Darklands designer Arnold Hendrick Q&A on Steam forum

[LESS T_T]

Arnold Hendrick's early impression of Battle Brothers:

Thank you for making this classic and your dedication in this thread. I noticed that the game Battle Brothers by Overhype Studios has Darklands as one of its inspriations. Its world is also kind of low fantasy in a medieval germanic world, worth taking a look. I would also welcome a modern version.

I'm glad you enjoyed Darklands. I am continuing to investigate another game of that ilk, which will almost certainly be a spiritual successor for financial and legal reasons.

Yes, I have played Battle Brothers a bit,. I enjoyed the "build my own band" feature quite a bit (not unlike the troops in the various eras of X-COM games). Unfortunately,all games of this type took the easier design path and built in a "fixed advancement path" of progressively more difficult enemies appearingt on a fixed schedule. I confess I prefer games where I can progress as fast or slow as I wish, rather than knowing, "Oh, the next big fight will have XYZ, so I better start arming and recruiting for that..."

 

[LESS T_T]

About the spiritual successor:

@supercosmo - Thanks for the kind words. I am looking into building a spiritual successor, but have nothing to announce yet.

Crowdfunding has been discussed above, in this discussion at various places. The problem is that good games take multi-person teams well over a year to build, and teams burn hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in salary. The average crowdfunding campaign raises a paltry $7.000 (per https://blog.fundly.com/crowdfunding-statistics/ ), and computer game crowdfunding has a mixed record (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_game_crowdfunding_projects ).

I know friends who started a dev company with great ambitions, but had to give up when their crowdfunding efforts failed to raise anything like the money they needed. I know people with large egos who invested their whole career in developing their own fame. They could and did raise millions, but mismanaged and wasted it all - because they didn't really have a clue about organizing and leading game development (Ithey just said they did, which is totally different).

However, there may be alternatives and useful middle grounds. I'm currently working on that now, and must get back to it!

I wonder if Piko Interactive now also owns Darklands, and if they're willing to give him a license.

 

[vonAchdorf]

I know people with large egos who invested their whole career in developing their own fame. They could and did raise millions, but mismanaged and wasted it all - because they didn't really have a clue about organizing and leading game development (Ithey just said they did, which is totally different).

Who might that be :D

 

[V_K]

I know people with large egos who invested their whole career in developing their own fame. They could and did raise millions, but mismanaged and wasted it all - because they didn't really have a clue about organizing and leading game development (Ithey just said they did, which is totally different).

Who might that be :D

I can think of at least 4.

 

[LESS T_T]

Oh right his opinion about turn-based vs. RTwP combat, asked by deuxhero. Not surprisingly...:

deuxhero -

While I enjoy both turn-based and real-time-with-pause combat systems, I think real-time works slightly better, because it keeps the battles moving a little faster and puts slightly lighter demands on the AI. In a turn-based game, every weak move by the AI is super obvious.

Furthermore, turn-based battles create more system complexity, as things like facing, "zones of control" (which interrupt/intercept enemy movement), "opportunity fire" (ability to fire while enemy is moving), etc. add a plethora the tactical options which must be built into the UI. In simultaneous real-time play, people can just pause the battle to take their shots, swings or pokes as they wish.

I am interested in other people's preferences. It appears that both real-time (simultaneous) and turn-based battles have their partisans.

Historically, Darklands was one of the first CRPGs that used real-time-with-pause battle mechanics. It helped distinguish the game in an era when people still remembered the text-based adventure games (like the first Wizardry, or Zork), and whose primary experience with RPGs was the SSI "Gold Box" AD&D licensed games.

For reference, his response to a similar question in the 2012 Codex interview:

RPG Codex: Darklands' combat is real-time with pause, an unorthodox thing for a CRPG at the time. Why did you choose to go for this kind of combat gameplay? Would not party-based historical simulation rather call for turn-based as the more tactical kind of combat?

MicroProse had done a series of turn-based, hex-grid wargames a few years earlier. They were remarkably unsuccessful. Meanwhile, most successful RPGs in that time period were one-character real-time games like Ultima. I felt real-time with pause would appeal to more people than spending action points each “turn” to do various things with each character, much less deciding whether action resolution was “as you spend the points” or “simultaneously later.” The fact that action-point-spending games have died away suggests my judgment was correct.

