What I’m after is someone who can join the team part time while we get this project moving, and then be ready to go full time as soon as the funding starts. Or maybe you are so *pumped* at the idea of a Midwinter remake, that you want to volunteer your expertise just to help us get this off the ground.

Do you know what Captain John Stark should look like?

Give me a shout…

There are two projects that I would like to get off the ground.

The first is obvious, I would like to develop “The Lords of Midnight: 30th Anniversary Edition”. Yep, that’s right, 2014 is 30 years since The Lords of Midnight was released. For an anniversary edition I would like to bring in 3d rendering. Not a full freeform 3d world, just render the landscape from 3d models and textures. Part of the reason for this would be to up the quality and style of the imagery, but currently using 2d images has a massive graphic overhead. For LoM, the textures to support 3 resolution sets, for the terrain images take up 25mb compressed and 150mb uncompressed. The other area I would like to work on is the AI and game mechanic. Part of me wants to leave he current LoM pretty much as it is, a few tweaks here and there, but ultimately, not to tinker to far. To make bigger changes, I think I would rather have it in another product.

The second project is one that I’ve been contacted about a number of times since releasing LoM, and that is Midwinter. Midwinter was for Mike Singleton, to 16bit what Lords of Midnight was to 8bit. I think Midwinter is ripe for a full on remake and it’s one that Mike was considering for some time.

So, I’ve had a few conversations, and here is where I’m at.

I’ve spoken with Mike’s family and had the ‘all clear’ there. I’ve also spoken with Dave Gautrey who was the Maelstrom developer on the original ST and AMIGA version. He is interested in getting involved as a consultant to the project. I’ve also had early conversations with someone who could help drive the project forward, and help with the hoops required for trying to raise funding.

Firstly I need to assemble a team. As I’m not directly going to be working on this I’m going to need programmers. I’m going to need artists, 3d modeller, Texture, Concept. And I’m going to need a designer.

The idea is to start working on this project in the background to try and bring together the idea of what we want to do with the game. This is going to be large scale development, and the initial core team will be on the project for a least 12 months and anywhere up to 2 years. That’s a budget of at least 300k. Now, unless I’m very lucky and someone out there has a spare 300k or so that they want to throw my way, getting a budget together isn’t going to be easy, nor quick. So I need to find some people who would be interested in joining the team long term, but in the short term would join the team, like the rest of us, as part timers. During the first few months, and without deadlines, the focus will be to define the game; drill down and expand upon the original design, put together concept art, and get a working visual engine running. As we go through these stages we will get a good idea of what the game is going to be, what assets we need to create, how long it’s going to take, what the team size needs to become, and therefore what our funding requirements are going to be, and how we are going to raise that cash!

(If you are interested in getting involved, give me a shout… )

Now, I’d really love to be able to do both projects… but then I think I’m looking at closer to 1m to fund two teams… anyone got a spare 1m that they’d like to use for funding reboots of the two best Mike Singleton games and two fantastic franchises… ?

EDIT: I thought I’d better clarify. The Project Midwinter is higher priority than LoM:30, if I could do both then I would, but if I can only do one, then it will be Midwinter. I’m putting the finishing touches to The Lords of Midnight desktop version ( Windows/Mac ) then I will start on Doomdark’s Revenge for the same platforms as LoM and in the same style. In the meantime, the planning for Midwinter is underway…

Anyway, Stephen King runs this thing called Dollar Babies. The idea being that a student film maker can option one of his short stories for $1. There’s is obviously much more to it than that, and a full explanation can be found on Wiki.

The thing I was thinking about was, what if games publishers trawled through their back catalogues and IP and made a select few of them available to a central body. Students and Indie developers could then buy an exclusive option, for a time limited window, to develop a title based on that IP.

There would be rules in place to protect everyone of course. For example, maybe the game can’t be a straight remake of the original, or it can’t be used for an FPS, or it must have a particular age rating…

The option period may mean that the developer must supply a demo or design by the end of the window that the publisher can then sign off. At this break point the agreement can be terminated, and the IP returned to the pool, or the developer is granted rights to continue with the product. The final game cannot be released without sign off, and any commercial ventures must tip up a royalty to the publisher or the central body.

I know there are lots of details that would need to be ironed out. It’s never quite as simple as it appears in one’s head. But as a concept I think it could be a great way for students and Indie developers to have a chance to mine a wealth of old Intellectual Property that is currently doing nothing at all. Imagine then, if other creatives put some of their IP in. For example, an author could add one of their old novels or short stories to the pool. Or even a film studio could add a film or film character.

I’ve been so consumed with Lords of Midnight, that most other things have taken a back seat. Now that I have moved LoM to its own blog, I thought I’d post something personal here, and take a moment to reflect.

