Production Diary: The Making of Dirk Dashing

Game Concept

Game Animation

Game Scenery

Game Engine

Game Music and Sounds

Game Levels

Fine-Tooning the Game

Game Scenery

The background elements for the game have been painted by hand using a combination of acrylic paint and watercolors.  Each and every background element is painted individually: each stone, tree, cloud, building, lamp post, and so forth is painted by itself.  We then combine all of these elements programmatically using our new DynaPaint engine to produce a complete background scene.

Here is how each background element is created.

It starts as a pencil outline drawing on a sturdy sheet of watercolor paper, which is then painted with acrylic paint.  Sometimes a background element is redrawn and painted several times before it looks right.   The painting is then scanned into the computer at the highest possible resolution, and the raw image is stored on the hard drive.  You can see a small version of one of the background mountains below.

After the painting is scanned in, we use a paint program to crop the part of the painting that we want to use for the game.  We also resize it so it can be used by our OpenGL-based DynaPaint engine.

Next, we cut out the mountain by removing the unwanted portion of the painting around it, like the empty canvas area and any brush strokes that went over the line.  The cutout mountain is placed on a solid black background, which the DynaPaint engine will interpret as transparent when the image is used in the game.

Finally, we clean up any pencil lines that may be visible, and any blemishes that resulted from the painting or scanning process.  We may even perform some color adjustment to the image to make sure the colors match the original painting as closely as possible.

This process is repeated for each and every individual background element in the game - every hand-painted stone, tree, lamp post, mountain, etc.  As with the animation, it is a painstakingly slow process, but the results are worth it!  Dirk Dashing has a unique look and feel that is different from every other game on the market!