Good News!

The balls are now in my court.

The multi-hour tactical adventure Elspeth's Garden:  Diplomacy and War that's using Jake's Battle Engine and which I'm co-writing with Taleweaver is 50% "battle-ready" -- meaning that I should get cracking creating actual battles (instead of the movement tests thus far).  We actually plan to put the dialog last based on the constraints of the battle scenarios.

The small procedural 3D exploration game Elspeth's Garden:  Old Home Labyrinth which I'm producing with the assistance of MyBad Studios is also going well.  From the most recent build I will need to decide how to position this game in relation to the other one.

Which leads us to the issue of music.  I'm compiling a most awesome soundtrack courtesy of the talents of Alessio, Cornelis Jordaan, and *cough* myself (...yeah, just one or two tracks.  I was surprised when listening back-to-back, my tracks don't stand out as noticeably inferior compared to the works of the maestros).  While I'm making do with *ugh* Garage Band (hey, the synth instruments sound better than general MIDI!), Alessio got a new orchestral board, and Cornelis held a recording session with a live violinist!  Though I have nothing against chiptunes, I always appreciated concerto music over game loops, so I was willing to shell out the extra to get the soundtrack I wanted.

Originally, the tracks by Cornelis were meant to be solely for Old Home Labyrinth, but they're so good in really setting the mood for the entire game that it would be a waste if they're not featured more prominently in the main game.

Since I'm currently link-spamming like mad, I'd like to give a shout-out to the person responsible for the hand-drawn isometric backdrops Sara Gross.  I'd want to similarly credit all the artists responsible for the character designs but there's many of them ( we have about 20 characters total).  I'm kinda safeguarding the characters for now (since they're the core of every story), but eventually when I feel more confident about the release candidates I'll be willing to post them on this blog with the designs and give due credit.  I also have to thank the 3D artists without which I won't have any animations to begin with.

Technically speaking, you should be expecting some screenshots and videos within the next two weeks, unless I get lazy.