I think it's time to lay down a couple of things once again very clearly. I don't want to boss around, but the fact is I do have a lot of experience with projects of all kinds, many of them led by myself over the last 10 years. Some were finished, some failed. And I have to say the way things have been proceeding in the Korax project these last 6-9 months (or better said, the way they were getting out of hand), is the surest way to losing it all and making sure the project will never see the light of day. A project normally consists of several phases, in which planning clearly comes before doing. This also means in most cases that once work has commenced in a major way, new ideas (unless small things) shouldn't be considered at all any more. There is also the bigger picture to consider. There are currently 3 different projects on our roadmap: Scattered Evil, Korax Arena and The Serpent Power. You all seem to be focusing so much on SE as the project and keep forgetting SE is more of an evolutional dead-end and a kind of test of the whole principle (after all, in some ways it'll be the first game of its kind) than the final step. That will be TSP. That means in the case of SE it's more important to bring it out ASAP than to polish it until utter perfection. If you are still not convinced, think of Daikatana... 4 years in work by an industry mastermind and in the end not only not worth the wait, but even compared to games finished within a year a major letdown. Another thing about SE is the engine: it's utter crap. I want to leave it behind ASAP and that means releasing SE. One of my problems with mapping was that I felt my hands be bound by Doomsday all the time - something quite different in the case of Vavoom. Something else... fan interest in Korax has been dwindling over 2002 - very clear why: no new releases of any kind for nearly a year. This would all change with Korax Arena - which is delayed because of SE. Don't misunderstand me, I don't want to push out SE tomorrow, no matter how bad the quality... but I want it out in the first half of 2003, with a minimal set of features over KMOD2.2 (which I'll list shortly, now I've got to go).

So here is the list I consider as crucial for releasing SE: - damage skins for all existing monsters (including the 2 custom ones) - the 5 NPC types I mentioned in another thread yesterday (1.5 are already finished) - a score of one-frame standing NPCs (everything up to this point is responsibility of the 3 artists) - the new inventory screenshot I outlined and provided a fake screenshot for it (Moose or Janis) - the ability to assign quests (Camper says half of it is already present in the engine and the rest shouldn't take too long) - finishing up the town map (it's my responsibility) - whipping up the maps into a hub system and changing them to better suit the gameplay (will be mostly achieved through common work; I'll put out a kind of hub linking for the Alpha test, and after that everyone can have its say in how to rearrange them and what to change in any maps) - writing the story and the dialogues (the base storyline has been finished long ago, it'll be matched up with the maps once they're in order; to the dialogues everyone can contribute) Which means that before all of this has been finished, no work should be invested into anything else (unless I forgot something important from the list). I rather want an SE in March with unspectacular-looking spells and weapons than an SE with 3 cool new weapons and 5 new awesome-looking spells in August. Once again, please realize SE is but a stepping stone, just as KMOD was, both on the way to more exciting projects our fans themselves are more interested in: Korax Arena and The Serpent Power. I'm not sure whether you realize that if we work on SE for 3 years, people will simply assume we'll never finish it... but if we already have SE out and finished and we're releasing new Korax Arena versions every 2 months with still another bunch of new features and maps/monsters, and work on The Serpent Power for 3 years then, in that case people will assume we will release the project and not just talk about, and they will have the patience they don't have now. As usual, any feedback on these 4 posts I wrote this afternoon are welcome.

I fully agree with you.

BTW still another little argument, I recall Mago wanted more gore in the game, like blood squirting... well this feature has been in Vavoom for years. <!-- s;) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_wink.gif" alt=";)" title="Wink" /><!-- s;) -->