The final days are drawing to a close and despite being completely unfunded perseverance alone has pushed Sanctimonia to a state approaching playability.

In retrospect I should have posted some corny video pretending to wear my heart on my sleeve, as that seems to be the magic trick that will make the Kickstarter staff remove a project from the dark corners of Kickstarter's database and into the light of their front page. Not that they actually advertise their site anywhere...

While the basic concept of Kickstarter is a good idea, all things considered it's a bit of a scam as it relies solely on its own users to promote and thereby indirectly cross-promote its projects while the staff sits back and collects 5% for, apparently, light web hosting.

So, it's time to say goodbye, and I hope to see you all on the flip side of misplaced hope and trust. The truth is, it's on us to make our dreams come true. There's no magic bullet, only long hours of self-driven ass kicking that propel our endeavors toward a successful conclusion. Dan Wieden said it best with the simple phrase, "Just do it."

Drum and bass composer and DJ Chris Waugh, known to his fans as Absynth, has already begun work on the Sanctimonia soundtrack.

Combining traditional eastern and western instrumentation with cutting edge electronic sounds Chris is creating a unique blend of the ancient and the modern.

Here are a few examples of early works-in-progress being composed for Sanctimonia:

* Evening Forest
* Circle of Stones
* Dungeon
* Apothecary

While pledges are the bread and butter that will allow Sanctimonia to be completed in a timely manner, you can also help greatly by simply spreading the word. Here are some ways you can help without having to dip into your purse:

* Register on Slashdot.org and vote up (click the plus sign) or comment on my post here: http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl...
* Post in various forums about Sanctimonia and link to: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/eightvirtues/sanctimonia
* Email all your friends and contacts
* Comment on our press release all over the net: http://www.google.com/search...
* Last but not least say a prayer to the deity of your choice!

Soon I will be releasing screen shots and the source code and binary for Littoral, the world generation app that is largely responsible for creating Sanctimonia's initial game world. It needs to be mostly finished before work can continue on the client-server app that will make the game playable.

Thanks so much to everyone for their support and encouragement, and keep up the great work.

This is an excerpt from a reply to a backer, Toops of www.geeks.co.uk:

Communication is one of the key elements of Sanctimonia, largely because it can be expressed more than just verbally. The idea is to put in place very simple sets of game mechanics, both social and physical, that ultimately allow the same basic freedoms and self-imposed restrictions people have in real life. Once those basic building blocks of player freedom and interaction are discovered they can be used by individuals or groups to facilitate the more complex systems of human behavior and creative endeavors.

Sanctimonia's gameplay is being designed from the bottom up rather than the top down. A big mistake I think a lot of developers make is doing the opposite. They think first of story, genre, graphics or levels and work their way down to the gameplay specifics. That kind of top down thinking ends up constraining the gameplay within the confines of the initial concept and gives us things like "invisible walls", instantiated quests and game rules that don't make sense within the game world but only exist to curb griefing or other undesirable gameplay.

As in real life, the dark side of total freedom may be mitigated in two ways:

First constrain players to the physical realities of being human. If a human must eat, drink, use the bathroom and sleep then they need to work and find reliable shelter or they will die. That leaves less time to do things like wait around for new players and repeatedly kill them or perform random acts of vandalism and theft. Humans also can't reach level 50 and crush stones between their pectorals, which means picking a fight even with a new player may get you killed if he picks up a shovel and is good with a gamepad.

Second allow the same social developments that prevent bad behavior in real life. We all have the freedom to go out and steal, assault or kill other people, yet we're constrained by our conscience and the fear of punishment if caught. The sense of accomplishment players will feel working together to raise livestock, tend farms and build their homes will create a sense of community. That community will then naturally want to protect itself from outsiders with bad intentions and will take advantage of the ability to pass, post and enforce laws. One example would be to build a wall around the village, post guards at the entrances and require all those entering to leave their weapons in a guard tower before entering. Any unarmed griefer who started trouble would quickly be knocked unconscious by the townspeople and placed in custody, exiled or worse. All without invisible walls or restricted PVP. ;)