So, let's get something out of the way right now. I ignorant to a lot of things in the world, especially things having to do with babies, giving birth, baby showers, etc. So, let's just say that I was surprised when one of my best friend, whom I met in 3rd grade (1988) invited me to a baby shower he and his girlfriend were having.

...Right... So, call me dumb, but I never heard of guys going to baby showers.

Not really sure why, but I have always wanted to participate in jury duty. Well, my chance has finally come. Too bad it happens to fall on a day where I had other plans...

So, the way it works (in my town at least) is that you get a request in the mail, which has an ID, and some other information. Then, you send some form back, saying that you either want to be on standby, or hour standby (where you have to show up in a few hours from being called). Then, you just have to keep calling some number, or go to some website, to see if your ID has been pulled. Well, my ID was pulled, so I have to show up on Tuesday morning. Sucks, because I had just scheduled a dentist appointment for a routine cleaning (I am really behind!).

Plus, I don't know the policy at my job. I assume I will still get paid, but I will be mad as hell if they have some other plan. Getting $40 a day from the court ain't gonna cut it:)

To be honest, the main reason I want to go is because I know I will be inspired, and possibly come up with a scenario for an upcoming game. Not sure about other builders, but I am always inspired and come up with game ideas when I am in unfamiliar situations. Well, I shouldn't say too much more, I will spoil my grand plans *Looks both ways*

Till tomorrow...

So, as you all know, I just picked up a new digital HD cable box, with DVR capabilites. Not sure how I have made it through life without!

Seriously though, not being a slave to the TV stations is great. Hell, I don't even watch live TV anymore. I always have a huge queue of shows to watch at my leisure. The best part is, since I just skip past commercials, I actually save time! Some shows that I am recording are 24, Rome, Judge Mathis (yeah, that's right, I love that show!), and tons of History Channel specials. I think the best thing that happened was the fact that they are showing season 3 of 24 on A&E, which happens to be the only one I didn't see.

So, besides taping the new season, I am also taping the ones on A&E, and since they come on 5 times a week, in little over a month, I will have the entire season. Then, I can just go on a binge and watch it all in one day!

Till tomorrow...

So, in most Zelda games, the music is mainly "serviceable". In other words, not much of it sticks out. Granted, the game isn't designed like that, but, it is what it is...

Well, with Twilight Princess, I have to admit, there were a few scenes that I would be in, where I would just sit there, and listen to the music. In particular, one of the tracks that has stuck out in my mind is the track that plays during the day when you are in Hyrule Field. Riding around on your horse is already fun enough, but throw in some really good upbeat music, and you have yourself a winner. The beauty of it is, there are so many secrets to uncover, so I have no issue riding around for hours on end, trying to find new things.

Anyway, I recently downloaded music from the game, and was thinking about putting it into my next game, but something is holding me back. It's so freaking weird. It's like, since the music is established enough, I would feel weird putting it in. I ran into the same thing when I was looking for an imperial type of track for the Defenders of Legacy. I kept coming back to that Darth Vader track from The Empire Strikes Back. You all know which track I am talking about!

There is just something sacred about pieces like that, where I think I would be going too far if I put them in:) Although, that hasn't stopped me from using various tracks from Final Fantasy... Oh well...I guess I could use some of the new themes, that not many people would be familiar with. Not the main theme, though. That's as recognizable as the Mario theme!

Till tomorrow...

Without a doubt, it is so hard to wake up every morning. I know that it mostly has to do with the deep freeze we are in over in New York, but it's just getting ridiculous now... Every morning, I lay in bed for 10 minutes, debating on if I should just say that I'm working from home. It's crazy, but I just hate to do anything in the cold... Time to move out west to California!

Development wise with NWN2, I have been checking out the GUI features. For those that don't know, builders have the opportunity to get their own custom GUI's in the game. As I am always trying to do things unique in my games, I will most likely make extensive use of them.

The first application of this that comes to mind are the menus and submenus for party members. I always thought it was quite ridiculous to be setting Last Resorts and Passive Abilities on party members via conversation. Now, I am sure that I will have to instantiate a GUI through conversation, but once it is up, I should be able to do everything from there. I may even try to get some custom icons for each custom ability, to flesh it out even more. Also, I should be able to finally do away with using that stupid Rose of Eternity Manual to set attributes on Aramus (i.e. Tonic of Rebirth usage).

