Let the adventure continue

Let the adventure continue

The second chapter of our Trader of Stories series is now online!

play it now:

www.rudowscy.com

You can also check the Trader of Stories facebook page:

www.facebook.com/traderofstories/

Have a nice game,

Rudowski brothers

Let the adventure begin

Our newest game: Trader of Stories - chapter 1 is now online!

We are happy to invite you for an unforgettable travel in the world of The Big Old Tree that Dreams, the world of Myosotis - the Trader of Stories. See how it all began.

play it now:

www.rudowscy.com/tos1/

You can also check the Trader of Stories facebook page:

www.facebook.com/traderofstories/

Have a nice game,

Rudowski brothers

Fighting with bugs

Finally the game engine is complete but that does not mean that the work is done. Where there is at least one line of code there must be a bug. And there are many, many lines of code here :) 

We are testing the game for different browsers and trying to improve its performance on them. We are also waiting for one very important aspect of the game, but I don't want to jinx it by talking about it. There is light in the tunnel and we are closing in on it. 

Do you speak English - yes, I don't

Thank You all for Your comments and advices concerning the translation. At first I decided to translate the whole text in english myself, no matter how broken the results would be, hoping that some good soul would find mercy on me and fix it after the game release. It was not the best option, for some time you all would have to endure my efforts in english translation, but it was the only I got. Until recently... Great news! We found our translator, or rather she found us. Maria Barć is back on board. She did such a good job in "A Grain of Truth" and is working very hard right now to fix my english. OK, I will be honest with You guys. She translates the whole thing from scratch. Faith in humanity restored, faith in my english falling :)

Still working on the engine and music. Will keep you updated.

Lost in translation

The game is almost finished. The scenario is written, the graphics all done and we are now coding it all in the game engine. But there is one thing missing. English translation. With the "A Grain of truth" game we were given a helping hand by Maria Barć, but unfortunatelly we lost contact with her (if You are reading this Maria please contact us :) ). We could really us some help in translating the game from polish to english. The game is quite long (about 80pages of script) so it would be a lot of work but the alternative is playing the game with broken english as pretty as this blog.

Still there

To paraphrase the words of Mark Twain: The raports of the death of the game are greatly exaggerated :) We are still there and we are still working, and we have an in-game image to proof it. But the only anwser we can give for: "when it will be ready?" is: when it's ready :)

Moving slowly but forward

Wow, the time flies quickly these days. I'm sorry I was not writing any posts lately but during the past months me and my brother had so many discussions about the game, how it should look and work, about lots of other different projects that we were not sure about the future of the Trader of Stories and did not wanted to bother You with our constantly changing ideas. We tried to be careful in what we share with You as many sketches, early game graphics, scripts, game engines were discarded by us and thrown away. But after all this brainstorm we think we have come to a conclusion. We are still in a very early stage of development here but after reading from You that You are losing hope for Myosotis and her adventure our hearts broke and we just could not stand still. 

We don't want to give away too many secrets, especially so early, therefore we are leaving an image form the game without any comments :)

Best Regards

Rudowscy Brothers 

Hi everyone. after more than a year I decided to write a post here, on the Trader of Stories blog. So for taking so long but many changes took place in our lives and we simply didn't have time to update. Putting it all in a nutshell - fatherhood can be very time consuming :) 

We are currently working on a next episode of the Trader of Stories, taking place right after A Grain of Truth. In between singing lullabies and changing diapers I'm writing a detailed script. I really can say when I will finish. Parenthood is a new experience for me :)

P.S. Some of You ask about the demo "Trader of Stories" and if we will finish it. The truth is that the game "A Grain of Truth" was a reboot of the series. We wanted to tell the story more detailed and divide it into episodes for better and faster sharing with gaming community. Saying that You can guess the next episode I'm talking about will take place in Myosotis home village.

See You soon and don't loose hope. The next episode will come out... eventualy :)

a Grain of Truth - finished!

a Grain of Truth is now online!

It took us some time but here we are, glad to invite you for an unforgettable travel in the world of The Big Old Tree that Dreams, the world of Myosotis - the Trader of Stories.

play it now: 
http://www.rudowscy.com/agot 

Have a nice game,
Rudowscy brothers

Almost there...

We are slowly coming to an end in our new project "A Grain of Truth". The whole scenario is constructed, the dialogs written (special thanks to Maria Barć), the graphics drawn and the music composed. But it is no time to rest as there is still a lot of work ahead. As we are making the game in HTML we (and by we I mean brother Martin) need to write the whole code from the scratch. Fortunately Martin is a skilful programmer and therefore the progress bar reaches 90%.

How it all began...

