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Within the Light is in the game now and this blog entry is to describe what a developer goes through in the later stages of a project's life cycle. This will cover taking a project from RC to LIVE and beyond. If you want to know the details of what goes on before this stage, have a read of Mod John A's blogs on the development of the recent dwarf quest (Forgiveness of a Chaos Dwarf).
RC
When the project is in WIP, development and QA can span across weeks or months. When the release date closes in, a certain Mod Nexus will copy it all to RC, as detailed in this blog, which is what will become the version of the game you all play following an update. This is usually done the week before release, so QA (and me!) had a very limited time to check through everything again and make sure Mod Nexus hasn't missed copying anything and that it's all still bug free!
Release
Next comes release! This is where it leaves our hands, really, and I get the most nervous! As the elven curator, and a fairly high-level player myself, I know how much prestige the elven quest line holds in players' eyes, so I was especially nervous. Not only because Within the Light was my first quest, but also because it had a lot to live up to.
As I said, after release, it is generally a process of watching the forums, having an in-game presence and trying to gauge feedback on the content. I'm happy to say the majority of the feedback I've seen was very positive, and I'm glad people enjoyed the puzzles.
Why release this and what is to come?
*Spoiler alert*
The question that many seem to have is, "Why, after all these quests, do we still not have the city of Prifddinas?"
The answer is one of time or, more specifically, resources. We know it has been years since Mourning's Ends Part II was released and there has still been no elven update in this time. The time between ME:II and Within the Light could have been spent creating resources (graphics, audio, code) to build the city - however, this would have been in place of us working on things like Summoning, While Guthix Sleeps, RuneScape HD or other such projects that require a lot of time to make assets for.
While this update didn't bring the city with it, it did bring an important plot point to why it's not quite where players thought it was. We released this quest as it had been years since ME:II's release and players were missing the continuation of the quest series.
It was also never planned to release the city with the quest that was to follow ME:II as it does not fit with the story we have planned. If you follow the quest line on the world map, it starts in Ardougne, snakes through the Underground Pass, through Isafdar, back to West Ardougne and then somewhat dead-ends at the Temple of Light. Within the Light was an important quest to not only refresh you of the whole story if you hadn't played it for years, but also to advance that story and show that it didn't actually come to a dead end at the Temple of Light at all!
So, what's next for me post-release? I've obviously got other projects on the go, one of which (not elf-related) I hope you all see and enjoy before the year is out! In regards to the elves, I've got a rather large document of where I'm aiming to take the series with the next quest. Again, as a RuneScape player capable of doing these quests, writing this document is particularly exciting, as I am writing something I cannot wait to play myself due to the scope and scale of it. I'm also getting input from a few other Mods here that are getting hooked on the story too, so we can all develop it into something that everyone will enjoy!