• Official Site
• GameSpot Interview with Producer Darren Monahan

So, now that some Torn members are working on this sequel, how big is the team for Icewind Dale II?
We’ve got two full teams of artists made up of 3D modelers, 2D (textures and touch-up), and animators. The designers are Chris Avellone (Fallout 2/Torment/Icewind Dale), Dave Maldonado (Torment/Torn), J.E. Sawyer (Icewind Dale), John Deiley (Fallout 2/Torment/Icewind Dale), Rob Holloway (Torment/Torn), and our new guy, Damien Foletto. There are a couple of us producer types and two programmers from Heart of Winter.

• RPGVault Interview with Lead Designer JE Sawyer

So… work began on Icewind Dale II: “Electric Boogaloo” in late July 2001, pretty much the day TORN was canceled. Call me cold, but I was grateful that there wasn’t any time to mope and whine about it. Anyhow, the designers had decided on a rough story (Josh Sawyer, I believe, was responsible for the initial proposal – see, I don’t even care enough to do the research – that’s how “gritty and real” this designer diary is – maybe the Pope wrote the initial story, WHO KNOWS, hey he might like Dungeons & Dragons) within a week’s time and the game’s areas were divided up amongst us.

“From a true legal sense, my belief is that ‘abandonware’ does infringe on the copyright holders’ legal protection…if they care,” says Richard Garriott, the creator of the classic Ultima role-playing series.

“Electronic Arts, for example, does care about early Ultimas, as they don’t want to lose protection on current Ultimas,” says Garriott. “Truly ‘abandoned’ properties are less worrisome. That being said, personally, I think that sites that support these old games are a good thing for both consumers and copyright owners.” He explains: “If the options are (a) having a game be lost forever and (b) having it available on one of these sites, I’d want it to be available. That being said, I believe a game is ‘abandoned’ only long after it is out of print. And just because a book is out of print does not give me rights to print some for my friends.”

Hello all. Here’s a quick update on what we’re doing around here. At the end of last week we selected our ads so you should be seeing those in your favorite gaming pubs soon. I have been harassing my Q.A. team to take hordes of screenshots so you should be seeing a lot more of them around too (check out 4 new screens here). All of the producers and some of the designers are answering questions from the various journalists out there. Darren is helping out with the programming too. I have been busy with marketing and PR and working with Q.A. Kevin is keeping busy with the buglist and trying to make everyone’s job a little easier. This is all in addition to combing the message boards every day looking for suggestions and putting out any fires as they come up. The new interface is coming along very nicely and Brian Menze is redoing all of our spell icons to match up with the changes being made. The area designers are almost finished with the final areas in the game and most are concentrating on bug fixing and polishing up anything that needs it. Justin Sweet is working on our new portraits (you can see one of them on the website under Visuals\Portraits). Everyone else is really pushing to get the game finished to make our deadline. It looks like we’re finally approaching the home stretch. Unfortunately that also means “crunch time” is just around the corner. Time for the caffeine I.V. Talk to you all soon.

Over the course of the past few weeks, we’ve really been concentrating on getting the interface completed. Artist Brian Menze is still working on the spell icons and they look fantastic, I can’t wait to show them off. We are shrinking the character portraits down and putting them along the top of the bottom panel with their health bars underneath them. You will be able to hide either of the two panels of the interface, the bottom portion with the text window and command buttons or the top portion with the character portraits. That is just the main interface. We have also made the decision to cut the character kits and go with 3E multiclassing. This will make Q.A.’s job much easier and will keep the game way more consistent with our 3E goals.

On the design front, Rob Holloway and John Deiley are almost completely done with their areas. All of the other designers are still polishing up theirs and concentrating on bug fixing. We’ve also gotten a lot of feedback from Q.A. and have implemented a number of their suggestions for the areas.

Programming is where we have allocated most of our resources to implement all of the 3E changes we’re putting in.

On the production side we are answering interview questions from many sources and working closely with our marketing department on the box and going over the possibility of a collector’s edition. Oz (Kevin Osburn) is, as usual, still beating on the buglist and working with Q.A. to get all of the outstanding issues dealt with.

That’s about it for this update. I’ll keep you guys posted on what is happening periodically. I’ll also be on the message boards to answer questions there.