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Recently I've started working on a new animation in cartoon 2D style. The animations follow a low frame rate style which is super cool to watch. With the power of Adobe Animate CC and all the nostalgic flash artwork from working on OldCP, something is potentially possible here...

In the photo you can see two frames in one. Using the "onion skin" feature to help see where the previous frame was, you can draw the next bit accurately.

Thanks for coming on this journey with me. The development of Realms has been the most fun I've ever had making a game. I hope it reflects in the "finished" product. The truth is though, its never going to be finished because it will constantly be improving!

A week today I will release Realms for open beta testing. This is the most excited I have ever been about releasing a game.

I look forward to building a world with you all, inside of this virtual one. It is waiting for you to immerse yourself within its many buildings, paths and halls.

I look forward to see you discover and experience the world as it is, and as it continually develops into something even better following release.

I have only to finish the hairstyles and beards. Everything else is done to a good enough standard for v1. And I expect to find someone with a really mid/low level PC/laptop to help test how the game runs.

Keep checking your mail just in case I select you.

These tracks will play in the beta release of Realms, some in the entry screen and others in-game.

Since I was 13, I've been making games for people on the internet. I started out pretty rubbish, but as time has gone on, I think I've levelled up a bit. However, the studio is as simple as ever. My laptop, a desk, and as of today, my first PC. That's right... I've never owned my own PC before. Its that tiny thing in the corner. I've always used my brother's, or my parent's.

But now I'm a MAAAN I can buy my own. I purposefully went for a mid-PC to see how Realms performs on it. It actually performs pretty well.

I'm anxious though. The time is going quick, and although I'm confident I can finish it all by mid-April, I just really hope it works and is to your liking.

I am confident you'll love this game. I mean, I'll love it. Hell, I'll play it on my own if I have to! But I'm sure you'll join. But I won't be playing as 'Damen'. I'm a certified senior citizen, possibly dead skeleton man now as I'm over 100 years old.

So maybe you'll join me in starting an entirely new in-game persona/character for yourself? For me- Mr. Burns for return? Nah, I'll think of a better name.

Where to stop

I have to find a point when its reasonable to STOP working on these quests and finish the last few features. Remembering this is a multiplayer game mainly, it doesn't need to be perfect in its solo play loop to start with. But quests will be easy to add and update after release anyway..

To give the game extra depth as well as ways to challenge the player to find loot and the materials needed to forge their own armour/weapons, underground dungeons are a necessity. P3D, which had many cave systems, creates the blueprint to follow in Realms.

The first cavern system is also present in P3D, but in Realms it receives several improvements. Loot is scattered and randomly generated, as well as enemy NPCs who ambush the player in the darkness. The caves are also 99% pitch black, requiring the player to find and use their own light source.

Minerals can be mined from the walls, but the user must find the right spots to find ore. Depending on the sound the player hears from the stone, they can determine whether to spend time mining there. These heatmaps change over time to force the player to keep hunting for the right rocks.

Alternatively, the player can find or buy weapons/armour with gold, although this is more expensive.

Attention all ladies! Damen has you covered. I've got some BEAUTIFUL & STUNNING tudor outfits for you who might like wearing that sort of thing in-game. Dress and impress the men in Realms, and make eachother jealous with your absolutely 10/10 fits. Get married in-game to fellow adult players, and divorce at will (with expense to the bank). Its all going to be here for you to enjoy!

It's been a short while since I last posted but much has been done in that time. I have a small preview to show you off the in-game readable content- which includes books and scrolls. Books and readable articles will be dotted around the world, and will increase as time goes on.

They are easy to make and users could even make their own to be added into the game. Also, containers- like chests, barrels, crates and cupboards are added and are to be dotted around the world.

When it comes to obtaining valuable objects, like certain weapons, armours, and rarities, these can be found by exploring the world, with rarer items being in caves where there are enemies to be defeated and looted.

I'm also thinking of including mining, something that was key in making weapons and armours in P3D. This will provide another way of making weapons and armours. So three ways of obtaining armoury:

- Looting
- Buying from town market
- Forging via ores

Hopefully all three routes will be ready for beta. Otherwise, they'll be included soon after.

Another preview of the Imperial Chancery where official letters are sent, received and handled. Official places like these will play roles in the user's advancement in the game.

World building enables quest-lines to have depth, meaning and history to them. As well as this, crimezone will also have plenty to do. With this dual approach to the game, a great world only makes things better.

A lot of time is being spent making the individual assets look good, without spending too long on minute details so that the game can be finished or at least playable by early springtime.

Pictured: The ruins of a hall belonging to an old House in the DSGHQ. It was burnt down after its Lord became embroiled in controversy. Its ruins remain on the east of the southern mainland west of the frozen river.

