Return to Gaming

Anyone who’s followed my work knows that “real life” interruptions and delays have plagued my efforts to make progress on both my novel writing and game development projects for many years. And to my chagrin, those have extended into my recent retirement as well. The world, it seems, doesn’t stop throwing curveballs at you (and sometimes, big ones) just because you no longer have a “day job” demanding most of your productive time.

Nevertheless, I’m finally getting to the point where I have enough of a handle on these competing priorities to fit resuming “Sanctum 3” into my active schedule. I’m not promising that there won’t be any new delays that will derail the project temporarily. Reality has already taught me better than to expect that. But I am confident enough now that I’ll be able to resume and continue work on it going forward.

This shouldn’t be taken as a forecast that Sanctum 3 will be available anytime soon. While I have done a fair amount of work on it, including a completed 60+ page design document, there’s still a lot left to go. In addition, Neverwinter Nights has changed A LOT over the last decade since I’ve looked at it last. There are many new features available not only from Beamdog’s EE enhancements, but from the community (for example, via NWNX). I can’t imagine returning to complete Sanctum 3 without incorporating and making use of these new features as well.

That will mean a lot of research, redesign, and refit time, on top of the rest of the development effort. And I will also be writing the next book in the novel series, Wrath of the Peregrine King, at the same time. So I wouldn’t expect anything in less than a couple of years. But I will be posting status updates going forward, to let everyone know how things are going.

My intention is to complete the next several games in the series as Neverwinter Nights modules. This will include the two parts of The Miracle Worker, titled Mission to Rayche and Treason. The last of the Neverwinter Nights mods will be Sanctum 5, The Battle for Mount Cassandra, which will conclude the part of the story arc that was started in The Sight.

At the same time, I will also be writing the novels that will “catch up” to the part of the story being told in the games. That will include the rest of Volume Two, Crucible of Heroes; Volume Three, The Sight, which tells the same story as the first game module; and Volume Four, The Miracle Worker, which tells the same story as The Quest and the upcoming modules. I’m hoping to time all of this so that The Battle for Mount Cassandra will be ready to come out in both book and game form at about the same time.

I have another five volumes in the novel saga planned after that. As I’m working on those, I’m also hoping to be able to pivot my game development efforts into porting the existing modules into a new form. My current aspiration is to use Unreal Engine to develop a commercially marketable indie game version of the story using modern technology. It’s a very exciting prospect, but too far out to go into any more just yet.

So that’s today’s story about resuming work on Sanctum 3. I’ll have some follow-on soon about my plans for ramping work back up on the novel side of the Sanctum Saga, so stay tuned for that!