Driftmoon will be released on the 26th of February 2013, that's less than a week away! Thinking back to the summer days of 2005 when all of this started, I can only say that Driftmoon has far exceeded my expectations. A lot of things can fit in seven years of development, and certainly there were times when I thought such a huge project could never be completed. But finally (and with the help of a huge amount of people - especially my developer companion and lovely wife Anne), Driftmoon is now very nearly ready!

Celebrating our soon-to-be launch, we're proud to present you with the brand new Driftmoon launch trailer! We'd be happy to hear what you think about it (...and at the same time desperately hoping you like it after all those sleepless hours of putting it together)!

Ps. Have you noticed the new Driftmoon logos yet?

Here's something I've been feverishly working on for the last couple of days. It started simply enough, I just wanted my 3D model to have a bit more depth, and it turned out to be a rewrite of the code that handles lights. Maybe you can guess which picture is which?

Recent Driftmoon coverage:

• "DESTROY ALL FANBOYS!"
• INDIE STATIK
• I-Luv-Games

Right now we are giving the finishing touches to the game! Yay!

Ps. There's a known bug in the current version that may sometimes prevent passing the gargoyle puzzle near the end of the game. We're going to release a bugfix soon, but before we do, be sure to save your game before attempting the puzzle. Thanks for everyone who sent a report of this! [Update] The bugfix is now live.

If you've been holding your breath, waiting for this announcement, you can finally inhale (we can only hope you've survived the long wait with minimal damage): The worldwide release date for Driftmoon is now officially set for the 26th of February, 2013!

[Roaring applause, the crowd rises to its feet, and whistling fills the air.] Wow, thanks! Glad to hear you're almost as excited as we are!

A new addition - The shortest bridge on Driftmoon, Northrop's major tourist attraction.

Other good news: Starting from release, Driftmoon will be available through an awesome gaming site called GOG.com! In accordance to the GOG.com principles, a copy of Driftmoon that you buy there will be completely DRM-free: You won't have to license the game, and you won't even have to enable our amazing mod-list unless you want to (but obviously we do recommend enabling the mod list, to get access to all our cool mods, and all the hundreds more to come). As an additional bonus, our composer Gareth Meek has agreed to provide 6 of his original compositions for all Driftmoon -buyers from GOG.com.

Velvet has cleverly decided that the sliding storage room is no place for a respectable panther queen.

As before, it will always be possible to buy Driftmoon directly from us as well as Desura and Gamersgate... And we should also have another distributor to tell you about soon.

We've got Beyes everywhere! ...Just kidding, only at the Fortress of Mors-Sarmeth.

Ps. Any amazing trailer ideas? A new trailer is next on our to-do list, so we're all ears...

We've just released Driftmoon beta version 0.996! This is the first version featuring our new, tilted viewing angle that we mentioned earlier. It's available right here. If you haven't had a chance to try Driftmoon yet, or have patiently been waiting for us to add the angled camera feature, then now is the best time to start playing! And before you ask, yes, the full adventure is all there now, from start to finish.

I have to say that we've both been surprised by how noticeably our recent work has upgraded the graphics of Driftmoon. More importantly, it has brought the characters of the world more alive, so it has clearly been working toward our goals as developers.

Someone save Granny Newmoon!

An important notice to all who wish to continue from their existing saved games, and try the new angled camera. We have had to considerably upgrade some of the areas in the game to make them work better in the angled view, but those upgrades don't reach any areas that have already been opened in your saved game. That is, if you've been to an area already, you will see some small graphical errors, but they should not affect gameplay. As usual, we recommend starting from the beginning, but the game should be playable if you continue with your save.

As always, we'd be very happy to hear what you think of the new version! You can comment here, or at our forum - but the easiest way is probably still through our in-game feedback-function (press the letter "F" while playing). We're especially interested in any graphical bugs and glitches that our new visuals may have produced, but all other feedback is welcome as well.

As mentioned in an earlier post, it is possible to adjust the viewing angle while playing, by using Page Up and Page Down, so anyone wishing to stick to the traditional top-down perspective, will be able to do so very easily.

That Gargoyle still hasn't gotten through his defragmentation process.

A closer look at Sarah.

The Heart of the Fortress

Ps. Our never-expiring Driftmoon discount codes will be available through the demo up until the end of February 2013. Be sure to grab yours before that.