From a technical standpoint, I am still learning. I know that they use XML to define them, so right now, I'm just going through various examples, such as partyselect.xml. This is used to pick party members that are a part of your roster, and actually add them to your party. The way they handle party members in this game is a bit different than "henchmen". Essentially, a potential party member has to be added roster first. Once on the roster, they can be added or removed from your party at will. The difficult thing is that there are some methods within the XML, such as UIListBox_OnUpdate_RosterMembers, but I have no idea where they are defined. I have a good idea what is happening behind the scenes, but it would be good to know for sure. Another confusing thing is the amount of tags that are used. It would be nice to have a full list of the tags and elements, and what they do/mean. Hell, for all I know, that information is already out there. I guess I'll have to do some searching around during some downtime at work.

Heh, it's interesting, because when I joined the NWN1 community in 2004, it had already been going for 2 years, so there was a lot more documentation. Now, all of that documentation doesn't even exist for NWN2, so I guess I have to take more initiative. Man, and I just wanted to be lazy and have someone do the hard work for me:)

Till tomorrow...

Before I start, I want to really stress something. I am just going to be rambling for this update. Nothing I will talk about is something I am planning on doing. It is just something that is on my mind...

So, everyone who played The Coming knows that there were 2 storylines. I really wish that I had the time to do more of these, just to flesh out the characters a bit more.

Not sure if I ever mentioned it, but I really did intend on doing multiple storylines for Cry The Beloved, but it just couldn't have been done in the amount of time I had. But, I guess I might as well talk about what I did have planned... Oh yeah, there will be tons of spoilers...

Auden

So, here's an interesting character. When the player initially meets him in The Coming, they look at him like the typical captain of a group of soldiers. In fact, I am sure no one even gave him a second thought... Once you got to Cry The Beloved however, his true nature was discovered. Now, there is an obvious gap in the time between Aramus & Clopon leaving Aribine for the first time, and meeting Auden in Dematol.

This was to be the perfect opportunity to show what happened during this time, while allowing the player to directly control Auden. In fact, a year later, Jason Melancon helped me flesh out the very extensive back story of what did happen. Heh, I remember it well. I wrote up some stuff really quick on the train one day, and handed it off to Jason for editing. He of course notices everything, and highlighted a bunch of inconsistencies. Over the next few days, we had a bunch of back and forths, and finally came up with something. Actually, to be more accurate, Jason came up with it, and I agreed:)

As to what actually happened, you will just have to play Cry The Beloved, and make sure you take Auden with you on the assault on Bannerman Hill, and make sure to be nice to him in the dialog after finding the dead villagers:) Then, just imagine it fleshed out even further, and actually playing out the events as Auden.

Sinteres

This was a biggie. I really wanted to get this in game, but just ran out of time. I really wanted people to see why he tried to assassinate Aramus. I mean, everything still worked out, because now he has this sort of mysterious aura about him, as people don't know why he tried to kill Aramus, and more importantly, why he was in one of the epilogue cut-scenes, after thinking that he was killed many hours earlier...

The other thing I wanted to accomplish was making a game where the player plays a somewhat "evil" person. I put quotes, because in my games at least, I don't ever want to label someone as "good" or "evil". Things are very much gray...

Clopon

This wasn't something I really needed to do, but I flirted with the idea every once in a while. I basically wanted to capture everything that happened with her between leaving Stramadon to meet her master, Adaramus, and being rescued by Aramus (these events were described in the beginning of The Coming, but never shown...). Besides showing more about Clopon (without a mask!), it would flesh out exactly what happened when Aramus rescued her.

***********

So, am I going to go through with implementing these? Not likely... Would I like to? Of course! You know, as I was writing this, I realized that many people may not have even seen all that Cry The Beloved had to offer. It was an early design decision to only allow you to open up certain things about party members if you took them to Bannerman Hill with you. This was my sneaky way to encourage replayability. At any rate, perhaps I will write the exact parts of the stories for each party member that some people may have missed, due to the fact that they didn't want to play through the game again...

Till tomorrow...

