Well, this is sort of a long time coming for me. For those of you brand new to this project, it actually started about seven years ago with a simple sketch. This one, to be exact:




That thing sat on the shelf for a while, there in that journal, just collecting dust. I took it out later, and when I looked at it, a flood of thoughts came to mind. These thoughts formed the backbone of the mythology of the world that would keep the name from the original map: Fountaindale.

In the years from '99 - '05, I occasionally took the map out and jotted notes down - sometimes in the journal, sometimes on pieces of scratch paper, or sometimes actually typing my thoughts out staring at a computer screen. I always managed to keep a hold of those papers and files, though.

Sorting out the world...


Then about a year ago, I finally decided to assemble and sort through all of the papers, files, and thoughts I had been collecting for six years. What came out of those several months of work was a cohesive mythology, history, backstories, and a front story that could be used in a game. After all of that was sorted out, I started in on the actual game design for another several months. After creating enough world, puzzles, labyrinths, and extra quests for the monster of a story I'd made, I slapped it all down on a scanner bed and zapped it in. I could now share it with others via the magic of the internet.

I made the first post gamedev.net in January of '06, asking for help in just about every area I could. The responses came slowly, but steadily, and I soon had a small team doing very little. Although I had a lot of content (a LOT of content), I hadn't yet decided exactly what to do with it, and just how to do it. Some of the folks left the project, so I took some time off, read a couple of books, and decided to bite off just one small chunk of the Fountaindale world and concentrate on that, leaving the rest to be uncovered at a (much) later date.

With the help of Alex, a guy who has become a real stalwart on this project, we narrowed my small goal down even smaller - to the size of our current demo project. It's a tiny little thing, but it's the right size for the team we now have; we expect to finish it sometime early next year. We're making slow and steady progress, which is just fine for a bunch of guys and gals working part time.

So here it is, about eight months after I put the original "help wanted" post up, and got me one o' these developer journals going. Feel free to drop me a line...in a project as long as this, encouragement is helpful. But this dream of mine won't die as long as I don't.