I was surprised to realize this morning that I’d let all of August go by without blogging. That’s a good thing in a way, because it’s an indication of how busy I’ve been, and work on Sanctum 2 has been front and center on the list of things that have been keeping me busy. I’ve made some decisions about how to move forward with releasing the work I’ve been doing on it, though, and I wanted to make all of that “official” with an announcement here.

I still very much want to keep working on the sequel modules to the Sanctum of the Archmage saga. It’s become very clear to me now, though, that the only way I’m going to be able to manage that is to develop them in relatively short pieces, on the order of 2-3 hours in length — similar to the format of Adam Miller’s “Shadowlords” and “Dreamcatcher” series. In line with that decision, I’ve decided on a good point in the story to break and end the current module, and I’m now working toward that as my goal. If all goes as planned, I should be able to release the first installment of “Sanctum of the Archmage 2 – The Miracle Worker” in about a month.

For those who may have read my previous remarks on the idea of releasing my current work as a “demo” module, I want to stress that “Sanctum 2A,” as I’m now thinking of it, will not be a demo. It will be a short but fully completed piece, probably a little over 2 hours long. Although there will be a couple of challenging fights, it will be light on combat, and very heavy on dialogue and roleplaying. I also spent a good deal of time working out how to do some (I think) fairly creative things with scripting cutscenes, structuring dialogue, and the like — all of which I hope will give the module the same feeling of novelty that many players have come to expect from Sanctum of the Archmage.

Here’s where things stand right now. I’ve fully tested the module up to the current scene, which should constitute a little under 2 hours worth of play. I have one more conversation and a little script debugging to do, and then the current area will be done. After that, I have one more area to create, and 2-3 scenes to write, along with about a dozen or so journal entries. Perhaps more importantly, the remaining scenes will be straightforward, not involving any of the complicated scripting or cutscene testing work that tends to slow things down a lot. With some sustained effort, this should be a few weeks worth of work at most. And since I have most of the current 3-day Labor day weekened free to work on it, with any luck I should be able to get a fair chunk of that work done right away. 🙂