The Fate of Dragon Age Journeys
Nov 19th
I wanted to point out this dev diary talking about the future (and history) of the Journeys project. I would be delighted to see it completed some day.
Dragon Age Legends
Nov 8th
or “What the Journeys team did next” (without me).
This week EA2D announced one of the games they’ve been working on for quite some time:
Dragon Age Legends. This is another Dragon Age tie-in game (quite obviously) but with more of a social emphasis, and aimed at Facebook.
This is one to watch, as it’s significantly more engaging than your typical mindless Facebook click-fest.
Godfall Report: October 2010
Nov 2nd
This month saw a lot of new art added to the game, which is always exciting. There’s been continuing iteration on the interface– I’m pretty happy with the combat portion now, but other aspects still need some work (and prettying up.)
I also spent some time on the dungeon map. This is really the only element which has been carried over intact from Book of Dread, so it was time to change that. A few presentation tweaks make the exploration feel much nicer, and support for different dungeon tilesets is now added.
There have been big changes to the way stats influence skills, which has resulted in the new “Melee, Missile, Mastery” system. More skills have also been implemented. Godfall will have more than twice as many active skills as Book of Dread.
Look! It’s Godfall!
Oct 27th
I suppose I can’t hide away forever. So, here’s the first ever look at the combat view in Monsters’ Den: Godfall!
Click for full-size version.
It’s still a work in progress, some elements are placeholder etc. But this should answer a few questions, and probably raise a lot more.
“Hackers”
Oct 6th
Today I noticed all of the obnoxious advertising that had appeared all over the site. Rest assured, I didn’t put it there. Embarrassingly, I didn’t notice until now because of my browser’s ad-blocker– I didn’t bother disabling it here, because I knew my own site had no ads! Well, originally.
To fix it, I had to take the site down and pretty much reinstall it from scratch. The database has been cleaned up, the security hole has been addressed, and their ad code has been reported to the ad provider. Hopefully something like this doesn’t happen again– I would have preferred to spend my day actually working on the game.
I haven’t set up the forum again yet, I’ll do it tomorrow (no posts will be lost.)
Godfall Report: September 2010
Sep 29th
It’s been a lighter month, work-wise, as I spent two weeks on holiday back home in New Zealand.
At the moment, I’m overhauling and streamlining the way quests and locations are generated. I’m also still struggling to get some elements of the fiction and geography nailed down. It’s turning out to be more difficult than I realized.
Have a look at a couple of the new item properties:
Doing It In Public
Aug 31st
First of all, I’m sorry about the infrequent updates lately.
Truth be told, it’s not always easy to find something to post. There’s a lot I’d like show or tell you about, but it turns out I have a strong aversion to publicly showing things before they’re finished. This is, naturally, a bit of a problem when you’re trying to be more open about your development process. The thought of someone seeing placeholder art or WIP UI elements and thinking less of the game for it bothers me. But plenty of other developers manage it, so I’ll see if I can start scraping together some more actual gameplay shots for you in future.
Another thing that comes up a lot is the release date for the game: to be blunt, I don’t have one. The most specific I’ve ever gotten is “2010″, and I’m still hoping I won’t end up a liar about that. One of the great things about being an independent is being free of externally-imposed deadlines, and being free to take as long the game needs. This is a big game, much more complex than the previous ones. And I’m working hard.
I’ll put up a new character art preview soon.
Devil Region!
Jul 26th
I mentioned a while back that I was involved in localization, and here’s the proof: Book of Dread has now launched in Japanese!
It was a fairly grueling translation process, but the end result is fascinating to me. It’s a very interesting feeling to see something that you created presented in a language you don’t speak. I can still play it pretty well, though!
Have a look: http://game.goo.ne.jp/premium/game11.html
