Our friends at Monolith have asked that we start posting a "Developer Diary" of sorts, so that we can share with you some of the stuff going on at Valkyrie Studios as we near the finish of Septerra Core …

Things are both fun and furious around the studio these days. Everyone is working some pretty outrageous hours, as is always the case near end of a project. There are the usual little spasms of panic when we find that something doesn't work, at first, quite the way we expected it to, and have to find alternative solutions. There are the standard minor flare-ups of temper typical of really tired people working too hard, for a very long time, at the same thing.

But all of this is routinely punctuated by the sounds of people getting to see 'the baby' finally starting to walk and talk, so to speak.

I can sit in my office and hear things like "Damn! For the first time, I can finally see what it's going to be, and I'm just so proud to be working on this game.", come blowing down the hall. Then there's "I didn't know we were going to be able to do this!", or "How did you make it do that?", or "Whoa! That is totally awesome!!", spoken by someone finally getting to see in action some of the effects they've been working on for months.

When a team of individuals does things in pieces, meant to be assembled a later time, they are essentially working blind. There is always that moment of revelation when you see it all finally come together as a whole, and I believe THAT is when you truly know whether you've 'done good', or not.