It was the studio’s independence and sheer creative nous that ultimately led to State of Play creating exactly the game they wanted. “And that was the best advice we ever got.” “But the investor, who would have been really good, and someone to help out and finish it, played Kami and said you don’t need me, launch this and you should be fine,” says Whittaker. This, at a time when the studio was considering obtaining outside investment to complete the game. Hardly a side-project however, the game was a success and provided the much-needed finishing funds for Lumino City. Though State of Play had its work cut out on Lumino City, during development the team also got to work on another game, Kami. Daniel Fountain did some lovely code which actually applies film grain and blur to these characters and makes them sit in the scene.” Do-it-yourself This is before, by the way, our final layer is gone onto it. And you can see that she’s got a shadow as well. Especially when you’ve got a moving character and you’ve got to match the character to that. “So I’d have a run, a jump, and climb up animations. “It’s basically a question of putting all of these different parts together,” says Whittaker. It was a process the team admits took longer than it had initially expected, but was ultimately worth it due to the pay-off. The animation was done in Flash, with the game’s lead character Lumi made up of photographs of coloured paper and her various elements. Though a crucial part of the process, there were still two more years of development after this, with lots of programming and animation work still to be done. “It can get within millimetres of these models without touching it.” “This thing weighs a tonne, so every little inch we were like: ‘watch that model’,” recalls Bidwell. The storyboard was honed meticulously, everything had to operate as was intended to make the puzzles work.There were no second chances. The impressive machinery cost £2,500 a day. It was an experience that also made the team somewhat nervous. They’re used to doing one shot a day probably for a film, but we were like, can you do 150?” “It kind of surprised the guy when he turned up. “They haven’t done anything like that before,” says State of Play creative director Luke Whittaker. And what’s more, these are often used for one shot a day in film – State of Play needed 150 in the same timeframe. Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of the project’s development is the use of the Talos camera rig, usually used in film. A year into development, its creators then got to work capturing each scene. Each set would then come together to form the entire Lumino City. Once this was achieved, it would build a physical set for the puzzle and scene to take place in. To build Lumino City’s stunning scenery, the team would very precisely design a rough virtual mock-up of a scene, to ensure its ideas for puzzles would actually work. It was a lot, lot smaller scale though, and we did some experiments with cardboard.” Capturing the city We did Lume in 2011 and that was a set as well. “We set up State of Play in 2008, and in all our games even back then we’d use paper textures, or if we needed to animate a horse, we’d draw it and then scan it in and use it.
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