It’s time for that irregualr bastion of the Hector Files Blog – the meet a member of  the Clappers Wreake community post. This time it is Clappers Wreake’s answer to Bob Dylan, well, actually it more like their answer to Glenn Medeiros, it’s Busker McCusker.

Busker McCusker is another member of the Clapper’s Wreake fraternity who makes a star turn in the upcoming Hector: Fat Arse of the Law point and click adventure iApp ‘We Negotiate with Terrorists’. McCusker, as his name implies, is a Busker, and not a very good one at that. He lurks around the local Park in amoungst the rest of the dregs of society that like to frequent this much maligned public amenity. His instrument of choice is the bass drum, and he likes nothing more than spending his days bashing away with his stick. Ahem. He is quite useful with the bass drum however, beating out any number of hits ranging from James Brown to more contempary numbers such as Cheryl Cole’s ‘Fight for this Love’ . But, as with everyone in Clappers Wreake Busker has a more sinister side which Hector must uncover in order to save the town from the Terrorist threat in the Badge of Carnage trilogy of games. Keep checking back here for more updates about when you might be able to get your greasy little mits on the game.

I would say it’s time to meet another member of the Clappers Wreake community but that would insinuate that I have an allotted time for these posts and I think it is fairly clear to see that these posts are about as regular as a tester at the immodium factory. Anyhoo, today I would like to introduce you to one of the stars of the upcoming Hector: Fat Arse of the Law point and click adventure iApp ‘We Negotiate with Terrorists’ – Blind Ali.

Dean Burke, the creator, director, composer and all round doyen of all things Hector produced this before and after sketch of Blind Ali, one of the more colourful and disturbing members of the Clappers Wreake populace. Blind Ali is, as you might have deducted by now, blind. This is the reason for the pink bum bag, as he was told that is was a Louis Vuitton purse by Busker McCusker when it was sold to him. He was assured that everyone was wearing them around town, and I suppose as far as Ali is concerned, they are.

Blind Ali has, what can be conservatively described as, a penchant for pornography. He can be found wandering aimlessly around outside of the hub of Clappers Wreake Porn Industry – Exotico – rifling through the bins and discarded carrier bags. He finds the overwhelming whiff of a freshly opened jazz mag quite a comfort and dedicates his life to the pursuit of all things smutty. Quite how he become blind is a matter of debate, many think it is penchant for siphoning the one eyed trouser snake, but there is also a rumour that he was caught in the eye by a piece of over stretched latex when he was manoeuvring out of a particularly figure hugging cat suit.

Will Hector be able to find out what happened to Blind Ali’s sight?

Will Blind Ali find enough smut in order to quench his depraved needs?

And will Hector manage not to relocate Blind Ali’s bumbag into a more literal location?

You will have to buy the first installment of the ‘Badge of Carnage’ iApps to find out!

Happy New Year everyone. The radio silence has not been down to lack of Hector activity I can assure you. The last month has seen the production of the first installment of the Hector ‘Badge of Carnage’ trilogy of games for the App Store reach fever pitch. The animation of the cinematic cut scenes has almost been completed and they are looking pretty damn good, if I do say so myself. The production levels rival that of Avatar and Dean Burke has now adopted the moniker of Holywood’s answer to James Cameron.

The ‘We Negotiate with Terrorists’ iApp sees Detective Inspector Hector of the Clapper’s Wreake Police Department pitted against a fiendish adversary who is holding the town to ransom. Hector must use all of his wit, cunning and intellect to foil this master criminal before more innocent civilians perish. Problem is though is that Hector doesn’t possess any of these traits, so you the player must help him crack the case with the one characteristic that Hector has in spades – obnoxiousness.

So if you are a fan of watching policemen getting their heads blown off by gun wielding maniacs, or assaulting tramps with a crowbar, or propositioning prostitutes, or selling narcotics to street youths, then chances are that you should not be allowed out on the street with an electronic tag, but you might also enjoy playing ‘Badge of Carnage 1′ – coming soon to the App store!

You might be surprised to hear that despite his less than sunny disposition, Hector: Fat Arse of the Law is a big fan of the festive season. Yes, Hector will be the first to tell you that there is nothing quite like stuffing a game bird on Christmas morning, or roasting your nuts over an open fire.

So from all the Hector production team working on the ‘We Negotiate with Terrorists’ iApp we would like to wish everyone a very Crappy Christmas and a very Merry New Year! Hector’s will certainly be very crappy and undoubtedly merry! Watch out for the launch of the iApp some time early in 2010!

As if we didn’t have enough to do with the production of our first ever point and click adventure game – ‘We Negotiate with Terrorists’, we have also been shooting the Hector: Fat Arse of the Law ‘making of’ movie, as well. The movie will be a no holds barred, warts and all documentary following the production team in the Straandlooper studio as they navigate their way through the rather ambitious production of the first installment of the trilogy of ‘Badge of Carnage’ iApps.

Here we see Kevin working hard on the Apple SDK creating the ‘Tour de Force’ of gaming that will be the first Hector iApp. In these never before seen shots, you can see an exclusive first glimpse of Trampy Tim in situ in the Alley beside the Police Station. Kevin is working on deciphering the dialogue that was recorded for Trampy Tim and attempting to subtitle it. Easier said than done, as you will find out when you get the game. Trampy Tim has a rather unique tone and timbre to his voice which has to be heard to be believed.

We also captured some footage of young Ciaran Oakes working away on the Hector game. Ciaran works so fast that I am surprised that his fingers were not blurred in this image. We have had to slow the frame rate way down for any sequences including Ciaran to avoid the motion blur around his lightning quick mouse action.