Last New Year’s Eve, I set myself two goals. I don’t normally make resolutions, but I did last year. The first became known as ‘Piss or get off the pot’. This was directed at Lords of Midnight. I made the decision that I had to finish the game, or at least have made enough progress on it by the end of the year, to warrant continuing. If I hadn’t, I had to step away from the project for good.

So firstly then, I shall reflect on LoM, and I shall do it backwards…

The last two weeks have been manic. I had an intended release scheduled for the 21st Dec 2012 which didn’t quite go to plan. Due to Apple closing down iTunes connect, their service used to push out Apps to iTunes, I had to release LoM early. I chose the 19th, hoping that a) it would give me a little time to fixup any issues that might occur during the release, and b) no one would notice. The problem was a) there were no issues, and b) people noticed. So ill prepared, I found myself in the middle of the release storm, a couple of days early, and from that point on, it’s been go go go, all the way.

I have to say that I am very happy with how LoM has been received. From a sales point of view, it’s shifted just over 2000 units to date. As numbers go, it’s nothing to write home about, it won’t make anyone rich, and in fact for me, I chose to split the royalties after Apple and the VAT man took their cut, and therefore absorbing my costs out of my earnings. So, if I really analysed it to detail, and depending on what cost I want to attribute to LoM, I probably haven’t broken even on everything I’ve spent over the last few years, getting to this point. But then, it was never about the cost, and I have spent that money anyway. For sales, moving forward, it is now about stimulating the market, and getting out the releases for Android, Windows Mobile, and desktop.

Midwinter’s day was bitter-sweet. It was great to finally, albeit in a different way, to have shipped the product that I have been working on for the last 2 years. In another way of looking at it, I have finally commercialised something that I started working on over 20 years ago; in some way that legitimises the work. However, I’m painfully aware that it only happened because of Mike’s death, and that he was not there to see the release. That aside, I had a great pick-me-up on the day when Julian, Mike’s son, called me to talk about the release.

The game has been pretty much universally accepted well by the press and the public. The reviews I have had so far have all been positive. And although the game will never be the one that Mike and I intended to release, I feel justified with the decision I made just over two months ago.

The Christmas break proved a much needed rest, even though I must qualify rest based on the previous 6 weeks, which meant I was still working hard, just not quite has hard as before. Either way, I was able to recharge some of my batteries! It was also great to spend a bit more time with my family!

The 6 weeks prior to release were just hectic. I managed to cram in during that time, so much work that I had been unable to do over the previous two years! I was working on LoM until 2am most days, and then getting up in the morning to do the day job; home from work, start on LoM. It was so much a relief when the game shipped even if it didn’t relieve the work load.

The two weeks prior to that were a little numbing. Mike’s death knocked me a little more than I expected. Mike was a friend, and although I only met him a few times over the last 20 years, and I wouldn’t have considered him a friend in the same way I would friends I went to school with who I am still in contact with, or friends that I work with, or friends that I see more regularly and go for a drink with. He was a friend I spoke to very regularly, some times many times a day, every day. So, if we analyse friends based on how much we have talked, he would be up there near the top. Add in how much he, and his work, has influenced me over the years, and that we were collaborating closely on a project, it really is no surprise that his passing had such an affect. I think what happened was, I realised that he was more of a ‘friend’ than I had ever considered.

The second goal that I set for myself back at the dawn of 2012, was to lose weight. I won’t go into any detail here about that, other than to say that I lost 3 stone/ 36lbs / 16.6kg over the year. My shirts are now slimline, my t-shirts are now large not extra large, I just bought two coats that were medium, and my waist size went from 38 to 32. Overall I feel that I changed my lifestyle without sacrificing much or excessively exercising, so on the whole, I am very very happy with the result.

www.thelordsofmidnight.com/blog
www.thelordsofmidnight.com

I have copied historical posts for completeness and hidden them from the main home page of this site…

Over the next week I will be working on the Blackberry10 version ( to be ready at launch ), and the Android version. Hopefully the Android version may also hit Google Play store… something to aim for.

The website is now live at www.thelordsofmidnight.com

The Solstice is nearly upon us and Doomdark is already waking from his slumber. We must reach the Tower of the Moon by tomorrow, yet our ride promises to be long and hazardous.

The last few days have seen many issues knocked off the list for Lords of Midnight, two of them were show stoppers! Right now my actual TODO: list has 3 items on it. That said, every night, before I start working, I run through the game and add all the issues that crop up to my list; it seldom stays short for long… That said, I almost have a product that I am prepared to ship, even if not 100% happy with it. But then, when are we ever 100% happy with something.

Tonight I will be finishing off the tutorial system in the game. It’s not ideal and it’s a little wordy, and to be honest at this moment in time it is so in your face that I’m tempted to remove it. But knocking off the rough edges tonight should do the trick. After that I need to finish the manual, which will be online. And that should be it.

