A New Map, Waning Playerbase

New Pastures

The new game was a 6 month long process involving countless working hours. The new Smooth Terrain made by ROBLOX would be used for the groundwork, forgoing the old brick based ground. The old way was too inflexible, making adding new caves and buildings tiresome and annoying. The new system, although having its learning curves, was more appealing to look at and more natural to craft.

The GUI was gutted, in favor of a cleaner and less in-your-face GUI setup. It would have a cleaner Roleplay Bio, Catalog, and private morph GUI. All old systems would be updated as well, putting some new paint on an aging user interface. Valkyrie, a lifelong friend of Chris, would help with the original art design and catalog setup. But a new coat of paint for the GUI system was not enough, the game had to be Filtering Enabled. This would involve switching to remote events and functions, and making a click checking system for any click based activities like house buying, morph selecting, and clothes picking.

From this, every building would have to be revamped and reworked. Three new types of houses were added (Small, medium, and large) and the city redone. The zones would be separated between commercial and residential.

Then the various caves would have to be worked on. Each cave would have its own feel and style, and would not just be the same old cave but with a different color. The terrain was gouged and split asunder to create each cave. The water cave would be an open cavern design, regal in appearance, whereas the darkness cave would be a cult-like cut in the mountain. The light cave would be redone and remodeled, and with the church, given a brand new face lift.

A military base was added, out of the way and non-intrusive, to prevent potential mil-sim roleplayers from spoiling the fun for anyone else. While this was being done the sewers were given a new purpose connecting the residential and commercial areas together.

The lab greatly expanded on in terms of detail, and with a tongue in cheek half-life reference, it was morphed into the mountain.

The various buildings in the town like the club and the school were given special attention to add detail and life to the insides of them. And then he started to update...



...On and on and on it went.



For 6 months terrain was changed, redone, changed back, and then moved. Buildings were sent through the development process over and over till a satisfactory building was made. Ideas between Valkyrie and Chris were worked on, scrapped, and then revived in the course of a month.

By the time Chris pushed the update to the public, he was sick of ROBLOX.

By this time over 7 years had passed since the first block was put on Darkened Dawn. Some buildings had been remade over 8 times, and the cave systems had been through the development process at least 4 times each. Chris was an adult now, and with other things in his life like university, a job, and a relationship, he was finding a harder and harder time to force himself to make updates. On top of all this, the playerbase was severely culled from the exploiter attacks. No longer were there hundreds upon hundreds of fans asking for him to work on the game. There were but a hardened loyal group of followers gritting their teeth trying to ignore the exploiter incursions that were happening daily.

But the game was finished, and Chris pulled the switch.

Continuing Updates

From here many of you already know the story. The game was a great success, and many people came back to give Darkened Dawn a second chance. Buildings like the Inn, a shop, a library, and a blacksmith was add, along with a cave of nature.

Having had various billing issues with ROBLOX, he switched to his new main account xChris046x, and continued to support the game.

As of late 2019, the game had gotten some surprisingly impressive updates. A pet GUI, color changing GUI for clothes and accessories, and roleplay tool GUI to help manage the various roleplay tools like swords and other convenient accessories were added. On top of all this, new systems such as the block GUI, that would make people disappear on their side of the game, and the Morph GUI, which is slowly having new morphs being added for the public, have been implemented in the game. A save outfit system was added, much to everyone's surprise, allowing people to spend less time customizing, and more time roleplaying.

Overall the game had shrunk in terms of playerbase, but the constant free content had made Darkened Dawn an enticing place to roleplay if one was tight on cash.

But Chris in May of 2019 graduated Uni, and with that, he decided Darkened Dawn needed one final update. The most detailed and vast update he had ever done. He was off to join the workforce, but he knew he had to make a map that would stand the test of time. With a degree now in Computer Science, and almost 12 years of developing experience, Chris set about making a vibrant world.

This was not for him, as he had stopped roleplaying around 2014. It was for his followers and fans. It was for those that had been with him through trial and tribulation. He wanted to give back to a community that throughout his 12 years experience on ROBLOX always cheered him on.

The map would take a long time, and would require tens of thousands of lines of code, but much like his first block placement in the small little village in 2008, he knew it would be worth it...