This page displays a general history of the Twilight Project from it's beginnings with .hack//Twilight through today's version of Twilight Dreams. If you remember an event or occurrence in the game or project that you think is notable, tell us and we will try to add it to the page.
The Twilight Project was started in May of 2005.
Contents
- History
- Version Titles
- Notable Events
History
The Twilight Project began as a simple game, mostly used for testing, on the PlayerWorlds closed-source engine. It was decided that the project would start when Balmung's old game, The World Online, went into it's "decline".
.hack//Twilight
At first, the project only had myself (Orca) working on it, but soon DrunkenNinja was hired for his experience in working on games, which I lacked. It was also at this time that Hoshi was hired from the PlayerWorlds forums.
Hoshi turned out to be some crazy person on a self-proclaimed crusade to rid the internet of PlayerWorlds games. Hoshi decided to delete all of our maps to try and shut us down, but the maps had just been backed up, and the game was like it was before. Hoshi was fired, but tried to be re-hired under two more names.
Eventually we decided the maps were not good enough, so DrunkenNinja and Orca re-did them. This is also when DrunkenNinja offered to make our first good website and free hosting. It was a great improvement to the website that had temporarily been made, so it was accepted.
Soon afterwards, we realized that the game could not do much better using a closed-source engine, so it was decided to throw out the old game and create a new one using an open-source engine. Our scripter at the time, Aranshada, was going to be our programmer. But soon he decided to take on his own project, and no longer had time to program for us.
After looking through engines, we decided to use Elysium Diamond, an open-source engine in it's second version with a somewhat large community. Though we couldn't program, it was still a great improvement.
Twilight Dreams
By the time the new game was decided, the project had a few more administrators, SyCo being one of them. He had come from Balmung's old game and decided to join this project. We began working on plans for the new Mac Anu, and began looking for programmers.
The first design for Mac Anu was a large port town. This town and the first area were mapped, and the new game was given the name Twilight Dreams.
During the idle time given while looking for programmers, I decided to try my hand at a website. Eventually, with a template and practice, I came up with the website we have now. I made a new one that gave us more room and was more flexible, but sadly, I still run out of room for pages in the menu.
Eventually, Mac Anu was re-mapped again to it's current setting, Eternal City Mac Anu. Three Guilds were also created - Kestrel, Moon Tree, and Raven - but we decided to allow player-run Guilds, and so the three Guilds were turned into Factions to seperate the new Guilds. A back-story was created to center the role-play, and new towns were planned.
Version Titles
.hack//Twilight Beta: The Lasting Night
This game had only one version, Beta 0.5, and so had only one title. The title was chosen because of how long this one period lasted, and because we were in the dark about where to go from the beginning.
Beta Version 0.5: The Pre-Dawn Gloom
This title was given to show that we had come out of the complete darkness of night, but hadn't gotten to full light yet. We had just started the second game, Twilight Dreams, with the open-source engine, which let us continue to progress.
Version 1.0: The Early Morning Glow
This is the sub title for version 1. Section to be updated upon release.
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Dev Version 0.1: Darkness Revisited
Sub-title for the earliest version of the Twilight Dreams re-make after the loss of the first one in the crash. Here we were going into the dark again after we had almost gotten to the beginnings of light.