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Who creates Ghost of a Tale?

Ghost of a Tale is often called a one-man game. While in a sense this could be considered as true (as in “if I didn’t work on this game it would never exist”), I wanted to give a detailed breakdown of who directly participates in the creation of Ghost of a Tale.

Please forgive me for starting with myself but let’s get it out of the way quickly: I create all of the game’s visuals on my own. That includes all the art, characters, models, rigging, animations, lighting, textures, environments, etc…

I’m also responsible for about 95% of the game’s code (including AI behaviors, mechanics, interface, controls, etc…). In other words, if something breaks down or looks ugly, I’m to blame for that! 🙂

But all this would be rather lonely and daunting if I didn’t get any help. Luckily I do!

ScreenShot 2015_04_06 16;32;22001GK

Starting with Paul Gardner, who is the writer for the game. He puts up valiantly with all my nagging regarding finding specific “voices” for the characters. But Paul’s role is not “just” writing for the game; he’s also a professional game designer (having worked on quite a few titles at Namco and Traveler’s Tale).

So we talk a lot about ideas, back and forth several times a week. Our discussions range from game mechanics to dialogs to back-story to level design. And I never move forward if he disagrees strongly with something. If Ghost of a Tale is anywhere near what it is today it’s thanks to Paul’s steadfast collaboration.

On the technical side I have the considerable benefit of receiving help and support from Cyrille Paulhiac who is an experienced coder. As I mentioned previously Cyrille has created a couple of amazing tools that allow me to concentrate on creating the game itself rather than dealing with technical tediousness. His work often remains “behind the curtain” but is nonetheless very cool.

As a concrete example during the weeks leading up to Gamescom last year I had to manually model all the tessellated environment colliders (using Maya) for the demo. Which was a thankless, time-consuming job. Since then, Cyrille has coded a tool which creates those colliders in seconds with just one click, directly within Unity!

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Last but not least I want to talk about the very talented Jeremiah Pena. He’s the composer for the game’s soundtrack and his work gives its auditory identity to Ghost of a Tale. There again I feel very lucky indeed to have been contacted by him just before the Indiegogo campaign went live.

From the get go I used one of his existing compositions to edit the very first alpha trailer. I had even thought of leaving it in, but Jeremiah was confident he could come up with something much more fitting to the game’s mood. And what he did blew me away, obviously. That’s when I knew I could entrust the entire game’s soundtrack to him.

Needless to say I am extremely grateful for Paul, Cyrille and Jeremiah’s continuous involvement with the project.

Of course there are many people who at one time or another generously lent their help (and sometimes still do) to the game, but I hope next time I mention Paul, Cyrille or Jeremiah you guys have a better idea about their respective roles.

Talk to you all next time! 🙂

Seith
Seith

12 Comments

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    Hayden
    May 14, 2015 at 11:47 am

    Thanks for the update, Seith. I often forget the production of Ghost of a Tale isn’t a one-man job; nice of you to give some of your mates a mention. Let us know when you have a release date – hopefully it’s still on track for this year!

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    Uleertel
    May 14, 2015 at 1:37 pm

    Merci pour ces informations intéressantes sur la répartition des compétences sur le projet. Bon courage pour la suite!

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    evilkinggumby
    May 14, 2015 at 2:07 pm

    Hey nor Cyrille was also helping with some of the Xbox One testing and implementation too 🙂 gotta give the man props!

    Also noticed a certain lack of David mentioned here 🙁 I know he’s just community manager but he also did some of the testing for the game. Thats fun, I am sure, but also hard work! hehehe

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        evilkinggumby
        May 15, 2015 at 5:19 pm

        awww.. ok i guess that makes sense seeing how quiet it has been (which I stupidly asked you about and maybe that was salting the wound.. SORRY!!! )

        I’m glad it was on good terms and good luck with continuing to kick this projects butt 🙂

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    squintik
    May 14, 2015 at 3:01 pm

    It’s always better to have a few people at least to get some feedbacks from someone with a different perspective, as it can be hard to simply know if you’re doing a good job or not. (even more when you’re working on something for years)
    Congrats to everybody involved in this, and good luck for the next steps !

    (s’il y a besoin d’aide en level design, hésite pas à faire signe vu que ça fait des années que c’est mon boulot, mais on dirait bien que tu as déjà toute l’aide nécessaire !)

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    David Bowser
    May 29, 2015 at 2:27 am

    What sort of news do you have for those who backed your project SO LONG AGO?

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