Well, 6 months later, I know better.  Anyways, it has been a roller coaster of a time trying to get it implemented.  Before I released The Coming, I tested it out, and it worked.  I mean, scripting wise, I have no problems implementing it.  I basically just take the same code that runs ar the end of the cut-scene normally, and put it in the code that runs when the player skips the cut-scene.  The problem was, after the player saved the game, it would sometimes crash, OR take very long to finish saving.  Then, when you loaded up that save game, the game would crash.  Why this was happening was beyond me, but at the time, I wasn't very sure of my module being successfully anyways, so I said to hell with it, and released it.

So, for the past couple months, I have been alluding to the fact that cut-scene skipping was implemented.  Well, it was a sort of hacked solution.  For instance, you can skip the intro cut-scene to Cry The Beloved, but not by hitting ESC during it.  Before that cut-scene runs, the player is in a DM area, and at the end of the conversation with the DM, it asks if you want to skip the intro cut-scene.  Well, I was using this sort of solution everywhere in the game.  Like, say some special event is going to happen, and it involves a cut-scenes.  I somehow worked it in where some NPC would ask the PC if they wanted to watch the event or not.  So, like I said, I weird hacked solution.

Well, last week when I got my memory upgrade, I decided to take yet another stab at it.  I thought, "I have 1.2 MB of RAM now.  If it doesn't work now, it never will...".  So, I set up the functionality for skipping the intro cut-scenes, and after doing it, the game crashed when I tried to save...Bear in mind that after skipping the 1st cut-scene, the PC transitions to another area.  Then, a Light Bulb went off in my head.  What if the problem was with skipping a cut-scene that ends in a transition of some sort?  I put my little idea to the test.  I took a cut-scene that I wrote 2 days ago, which doesn't end if a transition to another area, and implemented the cut-scene skipping.  Well, as you can guess, IT WORKED!!!  Now, I have to either figure why the cut-scenes with area transitions do not work, or just stay with the hacked solutions...

I probably haven't been this happy that I successfully implemented something ever.  What this means is that I now have free will to do things with cut-scenes that I always wanted to do.  At this point in development, I was laying off of them a bit, as I didn't want people to complain about the length of them and whatnot.  Now, I can make them nice and long for people who like them like that, and if you don't like it, then just skip it:)  And that is all I have to say about that!

Till tomorrow...

As a brief example, I have many instances where I run the same functions on every important party member, even if they are not currently in your party.  For instance, in my last_resort_manager scripts, every module heartbeat, I run the same function on all party members, which essentially checks to see if they have performed a Last Resort in the last 10 minutes.  If they have, then I decrement the time until they can perform one again.  Nothing too fancy...Here is where things get a little interesting...

void runSomeFunctionOnAllPartyMembers () {
    runSomeLastResortFunction ( GetFirstPC ()) ;
    runSomeLastResortFunction ( GetObjectByTag ( "CLOPON" )) ;
    runSomeLastResortFunction ( GetObjectByTag ( "CHALLSEUS" )) ;
}

This is fine by itself, but what happens when I add more party members?  Then, I have to go back to this method, and add the appropriate extra function with the correct party member passed in as a parameter.  That isn't so bad you say?  Well, what if I have 10 functions like the above one, that do different things to all party members.  Am I supposed to remember all of these functions?  I could, but being it wouldn't be the most optimal code.  To get around this, I created my own custom function that returns a party member, dependent on an index passed in as a parameter.  So, if the index of 1 is passed in, then the function knows to return Clopon as the object.  And for you people out there thinking that there are already built in methods that you can use to return all party members, you must realize that those only work for people that are already in the PC's party.  I need to retrieve all party members, even if they are not in the party.  Here is the new way I do things:

!!!NOTE!!! The function, getPartyMember ( int index ) is defined in my new cast_manager include script, as well as the constant variable, MAX_PARTY_MEMBERS.

void runSomeFunctionOnAllPartyMembers () {

//loop through all party members
int index;
for ( index = 0; index < MAX_PARTY_MEMBERS; index ++) {

//get party member, dependent on index
object oPartyMember = getPartyMember ( index ) ;

//if party member is valid, run last resort function on them
if ( oPartyMember != OBJECT_INVALID )
runSomeLastResortFunction ( oPartyMember ) ;
}
}

Now, with this new way of retrieving all the party members, all I have to do is make changes to ONE file, and every time this for loop is used, it will retrieve all of the correct party members.  I tested this out with the new party member I added last night, and everything worked perfectly:)  In fact, even though it seems like a lot, I did not spend that much time on this at all.  Perhaps and hour at the most, but it is definitely worth it.  I blame it on the fact that I am a Software Engineer during the day at work:)  If my boss had not quit, I would have told my boss about this, as she would have been very proud of me:)

Besides dealing with the new party member, I also was able to add those 2 new custom tracks finally.  In the end, I only actually had to edit one of them, since it looped, and there was no point in having a file that was double the size.  Once I got those in, I am ran around the area with the music playing, just to get a feel for what the experience will be like.  I also started adding countless CEP placeables to some areas.

Tomorrow, I hope to get to actually implementing the some new custom creatures.  Since I had a couple of days to brainstorm, I was able to come up with some innovative things.  It still remains if it is possible to script it however...

Till tomorrow...

I continued to sift through my entire music collection.  So far, I have put about 1200 songs on my new iPod, with more to come.  The difficult part is taking all of the songs I have on my hard drive and organizing them in iTunes.  However, I have been killing 2 birds with 1 stone, so to speak, as I have been looking for more potential tracks I can add to Cry The Beloved.  

I have to be totally honest.  There are about 3 tracks that I really want to add in, but they just wouldn't fit.  However, there is going to be a new area the party will go to where this music would fit perfectly.  It's almost as if the composer created it just for me:)  The bad thing is, this part of Rose Of Eternity is so far off, that I wouldn't get to it until I was maybe at my 5th module...Oh well...I also wanted to get 2 of the new custom tracks into the game, but I just didn't get to it.  I will definitely do it tomorrow however.

So, what will become apparent after people play Cry The Beloved is that I am a fan of huge ensemble casts.  An example would be Final Fantasy 6: (lets see how good my memory is)

• Locke Cole
• Tine Branford
• Edgar Roni Figaro
• Sabin Rene Figaro
• Celes Chere
• Gau
• Cyan Garamonde
• Shadow
• Mog
• Setzer Gabbiani
• Relm Arrowny
• Strago Magus
• Umaro
• GoGo

That's 14 playable characters!  And, these are not just characters that you could possibly enlist to help in your quest.  They were a part of the story, and besides the last 2, actually had their own side stories.  I am not sure if anything like this has happened since, but I got to tell you, this is one thing I want to emulate with Rose Of Eternity.  Well, I don't know about 14, but I definitely want a wide range of meaningful characters.  However, I don't want to over saturate the player.  There is a fine line that I have to walk...

Anyways, when I was driving in my car while listening to my Lord Of The Rings: Fellowship Of The Ring earlier this week , I thought up another NPC that the party could encounter in the new area I am designing.  Well, as the week kept going on, and as I kept listening to the same music, this NPC somehow evolved into a possible part-time party member.  So, I began to implement some of my generic party member scripts for this new NPC.  

