Good news everyone! Most of you won't know this, but I've been looking for a musician for Driftmoon for quite some time now. I've been in talks with several composers over the year. I've listened to music from about 20 of them, and now we've found the best!
His name is Gareth Meek, and I'm doubly impressed by his skill. You can listen to some of his melodies here: https://www.youtube.com/user/GMComposer
Gareth casually showed us what he can do by composing music to the Driftmoon Preview video in one evening:
So what do you think?
I'm going to ask Gareth to pop by and tell us a few words next week, and we're going to hear more of his work later on. I hope you're as excited as I am! 
One of the things I've had in my head for over a year is a map of the Driftmoon world. I'm of course talking about a world map where you go to when you come out of a town or forest, where you can select where to go next. The whole idea is now on the drawing board, while I'm still working on the new levels for the demo part where you won't need the world map that much.
There are many ways to organize the world map. One is to use squares where you can open a map square by finishing the level in each square, and the squares next to it opens up. We've been using it in Ekapeli at work, and it's ok for that purpose. Most players select the optimal path, they play about 10 percent of all squares/levels if they know they're going somewhere. It's a bit different for roleplaying games, but I wouldn't want my players to miss 90 percent of the game I put in.
Another way to organize the main map is to use openable locations, for example in Baldur's Gate or Fallout finishing certain missions opens up new locations on the world map. We just pretend the player didn't see that exact location the last time he walked by here, he had to learn the location from the NPC. This system forces a rigid order on playing, you have to play the missions here first to open up new locations there. Another thing is that you don't know exactly how many locations there are to visit. That's something I would like to know as a player, even if to know how much of the game I've completed.
My favourite for Driftmoon at the moment is a mixture of the two. Levels are joined by roads on the main map, and passing a level opens up the roads leading away from it. This screenshot is from Puzzle Quest, it shows what I'm talking about. If you're coming from the Horned Temple, and you pass the missions at The Pike, the roads to Tusk and Hyaan open up for you.
One of the main problems I see with this kind of structure is that the levels need a clearly defined passing mission. I haven't decided on how to tell the player in each level that they need to pass this mission to continue forward. One possibility is that it's not a mission at all, just a location you need to get to. Going from one edge of the map to another would be realistic in regards to being able to pass through the area. Possibly the walk from one edge to another would require you to pass missions, or fight enemies, or sneak past them (Although I'm not planning on including a lot of sneaking, I personally don't enjoy sneaking games).
By popular request I'm moving forward on my oldies goldies list to the year 2000, when the budding game developer Ville had acquired his first version of Visual Studio C++. Oh boy, I was really in wonder of that thing. You could do programming magic I never thought possible before, like arrays and floats and struct types. Turns out they were equally possible in both Visual Basic and Pascal I had used previously, but this time I actually read some short tutorial into the language before starting on a new game.
And looking at the code now, it seems I didn't know you could write multiple source files. Then again the whole game has about 8000 lines of code, so it didn't matter that much. This was the first time I tried my hands at 3D programming, and I loved it! I quickly whipped up my own 3D file format, and an exporter for 3DS MAX. Later on I enhanced the same engine for Bikez II, Wazzal and Magebane 2. I'm still using the same sound code for Driftmoon, because after trying several sound libraries I settled for the only working solution I found.
So onto the review! At first I couldn't find the executable because I seemingly didn't know how to put things into subfolders. The game seems to start fine and runs even on my new Windows 7 machine with sounds, so technically it seems solid enough. The user interface feels complicated and unnatural, but nothing worse than any console game I've ever played.
I remembered the fighting mechanics, so I didn't have a problem fighting the enemies. But back in 2000 the sheer amount of people who didn't know how to fight with the mouse was overwhelming. I must have mailed a dozen people a week requesting help. The combat still felt rather random, the best strategy was apparently to make runs straight to the enemy with your sword pointed and hope it hits. As you win more battles you get more money to buy more gear to fight more battles, until one day you win the last baddie.
I still didn't have the patience to finish the game, and neither did I have the patience to finish it in 2000, so I still don't know if the ending works. As I recall the ending was simply a banner congratulating you.
You can download The Forge here. I honestly think you should rather play something like Notrium or the Driftmoon demo instead, but those interested in gaming history are welcome to give it a shot.
After releasing the game I got several offers from startup gaming companies, at the time game companies must have been desperate to staff themselves if a 17 year old kid from Finland would have been a good choise. Another tidbit of history, can anybody guess the original name for The Forge? I changed it before releasing the game because the original title was a common word. As if The Forge isn't! 
You're still in the right place! We've changed our name!
It's been seven years now since I started the monkkonen.net website, and since that we've grown quite a bit. Well actually not, I've only gained about 10 kg. But I have big plans. For the website I mean, not for my stomach. So I finally started a company, and here we are, at Instant Kingdom! I'm still not doing this full time, and it's just the same old me (Ville) and Anne. But we've got a brand spanking new logo, so we're down with the big guys!
So what's the story behind the name you ask? I've always loved how a good game is like a world in a box. Once you start up the game, you go to a far away land. A land of your own imagination as well as the game designer's. I've always loved to think that game developers are in the business of making Instant Kingdoms.
I've still got tons of links to rename, but I'll leave all that for tomorrow. In the meantime, what do you think of the new name and logo?
The nice folks at Brothersoft wanted to give the Driftmoon preview their Editor's Pick rating. They must see great potential in Driftmoon - after all we've only released a primitive preview version, and the actual release is still quite a few months away. So thanks! 
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