Combat

The four of us have been working hard on Combat (Build 13) and a taste of it is coming next week!

We’ve creates a series of specific combat scenarios so we can test and tune the combat experience. We’re going to release this as a “game” to see if you can make it through all of them successfully, and to get your thoughts on the experience.

Game Design

I continue to toil away finishing the game design. My goal is to finish May 1. As of today:

30 Significant Features left to design.

Wait, haven’t you had 7 years to design this game?!

Er… yes. It has sort of been like shooting the movie while still writing the script.
And about as effective. :-p

There have always been “key features” on a list, such as:

Interacting with the Conclave
Renegade Mages
Army Level Combat
Bards
Religions
Rival Heroes

I know what I want to achieve with them, their purpose within the whole design, but until now the actual feature description has been a bit sparse:
Make it awesome.

A tad difficult to assign to a developer.
Even harder for them to estimate how long it will take. :-)

The last several months, most of the team has focused on combat, while I try to figure out the roadmap to completion. I help them with combat, they help me with design, so it’s not as siloed as it sounds.

All of this is in the effort to decide:

Keep - it’s required for release
Free Update - it’s required, but can happen after release
DLC - it’s additional to the experience, can happen after release, and significant enough effort we need to charge for it
Cut - it’s secondary to the experience, and not meaningful enough to pay for it

This game being “my baby”, I want to put everything into #1 Keep column. :-) But I’ve been making software and managing projects long enough to know management has to make the tough calls, not push it onto the devs and hope for the best (Looking at you CD Project Red and Cyberpunk 2077).

More to say and more opportunity for you to have your say soon.

For those who love Origin and Ultima…

An excellent book series on the rise and fall of Origin Systems, Inc. during the 80’s and 90’s has just released. The author split the work into two volumes, probably to double his income. Smart!

The first volume covers Richard, Lord British, up until the launch of Wing Commander and Ultima VI.

The second volume, just released, picks up at Ultima VII The Black Gate until the end.

Really enjoying it! You may too!

Before we go, a Question

Recently the staff have been critical of the video updates. Too long, too boring, meandering babble, watch it at double speed, etc.

I've been thinking of moving back into writing updates.

In about the time it takes to make a video update, I can write an effective, to the point, honest update on the game's progress. Much like the above.

Let’s be honest: It's not like my face is winning me any fans!

I wouldn't stop doing video updates entirely.
I would shift to weekly written updates and video updates every 2-4 weeks to show the game.

Thoughts?