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.

On Wednesday we went into Belfast sound recording studio, One Zero Zero, to record some voice overs for the cinematic cut scenes in the Hector: Fat Arse of the Law iApp ‘We Negotiate with Terrorists’.

Dean Burke, the visionary behind the property Hector: Fat Arse of the Law, was on hand to direct proceedings, as he had already directed the creation of the scripts and animatics of the the cut scenes that will be interspersed throughout the game. The cut scenes already had a rough guide track voice, provided by the multi-talented Mr Kevin Beimers, but this was recorded directly into Dean’s iMac so the quality was not quite Dolby Digital.

As always, thespian extraordinaire Richard Morss was on hand to provide the voices for the vast array of colourful characters that have been written into the cut scenes. Always one for the big stage, Richard put in a towering performance, showcasing his quite remarkable vocal dexterity.

The facilities at One Zero Zero are excellent and we were able to get some great recordings of Richard doing the business. Click here to hear a quick sample of what Richard was producing in the booth.

These shots are screen grabs taken from some footage we shot of the recording session. We will be releasing some exclusive behind the scenes peeks at the production of the game in the coming weeks. Keep you eye on the blog for more details.

I thought that I would introduce you to another of the characters in the iAPp that you will have to deal with in your pursuit of cleaning up the streets of Clapper’s Wreake. This week it is Hector ever faithful partner, Lambert

A devoted family man, albeit through fear of reprisals, Lambert, is ever present at the side of his mentor in the world of criminology, Hector. He is full of potential and enthusiasm, without the street smarts to complement it. His brain isn’t wired the same as anyone else on the force. His preferred leisure pursuit is extreme office filing.

He knows the police handbook inside and out, and lets Hector know when he’s bending the rules, but he doesn’t put up much of a fight when Hector tells him to shove it were the sun don’t shine. He is a compulsive note taker. Though Hector’s memory is like a steel trap, he occasionally looks to Lambert for a recap of events. He is socially inept with a poor sense of logic and deduction. He has only made his way so far up the Clapper’s Wreake Police Force chain (which isn’t far) because nobody else can stand working with Hector.

One of the best features of the upcoming iApp, Hector: Fat Arse of the Law ‘We Negotiate with Terrorists’ will be the quality of the artwork in the game. Dean Burke, has done a fantastic job designing Hector and this visual style has been carried through to the property’s first foray into the mobile and gaming market.

Below is just a s sample of the artwork from the game, showing the progression from finished sketch to actual in-game artwork. As any of our more iniquitous readers might have noticed the artwork is of the inside of a Clapper’s Wreake Police Cell. A truly ghastly place to end up, but not beyond the realms of possibility if you have ever visited the Wreake, and had your collar felt by the CWPD.

This cell will be featured in the game itself, probably to house some of the many deplorable and immoral characters you will come into contact with when you are navigating your way through the iApp.

I will be posting more exclusive artwork from the game over the next few weeks as we continue production, but for now you will have to make do with this little sample of what the finished game might look like. I would encourage you to poke and prod the cell on your screen to start to immerse yourself in the world in which you will be inhabiting when you play the ‘Badge of Carnage’ series of games. Happy poking!*

* slight word of warning to those who have left the 20th Century and have a flat screen monitor rather than a CRT, be gentle with your poking. We can’t accept any liability for screen damage from any over zealous fingering action.

Hector creator Dean Burke came up with this cracking bit of artwork for the Hector ‘Badge of Carnage’ games. As a tribute to the classic point and click adventure games that the Badge of Carnage games pay homage to he created a version of Hector as he would look had he been around LucasArts in the late 1980′s.

Part of me wishes that we were still limited to 8-bit graphics as that way we would give ourselves a better shot of getting the game and cut scenes all completed on time! But what would life be without a few challenges.

Sadly, we won’t be able to distribute the game on Floppy Disc as, ironically, even this image that Dean gave me was 1.49MB. So we would have two hopes of getting the game onto a Floppy, and one of them would be Bob. But you never know we might release the exclusive walk-through for the game on Floppy disc, so keep following the blog to find out more.

While Kevin immerses himself in his SDK, the rest of the studio has been busy producing the cinematic cut scenes for the game. Never ones to make life easy for ourselves, we have scripted and storyboarded 4 cut scenes which we aim to produce over the next couple of weeks. The first and last cut scenes are now being scene prepped ready to animated next week.

Dean has done a fantastic job of creating some great sequences so I thought that I would share some of the images from the animatic with you to whet your appetite.

There is some cracking dialogue in the scenes as well so expect a few laughs mixed in with a fair measure of pant tightening tension and drama. Kevin stepped manfully into the shoes of Straandlooper’s resident voice over artist extraordinaire Richard Morss, to supply some guide dialogue for timing purposes.