As I was implementing the scripts, a thought occurred to me.  I didn't want to just make this new NPC a half way party member.  So, I bit the bullet, threw on some music, and began to brainstorm.  Now this new party member has a personality, and a little bit of a side story.  I will be the first to admit that this party member will not be as prominent as the others, but implementation wise, everything is the same as with Clopon & Challseus.  They will have Last Resorts, you will be able to change their AI via their conversation dialog, they will be able to use Tonics Of Rebirth, etc.  I have to say that I am very proud of myself, as by the end of the night, I was testing out combat with the new party member:)  I'm sure there are some places in my various scripts that I missed adding a reference to the new party member, but I will find it eventually.  Which reminds me...I really need to refactor my party member AI scripts:)  I'll save that for another day.

One thing that has been bothering me is that I feel as if there might be too much dialog in the game.  I mean, at least it isn't via a cut-scene:)  But, I can't wait to get it in the hands of the ALPHA testers to get their opinion.

Till tomorrow...

So, where to begin...Well, today, I received a vote of 2 from someone who didn't like the module.  Now, I can accept that people don't like this module.  It isn't made for everyone.  However, I explicitly what my module is about, so people who know they aren't going to like should know not to play it...What pisses me off more than anything else when you get a vote with the comment being something like so: "I don't know why this is rated so highly".  Now, I have been part of this community long enough to know that when someone makes a statement like that, they tend to make their score lower, so that they can lower your average.

Now, some of you out there are probably thinking something along the lines of "Challseus, why are you complaining about a bad vote?  So who cares that out of 130 something votes, 2-3 people have voted a score of 3 or lower...And, you have a highly rated module anyways...

Well, to be perfectly honest, I do care...A lot...I take what I do very seriously, so when I get a very low score that is obviously given to me to lower my rating, I take offense.  I am a man of principles, and this type of stuff is crossing the line.  What kills me, is that someone is more likely to give a rating of 1 to a higher rated module, than to a module that is not in the Top Rated list, even if it is worse than said higher rated module.  

For example, I love most music for the most part.  However, I don't like reggae music.  If for some odd reason I had the chance to listen to a reggae album and rate it, I wouldn't, because, well, I don't like reggae, so why would I even waste my time.  

So, in my daily update for December 6th, the theme was How much marketing is too much marketing?  In it, I stated that I felt like I was opening up myself for people to be disappointed in my module, which would result in some people leaving lower ratings.  Well, what happened today is what I am talking about.  I really feel that if I didn't market my module, have a banner ad and what not, I wouldn't have gotten that low vote.  The voter wouldn't have expected much with the game, and once he/she found out they didn't like it, they probably would have moved on...

I really do apologize for the rant, but I can't hide my true feelings, and sometimes, this blog is the best place to express them.  I may come off ungrateful, but as a whole, I really do love the community.  And I am not some egotistical person who can't fathom why someone would not like their module.  Hell, I know that lots of people hate my the style of module I have created.  Trust me, I have the e-mails still:)  But lets face it, no module author really likes waking up to see a vote of 2 for their module.  I'm only human you know:)

So again, I plead with whoever is reading this.  If you played through The Coming, and truly liked it, please drop by the Download Page , register if you haven't already, and vote (hopefully, not actually lowering my average of 9.82:) ).  I spent 15 Months of my life creating The Coming.  Surely, you can spend 5 minutes letting me know you appreciate it:)

Disclaimer 1: I understand that by posting this, I am opening up myself for someone to give me a low vote because they feel I am ungrateful...Well, I forever stand by what I have said...

Cry The Beloved Related Stuff...

Okay, back to what people are really here for.  So, today was very enlightening, to say the least.  First and foremost, my memory upgrade is still working GREAT.  I really do not know why I waited this long, but I am very happy with the results.  I also forget to mention that I got one of the new 30G Video iPods.  I had an iPod last year, but it broke, so I have been without my music library for quite some time:(  Now that I have another one, I had to go through my music library, and make sure everything was still there.  Which leads to my enlightenment...

To my surprise, everything was still there, and I even found some music that I literally haven't listened to in 3 years.  In fact, I think I may have found about 4 new tracks that I can use in Cry The Beloved.  One of the tracks I found will most likely go into the area that I will be building in the next couple of days.  For the past month or so, I had been deciding between 5 possible tracks for this new area.  Well, once I heard this new one today, I immediately knew it was the correct one.  Once I realized it was the perfect track, I put it on repeat, and listened to it for about 2 hours while I was developing.  In that time, I was able to mentally map out what this new area will look like, what exactly will happen, and I even came up with some new ideas for some new custom monsters.  

Again, going along with my design style, I really need to make this new area something a totally different experience then anything the player has seen thus far.  What this means is, I need new music.  I already have that:)  Next, I need some new custom monster with custom abilities that will challenge the player mentally.  Some new creature a la Shinkara Shadows , which you all know had a certain way of dealing with them.  One thing I will have to keep in mind when designing this new monster is the abilities that Aramus & his party will have at this point.  

If I can recall (and I damn better be able to, since I was the one who designed this game), Aramus will have at the very least:

Clopon will have at the very least:

Challseus will have at the very least:

Bear in mind that I only listed the non-spoilerish abilities.  There are other abilities that will have been gained at this point, as well as another party member or 2 (oops, I am giving too much away:) )...

Anyways, the real trick is to make the new enemy(s) difficult, but not ridiculous.  I mean, I am not just going to add more HP's or AC to the enemy as a means of making them stronger.  Not knocking any other module designers that do that, but it isn't my style.  Perhaps I could create an enemy that when brought down to 10 HP's or lower, can only be killed my Aramus casting Illuminate.  Perhaps there could be an enemy that can only be damaged by Clopon's Aqua Constituent.  These are just very basic ideas, but just to give people an idea of how I create monsters, these are the thoughts that run through my head.

Hopefully, tomorrow I will at least get a chance to edit the new music track, and get it in the game.  Besides that, I will probably focus on actual area designing.  Perhaps I will sneak a cut-scene or 2 in as well:)

Till tomorrow...

P.S.  In case you feel the slight urge to vote for my module because you simply forgot to, or you didn't think I cared before you read the above update, you can find the download page HERE   (again, hopefully your potential vote does not lower my average of 9.82, which would make everything I said in vein) :)

Well, I can safely say that the performance is even better than what everyone expected.  It is really like the difference between night and day.  I can finally have the Toolset open, 2 IE windows, Photoshop,

In terms of actual development, I am still making steady progress towards having a new version of the ALPHA ready by the time my vacation is over.  One thing I focused on was refactoring my teleport code.  As with a lot of colder I migrated from The Coming, although it was written quite good, the structure was not there.  So, much like I did with my old legacy summoning code from The Coming, I consolidated all teleporting code into a teleport_manager file.  Unlike the summoning code, this only took about an hour:)  Now, adding new places to teleport, or any other methods is very, very easy.  In fact, I added a new location with minutes after refactoring the old code.  

Another thing that has been going on for the past week is conversation writing.  For whatever reason, it just seems like there is a lot more dialog than I anticipated.  In The Coming, since things were very linear, I only had to create dialog for Clopon/Aramus when they entered a new area, and possibly when they were leaving one.  Even then, I was simply using cut-scenes...Now that the story in general is more complex, and there are more party members, I am finding that dialogs are taking up a lot more of my time.  One thing I don't want to do is bog the game down with a lot of dialog.  The beauty of not making them play in cut-scenes is that the player can role-play more.  I really use the term loosely, as I still don't know what it means, or how people do it:)  So, instead, let me just say that there are more choices in dialog now that they aren't viewed via cut-scene...

