Project Scope

Broken Saints was originally designed purely as a Web experience—lock your doors, turn off the lights, strap on the headphones, and fall into it. The online viewing window frame-size of 530 x 320, along with a chosen frame rate goal of 20 fps, was finalized following a series of initial tests on mid-range Windows and Macintosh computers to provide the smoothest experience possible across a broad range of hardware.

Additionally, because of the limited animation in the series (which is due in equal parts to its storybook style, team inexperience, and time and resource constraints), we were very ambitious with the audio mix in Flash and attempted to push the stereo sound experience with dense layers of high-quality sound.

When we began producing Broken Saints, Flash 5 had just been released. Our technical director, Ian Kirby, had tested our initial chapters in Flash 4, but he quickly came to grips with the strengths and weaknesses of the new release. Originally, our biggest issue was with mixing event and streaming audio clips on the same Timeline, which was causing movies to crash inexplicably. However, with some further experimentation in Flash 5 and some luck, Ian deduced how to embed streaming sections in subclips while keeping the majority of event-based audio on the main Timeline.

We would use Flash 5 for the remaining 22 chapters (9+ hours) of Broken Saints, only graduating to Flash MX for the 7-part/88min series finale brokensaints.com/outgoing/bs24samplewired in order to showcase video clips within climactic sequences in the narrative.

In the end, we had 700 minutes of original Flash material—easily over one million files, including sound effects, original artwork and animations, effects sequences, and text chunks—and hours upon hours of behind-the-scenes and promotional work. The project had an admirable online legacy, with more than 4 million visitors worldwide, as well as receiving professional and critical acclaim.

Hardcore series fans were clamoring for more. Hollywood studios were sniffing around with serious intent. The lure of video game development had been dangled. But now we had been offered a special opportunity—a chance to revamp the entire series, add incredible new features, and make up for all the mistakes and limitations inherent in our original processes. We simply had to do it, despite the obstacles standing in our way…

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