I'm writing this because I more often then not get confused comments about SOM because many people are getting their information from the wrong places, oftentimes probably from Dark Souls fans who're making backhanded comments about what you get out of it if you just install it from the original CD-ROM as From Software published it 20 years ago. That's a long time ago. Windows 2000 had just come out.  Windows XP was about to. Unfortunately since that time as far as I know I'm the only person who's felt that SOM was a good idea worth seeing to its logical end. I've been working with it full-time for 10 years now, and for 2 or 3 years before then. In a perfect world (we all know we don't live in perfect world these days) a vivacious community would've rallied around SOM and my work would have been less solitary and other developers could have joined me.

But that's not how it was meant to be. So, you'd think at the least King's Field fans would have not misinformed people about SOM's state, but even that wasn't in the cards. I'm not a communications person, so I've only been focused on getting SOM to the finish line, and partly it would be irresponsible of me to give people false hope about software mid-development, but nevertheless SOM has always been working software and my improvements on it (all vital, and hundreds of bugs slain) would always have been a better deal for anyone actually using SOM. But nevertheless people who've used SOM have stubbornly avoided me and my work, consistently, so I think for most people SOM is not about game development really, as it is wanting to be part of a social club that derives shard meaning from using forgotten and broken software. This may sound implausible, but it's nevertheless been my experience dealing with the handful of people who have dabbled in SOM over the course of the past decade. I've always had a practical reverence for the King's Field series. I don't see it as flawed or pitiful, to the contrary, so I don't share this low self-esteem perspective. I'm a very serious artist and software developer. I genuinely believe SOM and King's Field are superior to the alternatives.

That said, the real audience for SOM (and King's Field) is an audience that doesn't exist yet. That's who I wish to appeal to, because the alternative would be to accept that my project is failed. So I feel again, irresponsible recommending SOM to just anyone in its current state, but still feel like I should provide some context. So if you just want to experiment with it, I can provide this (http://swordofmoonlight.net/ex/diy/) tutorial. And if you're a budding game developer, maybe if you aren't in a hurry you could get a head start by using SOM and my work on this project will catch up with you. But I warn my work is pretty slow. Either way this is Sword of Moonlight, and anything you hear or see or read about it is most likely wrong or will be wrong. You should compare it to this version only before writing it off. Obviously the game demo here is leaps and bounds over any information you can find about SOM elsewhere. I wish that people would share my work on YouTube and elsewhere, but to this day I've yet to see a SOM video that addresses my work. So, these videographers aren't giving a complete picture, or didn't do their research.

If you set up SOM you'll have a full 3D RPG Maker system a la King's Field, however, right now you'd probably want to be willing to either make new 3D art for your project or join us in polishing up the original art work developed by From Software. This year there are tools for making edits to the original 3D models if you want to use those. Their style sits somewhere between the Shadow Tower series and King's Field IV. You can very rapidly make games with SOM. It's probably among the best systems, but it's not yet where I'd like it to be before I'm ready to recommend it to general audiences. That's mainly for ethical reasons on my part. But neither should you have the wrong impression or spread false impressions now that you've read this. And by all means please make SOM a community if you can find it in yourself to engage in wholesome online interactions in the form of communities. A community was always my dream for SOM. I stubbornly stay the course in case that dream comes to pass. Wishing on video games is perhaps a fool's errand. Please continue to check in and see if it ever turns around.