So, one day last week, I was talking with Hugie about area building in NWN2, how it's crazy that on the wrong machine, the graphics look worse than NWN1, etc. Yeah, dammit, I said it! All of those people on the NWN2 General Forums who called others liars for saying the graphics were worse need to get over themselves (you know who you are). On some setups, the graphics are worse. Now, I don't want to get into the argument of knowing which is the best computer to run it on, but it is true. Whew, that was one crazy tangent:) Anyway...

He was in the middle of saying something to me, and all I could say was something along the lines of "YES!!!! AFTER 3 LONG MONTHS, I HAVE FOUND IT!!!! MUA HAHAHAHAHAHAH"...

At that moment, I am sure Hugie assumed I had finally gone insane:) Why was I so happy? Simple... I had finally found a piece of music that I had been scouring the internet for for 3 months. It is called "Can Still See The Light", from the Phantasy Star Online OST. There are like 5 versions, and I could never found the piece I wanted...

I first heard the song on RPGFan Radio back in October, right before I released Cry The Beloved. I kept a small text file that contained all the names of the songs that I heard on the radio that I liked. Every so often, I would search the internet for various songs off the list. Anyway, like I said, after 3 months of searching, I finally found it. What is annoying is that the site I found it on was one of the first sites I checked way back when. They must have either just added it, or I just missed it the first time around (more like the latter).

So, why is this song so important? Well, it could damn well be the theme that will play in the opening cut-scene of my next Rose of Eternity game. More specifically, it could be the Keeper of the Rose's new theme song. Just like in The Coming and Cry The Beloved, this song is a vocal song, with really moving music to back it up. Remember, the whole concept of the Keeper of the Rose is that she is always singing, so I obviously will need to find a new vocal song for every opening cut-scene sequence. I am hoping that it will become a tradition, and something that lets people know, they are playing a Challseus game:) Speaking of the opening cut-scene...

So, it's no secret that I am not totally sold on the new NWN2 style cut-scenes. However, I have to admit, with them, I would be able to do an opening cut-scene that I actually thought about doing in my last game. Obviously, I cannot get into it (gotta keep some secrets!), but because of some new scripting features, as well as the way that you can static cameras, making this new cut-scene will be a lot easier. As I said earlier, I will just have to adapt with this new system, and already, I am...

Till tomorrow...

I don't have much time to really say anything, so I'll just leave with this.

COLTS FINALLY WIN THE SUPER BOWL!!!

Till tomorrow...

So, I finally picked up the new box, and I truly feel like I am in the 21st century now. I have been hearing people saying this and that about HD TV and whatnot, but to actually see it for myself in full glory on new TV set is amazing.

The best part is the DVR, which allows me to record shows directly to the box. The way I am, there are always multiple shows on that I like to watch, usually around the same time. Now, I can just record them, and watch them at my leisure. Yeah, I know DVR isn't new, but to me, it's the greatest thing since sliced bread!

Till tomorrow...

So, one of our QA workers is moving on to bigger and better things, so we took him out for drinks tonight. I'm starting to see a pattern... It was the usual people, the usual area, blah blah blah, but it was still fun.

In fact, the more time I have been spending down in Manhattan, the more I have been liking it. I am more and more inclinded to move down there for a few years, just to experience the city life. Plus, I wouldn't have to ride on that freaking train anymore. It was one thing when I was developing Rose of Eternity, but now that NWN2 only runs good enough to write scripts/convos on my laptop, I am running out of things to do on the train.

Till tomorrow...

It is a sad, sad day today... Well, it started off promising enough... As I mentioned earlier, I received some component cables for my Gamecube yesterday. Well, it was time to put them to use. WOW...

It was like night and day. I was so incredibly pissed off that I was just getting them at the end of the game:( Even worse, I actually beat the game today... And so ends the best gaming experience that I have arguably ever had. Definitely best in the past 10 years. I just hope I don't have to wait another 10 years for a game of this calibur...

On a somewhat minor note, this being my only day off during the week (well, technically, since I work at home), I figured I would go to Cablevision and trade in my current cable box for a High Def/DVR one, since my TV is now cable of displaying shows in High Def!

Too bad that the only day they are closed is Thursday... Figures, with my luck... Oh well, I guess I'll have to wait until Saturday. I sure as hell better be able to watch the Super Bowl in Hi Def...

Till tomorrow...