This parting has come too soon

It was a strange dawn. The Sun seemed reluctant to shake off the shackles of night and soar over the rim of the world. When it did, the rays it sent spinning across Midnight seemed cold and pallid. From the north a frozen mist was seeping over the hills and forests and plains and the dawn was silent, the air empty of birds, the earth untrodden by the chattering creatures of day. Even to Corelay the coldness spread and a nameless chill gripped men’s hearts as they rose to greet the new day. Old warriors, in dread, whispered of Doomdark, for they had been touched like this before, but the rest simply shivered and tried, with small success, to shrug off their unreasoning fear.

– Mike Singleton, Lords of Midnight.

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Blackberry Playbook

I recently registered for Blackberry development through Marmalade. The reason was because RIM were offering a free device on loan to test your application. I figured I had nothing to lose, so why not. Anyway, the process was pretty quick and within 10 days I was accepted on the program, qualified for the device, and it turned up today.

I installed the Native SDK, which in turn allows Marmalade to target the device natively. I registered all the certificates etc that I needed. Built the app. Deployed to the device. And well…

There you go. The process was pretty painless. But, check this out: The Marmalade SDK did it’s thing and it just worked. The previous work I did on resolution independence paid off. I just have a few tweaks to make because of the widescreen. But other than that… fully functional.

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“I slew score upon score of his foul creatures yet always there were more to take their place”

I can only apologise for the delays in this project, but can assure you that I more than anyone am eager to see this released.

The summer has proved much turmoil to my schedule. Not because I am too busy, but more because I am out of sorts with development in general. The house move came at a time when I was in full flow, and unfortunately, it had the dramatic affect of completely killing my momentum. And I am only very slowly getting that back.

Anyway, over the last few weeks I have pushed out 2 new versions for testing, and have already added some features read for next weeks drop. The first included changes to the Ice Crown quest. For those people who are very familiar with the original game, the quest mode is way too easy. So I wanted to spice it up a little. Ideally, I was going to move the location of the Ice Crown, or even have it randomly assigned to a location, so that you would have to do some questing to find its location, before you can perform the quest itself. However, I decided to leave that to later in game campaign updates. So all I did was add a few extra armies on the north western flank, the route that Morkin would usually take to perform the quest, and then add some additional logic for generating new armies that are interested in the Ice Crown, should it be lifted from its original location. Current testing suggests that the quest may be a little too hard! 🙂

Second update added some small features to the lord selection screen. The ability to instantly see which lords are at night, dawn, in battle, and to be able to filter on them.

Next weeks drop includes additional features for the map screen. Namely easily locating yourself on the map, scaling, and being able to select things from off the map. Hopefully, I will also add in support for iPhone5 for next week, because currently the wide-screen nature of it, is playing havoc with the game.

In other news, I have a Blackberry tablet dev kit winging its way to me, courtesy of RIM and Marmalade. Which in theory means that the game could launch on this device at the same time as iOS, something that I unfortunately cannot extend to Android.

And… still looking for artists… if you know anyone who might like to get involved, point them in my direction!

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Postcards from Midnight

Dawn approached stealthily, running swift fingers of light over the Lands of Midnight. Far to the east, it touched the grim Keep of Utarg with a brief golden haze: the Targ sentries yawned and looked around only to see if the next watch approached to relieve them. The dawn moved on. trembling over the Downs of Athoril, cloaking them in scarlet and saffron. The hills which had seemed hunched herds of vast menacing creatures in the absence of light, seemed now to draw apart and unfold.

Thought I’d post a quick update on the progress, or lack of, for Lords of Midnight on iOS as I am aware that I have not posted anything for a while.

Unfortunately, the truth is that developed has comes come crashing back to a slow trickle. This is due to me moving house at the end of June. I am somewhat surprised at how much the move has disrupted my development work.
Obviously, I had a few days prior to the move as I dismantled my study and then concentrated on all things moving. Prior to that I had had 7 straight weeks of shouting at people, chasing down people, to make sure the move happened, so by the evening I was more than happy to throw myself into development.
After the move it took a week or so to hey my study up and running, and generally be in a more organised situation round the house in general. But the momentum had been lost. Since that time I have not really spent anytime near the computer, where I have been able to develop.

It has really surprised me, and a little disappointed me, at the level of disruption that has occurred, but all I can do now is try and get myself back in the saddle, so to speak.

Testing has been good, and the current version is relatively stable. It is also now working on all iOS devices. The current changes that I am working on are amendments to the AI with regard the Ice Crown Quest. And then after that I will be working on tweaks for the Xajorkith Defence.

Hopefully I can get my self kick started and fully operational soon!

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Crowd Funding Midnight

If Lords of Midnight was funded using some form of crowd funding, what would you want from it?

What would be your enticement to donate some cash to the project and what would you expect to see in return?

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