Hello All,

First, I wish to apologize for the lack of updates directly on the website. Please rest assured that The 13th Doll project is still moving forward and still planning to re-visit the Stauf mansion. I will attempt to post an update every month or when some significant event occurs relating to the project.

Next, I also want to let everyone know that the Attic Door team is extremely excited that Trilobyte has announced the potential coming development of an official The 7th Guest 3 through various blogs.  This project was created to fill the void left when Trilobyte died and to hopefully inspire someone to take up the torch by demonstrating how alluring Stauf and his mansion can be.  I also want to let everyone know that we are still planning to complete The 13th Doll and hope that we can release it before Trilobyte releases the official game in order to drum up additional interest for Trilobyte and to avoid any confusion between the two projects.

Our developers are continuing to plug away at the program code and visual elements on the game.  We did switch game engines back in the fall which resulted in a lot of re-coding and re-porting of the graphics.  The reason for this was to improve overall game performance and to increase the flexibility of potential devices that the game can be played on.  It must also be mentioned that the original game development engine was top-of-the-line 7 or 8 years ago when the project was started but, has long been out of date and caused many problems, including tripping up virus scanners in test builds!  Obviously that kind of “bug” would not be acceptable in a final release and no such behavior has been observed since the change over.

Speaking of viruses, there had been some reports of our website being flagged by certain anti-virus software.  This was caused by an attack on the site some time ago which we thought had been fully corrected.  Unfortunately, the attacker left one small piece of code in one of our site files which the in-site anti-virus and malware scanners skipped over.

That has since been corrected and new security has been put into place in the hopes of mitigating any further incidences of bad code being entered into our site.  Obviously there is nothing that is a silver bullet to these kind of attacks but, we are hoping to be able to better manage and prevent these attacks from happening going forward.

To persons inquiring about a release date, no, we still do not have one.  Our focus must continue to be the creation of the best game possible with the volunteers that we have.  We are not going to push people who have families and day to day activities and who give up their nights and weekends to do this in order to push the game out the door.  We are also unwilling to release a game filled with bugs and technical problems rendering it unplayable.

Again, we would like to get the game out some distance before the “estimated release” of Trilobyte’s The 7th Guest 3 in order to avoid confusion between us, as a fan project, and them, as the original rights holders.  However, even their project currently has an indefinite time frame and needs to be funded in order to continue.

Speaking of which, everyone please keep your eyes open for a Trilobyte Kickstarter coming in the next few months.  There is no better way for us to encourage the development of the official game than to put our money where our mouths are.

That is all that I have to report at this time.  Please keep your eyes here for further updates and I think I speak for the whole team when I say that we are truly thankful for everyone who supports us and who have supported us over the years.  We couldn’t do this without you!

-Chris

Happy Friday the 13th everyone,

Our apologies for a lack of update on the status of the project. For the record, we are not dead, despite our employer being so, and we are still chugging along on the project.

Secondly, the site did get compromised for a brief period of time. That has since been corrected and shouldn’t happen in the future. Let’s just say our employer prefers not to be associated with any viruses of any sort and has taken some aggressive actions against the perpetrators.

We are currently focusing on tweaking some of the models and textures to ensure the best possible player experience. Some of the aspects of the models, textures and even some of the lighting just need to be re-worked a bit. There were parts where inconsistencies were causing some distraction from the game environment which would distract a player from the experience of the game.

The second major thing we are working on is streamlining the code in the various puzzles throughout the game. This will result in less delays during puzzle play and, again, will result in a more enjoyable and frightening experience.

Truthfully, our goal is to provide everyone with the best possible visit to the Stauf Mansion, especially after the years of work and development that have gone into this project. We want to make sure that it is a game that we, ourselves will enjoy playing and looking at, even after all of the work that has been put into it. We want the experience to be unforgettable and to be thoroughly enjoyed.

Please don’t be too worried about us. We are busy at work and will continue to ensure that every dusty relic and coffin in the house is as it should be. We aren’t going anywhere. Our employer has made one thing quite clear. He wants it to be a game to DIE for.

-Chris