One thing about the combat system that I still like is the armor penetration system combined with an endurance/death combat system. Heavily armored characters generally run out of endurance long before they die. Doing significant damage to heavily armored characters requires different weaponry than dealing with lighter armored foes. Therefore, weapon choice can and should vary depending on your opponents. A side benefit is that as long as someone in your party is still standing, there is a good chance that people won’t die. As a historical model it helps explain why late medieval battles rarely feature heavy casualties to heavily armored men on the winning side, while the losing side can suffer a serious loss of life. Agincourt in 1415 is a prime example.

 

[CryptRat]

The argument about choosing real-time with pause over turn-based because it would appeal to more people would have less impact today since in no way you would make a game such as Darklands to begin with if you wanted to appeal to more than a small bunch of classic RPG fanatics, who will play it anyway wether real-time with pause or turn-based.

However I actually wonder how accurate the argument is in the context of when Darklands was made, because I have no precise idea of the time stamps but I don't remember being any impressed by the combat in Shadow Sorcerer or in Darkmere and didn't spend that much time beyond party creation in Megatraveller ; I spent more time and then certainly had more fun with Legacy of Sorasil, Pools of Darkness or Blade of destiny back then, so retrospectively I can say I didn't prefer real-time and if I hadn't been a child who couldn't point out the difference between real-time and turn-based combat and didn't buy games based on probably mostly arbitrary considerations then I think I could have bought one because it's turn-based or reject another because it's real-time, not the opposite way. Besides he says he made his game real-time with pause because the most successful RPGs were one-character real-time games (I trust him on that) but controlling a party is different. Ultimately concerning players older than me I have no idea how many reviewers praised the game or how many players bought Darklands partially because of the real-time with pause feature and would have disregarded or hated it for being turn-based, probably many more than I think.

 

[vonAchdorf]

TB games don't lend themselves too well to trash mobs. Dispatching bandits in clothes with clubs or wolves way under your party "level" should be over quickly.

 

[Morkar Left]

However I actually wonder how accurate the argument is in the context of when Darklands was made, because I have no precise idea of the time stamps but I don't remember being any impressed by the combat in Shadow Sorcerer or in Darkmere and didn't spend that much time beyond party creation in Megatraveller ; I spent more time and then certainly had more fun with Legacy of Sorasil, Pools of Darkness or Blade of destiny back then,

Realtime was never better. In fact it sucked bigtime. Realtime worked for rpgs in that period of time only once. And that was Dungeon Master and its realtime blobbers it spawned after. It was "immersive" to explore a dungeon in realtime in first person (fake) 3D. It was like you were totally really there in the dungeon. Yes, back in the day that was the VR of its time. And realtime with its "action" was something a pc/console could provide that a boardgame / pnp rpg didn't have. I always thought it sucked and never got the hype of anything "realtime" in rpgs when it comes to party-based ones *shrug*

 

[Nutria]

didn't spend that much time beyond party creation in Megatraveller

You and everyone else who ever played it.

Ultimately concerning players older than me I have no idea how many reviewers praised the game or how many players bought Darklands partially because of the real-time with pause feature and would have disregarded or hated it for being turn-based, probably many more than I think.

This wasn't even an issue at the time. Scorpia wasn't saying "if u like RTWP ur a faggot" back then. It was a game with a lot of new, interesting ideas and the combat system was one of them. It was criticized back then for bugs, not for gameplay. They actually came up with good rules for weapons vs. armor in medieval combat, something that nobody else has accomplished to this day except in in Dominions. And that actually mattered to people in the early '90s, because a lot of us cared about history. The Codex would have you believe that everyone wanted to play games about elves and fairies and eskimos as long they were turn-based, but truly prestigious RPG players of that era had more refined tastes.

 

[LESS T_T]

Q&A about the overworld map:

Dear Mr. Hendrick, could you describe process of "strategic map" making? It is huge and quite detailed. Was it edited tile by tile? Do you had some digital data to start with? How many days it took?

