It is often said that we’re not very good at keeping you guys updated…that we get so caught up in working behind the scenes that we forget to come up for air and let everyone know what’s going on.

Well, those days are about to end, and to kick off the celebration, we’ve decided it’d be kind of fun/interesting to take you on a little stroll down what is, for us, memory lane, but might well be new information for all of you, so here goes nothing!

It’s a little known fact, but we’ve actually started this project *from scratch* SEVEN TIMES on this game.

We’d get to a point, and our coder would have to bow out (and in one case, simply vanished into thin air), and we’d have to start again (not completely, mind you…or at least not always. There were segments of the code we could use some of the time, but by and large…yeah. A do-over. And over. And over. You get the idea).

I thought it’d be kinda fun to show the development of the game over that span of time.

In the beginning, there was XRamesesX, SkankyBurns, WidowMaker, and Libertarian, Sir Ralph, Slightly Madman, WarpStorm, and a host of other code-related voices. We talked a lot, but sadly, did not gain much traction to actually accomplish much. Rameses gave us our first taste of the possibilities when he created a quick vBasic screen shot (now lost to history), and Skanky did some of our earliest work on a combat model. We had a lot of fun, kicked around TONS of ideas, but very little of what was created in those early days has survived intact and in its original form. Granted, the SPIRIT of those early days has survived, and in fact, resonates quite strongly throughout the works (both the game and the books), but as far as material in its original form…next to nothing survives. A specific example of something that remains alive in spirit from those earliest days is this: All of our earliest tests of the various rules of Candle’Bre were done in the context of making a mocked up board game and manually playing through. This led directly to the army graphics on-screen being depicted as tabletop, chess-like pieces, so echoes of that boardgame look and feel very definitely survive to this day!

Version 1 of the game was brought to us by the capable hands of Gasdd and Deep Kimchii. At the time, it was commonly said in Candle’Bre’s secret chambers that releasing something like this would set the gaming community back ten years! Now granted, Version One was just an experiment to see if we could actually make some kind of game. We knew going in that it would look like ass, but that was almost the point. We didn’t CARE what it looked like, as long as it worked, and it did!

Generation 2 starts getting a little more advanced, as you can see by the interface. Vel was absolutely insistant on having those damned vines in the interface. It was a battle that raged for 2.5 – 3 years before I finally conceded and we got rid of them.

Okay, so it wasn’t a battle, per se, but I was the only one who really wanted them. Anyway, as you can see, we made a *serious* advancement from our GUI-less version and the ASCII version, into a more traditional tile-based setup by version 2, and during this time, we saw a huge number of advancements and capabilities pour into the game. We were on track to release something playable to the public, and soon! Sadly, in the misdt of our rapid and rampant development, Gasdd’s life got a little hectic, and DK vanished without a trace. To this day, none of us can say with certainty what happened to him, but he is and has been sorely missed.

It was during this time that I encountered my first major health problems which ALSO served to set the project back. I croaked (literally) in my grandparents’ house one evening, just after dinner.

The details surrounding that night are quite fuzzy, and generally make EXCELLENT fodder for writing materials, but suffice it to say that these were not productive days for me in the least.

The combination of our disappearing coder and my health issues left the project floundering for a long time. A very long time, actually. Having come so close to a public release, I found myself essentially paralyzed by our code group’s sudden absense, and did not know how to proceed.

Eventually, I got the hair-brained idea that *I* could do it, and so Generations 3 and 4 were brought to you by me and Tadishi. DeepKimchii was gone, and with Gasdd’s life still full, and I had fully recovered, I decided to try my hand at the whole code game, using a tool called Game Maker. I found Tadishi, and he helped me get the basics running. The five provinces you see conquered, plus Rook’s Roost were the only ones we actually completed work on, however, and my forray into code was short lived.

A slightly later version showed slow-but-steady progress being made, as we began to incorporate some “game like” features into the system. In no way, however, was this prototype to be confused with an actual functioning game. It looked halfway decent, and we had gotten a number of interesting features to work (note that by this point, we’ve moved away from the tile based approach, and over to the province based map, where we remain to this day). A word about the switch from tile-based to province based. At the time, I was playing a LOT of EU2, and I was working on a side HTML project (a “choose your own adventure” type site). I happened across a tool that enabled me to create a free-form clickable shape, and that led me to the idea that we could do something similar to EU2, so when I began experimenting with GameMaker, that’s the approach I took, and have been VERY pleased with the results!

Unfortunately, this too was cut short, by another bout with health issues. Acute Pancreatitus, which saw me spend a solid week in ICU, and very nearly sent me to the morgue.

My involvement with Candle’Bre was limited to occassionally writing fiction for MONTHS afterward. It was a slow, painful recovery process, and unfortunately, the surgery to fix the problem left me with extensive scarring on my torso, and a finicky digestive system that requires me to take meds to keep my stomach happy. Worst of all, I can no longer eat Jambalaya, which was, at one time, my all time favorite dish!

Generation 5 was brought to us by Gasdd, done in Java. He’s an excellent coder and one heckuva smart fellow, but real life issues minimized his time with us. Still, it’s a beautiful piece of work, and he got us quite some distance down the road! The most unfortunate bit of news about this build was that I only got to enjoy it vicariously. I was never able to actually get it to run on my machine, which is a pity, as it appears to have been wonderfully complete and robust!

Generation 6 was brought to us by the tireless Dale (yes, the Dale of modding fame!). He very quickly got us up and running, and we were really on our way! Alas, he got tapped for a great, high paying job, and his free time to devote to the project dried up. We cheered him on as his path diverged from ours, but he was sorely missed.

During this era of the project’s life, I lost my grandfather to a stroke and my father to suicide, in a fairly short span of time.

