ARCHIVE

The following is a copy of the development journal ...
from Artifact-Entertainment's Site see note at foot of page:

Development Journal

October 16, 2000 - Patch Released

The patch has been released to the public. The beta testing group had no problems with the patch so everything should be good. This patch is focuses on stability issues only, so issues:

119: When Demise is installed, and the patch is applied, when the game is started it makes a ding sound and closes.

3: Crashing in town...especially after mapping large areas and then swapping inventory items. The game either gives a Demise error or the Blue screen of death.

40: Random crashes from a general protection fault in GDI.exe module. This may be related to having a a lot of newly mapped squares on your automap.

14: There is an indexing error generated by high level treastise-type items.

9: Attempting to Pick up/Drop Character/Companion causes an error in some circumstances. (Press keyboard P)

36: Playing game and suddenly dropped back to the Windows desktop with no error.

146: Sometimes on exit not all tasks are terminated. - Part of this issue has been resolved.

The patch has also been broken into two pieces so that updates in the future will only be a 1.5MB download.

I hope everyone enjoys the patch.

October 02, 2000 - Patch Released to Testing

A version of the patch has been released for testing today. Right now we have a small group of testers, and if not too many problems are reported, the test group will be expanded. As soon as we're ready for more testers, I will post in the forums.

This patch will resolve stability issues.

Talk to you all soon!

September 05, 2000 - Things are going well today

We're at 6:30 on Tuesday after the long weekend and things are looking good today. I'm just going to describe what's going on in a semi point form.

I went through the bounty system today and corrected issue 79 (blank gold offered for bounties).

Issue 53 (which is the bounty board offering bounties for monsters that don't show up) is related to a problem with the data files, and not a logic problem.

Part of issue 119 has been resolved but I still think there could be some problems elsewhere. Demise will no longer produce 'Error with ActiveX Servers...' at start up - so this is good.

Issue 3 has been partially corrected but I think there might be problems elsewhere. This bug is difficult to track so I'm having to keep my sniffers on full.

I made it through the game initialization code as well and made some enhancements to decrease load times.

Issue 146 should not happen anymore, but I still want to look over the rest of the source.

Well, that's about it for so I think we're making good progress. This is your Demise Patch Programmer signing off for today.

September 01, 2000 - Rick feeling a bit numb

It's friday at 6:00pm, I've been up since 3:30 this morning and my head is a bit numb. (I got up at 3:30 because I had some really good ideas for the multiplayer source.) To the great happiness of all of those looking forward to the patch, I made it through most of the multiplayer code this week. I still have some more testing to do but I think we're going to see some good performance improvments. So for all of those out there who were looking for multiplayer improvements, don't get too excited just yet, but things are looking good. Getting into the multiplayer code also involved the party code as well, so I think a number of related problems may also be corrected.

I also finished going through the data files earlier this week which gave me a better feel for the data flow in Demise. I incorporated a few changes that should speed load times.

We'll have a much better list of fixed items for next week because I'm really comfortable with the code now. It's good to see that the tide of bug reports has slowed down, which means we've got most items covered in the fix list.

All in all, it's been a productive week. I'll really try to keep this page updated a bit better next week. I hope everyone has a great weekend.

August 24, 2000 - Rick talking about what's going on now

Well, we're heading down bug fix nirvana at 136 reported bugs. There has been some confusion as to what a high priority bug is compared to a low priority bug. High priority items indicate that the bug results in the game crashing or causes a serious error. These are a top priority to fix. Medium priority items generally do not result in the game crashing, however they make game play difficult. And finally, low priority items are cosmetic or are easily worked around. The actually order of items in the bug lists does not indicate any sort of importance.

As we tackle each bug, I'll be sure to update the bug page. The statuses are New, Open, Can Not Reproduce, As Designed, Is Duplicate, Deferred, Fixed, and Verified Fixed - so everyone can have an idea of where things are going.

I want to personally thank everyone for putting so much effort into reporting bugs, and coming up with suggestions. I think the item suggestions, as well as new monster suggestions were excellent.

This page will be updated with Demise Patch info several times per week so you can check by often for status and sanity updates. Once again, thanks to everyone for such great input. It's the excellent and positive emails that we've received which allow us to make a patch everyone will be happy with.

June 14, 1999 - Chris Kehring talks about the new website

As you have undoubtedly noticed, the Demise website has been redesigned, and it's entirely my fault. *grin*

For those that don't know me, I am Chris Kehring (aka "Xcalibarr") and to this point probably most known for my Demise fan website, "Xcalibarr's Realm" (http://demise.gamestats.com). I have been a fan of David Allen's games since waaaay back when the original Mordor was introduced (funny, I just came across my receipt for that game the other day - I should frame that!). So when David was looking for some help with the official website, I offered to help. Luckily, my previous work on my own website didn't ruin my chances - or else David was just plain desperate! *grin*

The new website isn't finished, of course, but the main framework is in place. It has been a hectic couple of weeks, between my "real job", testing Demise, working on both this site, and trying to enjoy some of the warm California sun (its hard to resist the call of beach on weekends, let me tell you). It took me awhile to come up with a design that fit my goals and was appealing enough graphically. But I've managed to put enough of it together to get it running before the new BETA is released, and a lot more will be added in the future!

There were 3 main goals in redesigning the website. First, of course we wanted to implement the "Demise" look and feel throughout the site, as well as updating everything to remove any old references. I also feel that it's important that the site reflect the "feel" of the game, so that newcomers get a grasp of what Demise is about. In the future, we will probably add some DHTML and maybe FLASH movies to create even further atmosphere for the site.

Second, everything is designed to be more efficient both for the viewer in particular, and also for the webmaster. Remember having to always scroll down to view the Oracle updates? Not anymore. Even at 800x600 resolution, you can see most (if not all) of any new update on the News page - without scrolling. Speaking of 800x600, the old site was definitely not friendly at that resolution. This is a problem, since over 40% of the viewers are using 800x600. So all of the pages are sized to look good on 800x600, and most of the content will be viewable without scrolling.

For the webmaster, the new design offers a lot of room for growth. The five main categories offer convenient grouping, and new features can be added pretty easily. In the future, a lot of stuff is going to be built into SQL databases which will make site management and adding cool features REALLY easy.

Lastly, the site is going to be a "living" entity now. The goal is for there to be new content posted at least 2-3 times a week, and maybe by final release, daily. There are already a couple features we are starting that will be updated regularly - this Developer's Journal being the first. Each week, we will have a different team member write about what they are working on and post it weekly (probably on Mondays). Also, each week we will add a new screenshot. Some will be from cool stuff that the team is working on, and some will be from player submissions.

In the future, we want to add databases for things like the items, so that every time you visit the site there will be a new item to check out. Contests should become a regular thing also, much like the "E3 Photo" contest that was recently run. And there are a couple other REALLY cool things we are working on, that will make the site stand out and be a place players visit daily (or maybe even more often than that!).

So, what do you think of the site? Email me at xcalibarr@flashcom.net, I'd love to hear your comments and suggestions! And keep stopping by regularly, there's going to be plenty happening in the future to keep things interesting and fresh!

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