Here are some more exclusive artwork previews from the upcoming series of ‘Badge of Carnage’ point and click adventure games. In the first installment, ‘We Negotiate with Terrorists’, Hector: Fat Arse of the Law, must pit his wits against a maniacal terrorist who is holding the town to ransom. The town just so happens to be Clappers Wreake, the crime capital of Britain, so this is just like any other day on the beat for Detective Inspector Hector.

In line with the Clappers Wreake Police Department’s firm stance on dealing with Terrorists, Hector must do exactly what the terrorist wants or there will be a lot of blood on his hands.

Hector must scour the streets of Clappers Wreake looking for ways to appease the lunatic who is holding his townsfolk to ransom. He must get his hands dirty exploring every nook and cranny of the seething cess-pool that he calls home. These designs give you a little bit of an insight into the job Hector has on his hands. Hector must investigate Clock Towers, Dark Alleyways, Porn Shops, even Public Toliets, in his relentless bid to not only solve the case, but make it to the Broken Arms for their Lunchtime Venison Special.

Will Hector be able to save the hostages? Will the Terrorist be allowed to continue on his cold blooded killing spree? Will Hector be able to keep off the sauce long enough for you to find out? You’ll just have to get the game to find out. Keep checking back to the blog for more details about the upcoming launch date.

It’s time for that irregualr bastion of the Hector Files Blog – the meet a member of  the Clappers Wreake community post. This time it is Clappers Wreake’s answer to Bob Dylan, well, actually it more like their answer to Glenn Medeiros, it’s Busker McCusker.

Busker McCusker is another member of the Clapper’s Wreake fraternity who makes a star turn in the upcoming Hector: Fat Arse of the Law point and click adventure iApp ‘We Negotiate with Terrorists’. McCusker, as his name implies, is a Busker, and not a very good one at that. He lurks around the local Park in amoungst the rest of the dregs of society that like to frequent this much maligned public amenity. His instrument of choice is the bass drum, and he likes nothing more than spending his days bashing away with his stick. Ahem. He is quite useful with the bass drum however, beating out any number of hits ranging from James Brown to more contempary numbers such as Cheryl Cole’s ‘Fight for this Love’ . But, as with everyone in Clappers Wreake Busker has a more sinister side which Hector must uncover in order to save the town from the Terrorist threat in the Badge of Carnage trilogy of games. Keep checking back here for more updates about when you might be able to get your greasy little mits on the game.

I would say it’s time to meet another member of the Clappers Wreake community but that would insinuate that I have an allotted time for these posts and I think it is fairly clear to see that these posts are about as regular as a tester at the immodium factory. Anyhoo, today I would like to introduce you to one of the stars of the upcoming Hector: Fat Arse of the Law point and click adventure iApp ‘We Negotiate with Terrorists’ – Blind Ali.

Dean Burke, the creator, director, composer and all round doyen of all things Hector produced this before and after sketch of Blind Ali, one of the more colourful and disturbing members of the Clappers Wreake populace. Blind Ali is, as you might have deducted by now, blind. This is the reason for the pink bum bag, as he was told that is was a Louis Vuitton purse by Busker McCusker when it was sold to him. He was assured that everyone was wearing them around town, and I suppose as far as Ali is concerned, they are.

Blind Ali has, what can be conservatively described as, a penchant for pornography. He can be found wandering aimlessly around outside of the hub of Clappers Wreake Porn Industry – Exotico – rifling through the bins and discarded carrier bags. He finds the overwhelming whiff of a freshly opened jazz mag quite a comfort and dedicates his life to the pursuit of all things smutty. Quite how he become blind is a matter of debate, many think it is penchant for siphoning the one eyed trouser snake, but there is also a rumour that he was caught in the eye by a piece of over stretched latex when he was manoeuvring out of a particularly figure hugging cat suit.

Will Hector be able to find out what happened to Blind Ali’s sight?

Will Blind Ali find enough smut in order to quench his depraved needs?

And will Hector manage not to relocate Blind Ali’s bumbag into a more literal location?

You will have to buy the first installment of the ‘Badge of Carnage’ iApps to find out!

As if we didn’t have enough to do with the production of our first ever point and click adventure game – ‘We Negotiate with Terrorists’, we have also been shooting the Hector: Fat Arse of the Law ‘making of’ movie, as well. The movie will be a no holds barred, warts and all documentary following the production team in the Straandlooper studio as they navigate their way through the rather ambitious production of the first installment of the trilogy of ‘Badge of Carnage’ iApps.

