May 13

Yes, I'm a filthy liar. This hasn't been updated for ages – doesn't mean I forgot about you though. Yes, you! Our dearest fan who sends us kinky and charming love messages every night. To make up for this seriously long lack of update, I'll post a lot of meaningless nonsense.

First, I'd like to address the question that has been lingering in everybody's mind: why the heck is it taking so long? Well, the thing goes like this - Scratches has been gestating for as early as June 2003. Our intention back then was to produce an adventure game and the Scratches idea seemed like the most fitting one. We dedicated a few months to study our tools of choice and test our capabilities - the most important thing in this process was to decide whether we had the means to produce a game like Scratches or not. The result of that period was the first teaser. At that point, we decided the game could be done with what we had and projected a schedule. We would begin proper production in January 2004 and aim for a Christmas 2004 release. And it would have been released, had we followed the 2003 Scratches model! But, as it probably became apparent later, we decided to go for a production perhaps more fitting to the experience we had in mind achieving. As I've been saying for the past few months, the extra waiting will be more than worth it. And if it isn't, we'll lock ourselves in a cold damp room for the rest of our lives.

We're working on the most critical phase of production now. The biggest challenge has begun. We couldn't keep pushing it forward anymore... because it basically is the last big thing needed to be done! So what do we do? Why tell you all about it! Release the anger! Cry like babies! Of course, I'm overreacting here. The huge central garden of the Blackwood Manor you'll be visiting soon is on the works. You might ask yourself why all the fuzz – well you see, the garden works as some sort of 'hub' to connect the several locations in the game. This mean a smooth transition is a must between paths leading to other buildings aside from the house. The thing is, these paths have a lot of vegetation (because we want the walking outside to be just as oppressive as walking inside, mwahaha!) and that, combined with the trees and stuff you get to see in the garden itself, makes for a whole lot of vegetation. And it turns out that vegetation consumes a lot of resources. You must keep in mind we're essentially two poor souls without cutting edge computers, so you probably get my point. Every time I do a test render of the garden I can hear my harddrive screaming for mercy. I think I can even hear the capacitors in my 1GB memory stick doing some funny noises.

Even worse, as I begun fitting all the pieces of the garden together, I was getting really worried as I couldn't believe it was so extense. I kept wondering how the heck we were supposed to populate that, until Alejandro graciously told me I was a jerk because I was measuring everything against a particular object which was out of proportion. To quote him, "it looks like a friggin' endless gold field". But right now everything is all fine and dandy. As a matter of fact, it will be finished in a few days and you could be catching a glimpse of it soon.

And I swear our next game is going to take place inside a very sealed tight place. Or a solitary desert without a single shred of vegetation.

Fortunately, the efforts in building this place seem to be having good results. The musician Cellar of Rats, who is playing a test build so he can wrap up the soundtrack, would tell me he'd rush back inside the house where it seems... 'safer' as there's a feeling of something lurking among those menacing trees. Certainly not the effect we had in mind, but our dear musician still hasn't spent a night in the house.

That's about it for now. The next update is certainly going to be posted sooner. I'm utterly sorry to have kept you waiting (the both of you) but we've been awfully busy and I just couldn't begin to tell you all the things we've been doing since the past update. At this point, we have ceased having a life. Plus, I've been trying to watch Malevolence for the past week or so as I'm craving for some horrific stuff. Is it OK if the game is delayed for two hours so I can watch Malevolence?

Anyway, stay tuned – there's something exciting on the way!

February 28

I know, I know, I said regularly but look at the size of that first post! Surely, that should have covered a healthy three posts. More or less. Or maybe not. Anyway...

My first post raised a few questions. First of all, yes, you get to visit the Victorian house in three different stages. Immediately, some people seemed to have thought this meant that time travel (or something else) is involved. Well no, I hope I'm not dissapointing anybody but this only means the house can be explored in three different settings of weather/daytime. My bad for using the word "stage". Those three settings are: normal daylight, daylight with rain and night. At first we were going to actually render the whole house three times with a few variations, but we quickly realized that was out of the question. So what we decided to do is alter the same rendered version of the house via real-time FX. I've already figured out how to differenciate two of these settings – no, I won't tell you how we're going to do that as it's going to be surprise (but I can tell you confidentially that you'll be actually seeing some beautifully animated raining falling outside every single window in the house). I still have to decide how to variate the remaning setting, which is nighttime (probably a blue-ish tint and fog outside the windows?).

If there's anything you don't understand, please raise your hand.

As an afterthought, and this came to mind because is a subject that someone brought a few days ago, it could have been an interesting idea visiting the house in different eras and maybe taking part of the story as different characters, so that you may experience the whole thing from different points of view and in no particular order. Obviously, this would have made for a whole different game.

Secondly, some of you might get the wrong idea from our "joyful" mood. I mean, I remember someone once suggested that Scratches could be a huge and devilish joke (ie: something alone the lines of the ending in Signs). But in all serioussnes here, there won't be any humour in Scratches (except for some easter eggs). There will be some comic relief during early conversations and comments from the protagonist, but that'll be far and between. This will be a serious game – maybe even with some disturbing subjects.

And thirdly, yes, Gumbo is my friend. He doesn't talk too much and smells like hell, but makes for a good company nonetheless. I treasure the moments I spend peeling the skin off his face. That's what good pals are for!

Anyway, there has been a lot of work done since my first post, but mostly mechanic and boring stuff you probably don't want to know about (the exciting things I mentioned are just about to happen). One remarkable thing is that the gamma control has been implemented. Yes, those of you with dim monitors can rest assured you'll be able to find your way inside the creepy house. This will actually work as a real gamma correction, not merely brightening up the whole scene. No, the dark, intentional corners will remain that way while gamma is enabled. Not sure yet how many levels we'll be supporting though – we certainly don't want you people feel safe and cozy while moving around this place.

I guess that's all for now. Stay tuned. Next update will be posted sooner – that's a promise.