Jgprof in the forum wanted to know a bit about Driftmoon's background. I thought the question interesting enough to write a short post about.

"What language is Driftmoon written in, and what libraries are you using? How many LOC is it and how many hours have you spent on it?"

The Driftmoon game engine consists of about a 100 000 lines of C++, including the editor tools. It's a lot of code on one person's plate, I find it a great exercise for my memory. There are a lot of libraries we use. Ogg Vorbis, the sound decoding library. DirectX for graphics. Box2D for physics. And of course the standard JPEG and PNG libraries. Zlib. The actual game is written mostly in the Driftmoon scripting language, but I don't know how many lines of code there would be. Thousands in any case.

A quick calculation shows that we must have spent about 5000 hours for the game and the engine in the last six years. We've worked on the actual game content only for the last two years, after I had to drop the Cormoon project and adapted the engine to Driftmoon. The tough part at the moment is getting enough hours to work on Driftmoon, as we have two lovely little distractions running (and crawling) around the house and I have my day job. But we've managed pretty well, I think.

"Simlarly for the content: how much time goes in to creating a level as beautiful as the ones in the Alpha release?"

It's hard to say how long a good level takes to make, as we always have to work on new additions to the engine and the overall experience. And there's a lot of testing that we have to do. The upcoming monastery area and the adjoining crypt took about two calendar months to complete. Our current rate seems to be about one hour of gameplay per month of work, as we don't have to touch the engine so much and can finally focus more on the content side of Driftmoon. Making the content is very hard work, since we're committed to keeping each hour of gameplay fun! We're certainly hoping to keep that up for the rest of the development time.

Just wanted to let you know of an interesting vote that's opened in TIGSource just recently. The list of Most Anticipated Unreleased Indie Games (2011 version) includes a long list of upcoming indie titles, Driftmoon included. So, in case there is an indiegame, or -games you're anxiously awaiting, this is a great opportunity to go and cast your vote (it's possible to select many games when you cast your vote - just be sure to select them all during the same vote, because you can't change your vote later).

Check the list and vote especially if you're interested in coming indie titles. It's a great chance to update your knowledge on what's coming - and maybe even find some new pearls in the bunch!

Last week we asked for your ideas on improving Driftmoon combat. We've read them all, and we really appreciate all the different views you've brought out!

We've pretty much completed the work on the new monastery level, and the new alpha version is just waiting for the combat mode changes. While Driftmoon is much more about adventure than it is about combat, I still want to perfect it.

From early on in the game you should get to make choices that make a difference on whether you win or not. Interesting choices. Which enemy to kill first? Which skills should I use against this enemy, and which ones should I save for later? My health is running out, will I kill the enemy with this shot or run away? Should I use a bow against this enemy?

I have to meticulously tune the combat balance for your choices to matter. Interesting choices are very difficult to make, so I have to change a lot of things, like what the different enemy types do and how they behave. I'm not going to reinvent the whole combat mechanics we currently have, but it will need a lot of love. And of course I will have to add interesting situations in the levels, not just randomly drop different monsters around...

It's a huge amount of work for me, but I'm certain it will be worthwhile. So you can look forward to a whole new level with about 1-2 hours of gameplay, as well as carefully tuned fights in the previous levels!

A recent preview of Driftmoon got me again thinking about the combat system in Driftmoon. I thought I'd ask you, how would you improve the combat?

Some of you may remember I decided to change the way combat works right after the preview version a couple of years ago. In the preview, the combat worked like in Diablo. One click on an enemy gets you one strike.

And the current model is more strategic. One click starts a fight with an enemy, and you get to choose the kinds of attacks you want to use next.

So which one do you prefer? And if you prefer the current combat model, how would you improve it?

[Update] How about beefing up the combat with a magic system? Possibly the traditional spell book and mana kind?

Here's the first version of the Driftmoon World Map. Any suggestions?

I have started The Driftmoon Modding Wiki on Wikia. I haven't covered many topics on it yet, so please feel free to write what you know in it! And if there's something you don't know enough about, add it to the wishlist, and I or someone else will write about it.

I am preparing to release the game demo version in the coming months. But one thing still left undecided is whether people playing the demo version get to play all the mods?

If mods are allowed for the demo, then a modder will have a larger audience. But that's one incentive less to buy the full version, so it's a tough decision for me. And if any mods are allowed for the demo, then someone could easily make a mod that removes the demo limit - no need to buy the game at all. To remedy that, I've thought about something like preapproving mods that are allowed in the demo. If you're a modder, what do you think? Would you like a larger audience of all demo version players, or would you like your audience to be limited to full version owners?

Maybe you've been itching to get Driftmoon, and would prefer to buy from a service you already have a lot of games in? Or maybe you'd like more payment options than we can offer? Here is your chance! Both Gamersgate and Direct2Drive are now offering the Driftmoon alpha license keys with the purchase! That means that you'll get full access to the Driftmoon alpha versions, and any other bonuses that we're likely to throw to our preorderers.

Get Driftmoon from Gamersgate

Get Driftmoon from Direct2Drive

Get Driftmoon straight from us!