Here we see Kevin working hard on the Apple SDK creating the ‘Tour de Force’ of gaming that will be the first Hector iApp. In these never before seen shots, you can see an exclusive first glimpse of Trampy Tim in situ in the Alley beside the Police Station. Kevin is working on deciphering the dialogue that was recorded for Trampy Tim and attempting to subtitle it. Easier said than done, as you will find out when you get the game. Trampy Tim has a rather unique tone and timbre to his voice which has to be heard to be believed.

We also captured some footage of young Ciaran Oakes working away on the Hector game. Ciaran works so fast that I am surprised that his fingers were not blurred in this image. We have had to slow the frame rate way down for any sequences including Ciaran to avoid the motion blur around his lightning quick mouse action.

On the other side of the coin, any sequences featuring animator Colin McCusker we have sped up so that you don’t have to spend too long looking at him! Only joking, Colin, you are the handsomest animator that I know! The video will feature candid shots of all the production team working on all aspects of the game, including voice record sessions, character design, animation and the all important programming and testing. The video will also feature exclusive interviews with Hector creator Dean Burke and other members of the Straandlooper team.

We will be releasing the ‘Making of’ video in the coming weeks as we come towards the end of production and get closer to the, yet to be confirmed, release date. Keep watching this space for more details.

It’s time to meet another thread in the rich tapestry that is the population of Clappers Wreake. Today, I would like to introduce you to a person who plays a starring role in the upcoming Hector: Fat Arse of the Law point and click adventure iApp ‘We Negotiate with Terrorists’ – it’s the Clock Keeper.

The Clock Keeper, as his name suggests, looks after the town clock in Clappers Wreake. He is ex-armed forces, but this implies that he was armed at one stage, which mightn’t necessarily ever have been the case. The townfolk consider him to be as mad as a box of wasps, but what is so bad about wanting to keep the people of Clappers Wreake endowed with the correct time. Nothing, I suppose, but there is plenty wrong with a grown man sleeping with a 6 foot tall galvanized minute hand. But who am I to judge. Whatever spins your props.

Confined to his wheel chair the clock keeper whiles away his days inside the clock tower doing whatever he can to ensure that the clock runs with ex-military precision. But this being Clappers Wreake he is on a hiding to nothing trying to keep his little part of the town functionaly properly. Maybe one day he will be able to restore the clock tower to its former glory. Until then he finds comfort in the warm embrace of sweet inebriation brought about by his industrial strength moonshine that he brews inside the clock tower out of the not-so-watchful-eye of the Clappers Wreake Police Department.

Will Hector be able to resist a tipple of this tempting elixir?

Will the clock tower ever get fixed?

And will Hector manage not to shove his fist down the clock keepers throat when he starts up another story about his time in the forces?

You will have to buy the first installment of the ‘Badge of Carnage’ iApps to find out!

It has long been an ambition of the Straandlooper studio to move into 3D and on Friday we finally made the move with our Hector: Fat Arse of the Law property. We decided to move production of the ‘Badge of Carnage’ iApps into the third dimension.

As you can see from the above image Hector himself was the first character that we rendered in 3D. Obviously moving to a 3D pipeline will not be without its difficulties. For example we had difficulty recreating the ample girth of Hector in 3D and his chin is not meant to be quite so Men’s Health cover model, more Curry Monthly cover model. But I am sure that these are teething problems that any studio will experience when making such a dramatic change to a production this late in the day.

Special thanks must go to Ciaran Oakes who created the Hector cut-out. And a special mention also to Professor Ali McIlwain who rigourously tested out our new Hector 3D character rig by using it as target practice with the studio’s arsenal of Nerf guns.

For some time now I have been banging on about how hard we are working in the studio on the production of the ‘We Negotiate with Terrorists’ iApp, the first installment of the Hector: Fat Arse of the Law ‘Badge of Carnage’ trilogy of games. Despite this you have not seen much progress in terms of actual gameplay, and I can imagine that some of you were beginning to think that the game is a figment of my imagination. Well, that is only half right. I can assure you that the game will be delivered early in the new year, but I can also assure you that behind the scenes the game has been progressing extremely well and almost all of the rooms have now been completed so I am able to show you some exclusive new screenshots from the newly created areas of the game.

Kevin Beimers, our programming genius has been hard at work coding the various areas of the game , well over 20 in total, and getting the basic framework of the game functioning. These screenshots are from the as yet unpublished areas of the game. I can’t give away too many details about what is going on in the screenshots as you will have to play the game to find out.

