We have been contemplating how best we should market the Hector: Fat Arse of the Law ‘Badge of Carnage’ iApps for a while now. Leaflet drops, mass mailout, e-mail campaign, and even a Blimp have all been considered. But in a flash of inspiration, Dean came up with an idea of creating a series of banner ads that we could seed in various sites around the web. The banners will be variations on the image below.

Every so often we will remove a piece of clothing from the beautiful woman in the advert and possibly even add in a plea for you to rescue her from impossible peril, and maybe even refer to the player as ‘My Liege’ or ‘Sire’. Granted it is a bit off the wall, and some might say that it won’t work, but I just have a feeling about this one. I think Dean might be onto something. I think that it is fresh, new and innovative enough to really make an impact. Let us know what you think. You can also e-mail if you are keen that we don’t remove any clothes from the female in our ads.

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 These screenshots are from the as yet unpublished areas of the game.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.

Dean Burke, the brains behind Hector: Fat Arse of the Law and the director of the ‘Badge of Carnage’ series of iApps, has created a number of exclusive character posters for some of the more colourful members of the Clappers Wreake population that Hector will have to interact with through the course of the first iApp ‘We Negotiate with Terrorists’. The first of the posters is Clappers Wreake’s favourite tramp – Trampy Tim.

I am not trying to read too much into the decision to call the alcoholic tramp after myself but I can’t help but notice the resemblance in the charcater design: the unkempt facial hair, capillaried boozy beak of a nose, boss eyes and penchant for a Listerine on the Rocks of a night on the town.

Keep an eye out for Trampy Tim in the upcoming release of ‘We Negotiate with Terrorists’ early in the new year.

Sorry about the radio silence on the Hector Blog. I can assure you that the lack of activity on the blog is not representative of the amount of work that has been going on in the studio over the last few days. The Straandlooper team are working at break neck speed in order to get the Hector: Fat Arse of the Law iApp ‘We Negotiate with Terrorists’ finished before the end of the year. In the meantime I will continue to whet your appetitie for the launch of the game with exclusive artwork and images and behind the scenes news from the production of the first point and click adventure game for the iPhone to be produced in Northern Ireland.

If you want to find out any more information about Hector: Fat Arse of the Law you can visit the website – www.thehectorfiles.tv – and keep checking back here for more information on how the production is going.

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.

Now that we are moving into production of the animated cut scenes for the Hector: Fat Arse of the Law iApp ‘We Negotiate with Terrorists’ I though that I would give you an exclusive behind the scenes look at how we are animating the fat arse of the law himself.

There is rarely a day that goes by without someone saying to me ‘Straandlooper’s animation is fantastic! Tell me, how do you get the animation to look so realistic?’ Well, if you asked Hector animator Colin McCusker this question he would tell you that it takes years of training and an inherent God given gift to be able to create such realism in a 2D charcater. That, as well as devastating good looks, a silver tounge and a butt that won’t quit. But in actual fact I can now exclusively reveal that Colin is in fact over egging his role significantly.

In what will be quite a shock to the animation world, I can reveal that in a bold move, Straandlooper have decided to produce all of the animation for the Hector iApp using state of the art motion capture techniques.

For the un-initiatied, Motion capture, or mocap, is the term used to describe the process of recording movement and translating that movement onto a digital model. It refers to the recording of human actors actions, and using that information to animate digital character models in 3D animation. But Straandlooper are set to revolutionise the 2D animation industry by being the first company to use the technology for 2D animation.

Early footage is proving to be quite remarkable and I hope to be able to post some animation tests soon so that you can marvel at the results. While the production of the motion capture animation has seen an increase in our animation output, it has been absolute murder working with the actor cast to simulate Hector, Mr Harold Dixon-Balls. After being fired from his recurrent non-talking extra role in the jewel of the BBC’s afternoon programming ‘Doctors‘, for what the BBC are calling ‘artistic differences’, Harry was due to be turning out at the Grand Opera House in Belfast as second understudy to Widow Twankey in the upcoming production of Aladdin. That was until Straandlooper stepped in and offered him a role he couldn’t refuse. But working with Harry has been stretching the patience of every one on the team, not least Hector creator and director, Dean Burke. The usually calm and collected Dean snapped during one heated session when Harry asked for a sixth toilet break, before we had even finished attaching all of the markers to his body. Harry also insisted on having a larger marker for his genital region, despite Dean’s insistence that this was not necessary for the purposes of motion capture. This coupled with his questionable personal hygiene and penchant for large quantities of Amaretto, meant that the sessions were not without their difficulties. But then working with Colin has its difficulties too.

So keep checking back here on the blog for the results of the motion capture session to see how Hector will be looking in the first installment of the ‘Badge of Carnage’ trilogy of iApps.

If ever I needed evidence that Kevin is working to hard programming the Hector iApp then this is it. At Halloween, he dressed up his son, Milo, as everyone’s favourite pixelated plumber, Mario.

I think Kevin has been spending to much time immersed in the world of digital gaming and now itis starting to have an adverse impact on his home life. Just as long as none of his family end up being dressed up like Sonic the Hedgehog, Zelda, Blanka, or even worse Hector then I will just pass it off as the healthy venting of Kevin’s creative juices outisde of the Apple SDK.

It was only a matter of time before Hector got carried away with all of the publicity for the Badge of Carnage games and went all media luvvy on us. Sure enough, he has only gone and done an interview with classy gents mag Esquire – the magazine for men who mean business.

In the magazine you will get an insight into the dark cavernous world of Clappers Wreake’s least favorite son – Detective Inspector Hector. Also in the issue you can read about how to look good in your speedo’s this winter from none other than Clappers Wreake’s Lambert. And if that is not worth the price of the mag then I don’t know what is.

You have seen the Director’s Cut of the Hector: the Interrogator, well this time the Director’s not just cut – he’s bloody plastered. Check out the full un-cut version.

Hector: Fat Arse of the Law and his faithful assistant Lambert are going to be making their debut on the App Store soon in the upcoming release of ‘We Negotiate with Terrorists’ point and click adventure iApp. Keep checking back here to find out more.