Dev Update #20: Progress to Writing

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We’ve mentioned this before, but (most) of the blog posts on this website are written by the project’s lead writer.  That’s me. Now, most of us on the team have some level of experience with the process of game development; some have gotten their hands dirty and actually worked towards the development and others simply sat at the sidelines and cheered on the more talented people. Personally, I’m in that second group.  Back in middle school, there was this Pokemon MMO project that I could not have been more excited for. I didn’t know anything about IP at the time, and so I didn’t worry about them getting shut down. All I saw was all the 3D models and textures that were being put together by the community. They really did look great for their time, and the plans they had for the game?  Oh man, it was going to be so cool. I remember at one point, there was discussion of world effects from attacks like Earthquake and Surf. Like, how cool would that have been?

Of course … this was 10+ years ago. Today, I don’t think any of us have seen a fully fleshed out 3D Pokemon MMO, right? That’s because there are so many projects that come up with these lofty goals that they have no idea how to implement. So they fail. Worst of all, they fail after getting you excited. Here at Gears of Eden, we didn’t want to let that happen. Sure, we’ve done our best to get your eyes on us, but we’ve never lied to you. In fact, to my memory, I don’t think we’ve ever even told you something “cool” and crossed our fingers that it was actually do-able. You can view the list of features we plan for the “demo” on our features page, along with some of the items in our “wish list” should we be able to start (incrementally) expanding Gears into a fuller version. It’s very important to us to keep your trust and confidence and communicate clearly who we are and what we are aiming to do. If you ever have questions or input about where we are heading, get involved and let us know! We want to make this game with you, our audience—your feedback is very valuable to us. But please know, we keep our immediate goals in check and obtainable. We talk about adding things like wheel trails. Which reminds me …

We’ve got the wheel trails working! And the dust particle system!  Most likely, we’ll be updating the art there a bit, but at least for now, we have a framework. In fact, we have at least the framework for a lot of features in the game. At this point, we’re getting pretty comfortable with a very interesting notion: getting excited. As a writer, it’s time to get to work writing stories and situations for the player–you, I hope–to go on and enjoy. We’ve definitely done writing before this point (trust me, I had to take all the notes), but it is in that stage where everything needs to be at some point: it’s a framework. We know where things begin, we know where things end, and we know roughly what it’s like to get there. That’s it.

And that gives me a lot of room to play. Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be finishing up the story for Gears of Eden’s demo (some of which might even show up in the upcoming alpha). Maybe, just maybe, this is the time to start thinking about writing blog posts specifically about that process. That might be a little ways off, but until then, if you want to keep up to date with the latest developments in Gears of Eden, all you need to do is follow us on Twitter or Facebook! If you’re intrigued by that alpha that I just mentioned, sign up to our newsletter to be eligible for our randomized alpha testing system! You can also, should you feel so generously inclined, hop on over to our donations page to snag any number of rewards simply for supporting our project. Thank you so much and have a wonderful rest of your day!