As you probably know, Chicken Police is a Noir adventure game. Our newest favorite, home-made genre definition for it is "Orwellesque Buddycop Noir Advenutre", in which the NOIR plays the most important role.

So in this diary we will talk about the genre of film-noir and the effect it has on the game.



We all know what a noir is. As soon as we hear the word, the dark alley, the never ending rain, the stripes that the moonlight paints in the dusty office and, of course, the burned-out investigators and the dangerous, beautiful women will jump on us.

Well, all of this is of course present in Chicken Police, but we dug a little deeper when we discovered the peculiarities of style, and we were digging so deep that our writer Bánk had lost his relationship with reality for a little while...



"During the creation of the story, I watched about 70 noir films. 74, to be accurate. Somehow each of them had an effect on me, although I should rather say the style and its elements, archetypes, different writing techniques and other catches burned into my skin and my mind. Before, I would watch noir superficially... I considered it a loose, cool style that I like, but I quickly realized that it was an extremely complex and deep genre, waiting to have its secrets fully discovered.



My undisputed favorites are The Big Sleep, Gilda, Detour, In a Lonley Place, The Killing, Double Indemnity, and Murder, My Sweet, but It would take me forever if I wanted to list all the movies that added something to the game in the end. It soon became clear that noir is not jut the above-mentioned pale outlines...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWIuKcyuesg
The all-pervading scent of sin, the hopelessness and immorality, the tensions and relationships between the characters are what make this genre so unique to me.

Crime is never the centerpiece!

Noir is about those whose lives have been stamped by sin. The protagonists and characters always get the main focus instead of the action. From this point of view, the film-noir is much more a drama and a psycho-thriller than a crime movie.

And it is more philosophical than some loose moral doctrine.



But not only the black and white film-noirs influenced me in writing the story and the characters.

Chicken Police is a buddy cop-noir, with two main protagonists, Sonny Featherland and Marty McChicken. The strange chemistry between the protagonists is one of the most important elements of the story and character development.





Sonny is an old, tired, burnt-out rooster while Marty still feels at the top. Once they were some kind of celebrity-cops, who were mockingly called Chicken Police. But with time, the nickname quickly gained a new meaning and the public almost worshiped them (even a series of books were written about them), and Clawville's criminals even winced at the name: Chicken Police.

But it was almost ten years ago and Sonny is counting the days until his retirement when a strange lady visits his office with an even stranger case.

Everything starts here, and Sonny soon realizes that Chicken Police has to come back together!



Though the relationship between Sonny and Marty is continuous chafing on the surface, the many hardships, adventures and horrors that they have previously experienced has forged their relationship almost to a brotherly one, and inseparable.

Their "love-hate" relationship will be one of the player's most significant entry points into the characters and the world of the Wilderness.

During the writing of the game, the most exciting part was always the development of their dialogues because of their special, deep and humorous relationship.

Meanwhile, the infinitely dark and unprecedented mood of Noir stretches over the story as a great contrast and background.



I've never had the opportunity to work with such exciting and versatile materials before, so it is not surprising that while I was working on the first game, I could outline the story of four possible sequels and several spin-off games.

But that's the future...
There is a game we have to finish first! ;) "

- Bánk

In our next diary enty, we will dive deep into the mysteries of coding and programming.

So stay tuned, folks and have a beautiful weekend!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1084640/Chicken_Police/

Find our previous updates here:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1084640/announcements/detail/1586870834670163962
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1084640/announcements/detail/1586870834659213636
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1084640/announcements/detail/1589121999170324421

You've already seen how we create our characters in our previous dev blog so, this time we'd like to tell you about how they are came to life and set in motion.
Our 2D animator, Alex told us how he does it.

Say hello to Dr. Reginald B. Bubo:





https://youtu.be/V7NoI71ttV8
“Animation, in my opinion, is somewhere between the artistic and technical sides of game development. Your aim as an animator is to create appealing movement, but at the same time, you have to make sure that you are using the right tools. All of our characters are animated in-engine, which can be somewhat limiting at times, but it’s restrictions that really push your problem-solving skills.”

The first step towards a moving a character is the separation of its body parts. The amount of time required to complete a character’s texture sheet depends on the number and nature of poses involved.

Watch a sped up recording of Dr. Bubo’s “dissection:”
https://youtu.be/Bs2QZyWi3hw
“Does a sharp edge work here, or should it be blurry? Where’s the pivot point of this specific part? After some practice, your brain adjusts to see where and how you have to cut to enable motion that doesn’t reveal that you are basically rotating sheets of paper on top of one another.”
- Alex

Painting is an essential skill for this task, as parts that were covered before the separation must be filled in to be viewable on their own - otherwise, you’d see double in some areas during the animation!