It all started with a train journey. When I returned home from college by train the travel stretched for ages. During the ride I read, drew, and ... I let my imagination loose. At some point, from this idleness, the idea of the Big Old tree that Dreams came up. Although at that time I gave him the title of Vigne Virge (with an error as I learned later, it should be Vigne Vierge, which in French means the Wild Vines). In the beginning there was the ash, with it roots reaching the Yggdrasill from the Norwegian mythology, who much later became the Great Oak. Around him different lands grew, inhabited by various characters. At first I thought of the world of the Big Old Tree only as the background of my comic book. But for a long time I just took pleasure in the creation of the world, its geography, culture and people. Years passed and the world of the Great Oak survived three unfinished comics, several short stories and, recently, computer games. And although in the meantime in my head and on the pages of my sketchbook many different worlds were born the world of the Big Old Tree that Dreams is the closest to me. Maybe it's because I met that tree during a walk? It was huge, dominating over the others. And it was old. You could sense it, not just by looking at its twisted branches, roots winding deep inside the earth, the cracked bark, but also by the attitude of the surrounding trees, which rose around him as if with respect. There was something mystical about him, metaphysical. I imagined that he was dreaming. What can an old, ailing oak tree dream about?

The progress bar for "A Grain of Truth" reaches 85%.

Launch page

The game "a Grain of Truth" has now its own launch page.
 It is also on facebook and twitter.
Follow us and be in touch!

Music

Since I've started working on the first Trader of Stories game I knew that music is a very important part of the game. It builds the atmosphere of the game, like an additional background but on a whole new level. Therefore I'm very excited that for our newest project "A Grain of Truth" I was able to invite to cooproation a great music composer: Sergiu Muresan. He created four tracks illustrating the changing environment of the game. Thanks to him the game sounds really amazing and the progress bar hits 80%.
Once again - thank You Sergiu!  

Last location

I have just finished the last location for the game thus achiving 68% of the game progress (the game contains 22 full screen locations and 14 closeups). What is left? Puzzles, cutscenes, music and programming, so pretty much, but we are working on full speed and the finish line is getting closer.

Sketches

I have been so busy working on the game that I have forgotten to update the progress. I’m almost finish doing the backgrounds for all location. The inventory is up and running as well as the map that will allow for fast travel during the gameplay. And the progress bar hits 60%.

Below I present some rough sketches for the game.

Why HTML?

Have we said that we do this amazing thing all in HTML? Yes it is true - we are so excited about the possibilities and the whole creation process that we can't wait to show it to you. We used it for prototyping but we quick discovered that it's powerful enough to create the game we love. HTML is open source, completely free and really fun to use, and it's perfect for 'Myst' like type of game. When we see an adventure game we want to touch it and we want to be able to play it on mobile screens (iOS, Android) too. Now we can - direct from browser with no lack of good game experience. And we plan for even more…

Of course HTML5 has it own issues with older browsers like Internet Explorer and to play it we will need modern browser - and only it.

By the way the process bar hits 49%

Back from vacation

I'm back from vacation and working on the game. Myosotis climbs up just as the progress bar that hits 40%.

A Grain of Truth - A Valley of Floating Rocks

In the last post I have written about the main hero of the new story. Now I would like to present the location in which the story will take place. For those who have played the demo it will look familiar as it is the home of the Wiseman, located among the plains of endless grass. The concept of the place has changed however as I have returned to the original idea of floating rocks (if You don’t believe please check the first post on this blog when I have presented the page form my comicbook).

The main task of our heroine will be to solve the riddle of this place, so I will not write anything more to not spoil the puzzle.

I’m going for a vacation so there will be no new information for about a month.

And the progress bar goes to 35%.

A Grain of Truth - characters

The main character of the "A Grain of  Truth" game will be Myosotis, known from the "Trader of Stories". I wanted to start witch this character for two reasons. First of all because this is how the whole story begins, it is an introduction to a much larger story, in which Myosotis plays only a small (but important) part. And secondly I wanted to make a more smoothly connection with the previous games. In the next chapter the main character will change. The plan is that each chapter will have it's own hero/heroine. But it does not mean that we will not meet Myosotis again. She will play her role but as a non playable character.

Below is the portait of the Myosotis and one of the characters she will meet along the way.

The progress bar goes to 30%.

A Grain of Truth - beginning of a new project

At this time I have planned to release the second part of the Trader of Stories Flash game  (Bell's Heart). However, due to some delays on the part of the scenario we had to postpone the work on the game for some time. 

So, together with my brother Martin, we began to work on another project. Many years ago I have written a story that gave the birth to the world The Old Tree that Sleeps (the world of Myosotis). All other stories I have written later, including the story of Myostis I have told in the Trader of Stories are parts of that larger tale. I have tried to tell that story in different ways, like writting in a form of a book or a comicbook. Finally I decided that I will try to do it in the form of a game. The first chapter of this story will be presented in a game entitled:"A Grain of Truth." The nature of the game will be similar to the "Bell's Heart". I will write more about it in the next post.

So far the progress is about 24%. 

Below are two screenshots from the game.