Temple Development Timeline

1. Background and Contract

Tim Cain's development timeline videos for Fallout and Arcanum were popular but, ironically, not well-watched compared to his other content — a lesson he notes about vocal minorities not representing majority opinion.

The Temple project originated when Atari (actually Infogrames, who had acquired Hasbro/WotC in 1999 and the Atari brand in 1998) approached Troika in late 2001, right after Sierra pulled back from their Lord of the Rings game. At the time, Troika had already started work on Vampire: Bloodlines for Activision — unusually, without a signed contract, with Activision simply paying them while negotiations continued.

Tim badly wanted to make a D&D game — it was his childhood passion. But Activision wanted him, Leonard Boyarsky, and Jason Anderson as "keyman provisions" on the Bloodlines contract. Tim made the brave call: he stayed off Bloodlines and signed the D&D contract. The contract was signed in January 2002, with files timestamped as early as January 3rd.

2. The Skeleton Crew

The entire Arcanum team of 14 went to Vampire: Bloodlines. Temple got three people from the original team:

• Tim Cain — Project Lead and Lead Designer
• Steve Moret — Lead Programmer (was a programmer on Arcanum)
• Mike McCarthy — Lead Artist (was an artist on Arcanum)

Everyone else had to be hired quickly. As an example of the pace: Lucas Feld interviewed in March 2002, signed and started April 22nd, and one week later on April 29th had finished the interior map for the Church of St. Cuthbert in Hommlet.

Tim and Tom Decker (the producer) had to write all dialogues, design all quests, place all loot and creatures themselves — there was no time or budget to hire other designers. The beloved writing team from Arcanum was all on Bloodlines.

3. Why Temple of Elemental Evil

Tim chose the module for several reasons:

• Sentimental — it was one of his favorites from his high school D&D campaign
• Greyhawk — no Greyhawk computer game had ever been made (for "political reasons," he later learned)
• Gygax's module — co-created by Gary Gygax and Frank Mentzer; Tim got a phone call with Gygax in early 2003 to resolve long-standing module issues (a paladin with a chaotic good sword, confusing Elemental Evil lore, save-or-die traps)
• Self-contained — a big dungeon with nearby villages, associated quests, the Moathouse as an introductory dungeon, levels 1-10, and natural sequel hooks into the G-D-Q series (Giants, Drow, Queen of the Demonweb Pits)

Gygax told Tim the original intention was for the bottom layers to contain an Elder Elemental God, not Zuggtmoy.

4. Technical Approach

Atari wanted Troika to reuse the Arcanum engine (Troika owned the code, not the art or mechanics). The biggest modification was replacing sprite characters with real-time 3D models rendered into 2D backgrounds — a step beyond Fallout and Arcanum's pre-rendered sprite approach. Backgrounds remained 2D rendered scenes (the same technique later used on Pillars of Eternity).

A culling mask system let 3D character models pass behind 2D background elements. Brian Warmack was hired specifically to create these masks for every map — painstaking manual work at the time.

All Arcanum mechanics were ripped out and replaced with D&D 3rd Edition rules (later 3.5). Tim also organized weekly one-hour D&D sessions so the team could learn the game they were building.

5. Month-by-Month Development

5.1. Early 2002: Staffing and Foundation (January–May)

April and May were dominated by hiring. Tim wrote a large Game Design Document explaining how the pen-and-paper module would translate to a computer game.

5.2. June 2002: Moathouse Playable

By June, the Moathouse was playable — four interior maps plus the exterior, with a party, NPCs with dialogue, and navigable paths. It became the permanent test bed for every new feature: lockpicking, traps, particle effects, new classes and races.

5.3. July 2002: First Payment Troubles

Tim began discussions with Atari about late payments — a problem that would escalate throughout development. Quests with a proper quest log UI went in, and the backdrop culling tool was completed.

A production note from this month: "Now that we support the exotic weapons feat, are we actually going to have any exotic weapons in the game?"

5.4. August–September 2002: Visual Polish and Maps

The Moathouse received its first lighting pass and culling masks. Minimap and town map UIs were added. The team had a lengthy discussion about whether male and female bugbears needed to be visually distinct (males fought; females only fought if you attacked bugbear children).