The map source was primarily "GrosserHistorischer Weltatlas, Zweiter Teil" (Great Historical World Atlas, Vol. 2) published by Baerischer Schulbuch-Verlag, Josef Engel editor, 2nd Edition, copyright 1979, Munchen (Munich). Page 2 has an excellent map of levels of population vs forests, on top of which I took know topographic features from a great many other atlases. The bibliography at the end of the manual gives various other guides and descriptions which helped me try to reconstruct the "feel of the land" in the late 15th Century.

I believe the first map was done on a giant piece of graph paper, stuck to a wall, and me using an overhead projector to project on the graph paper various maps. I could adjust the projector's mirrors to make the map projections line up. Remember, this was in the era before common use of the internet (which arrived in 1995 with Windows'95). This was then input as digital data to create the map in the game, with each "colored" square on the chart becoming an graphic element on the in-game map. That same large graphic chart was given to an illustrator, who "painted over it" on another layer (probably clear acetate) to create the printed map we included in the box (and which is included as a separate file in the Steam version of the game).

This one is a repeated Q&A but he breifly mentions about the possible spiritual successor at the end:

Can you tell me what sources you used for your historical research?

The Steam version of the game includes a .pdf version of the manual. In the \steamapps\common\Darklands directory you'll find a "Manual.pdf" file. Pages 100-103 inclusive provides the bibliography, in nine categories, with comments at the start of each category about which books were most useful, an d why.

Remember that the game was designed during 1990-92, so some very important historical works since then aren't included because they hadn't been written yet, such as Peter Wilson's "Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire."

Others had close to publication, but weren't widely known. For example, I had a pre-publication manuscript copy of Kelly DeVries' book, which has gone on to become the standard work on the subject (now in a much improved 2nd edition). Burne no longer has the best military source for the Hundred Years War - Jonathan Sumption has and is still producing a magnificent multi-volume history of that war that will be "THE" work on the subject for the next hundred years. I cannot recommend his work enough to a modern reader of the period.

In fact, when considering the possibility of doing a spiritual successor to Darklands, I feel the existence of Sumption makes the setting a no-brainer. France and Burgundy during the Hundred Years War would make a superb backdrop for a historical RPG.

Btw he recently played Tyranny, PoE, and D:OS: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198022734065/games/

 

[MRY]

Simply reading his posts makes me feel inadequate. Sigh.

 

[vivec]

I have come to believe now that "worked on a fantastic game before" is no guarantee that they still have that talent or ever had it.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I have come to believe now that "worked on a fantastic game before" is no guarantee that they still have that talent or ever had it.

I hope he has a lot of tricks up his sleeve which he is not talking about, because expecting to catch anyone's attention nowadays with a series of scripted interactions interspersed with mediocre RtwP combat is dellusional thinking. Just getting an isometric RtwP combat system right is a major challenge.

 

[Darkzone]

From the Steam thread:

Spoiler

Thanks for the book recommendations, did you have any for the Hansa of that time period?

There is a title Codex Guide to the Medieval Baltic on drivethrurpg.com The publisher is bringing out a pen and paper rpg supposedly in Fall called The False Facade. The blurb for the Codex sounds exciting but it actually is just a big collection of notes.

The blurb has some elements similar to Darklands. If a DL remake used a data/event-driven construction kit design then it might be possible to expand the scope of the game.

Spoiler

"The year is 1456. The place is the Southern Baltic. The Free City of Danzig is in rebellion against the Brother- Knights of the Teutonic Order. Privateers flying the Danzig colors patrol the waters of the Baltic all the way from Reval to Denmark. Bearing letters of marque they will intercept any vessels attempting to reach the Ordernstadt: the Monastic State of the Teutonic Order. Their crews are armed with crossbows, firearms, and cannon, and wear the armor of Medieval Knights. Gunboats, similarly armed with swivel guns, crossbows and breach loading cannon, patrol the Vistula river, engaging any enemy forces they encounter.

Professional contractors do most of the fighting in this war... Bohemian heretics fight as mercenaries on both sides, and today they are preparing to sell three captured towns to the highest bidder. They are joined by Austrian, Scottish, Dutch, Swedish, and Italian mercenaries, each with their own small private armies.