Now that the majority of the framework of the game is in place Kevin is hard at work programming the narrative streams and various dialogue trees that Hector must enter into with the various nefarious characters that he meets throughout the course of the Game.

Keep checking back at the blog for more updates about the game and how Kevin is getting on with the joyous task of populating databases with audio files and coding conversations.

It is that time of week again….the time when I remove the digit and get round to blogging about another one of Clappers Wreake’s finest, who will be playing a starring role in the upcoming Hector iApp ‘We Negotiate with Terrorists’. This week it is Jarvis.

Jarvis is the assistant to Chief Superintendent Meeks, and chief clerical guy in the Clappers Wreake PD. Ironically he hates paperwork, but being assistant to Meeks means that even the most basic of procedures requires a myriad of paperwork to be completed, filed, duplicated and then filed again. Despite his dislike for his clerical duties, he enters into his role with an unsavoury relish, as he has one eye on the Chief Super’s job so he must keep up appearences. He is a loyal, bordering on obsessive, assistant to Meeks and can frequently be found in the Chief’s office peeling his grapes or ironing his copy of the Daily Depress. He regards his current situation as a necessary evil in his quest for promotion up the Clap’s pecking order.

He seems mild mannered on first glance, but simmering just underneath the surface is a tiny white hot ball of rage waiting to be unleashed at the drop of a hat. Or the drop of a hat without the correct Object Trajectory Amendment Authorisation form being completed in duplicate. He feeble physical form means that these tirades seldom result in anything other than a snickering after he leaves the room.

The only thing Jarvis hates more about his job than the endless paperwork, is Hector. There is nothing that Jarvis would like to see  more than Hector tossed off the force and into the gutter where he belongs. Hector’s blatant disregard for rules and regulations, in particular, Human Effluent Evacuation Form 39-G, has won him a dangerous enemy in Jarvis. But Hector shows Jarvis the same healthy disregard that he shows to pretty much everyone and everything.

It’s that time of the week, where I introduce another character from the upcoming Hector iApp ‘We Negotiate with Terrorists’ . I’m not sure if I do this every Friday, and whether it merits the use of a ‘It’s that time of week…’ type of introduction but I might start making a habit of it so it I can use it. This week it is Hector’s boss (and my personal favourite), Chief Superintendent Meeks

Contrary to the cliche, Hector’s boss is a paper-pushing pansy. He never leaves his office, more concerned about paperwork, PC-ness and statistics than anything else: if the jails are full and the forms are all signed, he must be doing a good job!

His obsessive compulsive approach to paperwork has seen the introduction to the Clappers Wreake Police service of much maligned ‘Form Requisition Form’ where you have to fill out a form to request the form you need and then receive a form receipt form and a form requisition acknowledgement contract. As far as Meeks is concerned this has been one of his greatest triumphs. On Meek’s watch you can’t even go to the bathroom without filling out the relevant paperwork.

Hector knows that Meeks is a push-over, and he frequently pushes Meeks’ buttons by accidentally spilling tea over his paperwork or breaks wind with first filling out the proper ‘Gas Expulsion Authorisation Form’. But Meeks is unflappable and eternally cheery. Hector can’t seem to grasp why Meeks will not rise to his provocations, and despite Meeks being a pleasure to work with Hector always thinks that he his busting his balls.

His worst fear is that one day he will be replaced by a computer. He has an old money posh wife who has slept with just about everyone on the force behind his back. Sadly, Meeks has been impotent for years and tends to turn a blind eye (either that or he is clueless).

Design work on for the Hector: Fat Arse of the Law iApp ‘We Negotiate with Terrorists’ is almost complete so I thought I would share a few of the sketches that Dean has created for the gallimaufry of Clappers Wreake inhabitants that Hector has to interact with throughout the course of the game.

The Badge of Carnage games will feature a wide array of interesting characters that Hector will have to engage with in order to complete the series of fiendishly clever tasks he will be confronted with during the game. These are but a cross section of the Clappers Wreake society which also boasts gansters, mobsters, crooks, yobs, scoundrels, kerb crawlers, young offenders, ASBOs, lowlifes, pornographic shop proprietors, and stationary salesmen. So as you can see Hector really has his work cut out for him.

Disconcertingly, the Tramp has been christened Tim, which I would like to think has more to do with the alliteration rather than any passing resemblance in appearance or character traits to myself. The guys remain tight lipped about this, and I guess I should probably not dig any deeper for my own good.