The whole process showcased above has to be repeated for each different pose, with little exception. Since we work with two views per character, heads only have to be taken apart twice. In some cases, we can get away with using parts from a previous pose as well, reducing the texture space required. It’s a game of finding the right balance between aesthetics and optimization.



“Following the disassembly, the character is reassembled in-engine, and it’s ready to be animated! Being a ‘middleman’ between artist and programmer, I try to do a bit of everything: finding ways to enrich the visuals, writing tools to speed up processes wherever possible, experimenting with new techniques to help enhance the performance of the game etc.”
- Alex



Alex uses Photoshop to prepare our characters for animation in Unity3D, a Wacom Intuos 5 Pro L (Touch) tablet to paint, and a vertical mouse to avoid wrist pain.



Thank you for reading our post. Every week, we will arrive with new, exciting blog posts from the making of Chicken Police, so it's worth following us.



See you next time, folks!
And don't forget to Wishlist Chicken Police. ;)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1084640/Chicken_Police/

Find our previous updates here:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1084640/announcements/detail/1586870834659213636
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1084640/announcements/detail/1589121999170324421

Bánk, the project's writer-director gathered for us which games were especially influential in creating Chicken Police's story, world and characters. They might not come as a surprise, but the reasons are. ;) If you read the arcticle, you will become a little bit closer to the spirit of Chicken Police.

Bánk "I wanted to be a videogame developer since my childhood. Among other things, these games were the ones that eventually drove me to this fantastic journey and even played a huge role in the development of Chicken Police."

GRIM FANDANGO – For Love and Bones

Grim is everything! It was maybe the most definitive gaming experience of my childhood, and also turned out to be one of the most determinate experiences of my adulthood too. Amazing characters, endlessly exciting and insane story, simply... everything about it! For a long time I only had the demo version of the game, which I've completed about 10-15 times if not more.
I didn't even understand the text completely. I learned English from video games and then I was less than a beginner. So I came back to it again and again and I understood more and more every time. Not just the text, but what the game really wants to say.

Grim taught me that no matter how great your setting and your story is, the characters are always the most important! - That's why I've created my own character generation formula (which I use ever since), and Grim, among others, made me fell in love irrevocably with the noir genre, and movies like Gilda, The Big Sleep, Double Indemnity or (the actually not even noir) Casablanca.

Oh and Manny's adventure also taught me that music is one of the most important elements of moody games like these. "Un dos tres cuatro... ta ta taaaaa!"
Huge heartfelt thanks to Tim Schafer, Peter McConnell and Tony Plana amongst many others...



L.A. NOIRE – The Golden Boy

Not even a question. By the time this game came out, noir was already one of my favorite genres. L.A. Noir was not only an almost perfect story with a fantastic mood, but the definitive investigating simulator. Unfortunately the project was bleeding from a few wounds, but it still inspired us immensely. So, huge respect and thank you, Team Bondi!



POLICENAUTS AND SNATCHER – Neon lights and buddy-cop noir

Both of them are amazing detective games in Mr. Kojima's unique storytelling, featuring real, alive characters (and incredibly funny dialogues at times). Policenauts is closer to my heart because of the buddy-cop theme, which Chicken Police also borrowed in the end. Actually it's Lethal Weapon in sci-fi version, and it's hard to come up with anything cooler than that...

Furthermore these games' gameplay is similar to what we created, with dialogues and interrogation being in the focus. Cult classics, that's true, but still undeservedly ignored. (REMASTER, anyone??)



BLADE RUNNER – Do the androids dream of good videogames?

When I first saw it as a child, it made my brain explode (it still does even today, when I get back to it from time to time). It was a little bit of adventure and a little bit of action, and the "camera-photo" riddles were almost surreal, the like I've never seen again ever since. (If you know about something similar, tell me!)

It was a groundbreaking game! To be honest... I never finished it because of some sort of bug, but it was still an unforgettable experience. I also LOVE the original novel by Philip K. Dick, and the movie version is very close to my heart too, so it's a no brainer BR is in my top games. (and yes, Deckard was an andorid!)



ALAN WAKE – "Previously on Alan Wake"

Another undeservedly ignored game. It masterfully twists the literary topoi of classic pulp-horror novels and their movie versions. Simply a forgotten masterpiece. I've completed it a thousand times, and - when I'll have time to play anything -, I'm sure I'm going to reach for it again.
"Previously on Alan Wake" I'm never going to get this sentence out of my head.



