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A Timelord's Travel In Thedas | Alazander's Blog | Baldur's Gate II Redux | Community Contest | Creations of AmstradHero | Dark Sun Glare Blog | Ossian Studios | The Sanctum | RP Singh

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3/29/13 -Friday: DECENT PROGRESS...

While in the midst of a Game of Thrones seasons 1&2 marathon leading up to the season 3 premeire on Sunday, I've made some good progress in the past few days.

For one, I put the finishing touches on the Unison Ability I mentioned in my last post. There were a few annoying bugs in it, but once I sat down and put my all into it, I was able to fix them. I also kept the same standard, where once the ability is unleashed, a codex entry will be created. However, unless you come to this site where I will of course have a description of the ability, you simply won't know until you activate it. In terms of balance, I think I have it right, but I won't really know until I do my next playthrough of the game. There's a tendency to make these custom abilities SUPER COOL AND POWERFUL!, but I kept my cool and didn't go too nuts with it. But like I said, I really won't know until I get in game. I do have some other ideas for perhaps another 1-2 abilities, but I'll continue to sit on them for the moment.

I was also lucky enough to have a Skype chat with Alexander. We've essentially missed each other every single other time we have wanted to have a chat for like a month or so. Was good to talk and do our brainstorming thing, bouncing ideas off of each other. In one instance, I was expanding on the lore of something he has to talk about in a particular conversation. When I gave him the lines, I didn't really give him that much to work with, but after talking it over, he had a much better understanding of it, allowing him to take the reins and make the conversation even better.

Next up is more level polishing, this one, potentially one of the biggest ones. Most of the other levels, I polished to make them look better. How I handle this next level will determine how the biggest combat event in the game pans out. So I can't just change things and be done with it. I'll have to test combat over and over again to make sure things continue to work well.

Till tomorrow...

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While I mostly only cared for the music in Soul Calibur V, this one character, Viola was pretty cool. Her weapon of choice was this little orb thing that she could send all around the arena, and then call back, damaging her opponent if it hit them. Anyway, enjoy her music!

 

3/27/13 -Wednesday: THE ONLY CONSTANT...

So, I can't lie to you... It's been a rough few days. I can't go into specifics at the moment out of respect for others, but when I can, I will. I always like to stress that this blog isn't just about Rose of Eternity, it's about all the things that happen during the development. I've never been shy talking about the emotional roller coaster that is game development, and I won't now.

Luckily for me, the one constant over the past 14 years that has helped me get through the hard times has been, yes, you guessed it: Rose of Eternity. When I was going through rough times emtionally after my first panic attack back in 1999, brainstorming ideas for the lore of the game kept me sane. And now, while going through hard times, brainstorming is coming to the rescue again.

Usually, my brainstorm sessions involve listening to some new age/instrumental/video game music, and within a few minutes, I start getting ideas for certain scenarios. Then, I start to iterate over these ideas, and within the hour, I have something. That "something" may not be worth putting into the game, but at least I tried!

A few nights ago, I got one of the best inspirations for a brain storm session, one that usually only happens a few times a year: I had a dream. I won't go into specifics due to spoilers, but the instant I woke up, I knew I had something, and immediately needed to keep thinking about it so I didn't forget it (as I usually do with most dreams). I rolled over and started telling my wife, who did her best to pretend to care. But simply talking about it kept it in my mind, which was the end-goal. Once I was fully up, I just kept iterating over the original idea (which in retrospect, was sort of lame), and within a few hours, I had what seemed to me, a damned good idea. It's a shame that the most people will get to even know about it is through a codex entry :(

The only other thing I've been doing in my spare time is working on a new Unison Ability. Surprisingly, it's been a while since I've created a new custom ability. I've actually had the idea for this type of ability for a few months. It's a timed one, meaning that you need to have 2 party members use certain abilities/spells at the same time in the right situation. I'm not sure why I hadn't tried to implement it before, but a few weeks ago, while reminiscing about Cry The Beloved after reading the latest review (hey, I get like 2 reviews per year now!), I realized that I needed to step up my game, ability wise.

To be clear, it wasn't like I was about to start cramming in any and everything under the sun, so I could meet some fixed number of abilities I think I need. I just happened to already want to add this new one, so I was already ready to go.

Implementing it has been a little slow, mostly due to other things going on in life, but I'm more or less there now. The ability itself works, I just need to implement some functionality to make sure the display of the ability name over the head of the participating party members only fires once. When that is done, I'll create a codex entry for it, and that should be it.

And that brings me to the final thing that has been in the back of my mind lately. Do I tell people every Unsion Abilility upfront, or do I let them discover them in game, and once they do use one, unlock a codex entry for it? Right now, I'm doing the latter, but just because of my personality, it kills me knowing that I could create some content in a game and not every person sees it. I don't know... I'll have to sit on this one for a while...

Till tomorrow...

