(the game map)
higher resolution img: http://www.betaarchive.com/imageupload/ ... r.5442.jpg
Notes from the developers:
Gameplay focused heavily on the individual talents of these three protagonists, and puzzles, pitfalls and all kinds of tricky situations were solved by cleverly using their unique abilities. This setup was obviously ideal for multiplayer and indeed this feature belonged to the original design.
Item interaction was not forgotten and you could pull nifty stunts like filling a flask with water, adding red colorant and selling it as a health potion.
Like Unless, LMK had been developed in 8-bit graphics, i.e. 256 colours. For some time this worked, but then one day someone from Attic attended E3 and had a mild panic attack when he saw Blizzard’s new Diablo II, resplendent in all its 16-bit, 65000 colours grandeur. Attic also had been contemplating how to position LMK. Because they had known much success with their games in the Das Schwarze Auge universe (The Dark Eye), they called together a meeting somewhere in 1998, and asked us to adapt the story of LMK to fit into the Das Schwarze Auge RPG canon, and to remake the game in 16-bit graphics. It seemed a logical turn of events, but sadly it turned out to be the herald of doom for LMK. The change of direction was to cost vast amounts of money. Money Attic was sure it could scrape together, but never did. We, the developers, had no idea about the precarious financial situation behind the scenes and readily agreed.
Granted, the game looked a lot prettier, but sadly, we were quite understaffed and could never realise the game we longed to make. Had the cards been dealt differently, 1999 or 2000 would have seen the advent of Divine Divinity avant la lettre, complete with multiplayer. It is more than interesting to read LMK’s post-16-bit-change feature list, and discover the various ideas present -but sometimes cut- in subsequent Divinity games.
Features in LMK
Graphics Engine:
1. The game is developed with a 16 bit high colour 640x480 resolution in mind, but resolution switching is possible.
2. Real time coloured lighting (without the need for a 3dfx cards!!!). As can be seen from the screenshots a lot of atmosphere is added to LMK through lighting effects.
3. Twilight feature (sunrise, sunset, light on the inside of houses (MMX only)). When dawn approaches you experience the sunset visually. Meanwhile you notice that the light inside the houses is not affected by the sun, creating a very nice atmosphere.
The most ambitious part of LMK were the demands made of the AI – these were especially impressive and show that at least in this regard, we were perhaps overambitious. The amazing part of it all was that all of it was actually demonstrable, at least as a prototype.
4. Reflections, lights that are reflected in the water. LMK features reflective surfaces as can be seen from the screenshots.
5. Coloured fog (MMX only). Our way of visualizing the phrase”As you progress through the swamps of Rulat thefog starts to thicken around you. Suddenly you hear a horrifying sound approaching quite rapidly…” The fog appears as fog banks, i.e. areas with fog and without fog on one screen
Etc..
AI Engine:
1. High level of world interaction (sleeping, eating,turning on/out the lights…). Every character in LMK leads its own life fulfilling its needs.
2. High level of inter NPC communication. Using built in message boards the NPCs are capable of interacting with each other in what seems an intelligent fashion. Examples of this are trade, exchanging of rumours and combat communication. This is expressed to the player using speech samples. Trade communication is witnessed that when a player trades with a NPC, and later comes back to trade back something he gave to that NPC, the NPC might have traded it to someone else. When a player steals something, and someone sees this, this creates a rumour. The rumour spreads as the NPCs that saw it talks to other NPCs, who in turn, talk to other NPCs again. But, as they talk, they thicken the story. Inter combat communication appears at several levels, but one of the most obvious ones is the investigation example. There is a group of NPCs guarding something. They hear a noise. One of them says to the others that he’ll go and have a look. He goes, sees an enemy, turns back, yells to the others, and together they assault the foe. Or, if the enemy is weak enough, the sentry takes him out himself.
3. Built in genetic algorithm which runs in the background to further enhance the AI. This is a relatively new feature, and is being applied where necessary. (The tour of which lights to put out for instance is an example.)
(story teller)
A good RPG is of course not worth the title when it doesn’t have a good story. The storyline for LMK was already pretty fleshed out when the team signed with Attic, but the decision to adapt it to the Dark Eye universe meant that several parts had to be rewritten. It didn’t help the team that they had no affinity whatsoever with The Dark Eye, but after long conversations with the original creators, we did come up with a story which was deemed to fit in the popular table-top universe. Interestingly enough, the structure of the tale was somewhat reminiscent of the one that would later be used in Divine Divinity.
(part of the design document for LMK)
higher resolution img: http://www.betaarchive.com/imageupload/ ... .79221.jpg
Notice that Dragons are part of the storyline. Already then we were enamoured with these beasts, something that would become clear to the public with the later releases of Divinity II: Ego Draconis and the announcement of Dragon Commander. Looking over these feature lists and summaries, it is all the more a pity that the publisher –for want of cash – forced us to pull the plug on LMK in 1999. This left us in a gigantic mess with plenty of debts. To survive, we made plenty of work for hire games. As the rights to LMK were caught in a legal cobweb, we decided to turn over a new leaf and start anew. We didn’t know it yet, but the Divinity series was about to be born. A prototype of our new game was developed, taking cue from the lessons learnt during the development of LMK.
The full story can be read (more than 100pages
) on the Divinity Anthology disc (Divinity Anthology - Developer's Journal EN.pdf) (also fr and ger languages available)------------------------------------------
Now about the alpha build of LMK. The installer was made by GOG (good old games) company, since it became public, and free. After you install it, you get a nice alpha build, full of dev tools, debug features, and a built in level editor which can be called with F2 ingame. I still haven't discovered all the keys, with F3 I see lots of numbers on the screen, and with random keys (sorry, don't remember the buttons), it's possible to call a spawner menu, char editor, and other nice stuffs. Then you can save your changes on the map. The resolution is 640x480, I couldn't change it, not to mention it runs too fast on my current pc, will try it on Win XP later. You can move with right click (need to hold it down), and the same right click to open doors, or enter dungeons. With left click you can pick up items, talk to npc-s.
Beware!, you can pick up wardrobes, barrels, tables, chairs
So if you see them highlighted, never click with left mouse button, only with right, so you can search them for items. I don't know how long this demo is, I played quite a lot, then I accidentally pressed ESC to menu, but the game quit without asking if I want to. (no menu was implemented at this time)
There are some options you can turn on in the ini file, and there is an exe which also allows to enable debug function, 16bit mode, lights, shrinks (dunno whats that).
Screenshots (they were in the build)
The one and only trailer I could find about this game is here (E3 2000):
I'm gonna upload the build to the ftp for archiving purposes later today.
edit: uploaded
