July 2017 Update – New trailer and Con info!
Hello dear Tex Murphy fans! High time we had another update on The Poisoned Pawn, don’t you say?
New Trailer
Firstly, you may have noticed a new trailer released today. This latest trailer was created to showcase the game at Awesomecon (Washington DC, Mar/Apr), Salt Lake Gaming Con (Salt Lake City, July), and the upcoming AVCon in Adelaide, Australia. There is quite a lot of new content and locations presented in this new trailer – many of which existing fans will instantly recognize.
You will also notice the team has been putting extra time and attention into the details that bring the environments to life. There is no stone un-turned when it comes to creating the world you will get to explore. Every light, display, animation, asset, background or foreground is being constructed with care and purpose to immerse the player in a rich world that is truly ALIVE. We want you to be able to play the game multiple times and notice something new every time.
Holger has done a fantastic job evolving his skill along the way, adding new content and features that enable us to achieve the type of visual fidelity that earned our game the reputation of: “Oh, that one that looks like the triple A title” at Awesomecon.
We are upgrading the platform… yet again
Our programming lead Darren began investigating upgrading our engine to the latest version of Unity (2017), so far the results have been promising. After AVCon (this week) we will be looking to transition over to the new platform and take advantage of all the cool features it offers.
We are extremely happy with the results working with Unity. In fact, one of regular comments we get (when showcasing the game at the convention) is: “Oh, this looks great… I see you’re using Unreal”. Ultimately, we chose Unity because of the advantages it offered that were specific to our team and our project. We are very flattered that the skills being utilized in the creation of the game have been able to bridge the perception gap, enabling many players to realize Unity holds up very well compared to other engines, and that it can look “AAA” with a dedicated and talented team at the helm.
Cons, cons, cons!
We mentioned above that we showcased the game at Awesomecon and Salt Lake Gaming Con. Both were extremely successful. For Awesomecon, we showcased the 3D/desktop version of the game, and players got to experience a few locations with the Xbox 360 controller. For SLGC we presented a handful of new levels in VR, which really blew audiences away. We are aiming for an extremely intuitive user experience for the VR version of the game, and so far feedback has been extremely positive.
A note on the live stream that was schedules for July 8…
Some folks expressed concerns, as they were expecting a sit-down Q&A stream (and we were too, to be honest), but allow us to clarify with this statement we release on Twitter and Facebook shortly after SLGC:
While it was unfortunate we could not host a proper Q&A stream (with Aaron, and maybe Chris), we hoped that this short experience would suffice in the meantime. The dates for the scheduled live stream were set before we knew we were going to have a booth at Salt Lake Gaming Con. After this announcement, all team members were hard at work to get a demo completed to showcase to the attendees. Their hard work and dedication to deliver what we were able to showcase was miraculous… but this meant that the scheduled stream date sneaked up on us. So we decided: rather than cancel the stream, it could be a good opportunity to allow those who were not able to attend to see the game and the booth. We were, however, relying on mobile data while presenting in a crowded environment, so we apologize if the quality was lacking.
That said: we are going to make up for this and schedule a new date for a new stream. This will be a proper sit-down session with the Chaotic Fusion team, and we are going to try and bring Chris and Aaron in to offer their perspective, and showcase more of the game in a much more suited environment for all.
We are currently working out a new date where we can hold the proper sit-down Q&A session.
The story
Aaron has finished a first draft of the Poisoned Pawn story, which a lot of the in-game content and cinematics will be based off. He is currently revising the story, and will soon begin scripting the scenes for the FMV shoot which will be coming up soon. We are all very excited to read Aaron’s polished and complete Poisoned Pawn story, and continue working closely with him to help bring the story of The Poisoned Pawn to life in the game.
Donations, contributions and pre-orders
Some of you have expressed interest in donating, contributing or pre ordering for the project. We are super humbled and flattered by this gesture. While we do not have anything in place to accept these offers, if you are interested we may have something set up for this in the near future, so please stick around and we will keep you posted! Once again: we are really thankful for these gestures.
So, when is it coming out?
We are still aiming for early 2018. That has not really changed… granted, we all know game development is almost always a case of: “90%, and then the *other* 90%” – but we are doing our best to stay on target, and will advise folks if that is going to change, in advance.
That’s all for now folks. Time for us to get back to work! We will keep folks posted via Social Media (please follow us on Twitter if you are not already
@ChaoticFusionTM) and look forward to sharing more news in the next update!