Locations like this make up historical landmarks that can be traced back to past events. However, this is the only ruin currently added to the South map. All other locations are fully explorable and in-tact. Most buildings are old and built before OldCP's lore era.

More buildings and locations will be added even after the game's release.

Pictured: The biggest reveal of the game so far. The Rsnail Thrones (now named Founder's Thrones) in Realms. Heavily inspired by the OldCP Game of Thrones style throne room from 2014, this design invokes a sense of Kingdom power and Imperial strength.

Positioned under the star of melody is the Toblerthrone– the classical imperial throne that replaced Rocketsnail's original throne of helmets. This throne was made during Damen's rule in the lore, whilst the original throne was gifted to the King of the North by Damen in 2015.

The Thrones Fortress is also home to other areas- the inner courtyard, the royal dining chamber, Wise Moth Chambers, the Moth Library and the Moth Temple.

Pictured: An interior room basement which will hold storage, bed chambers and other miscellaneous objects. It is a transition room which the player will use regularly to go about their business as part of their service in Drake Hall.

Clutter is one of those key interior scene design challenges. All you can see here is a barrel and a crate. But I'm still in the phase of building the empty interiors. The step after that will be to properly decorate all cells with objects, decor, and intractable objects like books as well as NPCs.

Tiny details bring areas to life. Having a box room is not immersive. Having a box room which is crammed full of varied objects makes an area feel lived in and "real". Its also one of those things I really enjoy doing.



Progress report! The world keeps looking better and better. To be honest, I might be getting a bit carried away with my world building. If I'm not careful, I might run out of time to make the more code-related elements before the start of Spring 2026.

House Drake rules the Imperial South, with House Stags as their closest ally. The Stags have long been loyal to the Drake family. The house was founded by Tennis Stags in 2014 and rules from Stags Rock, where their lands and great hall stand.

Stags Rock sits in the western mountains, just north of Castle Hill. Outside its walls is the Scaffold, where lower-born traitors are executed.

House Stags is currently ruled by Tommo Stags, a descendant of Tennis Stags.

Together, House Drake and House Stags hold the strongest armies in the known realms of Arda. Even so, House Drake’s future is far from secure.

The only heir to the throne is illegitimate. Damen Drake’s two legitimate sons, Sriramsay Drake and Major Drake, are both dead. His two sisters and his brother are also dead.

Some know that Damen had a daughter who was exiled to Dorval after refusing to accept Wilfred Drake as his chosen heir. Her interest in the throne, and her use of Wilfred’s illegitimacy, may grow as the player moves through the game — if they choose to involve themselves in this side of the politics.

Pictured: The view out of the Imperial Chancery, overlooking Castle Hill courtyard and the Northern mountains in the distance. The image is intentionally dim, reflecting the state of the Imperial South at this time — fragile, and uncertain of what the future may hold.

This is one of the early locations the player will advance to as they progress through the ranks until eventually serving on the Emperor's council at court. The twists and turns along the way will see the player choose between loyalty, betrayal and the fine line between survival and death.

The South is now 80% complete. Once that is done, the North will be finished off and the more fine details of gameplay will be completed. We're on track for an early 2026, perhaps Spring-time release.

When building every interior and exterior, path gridding is one of the monotonous parts of the process. However, Damen3D Engine has made this easy with a new path gridding system that automatically detects walkable and unwalkable surfaces. With some fine tuning and layer masking, the path grids are built with a click of a button.

Further refinement can be done with the path grid editing gizmo, and then done! The Realms server automatically reads the room's game file, parses the path grid, and then can use that for internal path finding for NPC's.



The result is NPC's can navigate hallways, stairwells, forests, multiple floors and eventually the entire map to get to any person, object, or location they want.

The A* pathfinding algorithm on the server finds the intelligent route through the points to the destination, and then interpolates the NPC along the path by a speed value. All of this is happening on the cloud, and streamed in seamlessly across users.

This is much better than how P3D did things, as P3D relied on client-side assists to synchronise the bots, which often lead to glitches.

A big part of Realms will be the NPCs that support the solo gameplay loop. Rather than relying solely on multiplayer elements to make the game fun, Realms will invest heavily in solo-play quests and NPC interactions.

How many quest-lines I'll be adding in for first release I'm not sure on. But they will be easy to add incrementally. Quests will also move in sync with the lore/crimezone. So some quests may disappear from the game if they become irrelevant, and new ones will replace them.

This is the power of the Damen3D Engine. Content can be added on the fly without users needing to download a big 'game update'. New stuff just loads in automatically without you even realising it, making new quests, rooms, weapons, items and even entire islands addable on the fly.

Dialogue will work similar to how it does in P3D, with a dedicated UI to talk to NPC's. All of the NPC logic is server sided and is streamed from the server to the client. NPC's can interact with players differently depending on who you are.

