To end a long day of testing and feature-fixing, I decided to implement a much-requested feature, scrollable dialogue history! Hurray! You can now finally go back in time to reread all the witty replies that you so dearly love. I hope it will prove useful for you.
Ps. Our beta testing crew is already testing the new version!
There are now only 99 posts in my feedback folder left! That's right, we've finished all the content, and it's now down to polishing and balancing everything, before the release candidate ships to our excellent playtesters! 
What's all this feedback he's talking about, you ask? I've talked about it before, but it's such an excellent tool that I want to brag about it some more! But first, a little background.
You see, in the olden times we received most of the feedback through email, and we were thankful. There weren't many, because it really is an effort to go to your email program and tell someone about an error they've made. And even when somebody took the trouble of messaging us, sometimes it was very hard to make out what the person means by "There's something wonky in the area where the trees form a sort of a triangle." I usually just asked everyone to send me a screenshot, so I'd know where in the game it actually was. But then we realized, why not let the game do that! So the feedback button was born.
Our feedback button simply takes a screenshot of where you are in the game, and sends it to us, along with any message the player wants to send. And let me tell you, it has been used, dozens of times more than the email feedback would ever have been used! I have been through several thousand feedback messages, and most of them have been useful in one way or another. Sometimes they point to a clear flaw, sometimes to an area of improvement, and sometimes the people just want to tell us how much they've loved Driftmoon (Thanks, we've had a huge number of those, and they've all left us smiling!) But thanks to all the feedback we've received, we understand much more about how our players play the game, where they've had problems, or what they've enjoyed.
Before inventing the feedback button, our internal playtesting primarily consisted of one person playing the game, and the other being a scribe, writing down notes on where all the bugs were. That was tedious work, you had to quickly write down something like: "Tomb: Sherry, error in conversation, wrong name for Snap." And when you had just written that down, the person playing the game had already found ten other errors. It got even more tedious when we had to fix the error, finding the correct dialogue line, finding where in it the actual comma is missing. The exact same problem that we had with our players testing the game!
That's when we realized that there's no reason why we couldn't use the feedback button too! So now, every time we see an error, we just click on the button, write a short description, and off it goes into our fancy bug tracker system, which is actually a folder in my email. It's easy to see where the error is by just looking at the screenshot, and when we're complete, we can mark it fixed by moving the post to the handled feedback folder. What is more, either one of us can usually work on fixing the feedback, because the error's location is not written in some cryptic shortcode, like we previously had to do.
And that's where we're at now, we have 99 items left to fix from our own playtesting, ranging from dialogue errors to graphical glitches. And I'm sure there will be many more coming in soon when our testers get their hands on the new version. One item at a time, Driftmoon is getting ready...
Starting this October we've been happy to work with Lauri Heikkinen, who has been doing his game design internship at Instant Kingdom, and will be with us for a couple of months more. Lauri's creative genius is directed toward making a heavily adventure-focused mod, called... What do you mean it doesn't have a name yet? I can't call it the Unnamed Blood Elf Mod, can I?
Tell us a bit about yourself!
Well, good day. My name is Lauri Heikkinen (22) from Northern Finland. I mostly waste my time by playing games on PC.
How did you end up doing your internship at Instant Kingdom?
Right at the beginning when the world was born... Nah. Actually when I started my second and last year in my vocational school we were suddenly informed that we have to get the internship for October. It was bit confusing that it was so soon since I already spent two months doing an internship in another place. Well this time I planned to go in game development since I've always dreamed about studying it (I have tried to get in Kajak for 4 times already). After snooping the Northern Finland by using Neogames' and IGDA's lists, I went to the south. I didn't want to go way too south even though there is most of the game industry in Finland (maybe since I want to be in the wilderness, not in a metropolis). When you guys sent me the answer, where you told me what I can do my eyes were caught by the "creating mod/mods with Driftmoon's editor" line. That line flourished my mind with my old game ideas. Even though I tried to check other possible internship places I finally ended up in here. =)
How has it gone so far?
Nicely. I have done and learned much with this game's editor. But the mod is not ready yet. ;D
What are you doing for Driftmoon?
If someone didn't get through my Engrish or had ADHD and didn't manage to read all that text up there: I'm making a mod. =)
What is your mod going to be like?