I confess that I nearly quit the project, as the loss and personal pressures seemed to be growing exponentially. That, coupled with the fact that we seemed to be developing a track record of getting to a certain point then falling back, then starting over and reaching about the same point….only to fall back again.

It was a frustrating time for me, but I did my best to stay upbeat, and the rest of the team really rallied ’round me and kept my spirits up. That was when it really dawned on me that we were more than a team…that real and enduring friendships had been and were being forged along this path. Despite the loss, it was a good time to be a “Citizen of Candle’Bre.”

At around the sae time that Dale departed our band, I ran afoul of the NEXT bout of health issues. A series of heart attacks that put me in the hospital for an extended stay, and very nearly put me in the ground. When I finally returned to at least some level of activity, I discovered that the project had all but died in my absense.

With our last coder gone, and given that so much time had passed, everyone seemed to have given up.

During those days, Hex and I were the only two active members of the team, and I resigned myself to the fact that the books were probably the only aspect of the world that would ever see the light of day. The game seemed an impossible dream.

Not long afterwards, Solver approached me privately and asked if he could help.

I took him up on it, and he began sifting through the material that we had, trying to piece the various versions together into something useable.

While he did that, I wrote listlessly, and Hex produced an ever-improving set of artwork that was to essentially define the Candle’Bre Universe. I don’t think he knows this consciously, but oftentimes, his hauntingly beautiful images would inspire my words. I would say AT LEAST as often as my words inspired his images. It was a fantastic creative partnership, and the main thing that kept me going, during this stage of the project. Of the three of us, Solver had hands down the least glamorous task ahead of him. It must have been intimidating in the extreme, and I can only imagine how many times HE came within inches of just throwing in the proverbial towel!

It was during this period that I met and married Christina. She…well, she changed my life. She’s my muse and my guiding star, and that is as it should be.

She also re-energized me where the project was concerned, and I found a new reserve of energy that propelled me onward. It didn’t matter that I didn’t know what the outcome would be…I had wind in my sails again, and she was a large part of the reason for it.

Eventually, as I began closing in on the completion of what had mutated from a single volume into a trilogy of books, I got bit by the code-bug again, and Generation 7 was born.

This was me and Tadishi and Dermaine Smith, who proved invaluable in helping me get over rough spots…we took it as far as we could in GM and *almost* succeed, but not quite.

Sadly, during this “era,” MORE major health issues erupted for me, and I spent yet MORE time in and out of the hospital. That effectively ground my development to a halt for the last time. I have not picked it up since.

And finally…Generation 8. When Solver’s tireless behind the scenes work began to bear fruit! His personality meshed perfectly with mine and Hex’s, and we enjoyed an easygoing, laid back working relationship that saw periods of relative quiet, and periods of rampant creativity.

Shortly after the release of Demo1 (Version 8), Solver encountered a crisis of faith of his own, when it was discovered that our province shading scheme wouldn’t work with Windows Vista. At that point, I’m not sure he was ready to throw in the towel, but I do know that he figured “that was it.” That was as far as we could take it.

Fortunately, he performed a series of programming dark rituals and found some black magic that enabled us to get around that issue, and we were off and running again!

The thing is though…none of us ever lost faith (well…not entirely, anyways…there were moments–sometimes “moments” that lasted months–where I had serious doubts, but somehow…some WAY we kept slogging through it, to eventually arrive at the point where Demo 1 was released, and what we had promised so many years earlier had finally come to pass. When we finally released something, it would be interesting, engaging, and playable from start to finish.

And it was.

We just enjoyed the journey (well, minus those health bumps in the road!), and the destination sorta took care of itself.

Even better, with the release of Demo2 (version 9), we’ve got more action, more intrigue, and a more robust set of features that I’m sure you wll enjoy!

So…after seven “do-overs,” and a variety of missteps along the way (all of which can be traced back to the fact that I, as project leader, had not the first clue what the hell I was doing…I take full responsibility for our failures…the success, however, belongs to the team!)…after seven years of struggling to get it right, we finally emerged from the darkness of the developmental wilderness with a playable game! Solver, Hex…we MADE IT! You guys ROCK!

So…all of that paints (in rather broad strokes) the course we took to get from here to there from a code-based point of view, but that’s still just the tip of the iceberg, as it leaves off crucially important elements.

For example, during all this time, and especially during the first 3 years of the project’s life, when we had literally scores of people from every continent on the planet working on the game with us, we had tons of writers adding their voices to the tapestry of the Basin’s history (which actually inspired the title of the prequel book to the trilogy!). Names like Chowlett, BustaMike (art), JMarks (art and writing), BigRich (writing – it can fairly be said that he nearly “wrote the book” on the ecology of the Nilroggi!), Frustrated Poet (writing), Pyromaniak (art), ApolytonGuest (analysis), JustinSane (analysis), Ravagon (analysis)Cyclotron (writing, with a special emphasis on providing us the Line of Kings and lots of other historical background) and many, many others were all active participants during this time. And recently, one of our writers (who gave us quite possibly the best short story we’ve seen to date!) has returned after an extended absense…welcome back, Rich!

All these voices adding a verse…contributing to the pages of history that now make up the Basin. They are the reason that the backstory is so rich…so diverse…so wonderful!

They are the reason that this project has survived everything that’s been thrown at it. How could it not? How could it do anything OTHER THAN survive?

It’s been constructed with the creative energies of so many people…so many threads woven together that the resulting tapestry is immensely strong, and has proven time and time again to be capable of weathering any storm.

We’re still here.

Still creating after more than seven years, and I hope you’ll join us, cos the next seven promise to be even more exicting!

-=Vel=-