It belongs to a
museum!- Dr. Henry Walton Jones Jr.
Hello, my name is
Roberto Julio Alamo –Rolls3D-, and I´m an
Indyfan from I was little, we can say from I born. From a long time ago I enjoy
with all the adventures of the most famous archeologist, I watched his movies,
played the videogames and read many of his books and comics.
I wanted to make a videogame about Indiana Jones from a long
time ago, and I started it many times, so the story of this project have many
years, starting maybe from 1993, but I will start this story from 1999, date
from I still have files and graphics of the first part of the project.
1999,
10 years after The Last Crusade, 7 years
after The Fate of Atlantis. In this year, I started to work in a Graphic
Adventure based in the Adventure Game Studio AGS Engine. The work was slow and
the performance of the engine was not so strong as I like. Anyway, finally I
created a playable demo with 10 scenarios, but finally I didn´t still working
in it. At that time, the project´s name was “Indiana Jones and the Dark Book”, name that recently I changed to “Indiana Jones and the Book of Shadows”.
I started with the work in the backgrounds, with the draws
and with the pixeled final images. At this time I already create a first playable
DEMO with ten different backgrounds and some too much easy puzzles, in two
different countries: Mexico and Hungary. Indy must to find some objects to
force a locked pass to an archeological excavation, in the outsides of
Budapest; this bring him to find an old map of the 4
th century, and
after his investigation, and some telegrams that he receive from his old
friend, Marcus Brody, in the University of Budapest, Indy travel to the Yucatan
peninsula, to the Tulum ruins in Mexico, where his quest of the Dark Book begins.
By the moment the plot of the adventure was too far to be
solid, but was a beginning , and little by little the adventure start to grow
up.
Getting the pixeled character of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis as base for the game, little
by little it was evolving, as the main plot of the game. I wanted to make an
union between my favourite writer and his jobs, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, and
my favourite character of the films, Indiana Jones. With this two amazing
worlds together, something good was going to born. Based in the books of the
first and in the Cthulhu mythology, I already had all the elements necessary to
create a good adventure for Indiana Jones, and the object that this time our
archeologist friend was going to search: The Necronomicon. But about this you
can read more in the Sinopsis of the game, now I go to continue with the
history.
In 2001 the game continue, with an evolution of Indy, I
wanted he look more like the Indiana Jones in the movies, so I made the
character more big to can draw with pixels a recognizable face similar to
Harrison Ford.
With enthusiasm, I started to re wrote the main plot of the
adventure, based in an old story about Indiana Jones that I wrote a long time
ago, mixing, as the main idea of the game, the mystic world and arcane objects
of the works of Howard Philips Lovecraft, and the action, fun and magic of the
great adventures of Indiana Jones.
Ahead I show a group of screenshots of the second beginning
sequence of the first version of the game. With this initial sequence, starting
with the Paramount logo, and making a fade with a real mountain, I pretend to
make it the more similar to the official adventures of Indy. As his other adventures, the game starts with
Indiana Jones searching something, an object, different that the main plot of
the adventure.
In
2003 the game develop a lot, and finally it become the second version. Although
I liked the results, my job was becoming a very old style, with more
similarities with the graphic quality of the VGA The Last Crusade, and I wanted a more modern style, at least more
similar to the style of The Fate of
Atlantis. In addition, it focused the graphic adventure mainly in a deep American
village, and although the atmosphere was good in my opinion, I was going far away
from the Indiana Jones style and approaching too much to the Lovecraft works,
losing the desired balance, and perhaps resembling the process project to adventures
like Shadow of the Comet, where the
main ambience was the horror. I must flee this new style, so, again, after
that, I followed my steps back to take a new approach to the adventure I had in
mind...
From
the moment the adventure began to take another course, and working on the
story, I got the balance he sought. Being an adventure based on the work of
Lovecraft, of course, should have horror elements, but didn´t want cross the
limit, I did not make the adventure too dark history, so I decided that the
greatest horror that had to show it could be somewhat similar to that shown
when Mola Ram takes the heart from his chest to a poor victim in the Temple of Doom. I did not want to go
further, but not to stay too short and wanted to keep the style and ambience of
Indiana Jones, with doses of action, some humor, and plenty of trips to exotic
places ... The essence of our most admired adventurer.
In the years from 2006 to 2009 I retake the project, and
with my new knowledge in the field of the 3D, I started to build new scenarios,
this time abandoning my beloved pixels to start with another look for the game.
This, of course, forced all the work had to be started from
scratch, and he meant to keep an aesthetic coherence in the project. At this
time I started with the creation of a new Indiana Jones, this time in 3D, but
although slowly pulled something similar with Harrison Ford, the results still
did not convince me at all.
The different scenarios were gradually gaining greater
realism, gaining complexity and giving a completely different game. I must
admit that previous versions had a special charm pixelated , something magical
, perhaps reminding those long night hours spent solving the puzzles of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
(Graphic Adventure) or Indiana Jones and
the Fate of Atlantis.
This did not discourage me, but instead it made me want to
keep creating, looking for ways to recapture that magic of the pixels but not
counting the pixels. Arming myself with an increasingly solid history of ideas
increasingly foundation, and, above all, with the power of a fan of Indiana
Jones...
The problem I was having at that time was that of the
characters , especially Indiana Jones , who wanted to model correctly , much
like the original , which led me to continue delaying the project in time . As
more and more scenarios was telling , the characters were crowding me , and ,
because of this lack of time and eventually the game went into another long
break . Although in my head, Indy continued to live his new adventures ...
This
year, the name of the project changes. I
decided to change it from “Indiana Jones
and the Dark Book” to “Indiana Jones
and the Book of Shadows”.
The project reborn with my new abilities in the 3D field,
and I started to create a new image for the character. I wanted that to play
with Indiana Jones is to be Indiana Jones, so I wanted to do it so similar to
the real Harrison Ford during the films of the original trilogy. I based my
work specially in the two first movies,
Raiders
of the Lost Ark (1936) and
Indiana
Jones and the Temple of Doom (1935), because this story, “
Indiana Jones and the Book of Shadows”,
happened in 1937, before
Indiana Jones
and the last Crusade (1938).
Present day.
Now I´m living in the far China, and I still enjoying with
our famous hero, Indiana Jones. By the moment I still work in the project with
a new engine, the Wintermute Engine.
With my new knowledge of 3D and programming I´m starting the
project from zero, creating a new adventure for Indiana Jones dedicated to all
the Indyfans, that like me, miss the travels and the action of the most famous
archeologist in the world.
By the moment I created this new website to all of you can
follow my progress, and that all of you can enjoy with this game, by the moment
in W.I.P. status.
Welcome to Indiana
Jones and the Book of Shadows
Country: USA 
In May happens Hindenburg airship disaster. 