Map fogging was added in September. The temple exterior map and first dungeon began construction. The Hommlet exterior map reached its first form. Water started flowing; the mill's water wheel started turning.

First warning sign: Team meetings noted that many features marked "done" weren't actually complete across all maps, items, or creatures. This concern grew continuously.

5.5. October 2002: Cloth Sim and Design Challenges

Cloth simulation was added for robes and flags — cutting-edge at the time. A programmer began rewriting the pathing system, believing they could improve on Arcanum's. Tim was concerned: "We've already spent a lot of time on pathing and we don't see any improved pathing."

Tim and Tom began designing the Elemental Nodes — the module left them completely blank with no maps or descriptions. The team also grappled with True Seeing and Zuggtmoy's shapechanged form: what happens if you reveal her true tentacled form in a space too small to contain it?

5.6. November 2002: Story Complete

All main story arc dialogues were written — just nine months into development. The world map with random encounters went in. Temple dungeon levels 2 and 3 began. World connectivity was established: you could travel from Hommlet through the Moathouse and Nulb to the Temple.

The opening cinematic (the Circle of Eight wizards blasting Zuggtmoy) received its first pass, and storyboards for all remaining cinematics were completed.

5.7. December 2002: The Radial Menu

The divisive radial menu was completed — Tim's solution for handling the complexity of 3rd Edition's many spells, items, abilities, and multiclass combinations. Hotkeys alone couldn't handle it.

Tim wrote all QA test plans for the upcoming external testing. They were ignored.

A PR person at Infogrames assured Tim that a leak of game information "did not come from Infogrames," implying Troika leaked it. Tim didn't think they did either.

6. 2003: The Final Push

6.1. January 2003: External QA Begins

With six months (they thought) remaining, external QA started — and immediately went off the rails. Testers ignored Tim's test plans, skipping classes they didn't enjoy. Just like Vampire later, where testers avoided Nosferatu, Temple testers didn't play Bards. The game shipped with a critical Bard crash bug as a result.

Temple dungeon level 4 began. Day/night cycles went in with NPCs assigned to beds. The party alignment system was designed, leading to the multiple opening vignettes — different starting scenarios based on party alignment. Tim loved this concept of multiple beginnings as much as multiple endings.

A demo was built on January 17th. The weekly D&D sessions were discontinued — too much work to do.

6.2. February 2003: Breach of Contract

Atari was now two milestones behind on payments — December and January unpaid. Tim called them and said they'd breached their contract.

Atari was furious. Their response, which Tim wrote down verbatim: "If Troika is so desperate for money, go get a loan to make payroll."

Tim replied: "If that's what you think, it's you who sound desperate for money." And hung up.

They paid two days later.

A side note from this period: a producer from Interplay called Tim with questions about an installer tool he'd built in 1994. He hadn't worked at Interplay since 1998. He helped them anyway.

6.3. March 2003: GDC, Phil Adam, and "The Lists"

Text was locked for localization. Players could now start in their vignettes.

Tim attended GDC 2003 with Leonard to pitch post-Temple projects. There he had a meaningful conversation with Phil Adam, now president of Interplay, who apologized for how Tim's departure had been handled and claimed he'd helped Troika get the Infogrames contract by telling Steve Allison about how "wonderfully passionate and intelligent" Tim was.

Tim's takeaway: "Be nice to people even when sometimes other people aren't being nice to you."

Also at GDC, Dave Taylor (programmer on Doom and Quake) knelt down and kissed Tim's shoes, saying Tim had changed his life.

"The Lists" arrived from WotC shortly after GDC — a comprehensive censorship document demanding:

• Removal of mild swear words (damn, hell)
• Removal of subtle pop culture references (Buffy, the movie Legend)
• NPC name changes, including names from the original module (a bartender named "Dick Wrench")
• Children made invulnerable (Tim deleted them instead, since D&D flanking/cover rules with invulnerable entities were unresolvable)
• Removal of a lesbian NPC in the Nulb brothel

WotC had approved all of these elements in previous milestones. Their response: "We approved it then. We're not approving it now. Remove it."

The brothel removal was particularly damaging — WotC deleted the entire brothel to remove one character, destroying hours of associated quests and NPC content from Nulb.