Remember Warren Wound Caverns in P3D? That's a great example of how quests can be implemented into a multiplayer game. If you haven't completed the quest, you might not see what another player can see who has completed the quest.

However, there's a fine balance with immersion and realism. Of course, not everything can be exactly the same on everyone's screen with this approach, but this will only encourage players to complete quests and you can also be helped along by other players.

You could also log in late at night to do quests without being disturbed by anyone. And of course quests will reward the player with gold and unique items.

How do you get a game to feel like its got some weight behind it? Its all in the tiniest of details. Sound is a big part of that. The ambient sound of a room, often the quiet sounds that creep into eartshot every now and then, the footsteps of players, different variations of footsteps that change depending on the surface the player is walking on. Camera weighting is also important, especially in third person perspective. Making the camera move with some weight adds depth to the environment and masks any potential frame rate inconsistencies.

Pictured: The balcony of an official building in the heart of the South. You can see the banners of the ruling houses hanging from the rafters. The image is purposefully taken in the early hours of the morning to hide further details.

Buildings like these will serve different purposes. Some will be offices for public matters such as buying a house, paying a debt or carrying out service. NPC's will shoulder some of these duties, whilst real users govern other duties as and when.

Pictured: A trigger box, an audio source and a spawn marker. These hidden objects are like the glue that brings the game together. Want to open a door? Want to spawn on the other side of it instead of in the sea? Want to hear some cool ambience as you walk past the tavern?

These hidden objects make the world the world as you experience it in-game. They're also very useful when in the editor, as you know what is what and it is easy to click into them to edit them and see whether something is missing from the scene.

By putting code on an audio source for example, we can control whether the bells ring during the day but are mute at night. The trigger can do anything when the action button is pressed. And much much more. I will make tutorials in the future so that you can make your own additions to the game once its out, using Damen3D Editor!

Time is important in the world of Realms. Daytime and nighttime will be totally different, with certain official services like the court and town hall being closed at night. The bell tower rings in the day, but not at night (so you can sleep peacefully). Some buildings will always be open, such as the tavern and Drake Hall itself.

Shops and the smithy will not be open at night. The world will follow real-time scale as well, using the eastern timezone (EST) in the south, whereas other future lands like Dorval, Das, Providence and others will have their own timezones. Eventually, there'll always be somewhere where its daytime, and somewhere where its nighttime.

Pictured: Part of an interior room in the South. Just a tiny glimpse of the interior designs being made for Realms, in particular the South. A land storied in history and a land full of wealth. Every resident and building wears the high status of the land and isn't ashamed to show it.

Its just a tiny preview. No furniture is on display in the image. As I create the map, the most difficult part is modelling exteriors as well as interiors to fit. Instead of simple box rooms like in P3D's buildings, we have interior rooms, facades, basements, attics and staircases within. Scales on the outside match the scales on the inside.

As well as the many houses in the game, there are also large fortress type structures. The main one is named 'Castle Hill Tower', a new addition to the lore. Where P3D used a certain snowy children's game from the 2000's for inspiration, Realms pretends none of that happened. It puts a world together that would've been if the world, which those beloved children's games helped shape, had always been there.

Most of these interiors will be very cozy, making their owners or the public allowed to roam within feeling warm and comfortable. Other places however, will come with an uncanny feeling. Some will intentionally be the exact opposite of cozy.

Pictured: Interiors being created in Damen3D Editor (https://damen3d.com).

Users will be able to purchase homes in Realms. But of course, these will come with a price, depending on their size, location and grandeur. Owners of houses will have access to their interior d3dproj file where they can edit their homes in Damen3D editor.

For the sake of the lore! Myself, Damen, the maker of Realms and the Drake Hall Community, accept that my place in the lore as Emperor of the South is not going to last forever. With Realms taking place decades after the lore of P3D, I am very old in-game.

I'm also not a maiar or anything like that, so my mortality will soon bite. However, the game is more than just the south. As owner, I will be in charge of the whole thing. But land rulers can set their own laws in the confines of the community values.

Making the game our own is now easier than ever. Anyone can learn to code and build rooms / items / weapons etc... in Damen3D. Realms will be a slow burner in terms of user generated content, but it will release with the absolute highest quality standard for anyone to learn from and adapt.

Here you can observe the exterior of Drake Hall in Realms. The hall, positioned within the outer walls of Castle Hill, is the seat of House Drake whom rule the Imperial South.

The hall will be the starting point for all players as they choose their own paths to take. The game will take place some years after the events in P3D, namely the defeat of Ancalagon and the vanquishment of both Pythas and Kutya.

The north, which has been considered by southerners to be a frozen rock devoid of activity or purpose, is changing. Decades have passed since the attack of Raegon and Snowfalls with their ice ghost army. But now, a winter perhaps even colder than that winter is emerging. Rumours of strange sightings in the northern mountains are spreading.