Project Diary

More great E³ feedback. All About Games online magazine is giving The Dark Project their E³ Best of Show (Roleplaying) Gold Medal. Hopefully this bodes well for our reentry into the CRPG/Action-adventure field after our satisfying but distracting efforts on our millitary strategy game Terra Nova.

On the project front it's been a productive but considerably less flashy couple of weeks, as we've concentrated on absorbing the lessons from our demo effort. The design team is putting the finishing touches on the final production version of the design specifications (especially our novel multiplayer "Theftmatch" mode, which owes a lot to the efforts of Dorian and Doug).
The programmers have been finishing up systems which had to be nailed down half-implemented for the demo. Finally, we've been collaborating on a final feature push for our level editor, using what we learned from putting together our demo level to pave the way for better production work on our final mission levels.

Okay, I said the magic words "final mission levels." Yep, we're getting perilously close to jumping down off our ivory-tower game design pedestals and getting up to our elbows in bits. So far most of what you've seen has been proof-of-concept levels' screenshots and other flavors of elaborate ruse. Just goes to show the difference between a 3D engine (which we've essentially had since January, though refinement continues) and an actual game. -Tim