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Here's another person who I don't remember from my brief time with the game, but whose music is off the charts! Enjoy!

 

3/24/13 -Sunday: PRETTY PRODUCTIVE FEW DAYS...

I had a very productive few days in pretty much every facet of my life, and development on Rose of Eternity was no exception.

Earlier in the week, I sent RP Singh around 15+ ambient one liners. As these consisted of different characters, and because I certainly don't want the whole Elder Scrolls - Oblivion thing where everyone sounded the same, it was a pretty difficult task for him to come up with different voices for each. Luckily, he was up to the challenge, and while I didn't end up using all of them, I was able to make use of the majority of them, and get them into the game. Gotta say, respect goes out to him for initially reaching out to me to begin with, and then systematically knocking out all sorts of various roles. The gap on VO that still needs to be recorded is growing smaller and smaller by the day.

Not to be outdone, Alexander Baxter sent me 3 sets of lines. The first set was for the party member he does, another contextual conversation the player can start up with them pretty much anywhere in the game. There's actually this one line that is really, really funny, something I think might have to get added to a trailer for the game. One of the other sets of lines he sent was stuff we had brainstormed during our 8+ hour session a month or so ago. He took one character he does and came up with some scenarios for them that involve one other person. The 2 characters have a pretty... interesting relationship, and these ideas he came up with sort of flesh things out a little. Finally, just for fun, he sent some audition lines for another project he worked on. Good stuff.

Of course with all of this VO, someone had to integrate it, which I admit, took a decent amount of my time. Oh, right, then my laptop overheated on me! Yeah, totally my fault... I know I have a problem with it doing that, and stupid me had the damn thing's vent sitting flush next to a pillow. One minute, I'm re-writing some dialogue for a scene that Alexander did VO for (he usually changes up the text I give him), the next minute, the laptop is dying on me. When I touched the pillow and felt the extreme heat, I already knew what it was. I tried to do some work again, but within 20 minutes, it shut off one me again. Luckily, I have my desktop...

...Which allowed me to do some much needed level polishing. Keeping up my momentum, instead of slaving away on the same level I had previously worked on earlier in the week, I decided to move to another one. This process of doing the polishing in phases is really working out for me. I don't want to get burned out, and to be honest, I could spend a damn week on one level alone. At least this way, every level is getting a pass, and when I test the game, I don't feel so disgusting looking at many of the levels.

This particular level, I have to say, turned out pretty good. Unlike many of the other ones I've been doing, this one didn't need much in the way of props or terrain changes. Just a lot of vegetation. The main problem with this level was that when I initially did it, in the back of my head, I told myself, "Oh, I'll come back to this later, so I'll just sprinkle some trees here and there, and be done with it". I guess that's fine, but the main mistake I made was that I didn't set this property on each tree so that it was fully rendered at far distances. You see, in this level, I had a cutscene that ends pretty high in the sky to give the player a bird's eye view of things. For the past 2 years, this cutscene has looked worse and worse the higher the camera got because the default rendering setting was low (or default, can't remember), so the trees looked horrible.

So that was the first thing I did. Then, I just went nuts with adding more vegetation, which made things look a lot better, as well as more unique. Then, I got an idea for some props, and added them as well. Oh, and the water plane was seriously too small, so small that you could see the edges of it depending on where you were standing. So I more than tripled it, which looked 100 times better. The only worry is if rendering trees at longer distances is going to make the game take a hit or not. I mean, it obviously should (if not, then all trees would have the best settings), but I didn't notice anything to worry about. If I do, or some others complain about it during BETA testing, I'll just have to remove some. Eh, I'll worry about it when I have to. Better to start high and scale down anyway...

Next up for me... The last level that need this current round of polishing. It's not a big level, but a lot of scripted things happen here, so it's important that I get it just right. I'm hoping I sit down, and things just click.

Till tomorrow...

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This really reminds of some "end game" type of music, where the party is battling against their nemesis for the final time. Enjoy!

 

3/21/13 -Thursday: NOSTALGIA IS A MOTHERFUCKER...

So, I'll just come out with it as blunty as possible: Nostalgia is a motherfucker. Okay, let's back up a bit...

Every once in a while, I check the NWVault page for The Coming & Cry The Beloved. I used to check like 10 times a day (yes, I am quite mad) when the game first came out, because I didn't want to become that developer that doesn't respond to comments in a timely manner. If someone's stuck in your game, they don't want to wait a day to get an answer, because mayb they'll get bored and move on. That was the thinking anyway.

Fast forward almost 8 years (damn, I'm getting old...), and I check maybe 3-4 times a week, in the off chance that someone has written something. I went from multiple votes and comments a day to like, maybe 5-8 a year perhaps? So you can understand why it's not high on my "websites I must check once I get home from work".