Tomorrow, I will begin creating a new area.  As I usually do, it will just be a placeholder area for the time being.  Once everything is working correctly, I will go back and add in the necessary placeables and such...

Till tomorrow...

I am very excited about the next phase of development.  For the player, at this point in the game, the story really begins to take shape.  The player will also be introduced to about 4-6 new characters that are integral to the storyline.  Interestingly enough, this section of the game is something that wasn't in the original design process.  However, as I was developing, I felt I needed to add a little bit of story to one of the party members you meet, and the current area(s) I will begin working on are the brainchild of that.  Remarkably, I was able to tie in Aramus' story as well, so it doesn't just feel like an offshoot quest, or diversion.  It is definitely part of the main story, even if it does focus on a couple party members.

One thing that I am trying to do with this series is make the party members just as important as Aramus.  Really, you have to take into account the fact that Aramus has amnesia.  As I am a fan of invested storylines (not saving the world in a 6 hour span), giving him back his memory so soon was not an option.  Therefore, the party member's ( i.e. Clopon ) storylines have to be just as strong to keep the player interested.  It is a very arduous task of juggling all of these storylines, especially making sure there are NO plot-holes to be found.

As a developed, I know where this game is going.  Hell, I have known for the past years what happens in the final scene of the game.  The thing is, to bring my vision to reality, using the Aurora toolset, will be very difficult and time consuming.  Many people complained that The Coming was too short.  From a developer standpoint, it made perfect sense to stop the game where I did.  From a player standpoint, to put it bluntly, they don't give a sh**.  Players don't want to hear excuses, and I am slowly coming to grips with this.  I mean, I guess no one really wants to play a half made game...Makes sense...And as much as I try to break up these module into logical pieces, the game really is meant to be played together. 

All of that said, I can promise the players of Cry The Beloved that they will have felt like they accomplished a lot by the end of the game.  Will it be the end of Rose Of Eternity, story-wise?  Not even close...Not even scratching the surface...But, as itself, it will be a great game...And that is all I have to say about that...

Till tomorrow... 

Till tomorrow...

I actually finished up about 95% of the issues.  Some remaining issues are some interface issues.  More specifically, there are a lot of new custom abilities that can be viewed via conversation with party members.  If you can remember, Clopon's first level of conversation looked like so:

[Cast Spell]
[Last Resorts]
[Summons]
[Actions]
[Inquiry]
[Stop Talking]

Now, with new systems that I cannot disclose at this time, things are starting to get cluttered.  So, I decided to put in a [Custom Abilities] category.  Not a big deal, and very easy to implement, but it does clean up the interface a bit.  Again, it is always the small things that count in the end:)

Till tomorrow...

Today however, I was feeling very, very motivated, so I feel that I am back on track.  I did do a little implementation today, but the majority of the time, I was actually testing it.  For about 4 hours, I went through every nook and cranny of the ALPHA.  And when I say every nook and cranny, I mean it.  I literally have 3 pages worth of notes/issues that I will deal with tomorrow morning.

The game itself is coming together quite well, if I must say so myself.  The scripting is tighter, and the flow is much better.  With the release of the 1st ALPHA, there were many show stopping bugs, and other such things that made the game unplayable.  I am now confident that when I release the next ALPHA, the testers will not have as many bugs to report *crosses fingers*.

After I go through the 3 pages of issues and fix them, I will most likely start on 2 more merchant NPC's.  Once they are done, I will start working on the next part of the story, including cut-scenes, areas, and dialog.  How everything flows up until this part has not really changed since I mentally designed this game years ago.  The next part however has gone through about 3 changes in the past week alone!  I am happy with what I have now thought, so I can finally move forward.

Another thing that I will be focusing on a lot more is the difficulty.  For the most part, the majority of testers found the ALPHA easy.  They said that The Coming was a lot more difficult, and that they really feared for their lives.  Well, I intend to change things so that they can begin fearing for their lives again:)

Till tomorrow...

I have to admit that the other reason not a lot got done was because I actually went out and bought a game...Yes, that's right, I BOUGHT A GAME.  Not just a game, but a console RPG.  What did I buy you ask... Dragon Quest VIII .   So, let me back up and give you the history of how this happened...

My dad is a big fan of 1st Person Shooters, as he has been playing both Unreal Tournament & Unreal Tournament 2004 over the past 5 years...So, there is this new game, called Battlefield II .   I won't go into any detail about Battlefield II (click the link for more details), but it is apparantly supposed to be one of the best multiplayer 1st person shooters out there right now.  So, it is a no-brainer to get it.

Anyways, the real reason I bought Dragon Quest 8 was because it included a playable demo of Final Fantasy XII... Now, anyone reading this who knows anything about me knows how much this means to me.  But, I will reiterate for those who don't...I am a console man, and Final Fantasy as a whole is the reason why I got into RPG's so much.  I did not like Final Fantasy X , and I did not even attempt to play the horrible Final Fantasy X-2 .  In essence, the last really great Final Fantasy for me was Final Fantasy 9. And that came out over 5 years ago!  So, you can understand why I was very excited.  Plus, after I played the demo, I could return it, and get Battlefield II for my Dad, since they cost the same amount:)

The thing about Final Fantasy 12 that has me so excited is that the director of it is no longer Horonubu Sakaguchi.  He has left Square-Enix, and founded his own company.  So, the man who would come and lead the team was the director/designer of the wonderful Final Fantasy Tactics & Vagrant Story! This is a very good thing, because the stories of these games is a little more adult, dark, and in my opinion, more befitting of a Final Fantasy game.  

The last reason is quite simple.  I WANTED SOMETHING TO REMIND ME OF THE GLORY DAYS!!!  I wanted to get that warm fuzzy feeling that I remember quite well when I played Final Fantasy 6 & Chrono Trigger for the 1st time.  As corny as it sounds, I wanted to remember why I learned to LOVE RPG's...Did the demo give me that feeling?  Not really...Why?  Because it was just a demo, and it just dumped you in some place where you were already level 20 and had tons of spells and items.  I mean, I don't know why I expected anything else...It was supposed to be a demo of the new fighting engine, and that is what it did.  For what it is worth, I will still buy it when it comes out, making it the 1st console game I have bought since December of 2000...So sad...

But wait, there's more...There was still the little issue of seeing how good Dragon Quest VIII was.  It did received glowing reviews, and everyone stated that it was a complete return to old school console RPG roots, with 21st century graphics and presentation.  Hmm, sounds like was I am trying to do with Rose Of Eternity... So, I popped the game in, and once I heard the music, I was literally brought back to 1989...

It is true that I say Final Fantasy was the game that got me into RPG's, but Dragon Quest 1 (it was called Dragon Warrior 1 over here in the United States) was the 1st RPG I ever played....The game was so simple, and yet, as a 9 year old, I was immediately hooked.  I fondly remember killing Gold Golems near this town for 3 days in order to be able to afford the pricey Broad Sword.  Now, you want to talk about old school RPG design, well this game is it!  You had to fight so hard and long just for a new piece of armor, or a weapon, and when you got it, you felt like you were on top of the world!  Ah, the simple, elegant old school RPG designs...It was perfect.  Every time you got something new, you were just a little bit stronger that you could kill some enemies a little easier, but once you explored more, you found tougher enemies yet again.  Simple, yet great.  I have to admit, I tire of games where you get so much stuff, so fast, that it just doesn't mean as much.  This is one of the reason why The Coming had a very limited amount of weapons/items that you could receive.  I wanted the items that you did get to mean that much more.  Of course, some players didn't feel that way...