SAM & MAX HIT THE ROAD – Total mindfukk

Shame or not, I've only run into this game in my adulthood. I started to play with it at the insistence of our programmer, Péter, and its humour, breakings of the fourth wall and the two main characters blew my mind.

I'm still trying to recover from it, with more or less success... (probably less)



+1 BIOSHOCK - Would You Kindly?

There's Bioshock and there's everything else...Narrative design, writing, characters, setting, music, mood. Bioshock is one of a kind. Whatever game I'm working on or will be in the future, Bioshock will always affect me one way or another. I'll have to shake hands with Ken levine once.



"Maybe the most important thing is that the mood and the atmosphere must be coherent. In creating narrative games, you must pay attention to a lot of things that the player maybe won't even notice (or will be affected only subconsciously), but all in all I believe everything stands on the characters, who we'll learn to love or hate in order to be breathing with them within the world they live in.

It all depends on whether you, the player, want to know, is the character have a life outside of the game? If the answer is yes, you, as a writer, did your job well. "

- Bánk



In a later developer diary post, Bánk will elaborate on how he builds his characters and their world, and even unveil his "top secret" character generation formula.

Until then we'll be back with lots and lots of exciting developer posts, soon for example we'll talk about character animation with our animator, Alex.

Stay tuned, folks and don't forget to spread the word: The Chicken Police is coming... ;)

The Wild Gentlemen



And don't forget to Wishlist Chicken Police, folks. ;)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1084640/Chicken_Police/

Find our previous updates here:

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1084640/announcements/detail/1589121999170324421

One of the most exciting aspects of game development is character design. But what's so interesting about creating a character? First of all, you need to write the background story, figure out what type of animal he/she should be, endorse the most important personality traits, find the motivations, and find the model ... moreover, in our case two models, one human and one animal, because in Chicken Police all characters are made with photo manipulation technology.



Watch the video about how Natasha was made, the female protagonist of our story:
https://youtu.be/Bzb48xg_VBU

Our art director Zoli tells us how the characters were made in the first place.

"The amount of time spent with one character is difficult to determine... It can be one and a half weeks if it's not problematic. But usually it is. The NPC's which are "single-phase" characters done in several (1-2) days.

However, there are complex characters (Our two main protagonists Sonny and Marty for example), and they are especially important.





The biggest difficulty is creating a head. We used stock photos for some of the characters, but then we realized that it'd be better to use our own photos. This is where the wildlife parks and zoos came into the picture.



But it doesn't solve all the problems... The background and small depth of field are almost always inseparable from the head. Therefore, 85% of the time, I have to draw the hairs and feathers around our characters.

Zipp is full of tattoos and scars, Natasha's got an almost human look, with painted eyes. On Bubo, the glasses were built from scratch.



Combining bodies and heads is difficult. In many cases, because the neck size is very different from that of a man, believable shadows are vital for a good and natural end result.





Why did we decide on our own photography? From the above I think it's clear. Same animal for different views, right angle, depth of field, illumination, and enough size!





For me the most exciting task is to create a new creature who has never existed. Often the challenge itself is joyful. Seeing the starting material that looks hopeless but the strategies are in the head, that's how it can be solved! The greatest pleasure, finally, is to see the character in your own environment! In the game!

I am most pleased that I can work in such a team of professional people and such an exeptional project!

Stuff I use: The characters are made in Photoshop only. (on an 8 year old PC, but on a much newer and better monitor, and on a drawing tablet)
I also use a Canon 5DsR camera with professional optics for the photo shoots."

- Zoli



Thank you for reading our post. Every week, we will arrive with new, exciting blog posts from the making of Chicken Police, so it's worth following us.

See you next time, folks!

And don't forget to Wishlist Chicken Police. ;)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1084640/Chicken_Police/

Hey Everyone,

We added six more languages to the steam descriptions, making it available in eight languages altogether. :)
(which we'll probably expand later)

Our steam site is available in: English, French, German, Brazilian Portuguese, Hungarian, Russian, Spanish and Italian.

How many languages ​​will be exactly when the game is released? We don't know for sure... but we planning to add a minimum of 4 language at release, and to add more ​to the list later. :)

Have a nice weekend, folks!

The Wild Gentlemen

Dear Everyone,
Hey, folks!

We are pleased and proud to inform you that our "Animal Noir Adventure Game", Chicken Police, is now present on Steam as you probably already noticed.

It's been a long journey getting this far and a way longer journey is still ahead of us.

The game is developed around the clock with expected release in the first quarter of 2020.

If you like what you see, please share it, spread the news, 'cause in this wolf-dominated world you can easily lose two roosters, whatever the size of the gun they're carrying ...

Thank you, and have a nice weekend!

The Wild Gentlemen