Edit:It seems the server is having problems right now, so until it's fixed you winners can have, um...., a broken link to a picture of an Xbox 360. There's something you don't see on eBay every day!
Edit 2:Ah, it's working again. Your pictures can now be acquired!
The design document is coming along slowly but smoothly. I've got the premise of the background story figured out, and I've penned a preliminary combat interface system. I'm finding there's a lot of stuff I just can't decide on until I can play a prototype though. Should I have magic as a weapon in the game? How deep should the inventory management be? Should I even have an inventory at all? Should the player be all alone, or a member of a loosely controlled team? I don't think I can answer these questions definitively yet, so once I get the skeleton of the design finished I'll move on to the next stage and come back to fill in the details later. The skeleton should be enough for the functional design and for the crucial element of budgeting my time (I'd really like to be able to estimate how long this is all going to take me!).
It looks like I'm on track to finishing the proto-design by the end of the month, but I keep distracting myself with the aethetics. I've ordered from Amazon a bunch of books on castle architecture and a whole swag of books on how to draw. The drawing aspect is starting to bug me, as I still haven't made up my mind as to the best art style for the ideas in my mind. I figure I need more practice, so I'll probably end up doing something crazy, like attempting to write journal articles in graphic novel form. Or possibly illustrating all my forum queries with a badly drawn web comic.
In the meantime, does anyone have any good suggestions for appropriate "mysterious spooky castle" style game music? Unfortunately I left my classical music CD collection in Melbourne, so all I have at the moment is that fan-made stuff from Castlevania 4 and a few other game pieces (such as a MIDI version of the music from Quest for Glory 4).
