The entire game, including the tools and libraries, was written from scratch. A trial and error approach was taken: the team learned by trying something and changing what did not work. They avoided using control panels, icons and buttons for casting miracles, preferring a gesture system. Molyneux commented that he would have been very disappointed if the system was dumped, but in the end, they got the feature working "beautifully". Integrating the storyline was found to draw the player through the game in an unexpected manner, which led to the development of characters like Sable, the Creature trainer, and the advisers. A great deal of effort was devoted to getting features such as the weather import working.