Blacksmith Features
September 16th, 2012 by panel

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The Jewel of Atlantis

By Dark_Reign

If you’ve been a lurker or a regular poster on AOK Heaven for more than a few years, chances are you’ve seen a familiar old face around the forums during the past few weeks. Dark_Reign, a respected scenario designer that has long been gone from AOK Heaven and has recently found his way back. What better way to celebrate his comeback than to feature one of his older, but recently updated projects?

The Jewel of Atlantis is a 100% cutscene teaser for a project which might never see the light of day. Why, then, would anyone be interested in playing it, you ask?

Simply because it is one of the most awe-inspiring cutscenes ever created for Age of Empires 2. Map design is fantastic and the atmosphere created by the combination of sound effects, music and the things happening on-screen will keep you on your toes until it’s finished. It’s not even that long, by the way.

Among the visual highlights of the cutscene is one of the most convincing volcano eruptions we’ve seen implemented in AOK.

And since it’s always great to have an oldie back, we’ve taken the time to ask Dark_Reign a couple of questions. Turns out, this six year-old cutscene might just give way to a campaign! But let us hand over the mic to Dark_Reign himself.
Quote:

You’ve started designing in AOK a long time ago. What was your motivation? And since it seems likely that you’re now back into it, what’s your motivation now? 🙂

D_R: My motivation, back in the day, was a passion for history, comic relief from school work, and the massive community that AoKH is famous for. I’ve made great friends through these forums, a few of which I still speak to today, despite the time I’d taken away. My recent motivation to start designing again was a mix of nostalgia, boredom and my girlfriend hogging the TV to play Sims on her PS3 :p

Does this update to “The Jewel of Atlantis” cutscene leave room to hope that a continuation of the story, in the form of a scenario or campaign, is in the books? Or do you have any other AOK projects in mind?

D_R: The Jewel of Atlantis campaign was always going to be my defining project. The one you put endless hours working on, but unfortunately after the release of TJoA my senior year at school began and I got less and less time to work on it. Then moving out of home and working on building my career added to the dust collecting on the project.

I’d love to try again for a campaign, depending on the reception this update gets and if I see a promising story unfold that I can use (the original seems to be lost in time).

I’ve tampered with other projects recently, including one I was considering entering into the ES Remake competition. I may decide to continue on with it, if I manage to break through the wall I ran into whilst making it.

Tell us a little bit about the designers and the works that inspired you to design for AOK.

D_R: Wow, remembering all the names might be a bit tough. If you’ve played the cutscene (Or seen the forum thread), you’ll notice “An Imperial Creations Project”. This was our design team back when I first started many years ago, it included some pretty big names in designing throughout 2005-2007 and worked along side of other teams you may have heard of like Tsunami Studios, Stormwind Studios, Dragon Gaming Design Network, and other teams who have long since gone. We were there inspiring eachother, helping eachother with designs, and generaly just having fun with the game, and making friends along the way (our off topic was just as popular as our design forum).

Being a part of the same crowd of people such as Beserker Jerker, Oliver, newIdea, Scud, Anastasia and chatting with them regularly on the forums back in the day, throwing ideas around, was a great time and all were a great inspiration to put all you can back into the community as you got out of it. It’s great seeing people such as Basse, Aro and others still around today, and a great reminder of the friends you’ve made in the past 7+ years, and seeing how it’s actually had an influence on your life (the things you’ve learned, the people you’ve met, the most rediculous things people find online and decide to share :p).

No better time than now to thank everyone, still here, or long gone, for the great times AoKH has given.

With these kind words we wrap up the Blacksmith Feature for this month, not before urging you all to download The Jewel of Atlantis and re-live the myth, though it will not exactly be accurate to what Plato (and Tanneur99) had in mind 🙂 .

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