• Andrew Phillips - Tuesday Dec 9 23:14 2003
  
  Well, I've published a pair of new pieces regarding backstory events. I hope our webmaster gets them up and available soon. Enjoy.
  
  In other news, I've begun to work on items for Dun Barethsol and future versions of the game. The going is slow, at this point. I probably just need to sit down with some loose-leaf notebook paper and start writing.
  
  Mostly, I'm working on special magick items right now, including their histories. Much of my inspiration of concentrating on items with historys comes from playing Icewind Dale (Goodbye, Black Isle Studios), and the histories provided with some of the magickal weapons and armors found in the game. The detail provided by the IWD writers gives very nearly gives some items lives of their own. Also, once I've done the items with histories, the magick items without histories will be easier since I've already got the basics of a given item type built into the really powerful forms of that type.
  
  Some of these things will be familiar, I suppose. Enchanted or runemarked weapons, magick rings, and Ancient Items of Incredible Power are normal fare in fantasy roleplaying. Of course, there are things that other CRPGs probably haven't done, unless some crazy crafter in an MMORPG has done what I'm thinking of doing. I can't tell you what it is, though. That would spoil the surprise.
  
  Above all, expect continuity, since I'm looking forward and backward in the development of our story for some of my ideas.
   
• Alexandre Courbot - Tuesday Dec 9 19:34 2003
  
  Doh! I just wanted to checkout the new source on my new box (Shuttle barebone - my free time recently has been dedicated to getting it to work correctly, and finally it paid!) just to discover that Savannah is still down due to the recent hacking and that I can't upload my key. Well, tomorrow is another day, I suppose... :/
   
• Kai Sterker - Saturday Nov 29 11:38 2003
  
  The good news is that I have started to move existing code from the v0.3 branch to the new version of the engine. However, it is not done with simple copy & paste.
  
  Completing Waste's Edge took us already longer than I had imagined, and it turned out quite different from our original ideas. Even the original name, "Waste's End" changed, although rather accidently ;-). I don't want to say that it did not turn out as good as we wanted. It is good in many respects, but parts of the story had to be sacrificed in the end, like the Fellnir Kezular character. Others were greatly simplified.
  
  Dun Barethsol will be more complex than Waste's Edge in every respect, and I would rather not make any sacrifices this time. That means, Dun Barethsol cannot possibly be done with the technology we had available for the making of Waste's Edge. One area I am specifically interested in is NPC behavior: I would like to see Sulin actually working in his forge, firing the furnace, hammering blades, etc ... . The same should be the case for other minor and major NPCs.
  
  So what v0.4 needs is a reliable, easy to use and powerful event system and modular character schedule scripts that can be easily reused and recombined to give the impression of natural behavior. That's the part I will be concentrating on in the near future. But it is only a small piece of the whole game and others will have to follow. Items and combat are of special importance, as they are vital to gameplay. But if the world the player will act in eventually is seemingly dead and sterile, the gaming experience as a whole will suffer greatly. Therefore, I'll deal with NPCs first and get to player related parts later.
   
• Alexandre Courbot - Thursday Oct 30 20:02 2003
  
  Looks like many people are moving these days!
  
  I've just moved to my appartment in Lille this month. I'm also waiting for a decent internet connection.
  
  Just started my PhD, which is quite a lot of work. I have been heavily involved in our research projects, but once I'm stabilized and well settled things should go better. Anyway, I have the Adonthell that is scratching me. I'm still twiddling with Python and map tests. Once I have enough of this maybe I'll produce something serious! ;)
  
  What are you others becoming? I guess this year have seen many of us moving. So Kai, learning Korean now? ;p
   
• Kai Sterker - Friday Oct 17 12:43 2003
  
  If you were wondering why I have been so quiet lately - well, I have moved (to Chemnitz, Saxony) 2 weeks ago. I still have no internet at home; that will take at least 4 more weeks :-(. So excuse me if I can't answer mails or support requests during that time.
  
  On the bright side, I've started solving the OSX init matters in a Clanlib-like fashion, and it looks quite promising so far. More tweaking will be required, but I hope to commit something that works as soon as I am online again.
  
  Of course, there is more to do besides Adonthell. For once, I have an internship in front of me (gotta find something first, though) and I've also started something new. So - tada - here I inofficially announce TYK. Feel free to have a look, but don't expect much yet ;-).
   
• Kai Sterker - Monday Sep 15 10:09 2003
  
  As I said earlier, September will be a busy month for me, as I'll be moving to another town. Once I'm settled in, I should have time to look at the OSX matters once more.
  
  Looking forward to do some serious work again.
   
• cirrus - Sunday Sep 14 14:57 2003
  
  Hi all!
  Sorry it's been so long since my last entry. I've just finished drawing my first house map graphic for 0.4! It's a remake of the old forest house from 0.1 and 0.2, but with more detail and in the correct perspective for 0.4!
  It's finished on paper but I don't have a scanner. I'm going to London for a few days tomorrow, if I can't get it done there I'll go to uni and do it there when I get back on Thursday! In any case you'll be hearing from me on the adonthell-artwork ML very soon!
   
• Andrew Phillips - Saturday Aug 16 22:31 2003
  
  Serendipity. That's the only word for it. I was inspired by a drawing done by one of my sister's friends to add badgers to my list of werebeasts in the Adonthell bestiary (this one, specifically). Of course, given what I've done already with the Marring of the World, I decided to add make some Dwarvish werebadgers as well. Today, after a quick trip to the local branch library, I discovered just how smart that decision actually was. Badgers are like Dwarves in many ways. They're solitary. They dig very well. If cornered, they're fighters. Their claws are big, long, and sturdy enough to put marks in stone. I couldn't have done much better if I had known what I was doing!
  
  I'm going to have to change a little of my preliminary write-up, since I realize that Dwarves, rather than being the least happy of the badger-prime hybrids, would actually adapt quite well to being part badger. As there are about eight different badger species, it wouldn't be all that hard to make different Hill Dwarf (aka Runebadger) setts (the proper word for a family of badgers) look different. Their relation to badgers also lends them some interesting abilities and statistics, relative to other Dwarves, such as a greater resistance to poison and probably better dexterity.
   

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