The burghers of Danzig plot their strategy over chess games they play this evening in their merchants Guild hall named for King Arthur. Safe behind the mighty walls of their city, the city council composes a letter to their ally King Casimir IV Poland, seeking to coordinate a new offensive. Nearby, burghers drink beer with their wives in the public baths, taking a break from their long day of guard duty on the city walls, or working the foundry in one of the cities water powered mills. At the river front, the seven story high automated crane unloads gunpowder, salt, pickles, and two hundred kegs of beer from an ocean going carrack just arrived from Bruges in Belgium, having crossed the multiple blockades under the safe passage of the Prussian Confederation and the Hanseatic League. The citizens will celebrate tonight, for tomorrow is the feast of St. Vitus.

A few hundred miles to the east in nearby Lithuania, the eerie primordial groves of a vast forest called the Grauden echo with the chants of pagan priests of the wild Samogitians, who still practice their ancient pre-Christian faith. This night they will give sacrifice to their heathen god Kupolė by bathing naked in the river in the moonlight. They will dance the wild primal dance around the fire without fear of interference. The Teutonic Knights invaded this land annually for two hundred years in a vain attempt to convert the population to the rule of Christ. Eventually they gave up, and the Samogitians are their own masters this day.

Meanwhile in his impregnable three level castle of Malbork, the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, Ludwig von Erlichshausen consults with his mercenary captains and brother-knights. His castle is surrounded by enemy forces who occupy the town of Marienburg, but he has plenty of cannon and sufficient supplies to hold out for years, and 100 iron-hard Brother Knights of the Teutonic Order beside him. The rebels dare not try to storm the walls, nor to even confront the armed river boats he is preparing to carry his orders to the other great fortress of the Order at Konigsberg. They are gathering their forces, raising money, and preparing a mighty counterstroke against the enemies of St. Mary and the righteous Teutonic Knights.

Further to the East, Mongol horse-archers of the Golden Horde check their saddles and water their horses as they prepare to make a slave raid deep into Poland. This is what they call ‘harvesting the steppe'. Their vassals in Muscovy not far away, give prayers to St. Vitus as they forge new gun barrels and build up their city walls for the inevitable next violent encounter with their overlords. Further to the south, escaped Ukranian slaves in an outlaw Cossack band are making preparations of their own, planning their own violent night time raid into the land of the Mongols, to steal horses, women, and gold.

In the north, Swedish and Finnish fur trappers hunt a wounded wild boar on skis, eager to bring food back to their trapping camp where they have been collecting beaver pelts. Little do they know, a pack of wolves is stalking them, and the alpha male waits patiently for the men to become separated. Not far away on a hilltop, armed Druzhina from Novgorod watch the drama unfold, not sure yet if they will rob the Swedes, or save them from the wolf attack.

This is not the familiar fantasy world of orcs and elves, it is a place you have never been before. This is the historical reality of life in the 15th Century Baltic. It's a tough place, a place where high technology and sophisticated urban life exist only a few miles away from primitive tribesmen, struggling for survival. It is a land of many ethnicities and language groups, religions and social classes, where adventure, honor, and wealth beyond the wildest dreams of fantasy can be won by the daring, but swift death awaits both the foolish and the unlucky."

A fantastic blurb that captures the essence of late medieval strife throughout western Europe. A king's peaceful rule only extended as far as his military power, while local lords, mercenary captains, bandit leaders and religious zealots sought wealth and power by any means possible, often with scant regard for peace.

The historian in me feels obliged to mention that Peter Wilson, in his fantastic "Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire," often paints an alternative view. He explains how the institutions of the HRE worked to prevented many big wars. It providied a system of politics and courts for non-violent resolution of disputes. Nevertheless, it's clear that a lot violence was part of life when you read between the lines.

---

I am continuing to investigate the possibilities for a spiritual successor to Darklands, and would like to talk with any artists (especially) and engineers who (a) have professional experience in the computer game industry, and (b) are willing to invest their time in return for a percentage of the game's once it launches - contact me by email (ajhendrick{at}aol{dot}com).

For those who want to debate the hows and whys of building new games, costs, staffing, goals, etc., spiritual successors or otherwise, this is NOT the place. The primary goal of this thread is to discuss the design of Darklands.

Thank you for this post, it may save me a lot of time for my next D&D campaign. I'm not so often on DriveThruRPG so i have missed this one.