I will make another few passes through the game trying to snag issues that annoy me more than anything else. I suspect most of those issues to be cosmetic ones that drop out of resolution changes, or physical ones raised because of small hit zones on phones. I am the least happy with 480×320, the iPhone 3gs resolution. But hopefully I can get it more acceptable over the next few days.

It’s been a long six weeks since I made the decision to continue with the project in its current form. I’m not sure how much sleep I’ve had. They have been longs days that have often finished at 2am, with the following day still starting early. Then straight from office after an hour drive and into the study to start the process again. But all that said, I am really happy with how it has come together, it looks great. Sure there are loads of things that I would change. But every-time that I write a change on a list, I have asked myself, “how much does this really matter to the person playing this version of the game? And that has been the thing I have had to keep sight of, it’s this version of the game, and this version of the game needs to ship. There are a number of things I can tweak, but I can tweak them later.

So, currently, I plan to submit the iOS version to Apple on Friday, with a scheduled release date of The Winter Solstice, That gives me nearly three weeks for it to bounce in and out of the Apple submission process if necessary.

The way was obscure but he moved onwards, little caring what he moved towards. The trees thickened and the darkness of the forest closed in upon him yet he hardly noticed; his thoughts were frozen; tomorrow unimaginable, but forgotten, yesterday a strange dream that had happened to someone else – if it had happened at all. Now the thing was destroyed, what else was left to do? All the fear Morkin had held at bay for so long, because he had to succeed, was unleashed with that success. His mind was just a wilderness now, bleaker than the Plains of Despair.

In light of Mike Singleton’s death, I have had to spend some time considering what to do with this project.

Developing this game has been a labour of love for me, but sometimes life just gets in the way, and this has caused large periods of none work over the last 2 years. Mike’s illness was a small factor in this.

You may or may not know, that a few months after Mike and I agreed to work on this project, and announced it to the world, he was diagnosed with mouth cancer. He undertook chemo and then was prepared for an operation to have some of his jaw removed and rebuilt using his shin bone. He also had to have part of his tongue removed. During this time it was found that he had suffered a heart attack and possibly a stroke at some point recently – something nobody, not even him knew about! Mike had the operation and was slowly rebuilding himself. It was during this recovery that he got very excited by the concept of Eye of the Moon and started working on story ideas and designs. I honestly felt that he needed to get the story out.

The plan became to develop Lords of Midnight as part of a practice run for Eye of the Moon. Mike and I figured that by developing Lords of Midnight, Doomdark’s Revenge, and the Citadel, we would cover everything we needed to produce Eye. Also, along side any later development heading towards Eye, we were going to start looking at moving Lords of Midnight Multi-User. Mike was impressed with the work that Jean-Yves Rouffiac had done on his game Midnight/MU, and saw an opportunity to bring the concept home. To this end, we had already started making design changes to the game to make the original Lords of Midnight AI decouple some of Doomdark’s AI processes. An internal blend between Lords of Midnight and Doomdark’s Revenge. We were also going to introduce a new set of Ice Lords to control those wandering armies. So there would have been new characters like Lord of Kor, Gorgrath, and Valethor.

Mike didn’t want to develop a game just for the faithful, he saw this as an opportunity to reach out to a new audience, and part of that process was working out how to deal with telling the story. The gaming world has moved on, and no one reads manuals anymore, let alone Novellas! But we intended to release Audio Books and eBooks, as well as having something in game to tell the story, maybe animation. We also needed a way to tell the player how to play the game whilst they were actually playing it. The intention there was to set the game a little earlier, and follow Luxor and Morkin on their way to the Tower of the Moon. During that time we could impart tutorial information that shows the player what to do, and give them parts of the story.

Mike accepted that moving the game to freeform 3d was not the way forward, making that change created too many other issues that moved the game away from the simplicity of the original; issues that The Citadel never really managed to overcome. Midwinter was a 3d freeform game, Midnight was not. In fact, it was part of this reason that we decided to remake The Citadel in the style of the original games. If there was to be a way forward, it was by going back the originals. We felt strongly that todays casual games, those that are playing games on their phones and tablets, would appreciate the dip in and dip out nature of Midnight.

Mike was playing around with new technical concepts for the graphics. We knew from the work I had previously done on Doomdark’s Revenge with Jure Rogelj, that we could vary the graphics dramatically, to create a more varied landscape. Using techniques to alter or change the graphics depending on location and area. On top of this Mike was working on a technique that placed information along side 2d artwork, to allow us to change lighting direction realtime. Another concept that he was playing with, was a system that he called ‘Paint’. Where all graphics had information in them that would allow them to easily change colour. A pixel was not represented by an RGB colour, but by a percentage of paint used from a small palette local to the image.

