Developer's Journal 3:10

Hey everybody!

I enjoyed taking a couple of days off, but now that I'm back home I'm ready to get to work again.

I told you I had something cool to show you, and aren't these James Bond posters super cool?  If you recall, MC has different posters for these three movies up in his office.  These will be replacement posters for those versions.

There are three reasons I have these posters in MC's office, and in particular why they are a part of the first image we see of MC.  One, I think they look cool.  Two, the fact that MC likes these movies enough to put the posters up, especially after we find out he grew up without a father, may suggest to us that he's been influenced by this fictional portrayal of masculinity.  And three, the images of the Bond stories subliminally prepare the player for the presence of comparable themes in the game, as we saw with the introduction of the assassin in Episode Two.  Due to their value to the story, I really, really wanted to have the Bond posters there.

But please understand that when I started making this game I wasn't thinking about it as a financial venture, and it wasn't until after I'd launched my demo that I even decided to put up a Patreon page.  Consequently, while I did give some thought to copyright infringement, I didn't give enough thought to it.  I actually believed that the posters I included in game were official movie posters and (don't ask me why I thought this) I thought I was allowed to use them.

Well, it turns out that those posters were actually the recent work of a very talented artist named Paul Mann and my use of them was a pretty blatant copyright infringement.  So, long story short, I realized I was going to need my own posters.  Lacking the talent for this project myself I looked around and found an artist I liked named Nic Brama.  Nic, who is British and therefore eminently qualified to make James Bond art, loved the project idea and agreed to it knowing they would be used in an adult game.  The result is what you see here.

I was really, really happy with the outcome.  I think he did an outstanding job and I'm really excited to showcase these going forward.

You saw that I just posted new links for the game last week.  This was to add Version .2 of Episode Two.  In Version .1 I made some bugfixes and in Version .2 I have made a few tweaks to some spots of dialogue, added notifications about unlocking the bonus scenes, and I have switched out the old posters for the new ones.  This wasn't as much work as it sounds because all I had to do was use the old pictures' file names for the new ones and run a long batch render, but I did have to redo postwork on a number of the new images.

I do unfortunately still have a copyrighted photograph of the Bond Aston Martin in MC's office, so that will have to be switched out.  There are some nice Aston Martin 3D assets on TurboSquid, so I may try doing this one on my own in Blender.

Some of you may be wondering whether I'm allowed to have even customized James Bond posters without running afoul of copyright law.  I admit I have not consulted a copyright lawyer, but after my own limited research I feel pretty confident that what I am doing will not get me sued by Danjaq/Barbara Broccoli.  If I'm wrong, well, my dogs may have to eat the non-premium dog food for a few years.

That's all for this week.  Thank you for your support!