 

[laclongquan]

I have come to believe now that "worked on a fantastic game before" is no guarantee that they still have that talent or ever had it.

So prove the devs of King of Dragon Pass. Or the devs of Prince of Qin.

 

[Merlkir]

I have come to believe now that "worked on a fantastic game before" is no guarantee that they still have that talent or ever had it.

So prove the devs of King of Dragon Pass. Or the devs of Prince of Qin.

Harsh.

 

[LESS T_T]

More Q&As.

On rarity of historical setting:

And yeah, the HRE and the TYW are both terribly underused settings, IMHO.

Darklands
Medieval: Total War
Pike and Shot
Kingdom Come: Deliverance

Are all the games set therein that I can think of. And it seems similarly unknown in cinema.

I believe in Europe it is different. Apparently there is a great series of French movies about their various "cursed" medieval kings. There have also been various films about the Thirty Years War, but those tend to perpetuate the seriously outdated theory that the terrible destruction in Germany between 1618 and 1648 "crippled" its development as a nation, which supposedly explains the rise of Prussia, the unification by Prussia in 1870, both world wars, etc., etc.

Peter Wilson has written an absolutely GREAT book on the Thirty Years War, including the later half (which has been largely ignored by many historians), that is well worth reading for an alternate viewpoint. It's more focused than "Heart of Europe," and therefore more readable. Wilson is the first historian to see The Holy Roman Empire as a unique and often unifying political institution.

As for gaming in the late medieval and early modern period, I agree it is rarely portrayed. But then, except for wars in which America plays a central and glorious role, historical games of ANY sort are very rare. My theory is that too many game designers and artists slept through their history courses in high school and college, if they even took any, and therefore have no idea how fascinating it can be.

About the text-based town menu in the original, and the possible successor. Asked by Galdred:

I was wondering: if you were to make a new Darklands, would you keep the text town menu? It seems a bit dated, but I found it very refreshing compared to all the games that insist on making you walk for 5 minutes to visit a given shopkeeper.

The text menu navigation of towns was a deliberate design element, and I think it is still sensible. Building a graphical version (2D map minimum, 3D version probably) of just one town with a few thousand inhabitants is a HUGE amount of work, and then gets multiplied many times as you create multiple towns, larger cities, smaller villages, etc., many with unique landmark buildings that require custom work. Then you have to create people and interactions for ALL the population, not just a few "strategic" choices that gamers will enjoy.

Although I haven't played Kingdom Come: Deliverance yet, it's my understanding that is what they tried to do (i.e., a real one-to-one relationship between reality and the game world), and as a result, the game is limited to one tiny of corner of Bohemia. Darklands covers a far more grandiose canvas.

When considering a spiritual successor to Darklands, the same issues arise. For example, if I want to represent the turmoil through France during the nadir of the 100-Years-War, including the turmoil, riots and poliltical assassinations in Paris, I will be forced to use text menus. Paris is an impossibly big city to represent within the game, not to mention the many other cities, castles, etc. in France.

Creating a detailed 3D world inevitably leads you down the road seen in Ubisoft's "Assassin's Creed" series where you have a very scripted plot with relatively few major decision points. This insures that the player can't wander outside the limits of that detailed 3D world. And even then, the cost to build such a world jumps the development budget into the $100k+ range of a AAA game. There is no way on earth of doing THAT scale of game as a Darklands spiritual successor - to my knowledge, no publisher in the world would risk that amount of money on such a project. If you know of such a publisher, please send me contact information (CEO, VP Biz Dev, VP Development, whatever) - I'll be happy to work with them!

JEWS, or lack thereof in the original:

Also, was it a deliberate choice to not have any jews in the game? If so, what was the rationale? Not trying to start a discussion; just curious.

re JEWS - You can't put everything in one game. I had dozens of additional encounter/minor quest ideas for Darklands that I could not include. The role of jews in medieval Europe is fascinating - for example, their importance in banking and trade cannot be underestimated. Of course, they were frequently scapegoats during periods of difficultly.

