Prelude to Darkness

• Prelude to Darkness recruitable party members
• Prelude of Darkness Spells pt.2 - Gifts of Goddess and Thaumaturgy
• Prelude to Darkness Spells pt.1 - Flame
• Prelude of Darkness character system - Backgrounds

• Prelude interview: The Zero Sum story
• Travis Williams Interview - Prelude to Darkness
• Mat Williams interview - Prelude to Darkness  

Prelude interview ( Interview )
posted by Vault Dweller on Sun 30 July 2006, 16:44:51
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Zero Sum's CP McBee and his pardner Mat Williams have found some time in their busy internet millionaire schedules to answer a few questions for us.

9. What have you learned from that experience? What did you do right and what did you do wrong? What would you have done differently today?

Wow. We would have done a lot of things differently. We probably would have stuck with our original model of creating the mobile games to sustain ourselves without having to always be hunting for financing. Our entire software development process would have been entirely different. We all learned a lot about game development, and software development in general. For programmers who are planning on making a game, make sure to pick up Software Project Survival Guide and Code Complete in order to avoid a lot of the mistakes that we made. Prelude would have been scaled down... a lot. It was an absolutely massive undertaking for such a small, relatively inexperienced group. Everyone at the time told us this, but we didn't listen.

Yeah, the scope of the project was the biggest thing we got wrong, probably followed closely by not having a real producer or manager and better software engineering. We should have used an existing engine rather than code our own as well. We did do a really good job of scaling the project back at the end and we did work hard and had a team of incredibly talented, creative people.

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Prelude to Darkness 1.5 patch ( Development info )
posted by Saint_Proverbius on Sat 20 September 2003, 02:06:29
More info on Prelude to Darkness - More info on Zero Sum

There's a patch 1.5 update for Prelude to Darkness available, which is a 1.1MB file and fixes the following bugs:

• Script engine re-written for speed and stability
• Magic not targetting some enemies fixed
• Some memory issues repaired
• Some speed optimizations
• Minor script fixes

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Prelude to Darkness expansion and sequel? ( Development info )
posted by Saint_Proverbius on Tue 27 May 2003, 18:00:03
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For those curious about Prelude to Darkness's future, since Mat Williams and crew have been fairly silent as of late, there's this thread which asks the question about the possibility of a sequel to one of the best CRPGs made last year. Here's what Mat has to say on the subject:

There's plans for a sequel. And an expansion is kind of in the works first. But currently I'm re-writing the game engine right now. We're not moving forward on anything until I've fixed it up a bit. Going up to DirectX 9 is a taking longer than I'd hoped, but in a month or two we should have a much better looking and stable platform to more forward with.

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Prelude to Darkness recruitable party member list posted ( Game news )
posted by Saint_Proverbius on Mon 10 March 2003, 21:02:51
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For those of you interested, I've just posted a list of recruitable party members for Prelude to Darkness. It might be a tad spoilery, but it doesn't really tell how to get them, just the who, what, and where of them.

Big thanks to CP McGee of Zero Sum for compiling this list!

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Prelude to Darkness 1.47 now out ( Development info )
posted by Saint_Proverbius on Fri 28 February 2003, 03:38:45
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Apparently Mat Williams is on a patch of the day kick now, because patch 1.47 is now up for download. Wackiness!

Since I haven't been a good camper and checked my email or the Prelude to Darkness forum all day, I'll give the credit to RPGDot for where I saw this.

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Prelude to Darkness 1.46 patch ( Development info )
posted by Saint_Proverbius on Wed 26 February 2003, 17:16:38
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Zero-Sum's Mat Williams has send word that Prelude to Darkness 1.46 patch is ready for the downloading. Basically, it's the same patch as the recent 1.45 one, but save games are now repaired.

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Prelude to Darkness 1.45 patch ( Development info )
posted by Saint_Proverbius on Mon 24 February 2003, 16:44:34
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Mat Williams of Zero-Sum has passed along that the Prelude to Darkness 1.45 patch is ready for download. Here's a list of fixes:

• Armor speed penalties and the armor skill fixed
• Skills improving the wrong attributes fixed
• Skill improvement rates adjusted
• Food delivery to Land's End Temple repeatable
• 'tab' key cycles through combatants
• Crash in Arens fixed
• Rotating camera issues on combat start fixed
• Some background memory issues repaired
• Equipping during combat takes action points

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Prelude to Darkness 1.41 patch released ( Development info )
posted by Saint_Proverbius on Mon 06 January 2003, 18:01:20
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Prelude to Darkness's 1.41 patch is now available for download. It incorporates all the fixes the 1.40 beta patch did, as well as fixes the large monster highlight problem.

For those who haven't tried it, the full version download is now version 1.41 as well.

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Prelude to Darkness 1.40 beta patch available ( Development info )
posted by Saint_Proverbius on Sat 04 January 2003, 22:09:57
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Mat Williams sends word that patch version 1.40 beta for Prelude to Darkness is up for grabs. Here's a list of the fixes:

Fixes and Changes:

* Fixed animating mouse cursors
* Fixed crash due to bad journal in Citadel
* Fixed bug in Euadne
* Fixed crash in guard event in Citadel
* Tweaked armor values and speed penalties
* Tweaked bandit encounters

New Options:

* Additional highlighting information on character mouseovers
* Difficulty level setting -- Easy, Norm, Hard
* A toggle to allow selecting characters by their full body instead of foot area
* A verbose combat option which displays locations of hits
* A toggle to turn off xp confirmation when improving skills

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Zero-Sum press release. ( Game news )
posted by Saint_Proverbius on Fri 03 January 2003, 14:38:32
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Zero-Sum has issued a press release curtailing information about them as well as mentioning being picked in our Picks of 2002 article. Here's the release:

News for Immediate Release
Zero Sum Software
Issued: January 2, 2003
Contact: CP McBee at cp@zero-sum.com

Prelude to Darkness: New CRPG with Old School Flavor

Prelude to Darkness was named a top RPG title of 2002 by RPGcodex.com! RPGcodex.com was created by several hardcore roleplaying gamers who are discontent with the direction of the CRPG industry.

In the past two years, CRPGs have become more diluted, blending genres rather than focusing on what makes RPGs great. In response, these gamers often look elsewhere to satisfy their role-playing needs. Independant game development houses are establishing a substantial presence amongst the CRPG community.

Newcomer Zero Sum Software's title Prelude to Darkness which takes place in a unique, non-Tolkien RPG world, offers over 400 individually scripted NPCs, hundreds of unique sidequests, skill based character creation/advancement, an involved plot and full 3D graphics.

Zero Sum Software was founded in 1998 by CP McBee and Mat Williams, who met while working at Impressions Games. Though both 22 at the time, McBee and Williams already had combined over 10 years in the video game industry. CP worked for several years at Acclaim Entertainment while Mat worked at Impressions and other PC game companies. CP and Mat organized a group of young graduates from Harvard University, all passionate about games, and together they formed Zero Sum Software.

Zero Sum Software's first title Prelude to Darkness has been named a RPGcodex.com 2002 game of the year. For more information, contact CP McBee.

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