Game Changelog

• The camera is now slightly tilted by default. You can control the tilt with the PAGE UP and PAGE DOWN keys.
• The Moon Rocket skill now works with the Mystic Staff.
• Fixed a bug with some feathers being permanently stuck to objects like chairs and bookshelves.
• It is now easier to target objects (especially doors) with the mouse.
• Fixed game hanging when a Rollo manages to stop somehow (which was unlikely, I admit, but possible if it got in a tight corner).
• The staves now work against Oozes and Spider Webs.

Modding Changelog

• The mod camera tilt settings are controlled by the mod settings.ini, see the main game for reference.
• The editor can be tilted with the PAGE UP and PAGE DOWN keys.
• Some bot models have been updated to function better in the tilted environment. If your mod contains humans that use the model from the main mod, your bots may require additional sprites to look better in the tilted view.
• The races.ini variable useInheritedGraphicsIfNotFound controls how the bot's graphics behave if there is no race-specific graphic available. We use it to inherit graphics from the default player.
• It is now possible to use .obj 3D model files for all objects.
• Wielded items can use .obj models by setting the wieldModel property.
• New script action: turnBotToStatue is used to create the statues in the main game. This also means that Pete can update his mod to include tails for the statues!
• Due to the new layers in the characters, some character sprites have been changed. This may break existing statues in mods - if it does, it might be a good idea to use the turnBotToStatue script.
• Topped wall edges can now have a repeating texture, fixing the stretched look of some walls.
• Animations now support cubic interpolation. Selectable via a checkbox in the animation editor.
• It's now possible to use exported objects as props, such as the new trees and rocks.
• The game will no longer crash if there are more than 32768 objects on the map.
• The game will reuse object id numbers from deleted objects, but only if there are no longer any references to the deleted object from scripts or dialogues.
• Hidden objects will no longer have physics. If you need to make an invisible object that has physics, change its alpha to 0.
• It's now possible to define a damageType in items.ini, and a corresponding immunity in races.ini.

It's review time again!

We just got word of a brand new review of Driftmoon, and thought we'd share it with you. Reading the review made the two of us very happy, because the reviewer had had such an awesome time with Driftmoon. By his request we also let him try out our upcoming version with the tilting camera angle (which, by the way, is currently undergoing beta testing!

Captain Sarah has done some redecorating...

The review at kelevandos.blogspot.com is originally in Polish, but the reviewer kindly sent us an English translation of the summary and the final table of his review. Here it is:

"While the release of Driftmoon is still almost a month away, I am already sure that it will be a great, unique game. For me there is no element of this little beauty that I would not like and it is really hard to find a flaw. Some time ago I could have written that the camera angle could not appeal to everybody, but Instant Kingdom changed even this, asked by the players. So I honestly recommend Driftmoon to every RPG fan and every player in general. The game is solid, full of interesting content and provides a huge amount of fun. I promise you will not be disappointed!"

Pros

• Really solid RPG
• Interesting story
• Interesting characters
• The physics engine provides a lot of fun
• Lots of great ideas!
• Quite a unique camera angle
• A real gem!

Cons

• None. Really, nothing here to criticize!

By the way, there is a little Driftmoon-related contest running at the kelevandos facebook page at least up until today (the 6th), so it might be worth checking out (you may have a chance to win yourself a copy of Driftmoon).

Ps. If someone with a lot of time on their hands for the next few days is extra-interested in joining our magnificent beta group, please send us an email!

The biggest secret of Driftmoon is that it's actually 3D! I bet you thought that it was purely a top-down game, right? Maybe you thought that it would be impossible to turn the camera, even a tiny fraction? Actually that was completely true a week ago, when we suddenly started wondering how the game would look from a more angled viewpoint, and in a mad coding frenzy got to work.

The new camera tilt feature in action, coming soon to your Driftmoon (when we get it fully working and tested)

The top-down camera angle is something that often comes up when people see Driftmoon for the first time. I've never seen a feature that divides people more, some people love it, and some people don't even want to try the game because they fear the perspective. I believe it's largely an issue of what you have become accustomed to. I started my gaming life playing games with a top-down perpective like Ultima VII, and grew up with isometric games like Planescape: Torment. The fully top-down camera of Driftmoon has never been an issue to me, but that may just be because I've been playing too many ancient games. And here's the important philosophical point, I'm not here to make games for me, I'm here to make games for other people to play. That's why we're adding controls to change the camera angle!

