Category Production Diary

While venturing through the catacombs somewhere in the depths of the Ruins of Nethermore the other day, we stumbled across a strange set of notes. They seem to be coming from the pages of a diary. In fact, someone suggested, they might be a diary entry from the great elven wizard Tesselar.

Long and heated discussion broke out over this suggestion here in our offices, but the more we did our research, the more it became evident, that the handwriting does indeed seem to match that of the legendary Tesselar. We also discovered hints in various reports that the elusive wizard-who-walks-the-ages has been seen approaching the Nethermore Mountains some weeks past, shortly after the initial outbreak of the undead plague...

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I recently did a lengthy podcast interview the great folks over at Darkstation and I thought I’d let you all know that the podcast is now live on their site in the “Darkcast” section.

The podcast has the title Making Zombies with Fire and covers a lot of ground. Not only did we talk about my current game project, Deathfire, but also about some of the games and projects I’ve worked before, including a brief discourse into my literary forays with the Jason Dark dime novels.

Interestingly, the discussion also revolved around things such as general game design philosophies and how my approach has changed over the years, as well as other very interesting topics that fans of my games may find interesting. So, waste no more time. Head over to the Darkstation Darkcast and listen for yourself.

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One by one they are disappearing
Friends, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers
When they return they aren’t who you think

They look the same. They sound the same
But they are no longer the same…

The most unholy of spells incanted,
Undead fire burns in its victims’ eyes…

The Nethermancer has spoken
His was the last voice they heard…
Before they were perverted into monsters with familiar faces

In a world without heroes
Who can you trust?

In a world where the dead are rising
Who can you turn to?
No one.
No one is safe

Can you save the world from everyone you ever cared about?

This, my friends, is the promotional snippet for Deathfire, designed to whet your appetites...

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After a lot of the talk about some of the basics of the game, I thought it would be nice to have Marian discuss some of the work the art department has been doing on their side of things. So without further ado, here is Marian with some shop talk for you. I’ll be back next time with more info for you.

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Hey folks! We did it! The first monster is in the game! And it looks… well… unhealthy. As it should.

I want to take you behind the scenes for a bit and talk about the creation of this monster, but since you can easily read almost everything about the steps normally taken by modelers on a site like www.zbrushcentral.com, I won’t go too far into the boring details.

With our first dungeon sets finished, we noticed that pretty soon we would need something that moves around in these labyrint...

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Before I get into the next Development Diary entry for Deathfire, I wanted to point you all to a new interview with me on The Nerd Cave. It is an interesting – I think – look at the different aspects of my career, not only the games most people are familiar with. But now back to our regularly scheduled programming… more Deathfire stuff.

It is a common occurrence in game development that you have to make design decisions based on incomplete information. Why? Well, because at the time you design many aspects of a game, the game itself does not really exist yet. You are merely projecting what you want it to be. Therefore you have to make a great many decisions based on whatever information you have at the time, and what you expect the gameplay to be like in the final product...

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On , as well as here on the blog, a few questions have arisen, regarding the “Bind item on equip” option displayed in the Item Editor. It is an option that is highly unusual for a single-player game, and some of you are wondering what’s up with that.

“Bind on Equip” has been brought to the table by massively-multiplayer online games in order to prevent players from using and then selling valuable and unique items to other players. It forces the player to consider‌—‌if only for a moment‌—‌if he’d rather use the item or make money off it.

In retrospect, I find it strange that this feature has never come up in single-player games before, because at its core, the rationale remains the same...

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For the past few days I’ve been working on some exciting things in Deathfire, that have propelled the game forward quite a bit in my mind. Items. Sounds trivial, I know, but items are the salt and pepper of any role-playing game.

It started when I decided to make a weapons list for the game. We have been working on parts of the user interface for the past two weeks or so, and it got to the point that I wanted to see some weapon icons in the respective slots. In order for Marian to begin drawing some icons, we began making a weapons list. It started out quite innocuously, but once I got into it, the list grew very rapidly, and at the end of the day we had a list of over 150 weapons for the game...

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As I promised, I want to talk a little more about the technology behind Deathfire today. I mentioned on numerous occasions that we are using Unity3D to build the game, but of course that is only a small part of the equation. In the end, the look and feel of the game comes down to the decisions that are being made along the way, and how an engine like Unity is being put to use.

There was a time not too long ago when using Unity would have raised eyebrows, but we’re fortunately past that stage in the industry and—with the exception of some hardliners perhaps—most everyone will agree these days that it is indeed possible to produce high end games with it.

For those of you unfamiliar with Unity3D, let just say that it is a software package that contains the core technologies required to...

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Usually when starting a new role-playing game, one of the first things you begin to work on is the underlying game system. Deathfire was no different. After a few programming tests to prove general feasibility of certain key features, the first thing we turned to was the game’s character generation. Because the player’s stats, attributes and traits are at the heart of any role-playing game, it was only natural to begin zoning in on that aspect of the game and lay down some underpinning ground rules from which to build the overall game system.

And with that we were off to the races. It was decision time...

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After I had put aside Thorvalla last year, I no longer had the urge to create some huge game world. The work load on that game would have been enormous, requiring us to build a team with over twenty people to get it done right. Needless to say that a team of that sort requires a tremendous financial commitment and the responsibility that comes with it, and somehow it no longer felt right.

I always loved to make games in an intimate environment. The games I consider my best were created with small teams, sometimes extremely small teams even...

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