I’ve been having a few conversations with Wayne Britcliffe about making his Midnight inspired music available. Two of these pieces of music I used on the game trailers. The Midnight Overture was used for The Lords of Midnight, and The Icemark was used for Doomdark’s Revenge.
When I say having a few conversations, I actually mean I spoke to him about it three years ago, and completely forgot to do anything about it. Now that I have finally remembered, I wanted to ask if there is an appetite for these pieces of music to be made available.
I’d appreciated it if you would take some time to fill the form in so that we can gauge interest on releasing the current music or potentially more music.
Monthly Archives: October 2018
How many times had he pictured in her mind its winding paths and gentle glades?
When Drew and I were thinking about the cover for the novel, we already had a picture in mind. However, as with most novels, the responsibility of the cover sits with the publisher. Very few authors have much say on what the final cover will look like, it is after all, generally a marketing decision.
In this case, things changed. Due to events outside the scope of this post, and generally not of real importance, Drew and I found ourselves having to think about the cover. What it would look like, and who would create it. The who was a no brainer – Jure my long time collaborator on all things Midnight was the perfect fit, and we had an image of his that both Drew and I loved and had used already in promoting the book.
There were just two issues with the picture though. One, we had used it already, and two its focus is the wrong way around. If you fold the above image in half the Lord would be on the back and the Citadel on the front. It’s not a huge problem, but it doesn’t feel right.
I also had an image that I used in the game for the main menu. The image shows a group of Lords marching out from the Citadel, albeit this one juxtaposes new and old art work. And that was the idea I liked.
So I created a mockup by flipping the image and sticking on a cutout of the citadel and the lords. This I sent to Jure and asked for something like that.
Within a day or so, Jure sent me his draft sketch. Which Drew and I discussed. Needless to say we loved it. There was only one thing that we wanted to change and that was to incorporate ‘dawn’ a little more. We both liked the way that the sun pops up from behind the mountains and sprays across the lake on the original image. So I asked Jure if he could adapt the sketch to take that into account.
Jure sent a new image, but he felt that the switch of the sun made the right side of the image, and therefore the front cover, too dark. We agreed with him and so asked him to create the final artwork based on his sketch. To be honest, I could have just gone with the sketch! 🙂
A couple of days later, I received the final artwork from Jure, and I think it’s safe to say that everyone involved with the production of the book were overwhelmed with how great it looked. It’s another one of Jure’s perfect Midnight inspired images.
I now look forward to what Doomdark’s Revenge cover might look like. This time however, we might give Jure more time!
Above, the towering clouds simply melted away and the bright stars gleamed in the sky once more.
After having a conversation with Drew a couple of weeks back about the future of the novels, I came to a stark realisation that I was now unable to build the special version of Doomdark’s Revenge that he would need to allow him to freely wander the Icemark as part of his research. This was something that I did for him with The Lords of Midnight and it helped greatly.
However, the problems that I have had with the building of the games because of the loss of the Marmalade SDK are still plaguing me. I was slowly coming to the acceptance that I would soon be removing the games from the Apple app store as each new release of iOS and new devices makes the game unobtainable. This will likely follow through to Android and Windows.
All this has been compounded that my general motivation has been through the floor for a number of years now.
The upshot of this post is that this week I had a self imposed break from work and I’ve been working on the game and have made great progress already. The main menu and surrounding screens are all working. The main view is mostly done bar a few niceties and features that I don’t yet need to give Drew the functionality he needs. Today I’m working on the Think screen, but the main missing screens are the Select and Map screen.
Main Menu 
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Landscaping 
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