Anyways, back to Dragon Quest VIII.   Well, I was looking for Final Fantasy XII to bring me back to the late 80's, early 90's, but it was Dragon Quest that did it. The opening musical score was the same score that played when you started Dragon Quest 1, but in full orchestral glory!  Everything from the combat, to the town music, to the story just felt old school, yet the graphics were quite decent.  Not the best, but good enough.  Unfortunately, I will have to return it today to get my Dad's gift, but I suspect after I complete Cry The Beloved, I will be picking it up again...

Till tomorrow... 

Well, I am off to bed now.  I know I was supposed to write this update earlier, but I got caught up in watching the Aviator, starring Leonardo DiCaprio...

Till tomorrow...

UPDATE - Maximus from NWVault has posted part 2 of his report of things he learned while visiting Obsidian, the developer of Neverwinter Night 2.  This should be very interesting to builders such as myself, as it goes into detail about the new Toolset.  Well, I am off to read this while I wait for my breakfast to finish cooking:)

Anyways, I knocked out another 3 NPC's that are in Dematol, including their scripts and quests.  I began adding items to the inventory of a merchant, and it looks like I will be spending the majority of tomorrow finishing that off.

I will then hopefully be able to start going through all of my e-mails and begin fixing bugs.  We'll see...

Till tomorrow...

P.S.  Sorry for the short update, but I am tired as all hell.  I think I will start writing these things earlier in the day...

So, I did not finish as much as I wanted to today, but I still got a lot more done than I would have had I been working.  I put the finishing touches on the conversation for a particular NPC.  I then sent the last 3 conversations I was working on to Jason Melancon for editing.

There is another conversation that I started on tonight, but all I really have to do is put in some skill checks, and whatnot.  This particular NPC will also be a merchant of some sort, so I will have to create the inventory.  Which brings me to my next dilemma...

In The Coming, weapon/armor selection was very limited.  More specifically, for example, Aramus could only use his Sword Of Galladoran as a weapon.  Besides being less work for me as a designer, it also helped with balancing combat.  Hell, the entire way The Coming was developed helped out with balancing the combat.  Since I more or less knew what level the player would be, as well as the items they would have, balancing just happened to work out perfectly:)

Now, I want to expand up this a bit, but giving the player more selection in terms of items/weapons.  Now, I don't see Aramus having a broader selection of items, but I see this happening with Clopon, Challseus, and any other party members he will meet.  The problem is, I don't play NWN, so I don't know what type of items players are used to getting.  If someone asked me what type of robe a level 5 wizard would have, I wouldn't have the slightest idea...  *Sighs*  This is going to be tough...

PUBLIC CRY FOR HELP - If you have any ideas for any type of new weapons/armor for Aramus, Clopon, or Challseus, please e-mail me at bedner@vindigo.com , or gamecoder@optonline.net . As you all know, I am very much open to the ideas of others.

I'm sure I will come up with something that works, but it is always good to get the opinions of the people who will actually be playing this game.  Now, to start brainstorming for some new item ideas...

Till tomorrow...

UPDATE - Maximus from NWVault has posted the 1st of 3 reports about Neverwinter Nights 2.  As you may recall, he visited the offices of the developer, Obsidian, about 3 weeks ago.  Anyhow, to read the report, go HERE .  It is a pretty good read, although I really can't wait for part 2, which will focus on the toolset, and the enhancements made to it...

With that behind me, I also began working on yet another conversation.  Amy Laurin had actually written this for me a couple of weeks ago, but since it wasn't exactly urgent, I put it on the backburner.  I have to say, this one was a lot easier to implement.  I won't say anything more than the fact that this particular NPC will allow the PC to finish a quest that couldn't be finished in The Coming... That is all...

In general, I have to admit, I really enjoyed developing today.  I know that I am on vacation for the next 2 weeks, so I didn't have to worry about going to work tomorrow. My NY Giants won their game yesterday.  I watched football all day today.  Had a great lunch.  Now that I think about it, nothing went wrong today.  Even my ear is feeling better:)

have no doubt that I will accomplish a lot tomorrow.  Well, besides going to the doctor at 11:15 am, I will be devoting the entire day to game development.  Once I finish off the work on the current NPC I am working with, I will take a run through the game, and write down as many bugs as I can find.  Then, I will begin to sift through all of the e-mails I have received from my ALPHA testers.  And trust me, there is a lot.  There is one bug that is sticking out in my head as something I know I really need to take care above before the next ALPHA.  I really do look forward to spending another fun filled day developing.

Till tomorrow...

Which brings me to my next point...How can I out do The Coming.  I probably ask myself this question about 4 times a day.  One of the 1st things I do every morning is check the download page for The Coming.  This sounds very crazy, but I always bring up the stats page, where I can see all of the votes I have received, along with the comments.  Then, I close my laptop and get ready for work.

The first thing I do when I get on the train is read through the comments.  Now, I don't ever read through all of them, but I mainly re-read through the long, detailed ones.  It helps me remember what people loved about The Coming, and what they didn't.

So, what are some of the things people didn't like?  Well, lets start with the obvious...Long cut-scenes that only have character dialog.  Well, I have nipped that in the bud, so to speak.  Don't get me wrong, there are still cut-scenes, but when only dialog is involved, I now use the standard NWN dialog system.  

Lets see, what else...Oh yeah, the overall beginning of the game.  So, some have criticized the overall simplicity of the beginning quests in Aribine.  Many feel that game didn't really start getting good until the 1st boss fight in South Shinkara Forest when Aramus & Clopon fought the goblins.  More specifically, many have said that the story is the strongest part of the game, and that I should have focused on that more.  Well, first off, the amount of story, and how it is presented has definitely been kicked up a notch in Cry The Beloved.  At times, I feel like people may get confused with all of the various people, and their back stories.  We will see...As for quests, well, they are not going away.  However, more time has been put into the design of them, so it won't be simple fetch quests where you only have 1 dialog option.  Hell, it didn't take me 4 days to create the dialogs/quests for 2 NPC's for nothing:)

As a brief aside, I just want to mention the story again.  Some people said that it was too simple, and that it didn't really go anywhere.  Well, some people how to bear in mind that this game is the 1st in a series.  You can't get all of the story in a 6 hour game:)  I understand people would want to have a more complete game, so they feel like they accomplished something, but as I always say, I am definitely a quality over quantity guy.  I wasn't going to have a lot of sub-par content just to make the game longer...Okay, enough about that...

So, another thing that was mentioned (not as much really) was how much hack and slash there was, as well as the re-spawning.  Well, I already took care of the re-spawning issue in a previous update to The Coming.  As for the hack and slash, well, I have to be honest.  Contrary to popular belief, the part of the game I really wanted folks to like the most was the fighting.  I wanted people to love the combat, and feel as if they needed to use strategy.  I was trying to get back to the complexity of Baulder's Gate 2.  So, the combat is not going anywhere.  What I can say is that more of it will be plot related, and not just put there to add extra hours to the game.  Plus, The Coming was labeled heavy on hack & slash, but I suspect anyone who complained about it didn't read the module description:)  That is, unless my understanding of heavy hack and slash is wrong...

Okay, now that all of the bad stuff is out of the way, what about the good stuff?  Well, first and foremost, everyone more or less agreed that the music selection was top notch.  As expected, this is not going to change.  I have mentioned this many times, but the overall music in Cry The Beloved is really going to surpass The Coming.  After getting a suggestion from an ALPHA tester, I am also trying to stay away from older tracks that have that MIDI sound to them (i.e. tracks from Final Fantasy VI).

Next would be custom content (i.e. Last Resorts).  Well, if you have been reading these updates, you know that I have been driving myself crazy making the current systems more robust, while adding new ones.  There will be many new enemies to fight, and they all have to have new, unique Last Resorts.  In The Coming, the player got a taste of Unison Abilities towards the end of the game.  Now, there will be multiple ones for different combinations between the party members and PC.  I will also be continuing the theme of creating unique items, like the Wand Of Power Challseus used in his quest, which would push enemies away 10 meters, and deal damage as well.

Also, I have been taking great care with area design.  Keeping with the trends of The Coming, I will not be using overall large areas for no reason.  In fact, when I get a final design of what should be in an area, I begin to resize it to a smaller size, since there is no point in having open space for no reason.  Besides keeping the module size and load time down, it is also easier on my part when developing:)

There is more good stuff, but I am too tired to keep writing...All in all, once I get rid of things people didn't like in The Coming, and expand on the things they did like, I know Cry The Beloved will be the superior game.  How it will be received by the community is another story, so I won't go there tonight...

The points I listed above are the major things that people pointed out when voting.  Do you disagree?  Do you think there are other things wrong with the game?  Are there things you liked?  Well, dammit, get out there and vote (man, I really sound like some politician) at the page you download The Coming from, and let your voice be heard:)

Till tomorrow...

Before all of that however, I had to say goodbye to a very special person.  It was the last day for the director of my team.  Besides being a great programmer and manager, she was a great person.  She kept a lot of the office politic nonsense from us, and allowed us to come in and do what we wanted to do: Program .  She was a very strong and independent person, and she fought a lot for the rights of her workers.  Hell, I didn't get a vacation until January 5th all by myself:)

In fact, she did one last thing for me that I will never forget.  She fought hard for me to get a decent raise.  I will not post real numbers, but lets just say that she took care of me.  I really feel like all the hard work I did the past year is starting to have results...

I do not have permission to use this person's name, but she knows who she is.  Thank you...

So, like I mentioned before, we all went to see King Kong today.  No it wasn't the greatest movie of all time, but it was damn good.  It reminded me of why I go to the movies.  It literally had everything, from romance, to comedy, to action, to suspense, etc.  I never heard of Peter Jackson until The Lord Of The Rings, but as far as I am concerned, he has the Midas touch (bear in mind I have never seen any of his older movies).  It was definitely a good way to spend my last day before my holiday vacation...

Concerning my ear, I have just learned to deal with it.  I just really can't wait till Monday when the doctor irrigates my ear.  You never really appreciate your hearing until you lose it...The one funny thing was attempting to interact with people at the office today.  Since the issue is in my left ear, anytime anyone called my name while standing to the left of me, I couldn't hear them at all:)  I am sure I looked very funny turning my right ear to face people when they talked to me:)  Everyone is pretty cool at the office, so everyone was understanding.  I only had to deal with a few jokes here and there, although I hag to admit I couldn't hear most of them.  I just nodded my head and smiled:)

Anyways, I did a bit of work on Cry The Beloved this morning.  I was still dealing with all of the scripts of a certain conversation.  I was making headway, but since I was still not quite myself, I could only work on it for about 45 minutes before passing out on the train.  On the ride home, I just about finished up the scripts, and I am proud to say they actually worked as expected.  I will test all possible branches of the conversations tomorrow morning, and move on to yet another conversation I forgot I needed to finish...

Till tomorrow...

I did however do some work on some conversations today...Again, I hate doing it, more or less because they are all a lot more complicated than in The Coming, as there are different dialogue options, various quests, skill checks, etc.  Popular to contrary belief, I actually do like module designing...Just not this aspect...If I feel better tomorrow on the train ride into work, I will hopefully finish it off.  And yes, Amy, the conversation I am working on still has to do with Kavor & Bruos :)

Till tomorrow...

That said, I decided to work for the rest of the week, and not officially start my vacation until next Monday.  And since I am losing out on 2 days this week, I will just tack those 2 days on at the end of my vacation, so instead of coming back January 3rd, I will come back January 5th.  Very nice plan if I do say so myself...

So, on the train ride this morning, I continued working on the conversation files for some NPC's.  As I mentioned before, this work is not hard at all, just tedious, and boring...

After work, we took out the director of my department for some drinks, since her last day is on Friday.  So, stupid me goes into the bar and orders a drink thinking, "My company is too cheap to be paying for drinks...".  Right as I was about to finish my 1st drink, I was informed that my company wasn't that cheap...

So obviously, on the train ride home, I was a little tipsy.  And I definitely learned from my prior mistakes, so I didn't try to write any scripts tonight:)  Who knows what they would have turned out like the next morning when I was in the right state of mind.  So, that left only one thing to really work on...Conversations...Joy...

Till tomorrow...

Seriously though, when I first began to design this game/story, my imagination knew no limits.  So, for the past 6 1/2 years or so, I have envisioned the way Dematol is, and how the story revolves around it.  Now that I actually have to implement it, I wish I didn't think so grandly back then...

So, I will be honest.  The Dematol that I envisioned isn't directly translating to NWN, so many things had to be cut.  But even what is in there is just plain annoying to create.  That thing is, NPC's and their dialogs.  It is just so boring and repetitive to implement, but it is just something that has to be done.  Oh, I can't wait for the days that I can move on...

So, on the train ride home today, I finally added in some new dialogs that Amy Laurin wrote for me back when I was on vacation last month.  I just have to make some minor additions (mostly script related stuff), and then send it to Jason Melancon.  While I wait for the edits, I will begin to create some more conversation requirements, and send them out to the writers. Hopefully, I can do this by the end of the week...

In general, I am in a weird annoying situation, because there is so much to do, that my head is literally spinning out of control (hence my headaches...).  For example, when developing The Coming, everything was developed more of less in chronological order.  What that means is that when I was implementing North Shinkara Forest, all I had to worry about was that, and nothing else.  For Cry The Beloved, since there are more people involved in the development, I am adding things all over the place!  Eventually, I will get to develop some linear parts of Cry The Beloved, and my head won't spin as much:)  Well, of to sleep.

Till tomorrow...

First things first.  My first NWVault Interview has been posted at the Vault.  I do have to admit I was a little disappointed in getting a somewhat generic questionnaire for it.  I think all interviewers assume the person who created the module is from a DnD background, and I am obviously not...So questions like "What are your favorite race/class builds" just don't fit me.  That said, I still think it came out very well, and it will also give some people an idea of what goes on in my head.  Although, anyone who has been reading these updates already has a good idea of how I am:)

So, as you can see to your left, I received another preliminary sketch of Clopon from our new artist, Olaia Ferrando.  Things are coming along nicely, and I can't wait to see it in color!  It is quite interesting to have back and forths with an artist, as it is a first for me.  I never thought I would have to describe in detail what Clopon really looks like, as her model in NWN would never do her justice...It was also quite interesting that Olaia wanted to create art for Clopon first, as that was her favorite character.  In fact, I have received many e-mails from many people telling me that Clopon is the party member they love to hate:)  When coming up with her personality, I didn't think she would end up being this loved/hated...

So what else is going on in my life...Oh yeah, I received my first review at work yesterday.  For once in my life, I went into a situation not worrying about anything.  I was very confident going in, and everything turned out fine.  For some background info, I started working with the company, Vindigo, in September 2004.  Around March 2005, I had my 6 month review.  It was not good...I wasn't really picking things up as fast as I could have, and I just didn't seem focused...Yeah, you can chalk up all of that unfocused energy at work to Rose Of Eternity:)  Anyway, after that initial review, I really turned things around.  I went from being that Junior Software Engineer who couldn't figure out things on his own to being a Mid-Level Software Engineer who was constantly helping others.  Also, apparantly, my communication skills are excellent.  I personally get nervous when I have to explain things to different people, but I guess I am good at it:)  Lastly, ever since our merger with the major mobile company, Zingy, I have transitioned very easily.  In fact, I was told that out of all Vindigo employees, the transition was noticeably easiest with me.  Basically, the average age of a Vindigo employee was around 35.  At Zingy, it was like 25, so naturally, being 25 myself, I made a lot of friends very fast.  So, I have nothing to complain about concerning work.  That is until I find out how much my raise is...

Okay, on to subject that folks who read these updates really care about:)  So yesterday, I briefly mentioned that I finished up the cut-scene I had been working on the past week, after solving a very annoying issue.  So, the problem was, at a certain point in the cut-scene, everything would freeze.  Well, the camera movements would continue, but any actor that was supposed to move or say anything didn't do anything at all.  I really had NO idea what was going on, and since I was very tired, I did not come up with a solution that fast.  I will not go into the details, but it was one of the most weirdest, and obscure bugs I ever encountered...To this day, I still don't know why the issue even occurred...

Well, I have to be honest, I am very disappointed in myself in terms of where I am with development.  I mean, it took me a week to finish 1 cut-scene!  Granted, this is the most complicated cut-scene I have created for Cry The Beloved, but I really should have knocked it out on Thursday or Friday.  I think the fact that I know I have a vacation coming up has deterred me from working to my fullest.  Mentally, I am thinking "Why kill yourself trying to finish this now?  You are about to be off from work for 2-3 weeks, when you can really put your all into development...".  Perhaps it IS best that I just wait until Thursday morning before I start getting into heavy development again..................................................................Oh the hell with it, you and I both know that won't happen:)

So, after 6 paragraphs of "Blah blah blah blah", here is my update for the day:)  I ran through the entire module to make sure the 2 new cut-scene I created run as expected.  For some odd reason, they both worked fine:)  At this point, I am ready to take another stab at completing the main part of Dematol.  There are many placeholder dialogs on various NPC's in Dematol that do nothing.  I know this must have been pissing off the ALPHA testers, so I need to clean those up.  I just don't want to spend anymore time on mundane tasks such as that:)  So instead, naturally, I turned to scripting, as I never have a problem with that.  So, NWN has a set of scripts, ActionEquipMostDamagingMelee, ActionEquipMostDamagingRanged, ActionEquipMostEfficientArmor.  Now, I don't believe these functions are broken, but they do not do what I need.

For instance, when a party member levels up, I destroy the current party member, and spawn in a higher level one.  Nothing fancy really.  After the new one is spawned, I call the above functions to have them equip their items again.  Unfortunately, there is nothing for shield, so the user has to manually open the inventory and explicitly equip the shield.  To me, this is silly.  Another example is for a melee character that duel wields and uses a bow.  If they are using their bow, and you call ActionEquipMostDamagingMelee , from my experience, they will not ALWAYS equip both weapons.  Finally, I have a lot of custom items with attributes that the NWN engine doesn't really know anything about (i.e. Illumination ).  So basically, I am overriding these methods for each possible party member.  So depending on which party member calls the method, different items that I KNOW (Which are hard coded into the scripts) are the most optimal to them will be equipped, not the ones that the NWN Engine THINKS are optimal...Interestingly enough, as I am writing this, I have just realized another way I can utilize these new overriding methods...Wow, expressing my ideas really does benefit me.  More on the idea I just came up with in the coming days...

Everything I just stated above is unfortunately the things I have to go through, seeing as everything I do is custom.  If I was just using the standard items/weapons from NWN, I wouldn't be running into this problem.  One more thing.  Even though creating these scripts is very easy, I only finished about 50% of them today.  And now that I am somehow better at managing what is high/low priority, I will put this on the backburner.  You see, it isn't needed, and is something I can do very easily in isolation.  Getting Dematol up and ready for the next ALPHA is priority, so I will continue on that first.  See, I am learning something:)

Till tomorrow...

I have good feelings however, because my vacation starts this Thursday.  Then, I can really focus on what I am doing.

Till tomorrow.

P.S.  Sorry for the short updates lately, but at the end of everyday, I have just been too tired to write anything else...I hope to be back to longer ones tomorrow, because dammit, I have a lot to talk about:)

I totally think it is appropriate, as when the player gets to this particular point in the game, they would have gone through a lot, so they deserve to kick back and watch a nice cut-scene that continues the plot of some of the other characters in the story.  Plus, if they do not want to watch it, they can just skip it:)  Ah, the beauty of cut-scene skipping.

So tomorrow, I will be getting up very early to put the finishing touches on the cut-scene.  All the really remains is the clean up scripts, and trust me, there are a lot of placeables, NPC's, to destroy after the cut-scene.  Till tomorrow...

The other issue is the fact that this cut-scene is a bit more complex than the normal ones I can crank out in a couple of hours.  It is mostly due to the fact that there are multiple actors/actresses in it, who all move in their own directions.  Not overly complex, but a lot more annoying than creating an atmospheric cut-scene that pans around a town...

Tomorrow, I hope to begin my resurgence into full force module development.  I have used my sickness as an excuse far too long:)

Till tomorrow...

That said, I decided to just take it easy, and not doing anything development wise.  I also have to go to sleep early, because we are apparantly getting a blizzard tomorrow morning.  That said, I will need to leave the house a bit earlier since it is supposed to start snowing during the morning rush hour.  Tomorrow, I should be back on track, cranking out as much building time as possible.

Till tomorrow...

After work today, there was a Christmas party.  To begin things off, there was a pre-party in the largest conference room, where they gave out food and champagne.  There was also an award ceremony where they gave out prizes for topics such as "Most likely to come into work with a hangover...".  At any rate, I knew there was a prize for "Most likely to be found at the foosball table."  And unfortunately, I thought I was going to get it, as most people associate me with it.

So, when they announced the winner, a foosball was tossed in my direction.  Now, bear in mind I was a little drunk off of the champagne at that point.  Not only did I miss catching the foosball, I thought I heard my name called.  Apparantly, they called someone else, so I made a fool out of myself by going up to accept the award, when they didn't even call me:(  At this point in life, I really don't care what anyone thinks about me, so it was all good.  If it happened 10 years ago, I would have probably quit that very night...

After the pre-party, we went over to a very fancy club on 29th street, between 9th & 10th avenue.  To be honest, the 1st DJ was horrible, and I was contemplating leaving early.  Then, the new DJ, who happened to be the director of the content team, came out and finally started playing good music.  For the 1st hour or so, people kept trying to get me to dance, since they assumed I was good at it.  I didn't want to get labeled as the party man, so I stayed very humble and politely declined everyone's request.  After that 1st hour though, and about 4 rum and cokes, I just let loose, and had one damn good time!  I didn't end up leaving until 11:00 pm, which meant that I didn't get home until about 1:30 am.  On the train ride home, I REALLY wanted to work on the module.  I truly feel like I do better while under the influence:)  Fortunately, I remember a couple of months ago when I scripted a new custom system while a little drunk...The code compiled, but the next day when I tried to test it, and it didn't work, I found so many logical errors in the code that I vowed never to drink and code again:)

It is now 9:11 AM on Thursday morning as I am typing this, and I just got on the train:)  I won't get into work till about 11:00 am, but at least I am making the effort to.  I tried to convince myself that I could work from home, but I just ended up doing the responsible thing.  Damn responsibility...

Well, since I have about another hour and half of a train ride, I am going to get cracking again on the cut-scene, and hopefully, finish it up by tonight.  Till tomorrow...

P.S.  To anyone who has sent me e-mails, I apologize for not responding, but I have really been out of my element all week, especially with my recurring headache/dizziness problem.  Although, I didn't experience it at all last night while drinking...Interesting...I think I have found the solution to my problems:)

So, I wanted to talk about a little subject that is my dear to my heart:  Marketing... The question I pose is, "How much marketing is too much marketing?".  To know where I am coming from, perhaps I should start at the beginning...

Back in July of 2004, I really started to become very familiar with NWVault.  One of the things that sticks out in my mind the most was module authors complaining about a lack of downloads... 

Once I found out that getting an advertising slot of the top of the homepage was easy, I began to wonder why some people didn't make more use of it.  As I remember it, the only ads I really saw were for Persistent Worlds.  In fact, the 1st ad for a module that I can remember was for Charly Carlos' Dragon's Edge , and that wasn't until early 2005.. .  Anyways, before I released The Coming, I had 2 very big concerns.  The 1st was how the community was going to accept a module like mine.  As I continued to develop, I knew I was doing things that were unconventional, and I was getting the impression that the community didn't accept change very well, although I know now that I am very wrong about that:)  The 2nd was how was I going to get people to play my module.  I knew there was about 4000 modules upload to NWVault at the time, so I knew there was a big chance mine could get lost in the mix.  Add to the fact that I was a new author, and it is very reasonable that I had these worries...

So, very, very early on, I decided one thing:  I WOULD MARKET THE HELL OUT OF MY MODULE!  Now, time and time again, I would question this decision, and here's why.  Lets say I spent a lot of time marketing my module, so much so, that when people download it, they are expecting a very high quality module.  Now, even if the module is high quality, it just seems like people are always looking for SOMETHING wrong.  So, I can candidly remember running this question through my head every couple of days or so, "Would I rather release a module without any advertising, and hope people get a chance to play it, OR market the hell of my module, knowing damn well that if I don't live up to the hype, my module would get low ratings".  

Another concern was how other module authors were going to take it.  Back in early 2005, a gentleman named Rick Francis released his Eye Of The Beholder module.  So, apparantly, he attended the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) either that year, or the previous year.  While there, he met someone from Bioware who told him that when he released his module, he should send an e-mail letting them know, and that they would give him a spot in the Bioware Wednesday newsletter.  So, he ended up taking them up on their offer, and they did the newsletter with his module.  His downloads increased by so many, I thought he hired 4000 people to simply click the download link:)  It was truly amazing.  

Then, out of nowhere, a Hall Of Fame module author whose name will remain anonymous started complaining that it wasn't fair that Rick Francis was getting "special" treatment.  He claimed that just because Rick knew someone from Bioware, his module shouldn't have been favored over anyone else's.  Even when he was told by the employee from Bioware (cannot remember his name) that anyone was free to e-mail him asking for a spot in the Bioware Wednesday newsletter, he still said it wasn't fair.  Then, he said something that I will never forget.  It was along the lines of "No module should ever have to advertise.  Your module will rise or fall off of word of mouth alone...".  I almost pissed my pants when I read that.  

I have to tell you, I am so determined to get in the video game industry that I am not just going to sit back and let it happen...I am going to take control of the reins, so to speak, and do whatever I have to do.  I can't even fathom sitting back and hoping word of mouth would help me...Not even in my vocabulary...

So, in June 2005, I just decided to take my chances with marketing. Better to find out my module sucks by letting everyone know about it, then having one of the best modules that no one knows about...So, at this point, I started what I like to call, my Rose Of Eternity Marketing Blitzkrieg.  My 1st plan was to establish myself on the Bioware NWN Forums.  I practically lived in the scripting forum for about a year.  I posted so many updates on The Coming in the module forums, that I thought the mods were going to just lock down any thread I created:)  I then decided to create the website you are viewing now.  I had never really seen another module that had a full comprehensive website (not including PW's), so I figured, what the hell.  Then, I created a trailer.  Once the trailer and website was up, I began advertising it at the NWVault.  My visits increased from about 4 a day to around 150.  I knew I was establishing my module as something to look for.  Since I had about 175 screenshots, I began to to start submitting them to NWVault as well, about every week or so.  What did all of this accomplish for me?  In my 1st week, I got over 1000 downloads.  I know for a fact that was a lot of downloads, considering the fact that I was a no name author.

So, my success was a gift AND a curse.  The gift is obvious.  The curse is that people expect it to be the greatest thing ever, and they go in expecting too much, and come away disappointed, and leave a slightly lower vote.  Which finally gets me to my original question (yes, I know I am very long winded...).  How much marketing is too much marketing?  Well, to tell the truth, I am slightly scared for Cry The Beloved (yeah, yeah, I know I worry too much, which is probably why I am feeling dizzy as I type this...).  This very update that you are reading is essentially a form of marketing.  I talk about all of the great things I am doing with Cry The Beloved, and I sometimes wonder if I am hyping it too much.  Are people going to go in thinking, "This can't be better than The Coming...".  Either way, I started this damn blog, so I can't stop now:)  Sometimes, I just think that this thing might be my own undoing.  Or, I will just have to work twice as hard to make Cry The Beloved that much better...I guess we will all find out soon enough...  And that is all I have to say about that...For now...

Till tomorrow...

P.S.  I just threw the following paragraphs together.  I am sure if I did some basic editing, it would flow better.  But dammit, I am a game designer, not an editor, so don't hold it against me *cough* Jason Melancon *cough*

I continued working on the cut-scene, and made pretty decent progress.  So far, I have the first 60 seconds done.  I have about another 60 seconds to finish up, and I can call it a day.

Well, I was going to talk about a topic that is close to my heart, but I am running out of time, so I will speak on it tomorrow.

Till tomorrow...

So, in between watching football today, I did a lot of preliminary work on the 2nd cut-scene that I wanted to finish this week.  I first handled editing and converting the music track that will be used.  I then began adding some placeables to the area, to flesh it out a bit.  Finally, I ran around in game and mapped out which camera angles I wanted to use.

Because I had to go to a birthday party, I did not actually get a chance to implement any of the cut-scene.  I did spend a couple of hours listening to the track, and figuring out in my head what will happen.  Much like movies, I like to have certain events to happen in a cut-scene that coincide with the music.  Sort of like how I have the Rose Of Eternity title appear at the climax of the music track that plays during the opening intro sequence in Aribine, not that anyone actually ever notices these things:)

Health wise, I haven't really gotten that much better.  I mean, when I am at home relaxing, I feel fine.  But if I have to drive anywhere, I feel the dizziness/headache feeling again.  If this persists, I might have to go to a doctor.  If anyone has ever gone through what I have, feel free to shoot me an e-mail to let me know about your experience, and how you got over it.

I am going to sleep very early, and I hope to get some of the cut-scene implemented.  I anticipate I will be working on it until Tuesday night, so I want to knock out as much of it as possible.

One last thing...For anyone out there wondering about all of the cut-scenes I have created, let me say one thing...Only 2 are over 2 minutes now, not including the intro.  I know it seems like I am creating a lot of cut-scenes, but in essence, there will be many things to do between these cut-scenes.  It won't be like in The Coming, where you could have possibly watched 7 cut-scenes before even killing a wolf in South Shinkara Forest.  To reiterate, there will be many cut-scenes, but a high percentage of them are quite short AND I am not just using cut-scenes for simple conversations between party members.  Plus, there will be instances where you don't even have to watch a specific cut-scene.  Finally, I am confident that the cut-scene skipping functionality will be working for many of them.  

All of that said, I will admit one thing.  The cut-scene I am creating now WILL be over 2 minutes:)  I have to really set the tone with things that are going on in Dematol, and I couldn't imagine trying to do it with a simple dialog tree.  In fact, it would be damn near impossible without it.  I am definitely going for the artsy, emotional atmosphere with Cry The Beloved, and that is one thing I won't change...

Just as a hint of things to come regarding cut-scenes, I anticipate that at least one particular cut-scene that I have to create will take a solid week of straight, uninterrupted scripting.  I mentally created this cut-scene the week The Coming was released.  I toyed around with creating it before I started anything else with Cry The Beloved, but I felt I needed to think it out more clearly.  That said, I now have a very general idea of what I want to accomplish, the question, is it possible with the Aurora Toolset...

Till tomorrow... 

First and foremost, I finished up the cut-scene I started working on during the week.  It came together a lot faster than I had originally anticipated.  Well, there is one more minor issue where the camera shakes at the beginning, but I am sure I will get to the bottom of the issue.

Tomorrow, I will begin working another the 2nd cut-scene I wanted to finish this week.  These 2 cut-scenes will definitely move the plot further, and I am very excited about them.  After I finish them, I will go back yet again to Dematol to polish it up some more.

Till tomorrow...

To make matters worse, there was a task that I had, and since I waited to the last minute to do it, I didn't actually get to leave the office until 7:45pm, which means that I wouldn't' get home until 10:30pm.  Thank god it's Friday...

Remarkably, I felt a lot better on the train ride home, so I dove right into development again.  I then hit a brick wall...For whatever reason, there is this cut-scene that I created before my dizziness problem.  It was working fine (the part that was done), but after making some changes to it last night, I somehow broke the script.  When the cut-scene is supposed to run, the game just locks up.  I know it is something small, but I have to tell you, I HATE small problems.  The big ones I can understand, but small that slip through the cracks are very annoying.  

The worst part is the time it takes to load up the module to test it.  Lets say I make a change to a script, and I want to test it out.  Because my laptop memory is low (I should be getting more memory soon), it can literally take 2-3 minutes to shut down the toolset editor and load up the game to check if the change works or not.  Now, that by itself is not a lot.  But then imagine doing this 10 times, and I have already spent close to 30 minutes simply staring at my computer monitor.  Okay, enough ranting...I just need to get more memory, and problem solved...

So, keeping with the theme from yesterday, I present you with 2 screenshots,  The top one was taken in September when I 1st began to work on the area.  The 2nd one was taken tonight.

As you can see, the bottom screenshot reflects the day I spent adding placeables to all of the areas in the module.  I really, really cannot stress how important I think this is.  And as weird as it sounds, I still have more placeables to add to this area:)

Till tomorrow...

I thought it would be better once I got to work, but the problem persisted all day.  After countless talks with people, the general consensus is this: I am stressed out from working on Cry The Beloved all the time, and I need to eat better.  When I say eat better, I mean eat the things normal people eat, such as vegetables, and fruit:)  I kid you not!  My diet is horrible, and I knew it was going to catch up with me sometime, I just didn't think the situation was going to be this scary.  When walking to the office, I stopped off and got a muffin and a fruit salad for breakfast.  Man, I really hate eating healthy.  But....must....finish... Cry The Beloved ....before...I ...have...heart attack...

So, changing my diet will hopefully help things.  As for the amount of time I spend on Cry The Beloved, well...I just don't know...There is no way in HELL that I am going to stop development.  I will try to not spend every waking moment worrying about how it will be received.  Now that I think about it, that is my main problem.  I worry too much.  I worries the hell out of myself before I released The Coming.  In fact, I guess I have been worrying since April 2004 when I began work on The Coming.  Hmmm, got to fix that somehow.  Okay, enough about me...

So, another month has gone by.  The interesting thing is, I said the following in my November 1st 2005 update: "So what are my plans for this month?  Simple, get a playable ALPHA released".  Well damn, I guess I was right on the money in terms of getting the ALPHA out on time.  It feels good to have estimated how long it would take for me to do something, and to actually have it done when I expected.  What a concept!  Actually, it feels DAMN GOOD!  

So again, what are my plans for this month?  Simple.  Release another 2 versions of the ALPHA.  What will these ALPHA's contain?  First and foremost, I hope to have more or less finished adding all NPC's to Dematol.  I also hope to have added another couple of areas, as well as everything that goes into them, including monsters, cut-scenes, and story elements.  

In fact, if I may go on a bit of a tangent, the big push for this month will be story.  The first couple of months, I focused on getting Dematol playable, as well as the NPC's and the quests they give.  There were also the cut-scenes to implement.  The third month, I focused on creating and updating many of the scripting systems of the game.  Oh yeah, and I worked on a new dungeon:)  Last month was basically a polish things up month, in order to get out the ALPHA.  This month, I will definitely be focusing on the story elements of the game.  The point at which the ALPHA ends is the point where the story will kick into overdrive.  More has to be revealed to the player concerning Aramus.  The player is going to have to learn about a supposed rebellion by the Dematolians.  Then, lets not forget Kain, Adelas, & Castias.  You can't just think I will forget about them:)  Oh yeah, can't forget about Challseus & Clopon:)  I take it you get my point...

Okay, sorry for the little tangent...Anyway, I also have some other big news to announce.  Through some weird miracle, I will be off from work from December 15th - January 3rd:)  Or, in other words, I will have 19 days of uninterrupted development time.  I seriously can't believe I pulled it (actually getting the time off), but I am looking forward to this very much.  First off, it will give me the rest that I so dearly need.  Instead of programming at work for 9 hours, and then trying to work on the module, I can simply work on the module for 9+ hours, and still have time to rest.

Now, just as I did a couple of weeks ago when I took my 1st week of vacation, I plan on making the most of this time.  The fact that I literally have more than half a month off means that I HAVE to finish a lot.  If not, I will feel as if I wasted a great opportunity.  This is a blessing, and I will treat it as such.

One last thing.  Take a look at the screenshots I have posted.  The first one was taken back in September, the second, just last month.  Anyone who read my updates from last month should remember the day I spent adding placeables to the various areas in the module...  Well, not even thinking about it, I ended up taking similar screenshots, and it helps me prove a point.  Now, it is obvious the bottom picture looks better than the top one.  And to think, I got that effect from just a little effort on my part...I might just go and take some new screenshots to show the before and after effect of how important placeables are...

Till tomorrow...

P.S.  In case anyone didn't understand the 1st 3 paragraphs, I essentially felt as if I was going to have a stroke/heart attack today, so developing was the last thing on my mind...