We had to "close up" game development and get the game out the door, to stop the corporate "bleeding" of development costs and start the IV of sales to restore the corporate blood supply. The final six months of development were nightmare of trying to get the bugs killed and the game functional for the marketplace. We had to do graphics and CPU software emulation to find some of the bugs (pretty advanced stuff back in 1991-92). Even then, we were only partly successful. MicroProse spent the next year struggling to find what turned out to be a really nasty memory management bug. It was easily inherent in the C++ we were using, and completely invisible to both the tools like "lint" and CPU emulators (because the bug existed in memory space assignment and release). In some circles "malloc" and "alloc" are still dirty words.

About German translation, from another thread: http://steamcommunity.com/app/327930/discussions/0/1694914735992437902/

Microprose hired a translator to come over from Germany, spend a few months at the company, and help up create the German version of the game. She spent many weeks of long days working with me over the meaning of the sentences and words (she was a language expert, not a historian), and with the engineers to get things working right.

The in-game text was not formulated well for translation, with too many "variable substitutions" dropping into the middle of sentences, which in German caused havoc, because other words change depending on the gender of the word dropping in. There is also a problem with subbordinate phrases, which are structured differently in English and German, which can make it difficult to structure the various text menu choices. This resulted in code changes were needed to support the German version. Fortunately, it doesn't appear to have significantly affected stability, probably because the code changes are in the simplest areas of the code

My German is not good enough to pass judgment on the final result, but overall I think you could say the German version is fully equal to the English version. However, the game was originally written with English in mind, so if you're a bilingual purist, you could pick English as the "source" language.

In addition, I don't think we ever did a clue book in German - you'll need to find the English version of that. Most people find the clue book VERY helpful, because it provides lots of data charts, and a multi-level help system to get you into and through some of the very arcane quests and puzzles.

Ultimately, the cost of the translation was so high that the company decided it wasn't worthwhile to do any other langauges, like French, Spanish or Italian.

 

[laclongquan]

I have come to believe now that "worked on a fantastic game before" is no guarantee that they still have that talent or ever had it.

So prove the devs of King of Dragon Pass. Or the devs of Prince of Qin.

Harsh.

The fact said itself. As long as A Sharp have not release their currently developing game, their record is still a game 20 year old. A great game, to be sure, but still 20 year-old

 

[Nutria]

I guess Jesus was a loser too. What has he done for us lately?

 

[Darkzone]

I guess Jesus was a loser too. What has he done for us lately?

Jesus is a fictional character or a real character that has been deified by people who believe in miracles. The belief in the things that Jesus said and he as an ideal are immeasurable in value for human civilisation. The european civilisation was built on the christian belief and perhaps is not sustainable without the christian belief and religion. But do not compare a fictional character without other confirmation source than the bible, with a real person.
People who cannot reproduce their successes didn't understand the cause of the success in the first place. A blind chicken also finds a corn / seed.

 

[LESS T_T]

On the title and the cover art:

What lead to the name Darklands, and who came up with the cover image?

The marketing department was heavily involved in everything that affected sales,. especially titles, packaging, and package artwork. Design proposed many possible titles, and they decided which was best. Darklands won because it was a single word.

Cover art needs to work with the title. A variety of B&W sketch ideas were submitted, with design and marketing sitting to down to decide which seemed best.

The game worked hard to appeal to the RPG audience, both computer RPGs (like Ultima, Wizardry, etc.) and paper RPGs (like D&D, Runequest, etc.). We visited a few bookstores and looked for successful cover images of fantasy books. At that time, a paperback needed either a Dragon or a Babe, or both, to sell. That was what guided the cover images, which included a Babe. By the way, the marketing chief at MicroProse at that time was a woman. The idea of using female imagery to help sell a product didn't bother her in the least! She was a consumate professional (one of the best marketing people I've ever worked with).

 

[DoomIhlVaria]

On the title and the cover art:

What lead to the name Darklands, and who came up with the cover image?

The marketing department was heavily involved in everything that affected sales,. especially titles, packaging, and package artwork. Design proposed many possible titles, and they decided which was best. Darklands won because it was a single word.

Cover art needs to work with the title. A variety of B&W sketch ideas were submitted, with design and marketing sitting to down to decide which seemed best.