Well... At first: it's going to be dialogue based. BUT, many of the lines have conditions to player's stats like, strength has aggression and imperative lines, agility is politeness (you need agility to bow down infront of your superiors) etc. But there will be some fights, so bloodthirsty players, do not worry. And for the second and the last, the plot: The apprentice of the royal advisor has a nightmare about his master, and after he wakes up, his master is nowhere to be found. Soon he hears that several princes were attempted to be poisoned. The Apprentice has to find his master to inform him what has happened so the master can in turn inform the king, since no one is allowed to see the king other than the advisor himself.
Your mod takes place in a world inhabited by ”blood elves”. Can you tell us something about them?
This mod is going to be my first blood elf story. I have developed these "WoW-copies" since I was about 12 or 13. Actually at first they were copies of Vampire the Masquerade -vampires so my blood elves are more like "vampiric elves", they drink blood and they've got fangs, but they have no vampiric powers or weaknesses. Also for making them more gruesome (and faaaar away from WoW and Tolkien elfs), they have blood colored eyes (jellyed blood), they can't cut their hair since all of their magic goes there, they shorten their ears and for the last, they don't live forever and they have diseases. Oh yeah. They are that bad. The name is actually the only thing that is taken from WoW. So that "blood elf" is only used by humans. Normally these guys call themselves as "Viark" which is from their ancient language, meaning "a slave".
How have you liked playing Driftmoon?
I played beta/alpha-Driftmoon in 7 hours having all side quest done also. The demo got nice cliffhanger so I had to buy it to see how this will end and to support you guys :3 I've tried but I can't say anything bad about it since I can't find any and if I do i'd probably get spammed by the other gamers =D (Editor's note: We would have given the game to Lauri anyway, after it was confirmed that he'd do his internship at Instant Kingdom, but as it happened, he already went and bought the game!)
How about gaming?
I use most of my freetime in gaming. Even though I've got quite a bad ass computer, I like to play old games more than new ones. I am one of those guys who prefers quality gameplay to fancy graphics. The most fun in games is when it changes it's normal gameplay from it's norms, like Lungfishopolis in Psychonauts (that was pure awesome!). Also I have found myself back again to boardgames. I have also made a game variant to Red November, called Perks!.
Favourite game of all time?
This is a pretty hard question to me since I have played lot's of good and excellent games. But since my favourites are adventure games, it will be the last of the golden age of adventure games. Yes, it is Grim Fandango.
Any other interests?
History is my main interest. It is really interesting to see how our world has being built from our ancestors' decicions. I also like to watch reviews from ThatGuyWithTheGlasses, SpoonyOne and Cinemassacre.
Inspiration and main influences?
I seem to repeat myself by talking about games once again. Well it is same if someone always talks about movies or comics. Well yeah, games are the main inspirations and influences in my life. Heh... even my blood elfs got their kick starter from the game called Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption.
What do you want to do in the future?
To get in game development school and from there to the game industry. Obviously...
Anything you'd want to add?
I have FURY! Nah... just to see how many will get that line. Well let's just say that I'll try to release this mod's alpha in December. I should get back to work then!
Thanks Lauri! It's certainly shaping up to be a great mod, and we'll be eager to see how it turns out.
When reporters threaten to drop you in a pool of lava, it's time to lift the curtain of secrecy, at least a tiny bit.
Hands up, who guessed that we've been busy making Driftmoon? Come on people, I can't see those hands! ...That's more like it. You will be pleased to hear that we only have a few pieces of Ixal's fortress left to do! It's true! And that's why I've locked Anne inside the dungeons of Mors-Sarmeth! (Don't worry, she's got plenty of food and water.) And I won't let her out until she's finished designing the whole castle! I think she's secretly enjoying it.
Of course, there's still some work left to do after we finish implementing the level design and the bookfuls of dialogue that go into the ending. Some parts of the fortress still have to be filled with finishing touches (and more monsters and loot), and then we'll get to the fun part of fully playtesting the whole game. We're nearly done now, and it's great to finally see our long dream coming true! Still, I think we're even more happy to be able to finally present the whole finished Driftmoon to everyone who's been anxiously awaiting to continue the adventure!
Man, it's difficult telling you about the game's wonderful ending(s) without giving too much away. Did I already tell you it's going to be great?
In other news, we've started working with a new talented game design intern Lauri Heikkinen, who's designing and implementing a mod that features a rather intriguing story in a world inhabited by something called "blood elves". I've yet to find out if they're related to their namesakes in World of Warcraft, but they certainly sound interesting. Expect to see more in January.
Ps. We'll tell you more about our release date soon!
Oh, oh! I nearly forgot! There's still time to get the preorder discount, 20% off! It'll be valid on our website until the end of time, guaranteed. And if you've already got Driftmoon, well... Christmas is coming.
Get our newsletter!