The Sanctum

The long-awaited version 3.0 of "Sanctum of the Archmage: Act I" is finally nearing release! The last stage of the beta test is finishing this weekend, and barring unforseen issues, I should be ready to post it sometime next week. Version 3.0 includes updates to both Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of the saga, although the most extensive changes are in Chapter 1. I’d like to extend my sincere thanks to the beta testers who volunteered to give the new version a very thorough shakedown, and who offered many helpful comments and suggestions.

I’d also like to remind everyone that we’re now in the final week of the NWN Vault’s Module of the Year Contest, in which "Sanctum of the Archmage 2: The Miracle Worker - Act I" is a contestant. So if you haven’t yet, don’t forget to vote before the contest ends on Saturday, April 5th!

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I’m very pleased to announce that voting has now begun on the NWN Vault for "2007 Module of the Year" – and that Sanctum of the Archmage 2: The Miracle Worker, Act I, is a contestant!

Voting is open to anyone who had an active Neverwinter Vault account as of March 1, 2007, and only one vote is allowed. So of course, I’d like to encourage fans of the Sanctum of the Archmage series to visit the poll and cast their vote!

The poll can be found here. And good luck to all of the other contestants!

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I’ve been relatively quiet here lately, in spite of having several reader and player comments that I still want to respond to. Unfortunately, several aspects of my "real life" are demanding a lot of my attention, and probably will continue to in the near future. And I’ve been keeping relatively quiet to try to focus my attention on finishing the update to Sanctum 1. But I did want to take a few minutes to post an update on my progress.

First, the good news: this weekend, I finally finished an alpha test of my rewrite of "The Sight." The "makeover" turned out to involve much more work than I’d intended, and I’m glad that it’s now almost over. A lot of the changes involved doing certain things "right" that I didn’t know how to do properly when I first built the module, but do now. A lot more, though, involved adding new content (especially new dialogue, scripts and areas). After a few pages of relatively minor bugfixes and another Alpha test run, I should be ready to post a beta version, hopefully by next weekend.

On that note, I’d like to ask if anyone would be interested in helping beta test the new version. Several players have mentioned an interest in doing so, and ideally I’d like to try to find several people willing to test out each of the different options that the new version provides. (The main ones are: easy/hard combat, male/female Robin, and male/female player.) I won’t post a final version to the Vault until the beta test is over, since I prefer to do short and private beta tests with only a few testers, and after I’ve shaken most of the bugs out of the module myself. If you’re willing to play a (mostly polished) beta version and email me some notes on any problems that you see or thoughts that you have, post a note here or drop me an email, with my thanks.

Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten to the end of my ideas regarding how to improve the module yet – but I’ve decided that I really do have to draw the line at this point at making any more significant changes. I did take to heart the comments of players who objected to Robin’s "harshness" in several conversations. I reworked them to try to make them less punitive, to let the player feel less pressure to "be nice" to him/her, and to allow for a little more "attitude." I’ve also changed the way that Robin’s relationship "points" accumulate, which should make it easier for players to miss or pass on some choices for RP reasons and still "gain influence and fulfill the romantic aspect of the campaign," as LadyN put it. But I’m passing on some of the more extensive writing changes that I had in mind (some of which I’ll try including in the next module).

And thanks in advance for any volunteers interested in beta testing!

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