Articles

Tony
Tough in a Rake’s Progress
Developer’s Journal

One of our favorite games
of the past few years was Tony
Tough & The
Night of the Roasted Moths.
This pint-sized Columbo’s ‘mis-adventure’ was a
throwback to
the LucasArts and Sierra games of the past.

During that period we
became close friends with Stefano Gualeni, Tony’s
game designer so, of course, we were thrilled to learn that after
many trials and tribulations, a sequel – Tony
Tough in a Rake’s Progress – was in development.

Graciously, Stefano has
agreed to write a Developer’s Journal following the creation of Rake’s
Progress exclusively for Just
Adventure readers. The following weeks and months should be interesting
as Stefano indeed possesses a unique sense of humor and has promised
many exclusive screenshots and inside information.

We hope you enjoy it – Randy.

Tony
Tough in a Rake’s
Progress
Developer’s Journal
Entries by Stefano Gualeni
Thu, Oct the 7th.

While the old demo we’ve
prepared in September is being refined and dolled up with new charachters,
fonts and pointing devices, we
are blessed with the first autumnal shower.

(Stefano showing the first map disposition to Valerio in a picture
which dates back to the first month of conception, March 2004).

Sun, Oct the 3rd.

Another hectic weekend for what concerns my personal contribution
to this game!

I both manged to support
Valerio with the postitioning of the cameras over the main external
sets of Washington, to finish writing the
main body of Chucho’s dialogues (took me more or less six days
so far) and to begin to structure Cornelia’s ones.

Cornelia – what a lovely name – will be a black maid
in her twenties who works part time for the Toughs’. Incidentally
she is a pivotal charachter for what concerns the uncoiling of the
main storyline thread.

Yeah, like if you cared at all…

Although you soon will
be informed about the history and architecture of the town itself
(in
the “BACKGROUNDS” link), someone
gracefully insisted on being informed about this game’s general
characteristics.

Imagining that many others would probably be more interested in
something of that kind more than to listen to my petty mumbling,
I guess I will try to endeavour to sum up what this game is going
to be.

Hrm… “Tony
Tough in a Rake’s Progress” will
be a very elegant 3D point and click adventure in third person.

A more logical and mature prequel to the first crazed episode featuring
a young Tony Tough which will paradoxally be the old Tony relatively
to the time when the first one is set (the first which is indeed,
chronologically, the second).

The old Tony, or if you prefer, the younger Tony has just turned
13 and lives a simple life in his native town with his parents and
his dog.

The game is very accurately
set in 1953 and allows the player to drive Tony both thru the hardness
of adolescence and acne, both on
the road – paved with passion for mystery and notionism – which
will lead him to become the private eye we’ve cordially hated
in The Night of Roasted
Moths.

The sun shines over nothern
Italy.

Wed, Sept the 29th.

In the last couple of
days I have personally been quite productive, moulding the personality
and writing the dialogues for a most lovely
character named Jesus “Chucho” Juarez. His narrative
and symbolic roles in the plot were of course determined in an early
conception stage, but in this specific phase I need to work on his
details and malfunctions, trying to give this puppet a soul and make
the next human wreckage out of him.

I would paste some quotes here, if only they were written in English…

As I write, Valerio is presumably working on refining the main set
of cameras for the central square in the village of Washington (an
imaginary, lonely and squalid town in New Mexico where our hero was
raised and a big slice of this adventure takes place).

Alessio is starting his journey as character animator for this project;
Vincenzo is busy modelling the first set of icons and pointers…

I am sure I will soon
have the chance to appropriately describe the settings, my team-mates’ work, some – I guess – charming
aspect of the main characters’ features, their double relationships
and whatever else I may fancy revealing… Although right now I reckon
it might be more interesting to introduce you to “the cast”.

I have, then, asked any
colleague to integrate and enrich the very schematic description
of himself listed in the “TEAM” link,
simply using four words.

This is what came out:

Valerio – “Total
and distressing waste”
Marco – “No time for dummies”
Alberto – “Nice, tenacious and mediocrity-proof”
Stefano C. – “Generous game cube player”
Vincenzo – “Happily untidy big-boned designer”
Alessio – “Eugenically correct long-haired rocker”
Demis – “****“
Michel – “Precise, messy and busy”
Daniele – “Fearless, tenacious: a mule”.
Emanuele – “Roman guy with glasses“
Stefano G. – “State of melancholy madness”

Mon, Sept the 27th.

Just like when observing
a planet, I believe one can have a complete and holistic vision
of what’s being examinined only from a
certain range of distance. Being too close might be deceiving, being
too far, useless.

These few intermittent
lines will not – by design – try to either describe objectively
the process of blooming of this game (I’d
rather call it that than “product”) nor to technically
log its development steps, but to pour on screen thoughts, anecdotes
and pictures which will hopefully add up to some kind of reflection
of it.

Whose reflection is it
going to be? And why is this journal tracking the development of “Tony
Tough in a Rake’s Progress” starting
today?

The narrative voice belongs
to Stefano Gualeni, Tony’s game
designer, locations architect and writer, besides being a real architect
and a part-time human being. It’s nice to meet you.
Or is it?

And, replying my solipsistic second question, this journal will
start tracking our very progress since the second big development
meeting in Belluno (Italy) on Thursday September the 23rd, after
roughly two months of development.

Needless to say I’ve
been working on this game for many months before anybody else,
in order to allow all the ghastly people involved
in this crazy and artsy project to start working on it efficiently
and to make it come (untruly) true.

In my eyes it will, then, resemble more the chronicle of an embalming
then of a growth, having this phase more to deal with the detailed
and careful rendering of a set of ideas of mine, then to the actual
production of new thought. (In a way, for me, those ideas died a
while ago. More or less like the adventure genre… hee hee…)

Besides my personal spare time, another reason to start today has
to be found in that last meeting of ours, in which some equilibriums
and roles in the crew members were rearranged (Demis Trevisson who
was the character artist for Broken Sword 3, is now responsible for
the modelling of Tony Tough and all the other lunatics in the game)
and some, in my opinion, fundamental decisions made.

This journal will, hence, start from a sort of beginning.

Beginning: take 3.

(In
the picture – clockwise
starting from upper left: Valerio, Marco, Stefano and Alberto).