Released! The Shadow in the Cathedral

Our second published game, The Shadow in the Cathedral, is available now in Standard Edition form for Windows XP/Vista/7.

We’re also working on version 2.0 of Jack Toresal and The Secret Letter, which should be released within a few days.

Please visit textfyre.com for more information.

New Releases Coming Soon

We’re wrapping up Secret Letter 2.0 and Shadow 1.0 over the next few days. Secret Letter has significant changes to the middle and ending, plus there are new images and some UI changes in the Deluxe Edition. Shadow has gone through exhaustive testing, although I’m still having a few people run through it to get those last second issues.

Jennifer Montes is once again doing a set of maps for Shadow (she did the map for Secret Letter that every has loved) and I’m hoping we can get her work into the final product by the 6th. If not, it will be e-mailed to all customers or a link will be provided in the new customer section of the website.

Speaking of the customer section of the website…we’re diligently working on it and although you can register and login, there’s really nothing to see quite yet. We’re going through some business model tweakings and this section may be handled in several different ways. We’re trying to nail down the Classroom Editions of each game before we complete the customer section.

The Classroom Editions will be based partially on SilverFyre, the vanilla Silverlight interpreter that Chris Cavanagh developed a few months ago. This edition will have a slightly different interface since the audience will be middle-school students and their teachers.

We’ve also gotten help from Giles Boutel from the IF community to help out on the website design.

Meanwhile, coding continues on Giant Leaps (Empath’s Gift) and we’re actively seeking a fourth design/writing team.

ACG Reviews Secret Letter

Adventure Classic Gaming has published their review of Jack Toresal and The Secret Letter.

Secret Letter on Silverlight.Net

Secret Letter is now one of the sample applications listed at Silverlight.Net.

Shadow Release Pushed to November

Ian, Jon, and I huddled up on the release of Shadow in the Cathedral and we decided to push it out to November 6th. We didn’t want to have the game come out during the competition or even within a week or two of its end. We also need more time to complete the beta testing and packaging. We should be able to have versions for all platforms in November as well.

Those people that pre-ordered Shadow will be offered a beta copy in Standard form on Friday.

Since Launching Secret Letter…

We’ve had an almost exact number of expected hits to the website since launching our first game “to the hobbyist community”. I thought we’d get a few more conversions from the IF community, but I think the game itself doesn’t resonate enough there. I do believe the next game, Shadow in the Cathedral, will resonate much more strongly within the IF community, but that’s just a guess.

We also had a number of technical issues and most of these were expected as well. Or at least, we expected problems, but felt confident that whatever came up, we could resolve them easily and quickly. Last night we pushed version 1.06 of Jack Toresal and The Secret Letter to the customer download areas and anyone that needs an upgrade is strongly urged to grab the latest installer.

We resolved the Save problems, the Keyboard Lag problem, and removed the Goudy Font. We also added a Settings page that allows the user to set the font, size, color, and background color.

We’re currently working on a Windows (non-Silverlight) version that should work on PC/Mac/Linux via Mono. We’re also working on a console version that is directed to text-reader-using customers, or blind computer users.

The next game is in the process of design testing and should go into major play-testing soon. That process will take a few weeks and then we can start the final production packaging tasks like artwork and such. The target is to get it out by the end of August, but I think we’re looking at September now. A publish date is in the works.

We’re thankful for all of the support from the hobbyist community. They’re initial purchases were helpful in resolving a few bugs and we appreciate the effort.

Now we need to get the word out to teachers, librarians, and schools.

Published! – Jack Toresal and The Secret Letter

We completed the initial publishing process last night and added the Intel Mac installation this morning (it’s 5am by me).

You can purchase Secret Letter, for $24.95, from the Textfyre.Com website.

Thanks goes out to Justine de Vesine for building the Mac installation package and to Thomas Lynge of Tenteo for all of his hard work and their partnership respectively.

We still have a lot of work to do. We’re just getting started.

Secret Letter is coming soon…

I’m working on the last few bits here. The digital download process is complicated and I want to make sure we test it thoroughly. The installation packages are backed and ready to go. We’re almost there…

Good artists are hard to find, and keep…

We’ve been at this for a few years now and I’ve gone through several artists and one art director in the process.

I originaly worked with a local artist, Erika Swanson and thought she had a strong feel for the Secret Letter story and characters. We hit a few snags in art direction and she moved on.

I then started working with an art director, Will Capellaro, and that was a fantastic experience, except for the part where he decided to move on and do other things. But before he left, he helped me find Goni Montes, a great artist that also had a strong feel for Secret Letter. Goni unfortunately found other work and moved on as well. His wife stepped in and drew the game map, but we were in dire need of someone to do the artwork for the release of the game.

I contacted Erika, wondering if she still felt some ownership for the work and she did. With the experience I gained working with Will and Goni, I was finally able to communicate properly with Erika and we’re now getting sketches ready for the release. Eventually, the game will have several dozen professional sketches.

I could have delayed releasing the games until we had stronger artwork, but my advisors suggested this was not really the core of the product and that we can always add artwork in patches and updates, which is what we’re planning to do.

The image I’ve shared of Jack looking down at Grubber’s Market done by Goni is great, but it will not appear in the final product.

We’re working like crazy to get everything ready for Friday. I just wanted to share this last bit of production news before we officially launch.

Current Products Require Microsoft Silverlight 2.0

In the presale announcement, I mentioned that the online demonstration versions of our software will require Silverlight, but I did not note that Silverlight is also installed as a part of the downloaded product.

Because of licensing issues with Silverlight 2.0, we are required to have the user download and install Silverlight from the Official Silverlight Website.

Silverlight 3.0 has an “install local” feature that we will implement in July and this will make the download and installation process seamless.

We will continue to look at other cross-platform technologies, including Adobe Air and potentially C++ with a cross-platform toolkit, but right now, the best technology for our developers has been Silverlight.

If anyone has already purchased our games and would prefer not to use Silverlight and would like a refund, please let me know and I will be happy to refund your purchase.