Eschalon: Book I Progress Update

Category: News Archive

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Written by BuckGB on June 9th, 2007

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Since it appears everyone is screaming for more news, I thought I should give a bit of an update here...

Right now we are in heavy crunch mode. Internally, we thought we could start the final beta test by June 1st, but we just didn't make it there. There are no technical hurdles in our way, it just happens that producing decent content takes more time than you'd think. Creating a single side quest involves the initial design, usually some rendering, scripting, dialogue writing, testing, and often programming when we discover a hole in the system. It is a huge accomplishment to get one working side quest implemented in one day.

I would never have thought from the beginning that the process of game creation would be so involved, especially a project like Eschalon where we purposely want the game to be "old-school". We weren't going to design a game with Radiant AI or a graphic engine that competes with Crysis; we are making a better looking Ultima style game with touches of Might & Magic and Wizardry. It turns out that quality game production on any scale takes time, and an RPG is about the most time consuming project of all. The variables that must be considered are staggering at times.

So, we're here and working hard on it. We don't have a dedicated promotional person, so it's hard to stop what we're doing just to get an update out or some screenshots posted. We try to be very quick about answering questions here when asked because we understand how many of you rely on the forums for news and this is extremely convenient for us.

We have some stuff in the works: we are scheduled to do an interview in June and we have an exclusive deal with a website to host our video trailer when we are done with it. We have been grabbing chunks of video from time to time and are slowly getting something put together for that. We have some internal testing coming up with a few "fresh eyes" that will give us valuable feedback on where we stand with the game. The final beta has been pushed back later in the summer and unless these early internal tests reveal any problems, we'll be on track for that.

Thanks to everyone for your patience and more importantly your enthusiasm and interest in the game!

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