We are planning to record some of the dialogue for the cut scenes next week so there will undoubtedly be a post about the VO session as it is always good for a laugh. Watching Richard  get into charcater for a 20 stone Polish prostitue should be quite a sight.

As you know ‘We Negotiate with Terrorists’ is the first installment of the trilogy of games entitled ‘Badge of Carnage’ featuring Hector: Fat Arse of the Law. But just who is Hector? Well, I thought that it was about time that I gave you a better introduction to the man who you will be fingering around your iPhone in the not too distant future.

Hector is the brainchild of Northern Irish resident, and all round artistic genius, Dean Burke and is one of the first original intellectual properties developed by Straandlooper, a digital animation studio based in Holywood, Northern Ireland.

While ‘Badge of Carnage’ is Hector’s first foray into the mobile world, the property has been quietly gathering momentum over the last few months. It has already been sold to a Russian TV Station and we are in the advanced stages of negotiation with an Indian co-production partner regarding an animated feature length cinematic release.

But enough of all that corporate cobblers, who is Hector, and why should I want to finger him?

Detective Inspector Hector is the grumpiest, gruffest, most sarcastic, cynical bastard of a cop you have ever had the misfortune of being collared by. Imagine being stuck on the phone with your credit card company for four hours and thirty seven minutes as you have apparently just bought £3,476 worth of Star Trek memorabilia in the name of Gral Stovakar, then you spill Marinara sauce on the crouch of your pants just before your meeting with Brenda from accounts, then you get a flat tyre on the drive home, stub your toe on the wheeljack, and when you finally make it in through the door to find that your dog has eaten your tea and subsequently curled one out on the pillow of your bed. Mash all that up into a fat guy in a cheap suit and that’s who Hector is.

Though he’s up against the insurmountable task of cleaning up the streets of Clapper’s Wreake, he solves crimes with a vengeance and (almost) always gets his man, even if it means cutting a few corners – paperwork, warrants, evidence, etc – in the process. Hector is not exactly one to let a little thing like evidence get in the way of solving a case. He might take the occasional bribe, or swipe beer off underage louts, but he’s not a dirty cop…more unwashed.

His history is tinged with tragedy, as a Rube Goldberg chain of events killed all of his family and friends and partner in a day. Since then he’s immersed himself in 24 hour police work to keep his mind off the tragedy. Well, he has immersed himself in a few other things as well, to be honest, but at least he can claim for overtime if he does it on the job. He still holds the record for the highest blood alcohol reading of anyone in the Clapper’s Wreake Police Department and he can be frequently found fast asleep in a holding cell sleeping off the night before.

In ‘We Negotiate with Terrorists’ Hector is up against one of his most challenging cases to date, and it is up to you to help him solve the case and return a modicum of safety and sanity back to Clapper’s Wreake. Well, if you can find him a clean pair of pants it will be a good start!

So work is underway in the production of the latest addition to the Hector brand – the iAPP game. Dean Burke – Straandlooper’s Head of Visual Development and creator of Hector, and Kevin Beimers – Straandlooper’s Head of Online & Mobile Development and resident iPhone whiz, have been hard at work coming up with a script for our proposed iPhone game.

Here we see Kevin and Dean thrashing out the story using a roll of wallpaper that Ali had brought in to the studio. I did say that budgets were tight. The story session is the most important stage of production as it is at this point where we can determine the level of work required to achieve our goals and then schedule our resources accordingly. Trying to strike a balance between what we can realistically deliver and what we want to deliver is always going to be one of the main problems we face as a company. Without the huge resources of companies like Lucas Arts and EA, we have to be very clever about what we develop in order to ensure that we do not waste any money and that any investment from the company will yield a potential return. But the Straandlooper team are used to working with tight schedules and budgets and have proved that they are more than capable of coming up with creative solutions to difficult design problems.

But never ones to make life easy for ourselves, rather than create a story for one iApp, Kevin and Dean came up with a story for a trilogy of games. To be fair the story that has been drafted is fantastic and promises to be an extremely entertaining game, but as Production Manager it is my respobility, no, my duty, to pour cold water on everyone’s ideas. While we do hope to produce 3 games, the CIIF fund that we have just received will be used to develop the first part of the trilogy and then we will look at raising the finance for parts 2 & 3 after we launch and deliver the rest of our slate of CIIF products.

The story sessions were extremely successful and have yielded what promises to be a really entertaining and engaging game. The only problem came when Ali came back into the studio after lunch and found that his wallpaper had been scribbled on. It turns out that he had been planning on wallpapering his downstairs walk-in humidor and that this was his sample roll from Harry Corry’s.