The games were going to be released on iOS, Android, Playbook, Mac, and Windows. A method which we were achieving by using the Marmalade SDK. In fact when I started Midnight iOS I was coding it in objective c under the standard Apple SDK. I had no sights for other devices. It was Mike that brought Marmalade, or Airplay as it was then, to my attention. It allowed me to code on my Mac and him to code on his Windows laptop. The ideas were bold, but we had time. We wanted to go for release of at least the iPad version of Lords of Midnight for Winter Solstice 2012.

Time ran away from us. Mike had his health problems, and I struggled with life and work just getting in the way. We also massively struggled to find an artist that was prepared to work on the game as we were, spare time without payment. Mike and I really wanted to use Jure Rogelj to produce the graphics. We really liked the work he had done on my unreleased windows version of Doomdark’s Revenge. But Jure had his personal reasons for not wanting to work on the project. We approached a number of artists, even had concept art from some of them, but we couldn’t find a solution to the art problem.

We wanted to keep the game independent. We’d had a couple of discussions with games companies about taking Lords of Midnight in house, and Mike had had a few offers from companies to develop the game. But in the end, we both felt that he would lose control of the project, and any small amount of money that the game would make, would be lost to the studio system.

We actually talked about creating our own small studio, codename – The Midnight Studio, just to develop these games. It would start small with a couple of guys working in their spare time, and hopefully as the games rolled out, we could organically generate enough money to get everyone working on the games full time.

We also discussed using Kickstarter or Gambitious to fund the project. But ultimately, we weren’t convinced that there was enough people out there to fund the project to an acceptable level. We didn’t like the idea of spending lots of people’s money, just to get them to give us money. Any money lost to buying goodies, was money lost from the project.

The night I heard that Mike had passed on, I couldn’t envisage moving on with this project. So much of the plan had become about heading toward Eye, and doing that without Mike was just a none starter. People want to play, Mike Singleton’s: Eye of the Moon, not Chris Wild’s: Eye of the Moon. It also bothered me that people would not accept any changes that we wanted to make without Mike around. And without him around, I felt that I might just struggle to get to the end. So it seemed to me that the answer would be to leave the game firmly where it was, back in 1984. It seemed the right time to finally turn my back on Midnight, and walk away.

Over the last week I’d had a number of conversations with various people who have either contacted me directly, or posted on my blog. I have also spoken to one of Mike’s sons, Julian. He, like me, is completely bowled over by the online response to Mike’s death. So, taking everything into account, it seems only right that I continue with the project. However, I’ve had to think very hard about what that actually means.

A lot of people out there want to play original, faithful, Lords of Midnight. However, that’s just not possible. Mike didn’t want to do that, nor do I. If you want that experience, play the game on an emulator. I know that might sound harsh, but I feel it’s right. That said, I appreciated that I cannot on my own fulfil the brief that Mike and I set ourselves. So, I have reached a compromise.

During the development of the test version of the game, we introduced hand drawn images of the original terrain. These were hand traced by Mike from the original graphics. He did the work by printing the graphics out large on a sheet of A4, in a faint yellow colour, and then drawing over them in black felt. He then scanned these images in, and removed all traces of the original. In game I think they look excellent, and they were going to be a building block towards final graphics. They look like high resolution versions of the originals. If I could get similar versions of the character graphics I would be able to release a version of the game, that look like the original without using the actual original graphics. Mike would have been happy with that, and so am I.

With this in mind I have decided to release a version of the game with these style graphics. I am going to remove a number of the new features that are already in the game, and restructure some of the UI. I will leave grouping in the game, a feature that the testers proved was now massively important as playing the game without it feels a little tedious. I was also leave in the automap, or at least a version of it. And finally I will leave in the moving landscape – the ability to pan around your viewpoint, rather than flick screen. There will be no new AI, no new characters, no real new visuals, etc.

This version will be a tribute version to Mike; as near as dammit original Lords of Midnight, playing on new devices, that myself and Mike would have be happy with. It won’t please everyone, but I hope it will accepted in the spirit of how and why I release it that way.
Hopefully I can still get this version released this year. If the uptake makes it worth it, I will also do the same for Doomdark’s Revenge. I will release on iPad, iPhone, and Playbook first, followed by desktops, and then Android. The only reason for this is due to the multiple device resolutions, and the testing required.

After that, the project in its entirety needs more discussions. For one, I want to make sure I have fully discussed the issue with his family, and we make a decision that is best for the legacy that he leave us. But in general, most of the plans remain the same with the exception of Eye of the Moon. Obviously, I think that Luxor will never find the Eye, and it shall always remain a myth or a legend.

Jure has kindly stepped in to produce the graphics that I need to release the tribute version, and I am so excited by the results of the work that he has already done. I know that Mike would have loved them, it’s such a shame that he never saw them. Hopefully, Jure will continue to work on the project for any newer version, that we may release next year.