The tricky part is that we've originally designed the graphics with a pure top-down viewpoint in mind, and changing the camera even slightly would have resulted in everything looking very strange. That's what we've been doing for the last week, making sure things look good from an angled point of view. Having said that, it won't be possible to change the camera all that much, but I think that even this small change does makes a difference in how the game looks - for the better, of course. But the best thing is that in the future, all of our players will have the possibility to choose the viewpoint they themselves prefer.

Same screenshot without the tilt

So, which screenshot do you prefer? The fully top-down, or the slightly tilted one?

Modders: The tilt feature won't be enabled in mods by default, but from the next version onwards, it will be possible for modders to enable it through settings.ini.

Oh, and I was just kidding you, this isn't the biggest secret of Driftmoon. You'll have to play the game to find it out.

Driftmoon beta 0.993 brings you the Moon Rocket!

How is it that when you want to add just one archery skill, you get two? Playing a nearly purely archer character, I wanted to snipe my enemies before they could get a chance to get to me. Guess what? That wasn't possible, because the range of my archer just wasn't good enough. No problem, make a new skill for it! It's simply called Archery, and will increase your range, as well as your accuracy.

Secondly, I felt that while archery was cool by itself, it really lacked in the territory where the Whirlwind skill is good with melee weapons - crowd control. No problem, make a new skill for it: The Moon Rocket! It fires an explosive arrow that gives a very satisfying boom, and your problems are gone! Naturally you have to be a bit careful with it, you can easily hit yourself if your target gets too close, or if you accidentally hit a wall. Which is to say, playing an archer is now a lot more fun.

Other updates:

• I've fixed the character movement speed on slow computers to be equal to that of faster computers. It should be noticeable if you've been getting less than 30 frames per second.
• It's now possible to run away from the wolves in the Vault area, even if you've provoked them into attacking you.
• For modders, the floor height painting tool now shows the heights in numbers.

I give you the Driftmoon Release Candidate, version 0.99! With this version we've fixed about 200 typos, and otherwise improved the wording of our texts. Writing a roleplaying game is a huge effort, so small mistakes are bound to creep into the dialogues. I want to give special thanks to our testers for helping us find all the errors! Driftmoon couldn't be this great without you.

An important fix with this version is that we've finally had a chance to optimize our rendering code. While Driftmoon works on pretty much any old computer, even first generation netbooks, there are locations in the game that have been visibly slower. The biggest culprit, terrain rendering, is now much more optimized, and runs up to 30% faster in the previously slow locations.

If you haven't tried Driftmoon yet, try out the Driftmoon demo. Not only is there an excellent adventure in it, you can also play all of the Driftmoon mods and even make your own adventures and roleplaying games, completely free of charge!

Game Changelog

• Improved minimap accuracy.
• Fixed characters jumping around on low framerates.
• Improved performance by optimizing terrain rendering, increases framerate up to 30% in certain locations.
• Fixed error where items given to companions sometimes reduced the stats they were supposed to improve. This fixes the bug where companions with agility-affecting items started walking backwards when their agility became negative.
• Physics simulation is more stable on low framerates.
• Holding down shift while moving an item splits a stack of items.

Modding Changelog

• Item graphics can now be set from an object file. This makes it possible to use any type of graphics and even animations for an item.
• To use the new accurate minimaps in mods, go to map settings and activate the "Fit minimap to borders" setting. Remember to re-render and save the minimap.
• When painting terrain, the currently used terrain is now shown without the smoothing effect.
• Added possibility to show terrain layer count. The layer count can be reduced by using less textures per terrain block. Reducing the amount of layers per terrain block improves the framerate.
• Changed the callscript action to run only one script of type Startrandom, if it finds more than one.
• It's now possible to have a separate item image in the inventory and on the ground by using the pictureOnGround property.
• IsTagNear now works for terrain objects and items.

[Update] 0.991 fixes a small error with the new stun effect. Apparently it was possible to attack it.

[Update] 0.992 fixes the companion-repeating bug caused by the previous fix. If you have too many followers, the only way to fix it is to go back to a save where you didn't, and never go back to any areas where you visited before the update.

The minimaps in Driftmoon are very useful, but up until now they've been a bit on the blurry side. Since I wanted to re-render all of the game's minimaps before release, I decided that now is a good time to see what I can do about increasing map details.

At first I thought about using a bigger texture, going from size 1024 to 2048, but then I realized something. Most of our minimaps have quite a bit of black in them, because the available world size is much bigger than what is actually used by the map. So why not use that black space to improve precision? Here's a comparison. Quite a bit more detail in it, right?