Time for another update Options

[Jerky]

Well, as for Project heartbeats go, here is another. We are still working away on the project's underbelly. We recently reorganized our process to include an actual game designer. Its been a long time coming, but honestly we wern't ready until now to get down to the nitty gritty. Much of the last 2.5 years has been learning for all of us. We now have reached the point where there were sufficient enough ideas in the forums to make an entire game out of.

This game designer has complted the arduous task of reading ALL of the ideas in the various forums and has compiled them. He researched the original Wish and what PW is trying to be and came up with a overview of who we are. Many newcomers to PW have commented that it is hard to tell exactly what we are. We hope to be able to use this to answer that. We now know what we are, so expect some of these bits of info to be released as we progress.

What does this mean for PW? A lot, actually. We have written a high concept document which will be the first step to a true game design document. What have we waited so long? Like I said, we weren't ready. That doesn't have anything to do with the individuals who have been envolved with the project, but more of the collective. Being a hobby-time project, we compete for the free time of any of our developers. Things wax and things wane. The management finally agreed that it was time to move on. This also means moving away from Agile development. That is a programmers way of organizing a project, but PW is not just a program, its a game. I know Agile is very up-and-coming, and many feel it has its place in the game industry, but for PW, it was time for something else. We had been putting off these important design decisions because that is how is how Agile would have us do it. The short of it was that we were in need of something else, so we took the steps needed to evolve into a leaner, meaner project.

What is being done currently? A number of things really. We have broken our alpha goals down into different tasks. We are close to having a basic server prototype which will serve as the stepping stone for the more complicated design decisions we have made. We are also working on a tech demo that should showcase what our world and engine can do/ look like. At first, we will only release screenshots, but we hope to eventually release this is a downloadable form, so you can see it on your own computer.

For the art team, we have been evolving and revamping our pipeline. New tools come out all the time, and production pipelines in the game industry are constantly changing. Ours is being redesigned with this in mind, to mimic a true game dev environment as closely as possible, while still holding true to our rules (legitimate software only). This requires a level of flexibilty that is not used in a standard pipeline. This pipeline, once completed, will be released to the game dev public so they can have something to go off of. It is very "in-depth" and promises to help those learners and veterans all reach the same level of quality.

What else is going on? Our Story team has been renamed back to "Story Team." They are working on a fresh perspective and original world concept that promises to provide depth to our world. We also recently redid our world map, which will also be released in the future. We re-evaluated some of the things we wanted and came up with a new layout that should provide us with a specific goal to reach.

What about programming? We have a model viewing tool that we hope to be able to release as well. Dwarf is being redesigned/improved so as to mesh in with our game engine and server structure. It is also being updated to the current version of Ogre, which should improve the look. We also have created a utilities library that can be used in other custom game-engines, not just ours. It is currently in Release Candidate form and should be finalized soon. For all you aspiring programmers out there, check back soon to see when this will be released.

What about the future? We are hoping to finish concepting the major design elements soon and begin working on the official design document. While that happens, we are hoping to finish our alpha server prototype and client/game-engine. All the while, Dwarf should be revamped and a tech demo is on the horizon. I do not have any dates yet, but we will continue to release updates to keep people informed.

Thanks to all those who continue to drop by and check us out. We hope you won't be disappointed with what we have in store. 'Til next update!

-PW Development Team