Hello. Things are going well with the Heart of Winter team. I’ll switch over to the Neverwinter Nights style of updating to let you all know what the current status of the project is:

Design: We’re quite happy to say that most of the design for the game is done and has been implemented. All of the dialogues in the game should be done within the next week and the vast majority of the areas have been populated, scripted, and gone through some minor testing. The stores are up and running, and almost all of the new spells and items are working exactly as they should be. Lonelywood has come alive under the exacting hand of Steve Bokkes and the barbarian camp is working in all of its savage glory thanks to John Deiley.

Art: The final area of the game, ********, is being worked on right now by Vance Kovacs and Tim Donley’s pack o’ artists. Vance was responsible for Wyrm’s Tooth in the original game and Tim’s team created Dragon’s Eye and the Severed Hand, among other things. Pete Meihuizen is busting through the monster animations with great speed and skill. I’m very happy to finally see the Polar Worms scuttling around. I also just can’t stop giggling when I see the Drowned Dead splatter all over the ground in their death throes. Special thanks go out to Chris Amaral and Dave “Exploding Viscera” Pursley for that sucker. Jason Manley continues to make happy, festive new character portraits and Aaron Brown is modeling many of our areas when he’s not creating to-the-washer-accurate models of cars in 3DSMax.

Programming: Jake Devore is ripping through a number of tricky features, including gem bags and scroll cases. Rich “Malavon” Finegan is finding time to implement a number of new class features when he’s not making the combat feedback more detailed than a U.S. tax form. Danien Chee, Bernie “Daddy Weirbucks” Weir, and Mark Murakami are working on some other fancy programming stuff that us designer types can’t fathom.

Production: Darren yells at us a lot and hits us with a yellow plastic baseball bat. Feargus likes to shoot his auto-fire Chinese Zebra(tm) gun down the hall and scare everyone. Otherwise, I don’t know what they’re doing.

Overall, the game is coming together nicely and has just gone into Quality Assurance. Soon, we’ll be getting the feedback we need to turn our good game into a great game. Thanks for reading.

J.E. Sawyer
Designer, Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter
Black Isle Studios

Hi everyone. I’m Bernie Weir, and I’m the lead programmer on the Icewind Dale Heart of Winter Expansion. It’s just one day before the annual turkey bloat-fest, and we’ve all prepared ourselves for tomorrow’s gluttony marathon (at least I’m ready). Before we all take off for the holiday weekend, I want to give you the skinny on what’s cooking code-wise for the Heart of Winter Expansion. We’ve been busy integrating many of the great features Bioware created for Baldur’s Gate II as well as new features into Icewind Dale.

BIGGER MONSTERS – We’ve beefed up the maximum monster size to accommodate the requirements of the design team. What does this mean? I won’t tell you exactly what to expect, just that it means bigger, more terrible monsters smashing your puny, pathetic, party members.

MORE HIGH RESOLUTION MODES SUPPORTED – Danien Chee has integrated support from the Baldur’s Gate II source code for lots of new high resolution display modes. Now you can play at 640 x 480, 800x 600, 1024 x 768, 1600 x 1200, even 2048 x 1536! Combined with the new ability to drop-away all of the interface panels for full screen gameplay, the view of the game world is huge. The artwork is stunning at 2048 x 1536 pixels!

USER INTERFACE IMPROVEMENTS – The user interfaces have been improved with many new features from the Baldur’s Gate II source code and some other improvements written down here at Black Isle. In stores, double clicking on items brings up a panel that allows you to buy the same item multiple times. Items that can’t be bought or sold have their descriptions grayed out. Each item icon now displays a count of how many of the item are available for sale. Mark Murakami has implemented the same counters for the character interface, showing how many charges are left on items such as wands and Bard Songs. Now, charged items that run out will turn gray instead of mysteriously disappearing. Jake Devore has integrated the space saving gem bags from Baldur’s Gate II – now you can dump all those shiny gems into a single inventory slot, which frees up space for lots of extra booty.

