Goldenflame Dragon has made some progress on The Dark Unknown since we last checked in with the project in early January, although much of his attention has been on his role as one of the planners of the upcoming Ultima Dragons 25th Anniversary Bash in Disneyland.

Back in early January, he added another NPC to the game:

Got my KS surveys sent out and some of the rewards are in the process of being made and shipped to me, while others are having test prints made. Progress!

Meanwhile, I added a sidequest to another NPC in Hildendain- you won’t be able to finish it, but I wanted his dialog to exist as you’ll be able to talk to him in the demo.

Hoping to have a demo by the end of the month, while also working on the Almanac and Art Book.

Work on Kickstarter backer rewards (and the Bash!) took focus for a bit thereafter:

Currently, my main focus is on the KS backer rewards (the first few are in my hands!) and the upcoming Ultima Dragons 25th anniversary bash, which I am helping out with. That said, I’ve finished the first draft of the Intro, which at least means there will be _some_ intro for the demo to show. So, progress!

However, toward the end of January, he was busily testing the still-as-yet forthcoming demo of the game:

Running the demo, gonna see if I can complete it. So far, fixed one AI bug that requires a circumstance that should be impossible in the full game but happens in the demo, and fixed a weird bug I’d added with (G)etting gold.

Backer rewards and playtesting the demo continued into early February:

Been working on KS backer rewards, and continuing my run through the demo-to-be. Fixed a bug I’d introduced a little bit ago in a different code cleanup that prevented you from equipping weapons. Hoping to finish my run through the demo over the weekend.

As of last week, however, Goldenflame was back in the code and working on bug-squashing:

Finally fixed a bug where the one spell in your starting spellbook doesn’t start highlighted until you try to choose a spell.

Also fixed a bug where hitting spacebar while you’re talking wouldn’t display but would mean that the keyword wasn’t recognized.

Still testing the demo, but as I think I’ve noted before a lot of my time this month is going towards preparing for the Ultima Dragon 25th anniversary party in 2 weeks. See some of you there!

More recently, some NPCs in the game were fleshed out a bit:

Added dialog to two NPCs in Hildendain, and then in my demo playthrough went “what the hell was I thinking?” when I first tried to buy some armor from a merchant. These prices are _way_ out of whack. Will be rebalancing tomorrow.

Oh, and that demo Goldenflame has been working on? If you’re at the Bash, you’ll be among the first to see it:

Spend the day playing board games, but the result of the evening is that I have a proof copy of the Dark Unknown Player Reference Guide winging its way to me now, and it will arrive in time for me to have it when I demo the game at the Ultima Dragon 25th Anniversary Bash. I wish I could have done a test print of my cover image, but my printer has decided to be a prat. But whatever, I can change it before future printings!

That’s all for now. As always, be sure to follow The Dark Unknown on Facebook for the latest news updates from the project.