Well, a few days ago, someone was kind enough to not only play the game, but write back feedback and a comment. Felt like Christmas, because I won't lie at all... Even 8 years later, I still enjoy the fact that people can still play those older games and find some fun. Anyway... One of the notes they made on the page for The Coming (rated 9.75) was that while good, they definitely found Cry The Beloved (rated 10.00) much better. I wholeheartedly agree. The Coming was just the stepping stones for me, while I was learning how to do this game design thing. I was able to fully unleash my potential in Cry The Beloved.

Now, I know I've talked about this a lot, but it got me thinking about those games, the 2nd in particular. I pretty much went to sleep, listening to my NWN - Rose of Eternity music playlist, thinking about those games, things that worked, things that didn't work. And as expected, I started thinking about how this current game would compare to the others.

I've been as open as anyone about the development process, and even my emotional state during it. The highs/lows, and everything in between. I'm not here to blow smoke up anyone's ass. That said... There is no way this game can match Cry content for content. It's simply impossible. I could knock out an area in NWN in like an afternoon, full props and everything. Now, it takes days. I think most folks know this in general about the transition from NWN -> DA.

Therein lies the problem. You know, a lot of AAA developers get crap from players about how games are much shorter with much less content. Yes, there are the Skyrim's of the world and such, but you know what I'm talking about... Myself and others look at games like Final Fanatsy IV, Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, and wonder, why can't we get that shit now. If I broke it down and really thought about it, these games, especially the latter 2 are so content filled, to be replicated in today's day and age would take one hell of a herculan effort. And so, we don't get them. We get Final Fantasy XIII-2. We get Final Fantasy XIII-3. We get promises of games of things like Final Fantasy Versus at the beginning of a console generation, and as a new one is about to begin, there is still no news.

It was hella easy to simply show Locke from FFVI use some simple sprite animations to get across what he is thinking. In this day and age, that shit don't cut it. We're gonna need some really good facial animation technology. Which do you think takes longer?

Okay, I'm babbling on and on, but you get the point. Unless you have some massive team, you just can't replicate what you were able to do 8 years ago. So when fans of the first 2 games play this, will they be like, "Hmm, this is okay, but why only x party members, when Cry had 2x party members? Why are there only x cusrtom abilities when Cry had 3x?

In the end, it's got to be quality over quantity. That's the only way I'll ship something I feel happy with. So while this game will not reach the lengths of Cry, I hope what is there is worth it for folks. Only time will tell...

Till tomorrow...

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<Insert comment about Soul Calibur having great music>

 

3/19/13 -Tuesday: MORE VO ADDED, LOTS OF SMALL FIXES, ETC...

I received the final bit of VO from RP Singh for 2 characters he voices in one particular scene. As always, good stuff. Also, it never gets old to hear one person play multiple characters in one scene. He does it pretty good, as well as John Erath, Elise Harris, & Edward Ashley. Actually, John does it quite a lot throughout the game. Off the top of my head, I can already think of 4 different conversations where he does it. It's definitely a testament to the skills of these actors.

So, one thing I've been doing without really mentioning it is really clearing up a lot of small tasks/bugs/etc. While the level design polishing is the most important thing, in terms of actual skill and time, while on the train, I continue to systematically knock out something from the list. Whather it's text mismatches with VO, or adding lore codexes, or even simply fixing an animation in a conversation, there is always something to do... Though, I am happy to report that I'm almost done taking care of all the important things. There's still a decent list of improvement related tasks on there, but I'm not entirely sure if I'll implement all of them. It's just things I jot down while playing, not really thinking if it's feasible/makes sense or not.

Finally... While I have your attention... I just wanted to put out a call for the following:

  • Female actors - I still have some smallish roles that need to be filled, ranging from 20-40 lines.
  • Concept artists - I'm not looking for the Mona Lisa or anthing, I'm just looking for someone who can take some pretty detailed information from me (including screenshots of the various games in the series) and turn them into small pieces of work. Hell, it could be black and white, just something that can be used to enrich the world a little bit.
  • Map artists - I'm looking for someone who can take existing sketches of maps, plus ones I plan on making in Campaign Cartographer 3, and give them a really cool fantasy look. I have flirted with the idea of just using CC3, but I think having an actual artist do the work looks so much better.

If anyone is interested in any of these, please email me at: gamecoder@optonline.net.

Till tomorrow...

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I don't even remember this character, but I remember the music :) Enjoy!

 

3/17/13 -Sunday: WELL, THAT WASN'T SO BAD...

So, after a lot of arm twisting and screaming, I finally sat down to tackle the very first exterior level I ever created, way back in January of 2010. Hell, now that I think about it, it was the first level, period... Interior or exterior...

Back then, while I always knew I would come back to things eventually, I at least thought the level was servicable. Fast forward 3 years, and well, I would have had to hang my head in shame had I released it as is. Turns out, it didn't need as much work as some other levels. The main issues it had were:

  • Not enough vegetation
  • