development in May 2001, was the company's first original RPG intellectual property. The concept of Jade Empire had existed with company founders co-founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk since they started BioWare alongside the plan that would lead to Baldur's Gate; called a "dream project", their aim was to fulfill player fantasies of becoming a powerful martial arts master. The game was first developed and released for the Xbox. Zeschuk later felt they should have held the game back and developed it for the console's successor the Xbox 360. Design Art director Matt Goldman took inspiration from multiple eras of China's history when designing various aspects of the world, focusing between the Han and Ming dynasties. The environments were modeled on landscape artwork from the Song dynasty, while the color palette drew from the green-hued art of the Tang dynasty. For ancient artifacts based in an ancient civilization, Goldman drew inspiration from bronze artifacts dating from the Shang and Zhou periods. The wild areas were directly inspired by the Huangshan region. Different regions of the game were designed to reflect the differing social classes present in the Jade Empire. In addition to its Chinese inspiration, Goldman drew styling elements for both clothing and scenery from Japan, Thailand, Tibet, the Khmer Empire, and unspecified areas of South and West Asia. The monsters, while taking inspiration from brief descriptions in Asian literature, were mostly original creations for the game's world. Speaking of his experience on the game years later, Goldman described "fond memories" of the Canada-based development team working to create an Asian epic. Creating the new combat system was the one of the biggest challenges when developing the gameplay systems. Rather than the rule and turn-based combat of their earlier titles, the team wanted combat in Jade Empire to be in real-time, as the slower turn-based combat of their earlier works did not fit into its planned setting. The game's martial arts were based on a variety of real-life styles, including karate, aikido and capoeira. Implementing the combat system required creating a number of systems to handle combat without relying on pre-programmed fight choreography. A key element of the design was that managing character statistics was kept low-key so as not to interfere with the player's experience. The Dragonfly mini-game was designed by assistant producer Sheldon Carter. Carter based the mini-game on classic arcade top-down shooters such as Xevious and 1942.