Bertram the pirate, a gay character written by Tom Decker, survived because WotC asked for his removal verbally but refused to put it in writing, and the contract required written requests. Tim simply never removed him. Time Magazine later wrote about Bertram as a gay character in a major game release.

6.4. April 2003: Fully Playable — and 3.5 Bomb

The game was fully playable from character creation through vignettes to the end (minus end slides, still in progress). A tutorial was added, made optional.

The 3.5 bombshell: WotC informed Troika that D&D Edition 3.5 was releasing in July — the same month Temple was supposed to ship. WotC had known about this for a long time and only told Troika a few months before.

Tim asked for six months to convert. They said no. He asked for three. They offered two — take it or leave it. He took two months, acknowledging this was likely a source of bugs.

6.5. May 2003: Alpha

Sound effects and music were integrated. Most 3.5 adjustments were complete. The team reached alpha. News arrived that Black Isle Studios had shut down — devastating for Troika, who had many friends there.

6.6. June 2003: Start-to-Finish Playthroughs

Cinematics and end slides were in. The game was fully completable as intended. Monster balance passes on damage, CR ratings, and loot were underway. Team members played through the game whenever they had spare time.

Two production notes from June: Tom Decker thought the Bardic Inspire Courage effect made the party "look like they're running around on fire." And Daniel Albert (art intern, later lead artist at Obsidian on The Outer Worlds) played the entire game start to finish in five hours.

6.7. July 2003: Content Lock

All cinematics and voiceover were complete. Everyone played with different parties to find issues. Atari was non-committal about a Temple 2. Meanwhile, Fergus Urquhart had formed Obsidian Entertainment with a contract for Neverwinter Nights 2 on Xbox and PC in 18 months — Tim knew exactly what they were in for.

6.8. August 2003: Beta and the Kidney Stone

The team entered beta — pure bug-fixing. Tim attended a PR event in London.

Days after returning, Tim woke up in agonizing pain from a kidney stone. Most people pass one in a day or two. Tim's lasted four months — from late August to early December. He was on strong painkillers that, according to the team, significantly muted his personality. His production notes thin out noticeably in August and September.

6.9. September 2003: Ship

Troika submitted gold candidates to Atari. Atari chose one with known bugs that both teams had identified, and shipped it.

7. Post-Ship: Patches and Frustration

Troika made more patches than Atari released. The contract prohibited Troika from releasing patches independently, and Atari refused to spend money testing or distributing them. Troika asked to release unofficial patches; Atari said no.

A damaging rumor spread that Troika refused to patch the game unless Atari paid — the opposite of reality. The modding community, particularly the Circle of Eight, eventually created essential community patches.

8. Team Postmortem

The team's hindsight reflections:

• Should have demanded more time or reduced scope — or just reduced it unilaterally. Tim acknowledges this but notes Atari likely would have stopped paying them.
• Should have made an original module — a programmer argued that adapting the Temple module took longer than creating one from scratch, and pointed to Tim's weekly D&D teaching module as a ready-made starting point.
• Innovative features worked — party alignment and multiple vignette openings added genuine value. Tim considers multiple starting points an underexplored RPG concept, 21 years later.
• Pathing was a rabbit hole — the rewrite produced smoother paths but consumed enormous programmer time without delivering the expected improvements.
• External QA failed — testers ignored test plans and skipped unpopular classes, leading to shipped crash bugs.

9. Code Ownership and No Remaster

Tim owns the Temple source code (and Arcanum's). However, he cannot release it due to legal restrictions — primarily that releasing source code would make it trivial to remove DRM and legally required splash screens.

This is also why no Temple remaster exists. When approached about licensing the code (similar to Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale remasters), Tim offered three different proposals. They never countered. He gave up.

10. Personal Reflection

Temple was Tim's last game with an Easter egg recipe — a tradition from Fallout. After the experience, he was simply done adding fun extras when the core development was so grueling. He didn't include another recipe until Pillars of Eternity.

After shipping, most of the Temple team moved to Vampire: Bloodlines. Tim's role on Bloodlines was deliberately non-publisher-facing: coordinating programmers, HR work, and some AI/boss AI code. Leonard handled all publisher interactions. Tim was done with that particular fight.

His closing observation: Temple ended up being his longest development timeline video for his shortest game with the lowest review scores.

11. References

• Tim Cain. YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNV4-qNyEyY