On the other side of the coin, any sequences featuring animator Colin McCusker we have sped up so that you don’t have to spend too long looking at him! Only joking, Colin, you are the handsomest animator that I know! The video will feature candid shots of all the production team working on all aspects of the game, including voice record sessions, character design, animation and the all important programming and testing. The video will also feature exclusive interviews with Hector creator Dean Burke and other members of the Straandlooper team.

We will be releasing the ‘Making of’ video in the coming weeks as we come towards the end of production and get closer to the, yet to be confirmed, release date. Keep watching this space for more details.

The cinematic cut scenes that will be included in the upcoming release of the Hector: Fat Arse of the Law point and click adventure iApp – ‘We Negotiate with Terrorists’ – are nearing completion. I have included a few storyboard panels here to give you a taste of what will be happening in the scenes. We were keen to make sure that the production values of the cut scenes were as high as the rest of the game, so no detail has been spared and the cut scenes promise to be an integral and extremely entertaining part of the adventure game.

The guys in the studio have done a fantastic job animating the movies that will feature in the iApp. As with everything that we do the schdules and budgets have been tight but the guys have really risen to the challenge.

I attribute a fair amount of what the guys have achieved to their innate talent, but I like to think that the continuous drip feeding of various chocolaty treats has kept the guys fueled and animating to the best of their abilities. I have to say that productivity almost doubled last week after the family size tin of Quality Street arrived. They have long since been polished off, apart from the obligatory strawberry creams that no-one wants.

The Animated cut scenes will now enter post production where we will polish the audio and tweak the animation before including it in the final game. Keep you eyes peeled for exclusive previews of the animation that will be coming soon.

It’s time to meet another thread in the rich tapestry that is the population of Clappers Wreake. Today, I would like to introduce you to a person who plays a starring role in the upcoming Hector: Fat Arse of the Law point and click adventure iApp ‘We Negotiate with Terrorists’ – it’s the Clock Keeper.

The Clock Keeper, as his name suggests, looks after the town clock in Clappers Wreake. He is ex-armed forces, but this implies that he was armed at one stage, which mightn’t necessarily ever have been the case. The townfolk consider him to be as mad as a box of wasps, but what is so bad about wanting to keep the people of Clappers Wreake endowed with the correct time. Nothing, I suppose, but there is plenty wrong with a grown man sleeping with a 6 foot tall galvanized minute hand. But who am I to judge. Whatever spins your props.

Confined to his wheel chair the clock keeper whiles away his days inside the clock tower doing whatever he can to ensure that the clock runs with ex-military precision. But this being Clappers Wreake he is on a hiding to nothing trying to keep his little part of the town functionaly properly. Maybe one day he will be able to restore the clock tower to its former glory. Until then he finds comfort in the warm embrace of sweet inebriation brought about by his industrial strength moonshine that he brews inside the clock tower out of the not-so-watchful-eye of the Clappers Wreake Police Department.

Will Hector be able to resist a tipple of this tempting elixir?

Will the clock tower ever get fixed?

And will Hector manage not to shove his fist down the clock keepers throat when he starts up another story about his time in the forces?

You will have to buy the first installment of the ‘Badge of Carnage’ iApps to find out!

The other day I spotted that Adventure Gamers had given the Hector Badge of Carnage games a bit of a write up so I thought that I would share the wealth and let you all know about it.

Adventure Gamers is the premiere online destination for news, reviews and discussion relating to adventure games. Founded it 1998, it is now one of the foremost and widely respected websites about adventure games and is brought to you by an international team of editors, writers, news updaters and community moderators.

The article, entitled ‘Hector: Badge of Carnage to be flashed on iPhone in 2010′ is worth a look for those of you who are new to this blog and have not yet been indoctrinated by my constant barrage of Hector information. Click here to view the article, or click here to visit the Hector: Fat Arse of the Law website to find out a bit more about the iApp and Hector himself.

It has long been an ambition of the Straandlooper studio to move into 3D and on Friday we finally made the move with our Hector: Fat Arse of the Law property. We decided to move production of the ‘Badge of Carnage’ iApps into the third dimension.

As you can see from the above image Hector himself was the first character that we rendered in 3D. Obviously moving to a 3D pipeline will not be without its difficulties. For example we had difficulty recreating the ample girth of Hector in 3D and his chin is not meant to be quite so Men’s Health cover model, more Curry Monthly cover model. But I am sure that these are teething problems that any studio will experience when making such a dramatic change to a production this late in the day.

Special thanks must go to Ciaran Oakes who created the Hector cut-out. And a special mention also to Professor Ali McIlwain who rigourously tested out our new Hector 3D character rig by using it as target practice with the studio’s arsenal of Nerf guns.

You might have noticed that the activity on the blog has been a bit sparse lately. I can now confirm that while work in the studio on the production of ‘We Negotiate with Terrorists’ has been continuing as its usual pace I have been out of the office working on the production of a different kind.

Beau Bryans is the latest addition to the Hector: Fat Arse of the Law iApp team. Our mantra here at Straandlooper has always been to spot young talent early and immerse them into a studio where they will learn so much more than they would in further education.

So Beau has already been allocated to the Animation Department and he is currently working on the cut scenes for the ‘Badge of Carnage’ game. The beauty of hiring them this young is that they never sleep so productivity should therefore be very high, although the frequent toilet breaks could become an issue. I will keep you posted as to the young man’s progress.