The game worked hard to appeal to the RPG audience, both computer RPGs (like Ultima, Wizardry, etc.) and paper RPGs (like D&D, Runequest, etc.). We visited a few bookstores and looked for successful cover images of fantasy books. At that time, a paperback needed either a Dragon or a Babe, or both, to sell. That was what guided the cover images, which included a Babe. By the way, the marketing chief at MicroProse at that time was a woman. The idea of using female imagery to help sell a product didn't bother her in the least! She was a consumate professional (one of the best marketing people I've ever worked with).

Marketing actually kicked back L.M. Jones' original version of the painting because the female warrior's breasts weren't considered sufficiently heroically proportioned. He originally just painted the breasts of his female model as-is. He then had to paint over it. It's kind of noticeable on the painting in person but the scan used on the box art is so dark that it isn't really noticeable. It's worth noting L.M. Jones had already taken it upon himself to seriously enhance the muscles of the model for the male warrior.

 

[LESS T_T]

About the spiritual successor, he is determined to make it happen :

Bscoms and others...

In the fall of 2017, largely inspired by the reaction of fans here, I began exploring what was and was not possible for an update/rework/sequel/etc. to Darklands. A number of people with game industry experience were interested, and ultimately another person from the original development team.

Naturally, one of my early steps was to contact the current company that has rights to the game. I spent an hour or so on the phone with one of their senior executives. I learned about their business, how Darklands fits in for them, and what things were possible for them, including the development deals. Since I know the true cost of development for games in general, and Darklands in particular, I realized that there was no rational, profitable way to resurrect Darklands. At the very least, I can't see a way to do it.

However, I also came to the realize that nothing stops me, the designer of the original game, from creating a "spiritual successor" RPG that violates no trademark and uses no existing copyrighted material. I know that a good historical RPG is possible, but the cost exceeds what's possible for any normal game developer or publisher, with or without crowd-funding. However, some industry friends in Seattle had discovered a new way start-ups could compensate the sweat-equity of the founders. I did some research, and realized it provided a possible way forward for game development.

A spiritual successor to Darklands has infinite possibilities. Even if you limited yourself to late medieval Europe, there are tons of superb historical settings for great RPGs. People have touched on a few in this very thread! The design philosophies of Darkalnds continue to influence other RPGs. There's no reason why they can't influence me too, when making a new game! In fact, I look forward to using everything I've learned from a lifetime in game design and development.

Alas, this is a discussion thread about Darklands design. I do NOT want to hijack it with discussion about any other development methods or games, spiritual successor or otherwise. I have made no public announcements about how far I have progressed in assembling a plan, much less the people and business details, to make anything happen. It will be months or years before I can make such an announcement.

However, I am willing to share more info with people who have serious industry experience, and who would be interested ibeing involved in such a project. By "serious industry experience," I mean one or more years working for a computer game developer or publisher. This includes all aspects of game development, from design, engineering, art, audio, UX/UI, production and QA, to PR and marketing. If you, bscoms, or anyone else is interested, you can reach me at ajhendrick(at)aol.com for more information (where "(a)" is the same as "@").

This is not an invitation for fans or the general public to contact me! I have no announcement to make. In particular, people hunting jobs,. or freelancers hungry for another contract, all should look elsewhere. Sorry -- I don't have a pile of money to help you. If I did, I'd be announcing things already!

There are quite a few games that have taken some of the design concepts from darklands, and used them for great new games .All of them seem to be fantasy games, with relatively little effort invested in a specific historic setting. That's not bad - it leaves historical fiction as a fertile field for other new products.

Thanks for the tip about Occidental Heroes, I may check it out on my tablet!

edit: a bit more detail from a comment at his Steam profile:

Thanks everyone for the kind words about Darklands. I am looking into building a spiritual successor to Darklands - about adventures in France during the nadir of the Hundred Years War (c.1380-1410). Due to the high development cost (over $3mil), I can only do it by having industry veterans willing to contribute time (now) in exchange for profit sharing (when the game ships). I've found a couple people with the expertise and interest to help, but not enough - yet. If you have game industry experience as an engineer, artist, designer, producer, or audio creator, leave your linkedin name here (or other contact info) and I'll get in touch with more information.

 

[AwesomeButton]

...nothing stops me, the designer of the original game, from creating a "spiritual successor"...

uh-oh!

"I look forward to using everything I've learned from a lifetime in game design and development."

uh-oh! x3

 

[hello friend]

Still using an aol address in 2018