TONS OF NEW SPELLS – Rich Finegan has been adding new spells non-stop for the past few months. Be prepared, as they are looking awesome!

I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving,

Bernie Weir

GameSpy: Who started your company and in what year?

Brad Grier, BioWare PR: Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka started programming medical education software for the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Medicine in 1994 while residents in family medicine. Augustine joined to add artistic embellishment shortly thereafter. The trio’s first project, the Acid-Base Simulator, was completed while they were still in Residency. Following graduation, Greg and Ray were appointed Research Associates in the Division of Studies in Medical Education. Their second, and final, medical project, the Gastroenterology Patient Simulator was completed in 1995. Not quite content to sit on their stethoscopes, the trio realized that their need to express themselves creatively was pulling them in a different direction. Soon after, they hooked up with a talented group of game programmers and artists and BioWare Corp. became a reality – incorporated on February 1, 1995. Granted, it started in a small room in Greg’s basement, but from humble beginnings.

GameSpy: How did you decide on your company name?

Dr. Ray Muzyka, co-founder: As I recall, the name came mainly from Bio = human and Ware = software. We make entertaining software for humans (with the founders’ origins being doctors). Also, the name conveys ‘human/machine interface’.

GameSpy: How did you decide on the logo and are you still using the original? If it is not the original logo, what prompted you to change it?

Brad Grier: Our current logo allows us a lot of flexibility. By using different treatments to the basic logo, we can update it or incorporate it more easily into various games. For example, at E3 we unveiled the Dragon Logo, which has been used in promotional trailers for Baldur’s Gate 2 and Neverwinter Nights.

Hey kids!
Christmas is almost here, and so is the expansion pack. Its coming along great, and having integrated a ton of cool features from Bioware’s BG2 code as well as some new stuff, I think you guys will really enjoy it.

If you’ve ever been interested in the going-ons here at Black Isle during a typical day of developing games, check out designer Josh Sawyer’s interesting diaries at:

GameSpy’s Dev Diaries
http://www.gamespy.com/devdiary/november00/iwd2/
RPG Vault’s Designer Diary, Chapter 3 (Nov 24, 2000)
http://rpgvault.ign.com/features/den/iwdhow04.html

Have a great weekend, and happy gaming!

Darren Monahan

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Hey Gamers!
What’s up to all the gamers out there? This is Harold Kim and I’m one of the QA Project Supervisors at Interplay. I was excited when Black Isle asked me to do this and so let me give you a little insight on what’s going on from a gamer’s point of view.

Everyone’s anxious about Xmas and getting Heart of Winter up and ready. With all the hustle and bustle of Xmas, the development team is sacrificing their time to make awesome changes.

To start off, the opening movie for Heart of Winter gets your attention quickly. If your video card has the capabilities, I recommend one of the higher resolutions when playing the game-it’s great!! New characters and new places give the player a new change of pace. Again the scenery is just awesome. Remember buying arrows one stack at a time? No more-you can now double-click on the item and buy as much as you need. Buying has just gotten easier. All the scroll cases, gem and potion bags are great additions. Remember lugging all those gems and taking up valuable inventory space? Don’t even worry about it. Now about the spells-AWESOME!!! If you never play a magic user, you’re missing out. The effects and animations are one of the biggest reasons that a player will want a mage or cleric in their party. New monsters that are difficult to beat are everywhere but don’t fear; newer magical weapons have been implemented to help you defeat these foul creatures. I know I’m going on and on about Heart of Winter but one last thing, the new bard songs alone are giving this class something to rave about. As you gain levels, you get to sing songs that help your party with bonuses, protection, healing, etc. Bards rock!!!

Okay I have to contain myself so that’s it for now, have an awesome Xmas!

Harold Kim
QA Project Supervisor

Each game nominated this year has excellent music that works well, but the musical score for Icewind Dale is unmatched in both quality and scope. In fact, as a testament to the quality of the score, Interplay actually sells the soundtrack separately from the game through its Web site.