Although I’ve been talking for a while now about my intent to finally get back to finishing Sanctum of the Archmage, circumstances have for some time had a habit of conspiring in one way or another to delay those plans. So I’m pleased to announce that I’ve recently made several decisions aimed at ending those delays, and at speeding up when the remaining chapters of the saga will be available.

The first step was finally completing my graduate work. I had gone back to college part time for a second Master’s degree (in physics) several years ago, but it had ended up dragging on longer than I had expected. Sanctum chapters 1 and 2 were actually built in the spare time I could find between (some very challenging) classes, which is one reason for the slow pace of the saga’s development. I finally graduated earlier this year, and that’s started to allow me more time for other projects again.

The second step was one that I initiated a few weeks ago, when I regretfully announced my resignation as Chairman of the Academy for Modding Excellence, effective at the end of 2009. Working with the AME, first as Vice-Chairman and then this year as Chairman, was a wonderful and fun experience that also allowed me to meet some really terrific people. Although I’ll be retaining my membership with the Academy, it will be with a much reduced workload that will allow me more time to work on my modules.

The third and most recent step, which I’m pleased to announce here publicly for the first time, is that I’ve decided to form a modding team to finish the Sanctum of the Archmage saga. I concluded that this would be a good idea for several (probably obvious) reasons, not the least of which is that my chances of being able to finish the modules in a reasonable amount of time would be significantly increased if I had some help. Since modding is beginning to move more and more in the direction now of team-based rather than individual work, I thought this would be a good time to make that transition myself.

I think this is especially true given the plans that I’ve hinted at in previous posts, but would now like to make official: that the final part of the Sanctum of the Archmage saga, The Alliance, will be developed in Bioware’s new CRPG, Dragon Age (or DA). Some of you may know that I was a member of the DA Toolset Beta team earlier this year, and participated in Bioware’s “DA Builder Event” this summer. These unfortunately also helped to delay my work on developing the next chapter; but they were good opportunities that I think will ultimately help me to improve as a modder and to make the series even better in the long run. Since it has a much more complex and powerful toolset than Neverwinter Nights, team development will probably be typical for modules developed for Dragon Age.

My plan for the Sanctum Team is to have two groups working on parallel development tracks. One group will be working on finishing the last two modules of Part II of the saga, “The Miracle Worker,” which will be in Neverwinter Nights and will use the fabulous new Project Q content. The second group will start development on the first act of Part III, “The Alliance,” in Dragon Age. It’s my hope that with these parallel development efforts going on simultaneously, that the end of Part II and beginning of Part III could be brought out without too much time between them.

It’s a fairly ambitious plan, and you can probably see why I’ll need to recruit a team of folks to work with to make it happen. So far, I’ve got four team members from the Neverwinter Nights community interested in the project (including myself), and I’m hoping to at least double that in the near future. The team will need folks with several different skill sets, from level builders to the voice actors that we’ll need for the Dragon Age modules. I’ll be in the role of lead writer and designer, and the prospect of working together to make an RPG with a group of really talented folks is one that I’m really looking forward to. 🙂

It’s been a while since my last blog post, so I wanted to give everyone an update on the status of my building activities for the Sanctum of the Archmage module series.

First, a bit of good news. Some of my readers may know that I’ve been splitting my time for the last several years between a full-time job, working on a graduate degree in physics, my work for the AME, and of course building the Sanctum modules. I’m happy to be able to announce that I’m now on the verge of being able to close out one of those projects. Just a few days ago, I completed my final requirement for graduation in January (a paper that I should be submitting sometime within the next week). Perhaps not surprisingly, this has been occupying most of my focus and attention for the last two months. So if all goes as expected, a major block of free time should begin to open up for me to begin building again in November.

My next step will be to complete the final update to Sanctum 2, and then to move on in earnest to Sanctum 3. Although my new ridable pegasi are now working in Sanctum 2, I still need to decide exactly how to handle a few issues regarding how to work them into the plot. Should I give the player a choice between Ridable Pegasi and Wind-Walking, or get rid of Wind-Walking altogether? How should I handle it if you get your mounts killed in battle? Should you be able to summon new ones, and if so how frequently? (If anyone has any advice or thoughts on that, please feel free to opine. :)) I’m working out those issues now, and trying to write the scripts I’ll need to make whichever solution I decide on work seamlessly in-game.

I also have a couple of final tweaks and updates to make to the module in general, such as (for example) updating the “Flooded Cave” battle. I had some very good feedback on that battle from a player, which made it clear to me that I need to make a serious effort to hack the standard monster AI for that encounter to make it more realistic.

Finally, there are NinjaWeaselMan’s Romantic animations. I corresponded with him recently, and the updated version of his hak (which will include some additional animations that I need for my update to Sanctum 2, such as hugging) should be ready in about 2 weeks. I’ve got the code ready for these animations now, so hopefully I should be able to just plug in the final version of the hak when it’s ready.

I hope to have a beta version of Sanctum 2, version 3.2, available sometime in November, and (hopefully) to be able to release it next month as well. And then, after that, it will be on to Sanctum 3!