The past, present, and future of Acheron's Awakening. It's amazing how fast time goes by... it still feels like I was about to release this game only yesterday!
The History of Acheron's Awakening
In June of 2006 I was nearing completion on what I was hoping would be the first public release of my
BYOND MORPG, Acheron's Awakening.
A month-long trip backpacking around Europe during July of 2006 interrupted that process. When I got back, I started my new job, created a television show and have been planning a wedding. It's been a busy time, to say the least. Acheron's Awakening kind of fell to the wayside.
During the past year (In relation to the development of my television series down in LA), I've been in talks to have a third party developer re-create Acheron's Awakening outside of BYOND. For at least the time being, that process is stalled.
A couple months back I felt that it was a horrible shame to let all of the effort I put into AA continue to go to waste, so I held a public preview of the game... which was a great success.
Where the game stands now
Acheron's Awakening is incredibly stable, very much complete, and without a doubt the biggest project ever created for BYOND. At this point, however, I'm facing two dilemmas: 1.) Finding the required 50-100 hours of time it will take to finalize the game for release, and 2.) My concern that I may have bitten off more than BYOND can chew.
Picture Acheron's Awakening as Diablo for a moment. The initial public release will have the first six levels of the dungeon to explore, filled with monsters, treasure etc... not to mention an instanced boss battle. Now crank that up to the planned 20 levels of the dungeon that I will eventually add, a few more instanced boss fights etc. and you have a crap load of mobs, objects, maps etc. for BYOND to deal with.
Obviously I've taken steps to insure that the game runs as efficiently as possible (and it does, let me tell you!)... but the reality is that BYOND has limits. I'm *praying* that I can stick within them.
The future of Acheron's Awakening
The fact is that I'm not even going to touch the code for this game until January. With my impending wedding in mid-December on top of all the other work that I have to do, I know that I won't be able to throw myself into it like I need to.
My hope is jump back into things in January. I strongly believe that this game is way too good to let it go to waste. I've devoted an embarrassing amount of time to developing it already, and I don't want all of those hours to be in vain either.
I'm not going to give any time tables or release estimates. It will be done when it's done... the important thing is to know that yes, it
will be done.
Posted by SilkWizard (Lead Developer) on Wednesday, November 07, 2007 01:27PM
- 15 comments
(link)
/
Members say:
yea +0,
nay -2
