Disciples 3 - Development Progress @ Worthplaying

Worthplaying has a press release from Akella titled 'Disciples III Nearing Completion', although that seems a bit ambitious given the Q3 release date. Still, good to have an update and here's a partial quote:

Akella and .dat are pleased to report on completion of the set of important features in Disciples III: Renaissance that is drawing the game release nearer. The storyline has been completed – there’s a script for all the 19 missions that’ll be featured in the game: 6 per race and one final mission. The game will feature over 150 units. You can view some sample units in the game gallery.

All of the units and objects have been animated and textured. The dev team has almost completed generating the game content: Elven Alliance and Legions of the Damned cities are templated; only minor fixing is ahead. Now the team is focusing on finalizing the city of the Empire.

The game designers are now working closely on perfecting the interface, completing the script (separate dialogues), making briefings movies, and finalizing arts.

More information.

Good. Hopefully the game will be as much fun to play as the Disciples 2 games.

At least it sounds like they've completed a good chunk of the game essentials, and hopefully enough that the game will finally hit the market. Disciples III has been in development almost as long as Dragon Age, and for a long time it was up in the air in between developers if I'm not mistaken.

It sounds like Strategy First is keeping an eye on things, too, so hopefully the game will keep what worked in the originals.

This game looks exceptionally promising. The art syle is spot on. I'm not sure that the developer has much of a track record though.

This game is one of the few titles I'm really anticipating this year. I hope it won't disappoint (note to developers: please work on the English translations).

I wouldn't say it's been that long in development - compared to Dragon Age (over six years if I'm not mistaken) or Duken Nukem Waiting Forever … but over 3 years is certainly long enough. I still remember that it was supposed to ship by Christmas 2006 …

I like the visual style of the game - it looks almost exactly like the previous one and they've made the elves a lot more better looking as compared to last time.

Yep, Arma, Akella's only had it since 2005, but I know it was started by another developer earlier and then transferred--I can't find any dates, though, so it may not be as long ago as I thought, and it certainly wouldn't be six years of continuous development, for sure. So really, the game's just been a rumor longer and your figures on actual development time are totally correct.

This is all I could dig up atm, from wipededia:

The publisher Strategy First changed the developer from Game Factory Interactive to Akella. Akella has been working on this project since the summer of 2005, and it will be finished in the first quarter of 2008.

Since it was a short time before the change of developer, since it was around 6 months, give or take a couple, I pretty much doubt that Game Factory did that much work on Disciples 3, if any, since they were doing 2 Jagged Alliances as well. I'm not really sure if they even started development, except being given the right and the initial pre-production stages, since there was virtually no info available on the game before Akella took over the project and probably started from scratch. Counting this about 3 years sound normal for developing a turn based strategy game. And I have the sneaking suspicion that they are doing work on the expansions as well that will introduce the Undead and the Clans to the game, so they could be shipped quickly after the core game.

Originally Posted by Arma
Since it was a short time before the change of developer, since it was around 6 months, give or take a couple, I pretty much doubt that Game Factory did that much work on Disciples 3, if any, since they were doing 2 Jagged Alliances as well. I'm not really sure if they even started development, except being given the right and the initial pre-production stages, since there was virtually no info available on the game before Akella took over the project and probably started from scratch.

I'd say your right about that--I never got the feeling there was anything solid before Akella--no screens or anything. My memory has probably just made it seem longer.

Counting this about 3 years sound normal for developing a turn based strategy game. And I have the sneaking suspicion that they are doing work on the expansions as well that will introduce the Undead and the Clans to the game, so they could be shipped quickly after the core game.

I just wish they'd ship them at the same time--it's going to be a little strange to play without them. But hopefully you're right and it's all in the works.