November Development Diary news

Happy belated Halloween, everyone. Sorry that I couldn't get the planned trailer out in time. I'll be mindful not to miss any future deadlines from here on out. The last thirty days have been awesome. We've gained back two team members -- Spelos, and Matt (from Frictional Weekly) -- as a programmer and level detailer, respectively. They'll once again be lending their talents on multiple fronts to make Ramlord as good as we can make it. As well, progress on all fronts of the mod have been smooth and we've taken much larger bounds then I expected.

After all, the foundation is set in place. The script, topping off at around thirty pages between voice and journal entries, is done. It's shipped off to the VA crew who have been working diligently in their respective studios to represent their characters the best they can. I've heard back some results, and they're incredible. I'll be sure to give each of the three a fair shake in the upcoming trailer, which should span about two minutes and represent the atmosphere and story much more loyally than the last.

November is going to be primarily a month of systems polish behind the curtains. Spelos will be reintegrating his code standard with some unique tools, bringing our stability for 80% of our maps to a much higher level. Overall, our goal is to spend this month polishing our latest build heavily, releasing a trailer, and finishing up the level detailing in the final two remaining maps. December is when we hope a fully playable beta will be whirling around, perhaps one we'd like to share with some devout testers. But more news on that to come. This means that barring any revelations, yes, our planned release is still somewhere in the ballpark of January-March. I expect sooner than later, but you never know how many layers of varnish and quality control we'll need before we're fully happy with SOTR as a release candidate.

And that's about it! Just didn't want to keep anyone in the dark, as it's been a while. In case you missed it, here was our recent teaser trailer (thank you, Matt!) I'll be in touch in a few weeks with an awesome trailer.