Dragon Empires Newsletter - 06/09/02
Hello all and welcome to September's Dragon Empires newsletter!

This month we are introducing a new form of developer diary, the Art Development Diary. I'm sure you'll all find it very interesting and you can read about it below. This newsletter also contains information on events in the Dragon Empires world for the next month and a new feature on Dragon Empires fan sites.

Art Development Diary
We know a lot of people are interested in the look and feel we're going for with each empire in Dragon Empires so we have started a new feature called the Art Development Diary. The first entry is on the Dragon Empires web page already under Dev Diaries and tracks the development of a monkey empire building. The Art Development Diary will allow you to follow our design ideas from artist's sketch through to finished in-game model. It will be updated as we move through the various development steps and will include comment from the artists working on each phase of implementation. If you want a real insight into the design work of a game this is the best place to find it! You'll find a picture from the diary showing a monkey empire village building included with this newsletter. The monkey empire is the most primitive of all the empires, but also the closest to nature and the people who live there are known for their nobility, intelligence and ferocity in battle! We look forward to showing you more of our world in the coming weeks.

Furthermore, keep an eye on our news and diary pages. We plan to go from one diary to two or three running at any one time! The diaries will show how characters, items and buildings are designed, developed and implemented and give you unique insight into the world of Fortitude.

Last month
The past month has been a very busy one for us. The team is expanding a lot (and we still need people! Check here for job info) and we've added a number of new artists and animators to our team. Consequently there's a lot of great new art all over the walls of the office here and their concepts of the new character models, dragons and buildings are fantastic! For some reason our recruits are predominantly Irish and this will be celebrated in the competition we're having in the middle of the month, more on that in the newsletter you will all get on the 20th, it should be a lot of fun.

Important dates
Friday 13th: New dev diary
Friday 20th: Mid-month newsletter with competition info and also the 1 year anniversary of the announcement of Dragon Empires!
Week of the 23rd: New Dragon Empires press release with some exciting info
Friday 27th: New dev diary
Monday 30th: Stratics House of Commons dev chat at irc.stratics.com #de-devchat (which I visit daily).

Fan site of the week
Dragon Empires Compendium http://www.dempires.gotdns.com/
Over a period of only a couple of months Shakron and Bitmap have produced a top quality German Dragon Empires portal which is a great resource for all our German speaking fans. Check it out if you want frequently updated and comprehensive information in the German language.

Beta list exclusive
As a thanks for your interest I have included a special exclusive for all our newsletter readers. Check out this exclusive piece of concept art showing one artist's vision of how a monkey empire workshop would look!

Thanks, and I'll talk to you all again soon.

Peter Tyson
Community Liaison Manager - Dragon Empires
Codemasters
http://www.codemasters.com/dragonempires