Goldenflame Dragon has put some significant development effort into The Dark Unknown over the course of May and June. He started working on a new puzzle early on in May, which proved more difficult to implement than expected, although he was able to distract himself by working on some basic AI logic for the Sentinels, NPCs which are found in some sort of maze. (He also name-dropped locations such as Mt. Drash and the Guild of Death.) His work on both AI logic and puzzles continued into mid-May, and he also took the time to design some new graphics — a laser beam, and the earth elemental monster type.

Later on in May, Goldenflame reverted his design of sounds in The Dark Unknown. He had switched to using audiosprites at some point, but these resulted in errors when the game was played in offline mode; sounds in the game are now standalone files once more. And he also gave us a look at the two puzzles he had been working on: an area called Toshin’s Maze, and something involving laser beams called The Royal Challenge.

Both puzzles are workable and solvable, and the layout for the dungeon containing The Royal Challenge is likewise complete. Goldenflame also put some work into The Dark Unknown’s NPC dialogue flags, and is working toward being able to let others create a player and properly start the game. The title screen and soundtrack also saw some adjustment; Goldenflame has resolved to compose a new tune to replace the classic Wander theme (which he will instead use for the character creation sequence). He also posted a new, and rather creepy-looking, screenshot of the Underwater Grotto dungeon.

Most recently, he has added code for fade-in/fade-out transitions to the game, fixed a “monstrously stupid” bug and worked on the Negate Magic spell. And at the end of all that, he took a well-deserved vacation to attend Unseen Dragon’s Festival of the Silver Serpent.