<\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/table>I’ve mentioned before that I’m currently working on an indie game for a small Canadian studio. For a while I’ve needed to be vague on the details, until we could be sure that everyone was comfortable with me blabbing about it here, to what is often thought of as a large audience. (Apparently I sometimes underestimate the impact of my traffic<\/a>, but only because I’m too busy looking at all the sites ahead<\/a> of me.) But now we’ve reached the point where I can speak freely… <\/p>\nThe project I’m working on is Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled<\/a> from Studio Archcraft<\/a>. (The game was called “Project Exile” during development, and that’s still the name you’ll see on the website in various places.)<\/p>\n I’ve actually only played the first couple of hours of the thing so far. I know it’s unfair to compare it to something like Final Fantasy VI, which is older and has earned<\/i> its place of legend among titles of the past, but as a recent newcomer to both titles I’d say the start to Black Sigil hooked me in better than the start to FFVI. It’s a shame, really – I’ve read the Black Sigil design docs and I know how the story unfolds, which kind of ruins it for me. <\/p>\n The game began development as a GBA title, and has since moved on to the Nintendo DS. It’s been in development for a while and I’m only getting involved now as the thing gets ready to cross the finish line. The bulk of the work I’ve been doing is simple stuff: Scripting pre-written dialog and choreographing cutscenes. It’s not creative work, but it’s important and a natural way to get to know the technology and tools. I’ve also been doing some writing and game design stuff for another project, but that stuff is still in the preliminary stages and hasn’t evolved very far past mere brainstorming. It’s the kind of stuff I live for, but the scripting needs to be done first. <\/p>\n Actually I shouldn’t call the scripting work “simple”. I know from experience that no system is ever as simple as it looks from the outside, but being aware<\/i> of this truth and being subjected<\/i> to this truth are always two different things. The work was actually rife with eye-crossing complexity until I figured out what I was doing. In my very first session with the tools, it took me something like two hours to get a couple of NPC’s to have a little conversation – five lines of dialog – in front of the player. This is the sort of experience that will bestow humility in short order. <\/p>\n Being introduced to a new toolset has several distinct phases:<\/p>\n I’m somewhere between steps 2 and 3 right now. I do not claim to be at all proficient with the thing yet, but I’m at the point where I can make the characters have a little conversation without expending an entire evening in the effort. A lot of this stuff would be done in minutes if I could somehow download, Matrix-style, the knowledge and familiarity normally acquired through repeated exposure. <\/p>\n This demo movie is pretty old, but this is more or less what the game looks like, and should give a good overview of the plot:<\/p>\n\n