AD&D Dark Sun Online: Crimson Sands

Art

Assigned only one artist part-time, in addition to a heavy reliance on (angle-adjusted) art and sound (and code!) assets from the two earlier Dark Sun games the developers drew on common assets from other SSI games as necessary -- graphics from Al-Qadim ("Sand is sand, after all, no matter what angle you view it from!") and sound effects from Thunderscape. Other necessary artwork ended up being commissioned externally.

Cover Art

The striking cover (and title screen) artwork is a piece by Brom originally used as the cover to Troy Denning's 1991 Dark Sun novel "The Verdant Passage", book one of the Prism Pentad and TSR product #2402.

Development

DSO was originally conceived of as a fantasy gaming cornerstone to AT&T's Interchange network in the summer of '94, a way for them to keep up with the Joneses with AOL's Neverwinter Nights. The deal fouled in early November '95 as the project approached completion, and it was left in funding limbo for a couple of months. Finally, DSO was picked up by the Total Entertainment Network in January of '96, where the game was beta-tested and, eventually, went live exclusively to TEN subscribers through to 1999.

Subtitles

1. subtitles bandied about during development:
   • Desert Hunters
   • Athas Defiled
   • Sands of Twilight
   • Raging Sands
   • Of Heroes & Fools
   • The Sandbox
   • Ship it or we're all back in test
   • We will have a Christmas! (We'll just be here.)

Source Material Size

1. source material size: Total files listed: 32,647 file(s) 1,789,507,548 bytes 1,373 dir(s) The end user only ended up downloading a 30 meg client (plus redbook audio and an opening cinematic on the v1.0 CD release), but it seems that about fifty times as much space was devoted server-side to other assets.