Fable 2: Milestone September 2006 (Thursday, 5th October 2006)

When you read this, the next milestone will be well on its way, but for this month’s update I would like to bring you up-to-date with the latest on-goings at Lionhead Studios and more specifically, with the Fable 2 team. It is little later than normal, and I apologize, but I didn’t get the right kind of candy, hence the slightly later monthly update…

In last month’s update I sat together with Charlton and we had a look at how the world of Albion is being crafted, but in this update we’ll be taking a look at the actual milestone itself and some of its highlights. As I explained in one of my earlier updates, we need to regularly submit a milestone to our publisher (for the n00bs out there, that’s Microsoft Game Studios) so that we can give them confidence in the development process of Fable 2. This milestone is referred to by the industry as the “first playable”, but we will abbreviate this to FP. The FP is important during the development of any videogame; it consists of just a few areas, that are fully functional, this allows the team to work on the major components and basics of Fable 2 and get them to a stage where the game is completely playable for the first time. Before everyone gets too excited I should point out that this FP is internal terminology for a pretty key milestone but it should not be confused with what some people call Alpha, when the game is deemed ready for some hands-on time for journalists.

Since the FP is such an important milestone in any project, the stress levels were getting high, particularly with the people on the production-side as they are the ones in charge of the timing of the project. A few days prior to submitting the build, things were getting hectic. Some of us even had whiskers on our chins, but that had nothing to do with the approaching deadline. At some point, I was excepting someone to commit a homicide, when the air-conditioning decided to pass the pipe to Martin, again. The exotic-like temperatures made the members of the team sweat. And not the nice kind of sweat you get from the gym, but the sort of sweat that just happens to decide to come up when you’re trying to make a date work! You have to understand this was the sixth time in only a few weeks that it had happened. Lives were saved but not due to the repairman, oh no, but thanks to our office manager Geraldine. A complete office refurbishment will sort this problem out for good!

The list of issues that required the immediate attention of a team member was growing steadily; when one problem was solved another issue sprang up. Most of the time these weren’t really game-breakers but things that needed to be fixed in order to get to the right level of polish for the FP. Bug number 656 for example, which was assigned to JMoore and which had a high priority, was accompanied by the following description: “The Hero’s mouth is wide open.” Not really a glamorous problem or even a huge one (we can always blame it on the boogie) but still it was something that needed to be fixed before the first playable could be submitted. And so after some tinkering, the problem was solved and bug # 656 was no longer with us.

With a delay of only a few days, nothing which will compromise what we are doing here, a stable build was submitted to MGS for them to have a look at. When this community update was written, we hadn’t officially made our FP yet. I’ll probably come back to this in one of my next updates or you might have heard about it at X06...

The FP also saw a Quest which sadly enough will never be seen by the outside world, a fact the team was keen to point out to me. This Quest was merely meant as a test for various game features, but during a Friday Meeting the submitted build was being shown, I was able to sneak a look and can tell you that this specific Quest included such things as a magical potion, some pretty messed-up, dandy-dressed, wizard-types and most importantly such a dramatic outcome of a twisted nature, that it would make Joe Average Jr. freak out. Can anyone guess?

In sharp contrast to the original Fable, we haven't released any artwork during this year's X0 event. We've learned from the past and it's better not to show too much too early. Although I think it’s just because the artists don’t want to share any of that beautiful environment artwork with us! And so a soft-pink, magical bird throws the following piece of artwork in my lap, and without further ado, we are happy to show you [CENSOR]. Until next month!

Environment Artwork for [CENSOR]

- Sam -

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