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One of the reasons it’s tricky to guess a release date is the fact that we don’t have a set order for making the different parts of the game.

What should I do next?

As usual, we just work on whatever seems the most inviting at the time. You might think that would leave a whole lot of boring jobs for the end but that never seems to happen.

I’ve got quite a few tricks that I’ve learned from our other games that let us skip a lot of the less exciting things. Looking at some of the ways we did things in DL1 was a shock.

Also whenever I’m not feeling creative or technical I put on a movie and work on mindless tasks. It’s works out a lot better than trying to force myself to be creative.

So more often than not, all boring jobs are done before the more interesting ones. And since my motivation to work is at it’s peak when a game is almost done, the system works!

I won’t pretend that I’m a supreme work machine though. Sometimes I just don’t get that much done.

Let it happen

We’ve learned not to plan too much in the beginning. So our initial plan for the game before we get started consists of:

• A list of dungeons and towns
• A storyboard showing how the dungeons are linked
• A few possible side quests

That’s pretty much it. Then we start. Andrew usually starts by doing some concept maps for towns and dungeons but they don’t get finished for a long time.

I usually start building the backbone of the game. Our game files are pretty well organized, everything fits in it’s place. Everything is so much easier with a well organized game. Towards the end things get a little out of control but not enough to cause any trouble.

From this point forward we just choose something and do it until it’s no longer interesting. We just assume that at some point we’ll have a good idea for a side quest or dialogue for the characters in a certain town.

Most of the best scenes in the game are just spur of the moment things that seem like a good idea. So we just try to make it as easy as possible for those things to find their way into the game.