply to all of your emails. This is happening all too sudden and I am having a hard time trying to digest all the info. What I know is that reading mail after mail, post after post, I am reminded of the reason why I have been leading this incredible team towards the creation of one of the biggest dreams ever to have crossed the gaming community.

We are doing our best to save the project. I have promised in various occasions KQIX would see the light of day, and I am certain somehow, one day, it will be released. Whether that is in a year or in five, I am uncertain, but Phoenix Online Studios lives and as a company, we will never forget what brought us together in the first place. We are working towards that goal and we can only hope the outcome is the best for everyone.

The words I can offer you is not let it die down. After all, you would be the one reason Vivendi Universal would want to make a deal with us. Let all fighting aside, let all disagreements behind. This is a time to come together and save what you guys love. At the end, that is the goal we would all want to achieve, is it not?

On behalf of the KQIX team, a huge "thank you". You guys are simply amazing!


Sincerely,

Cesar Bittar
Project Director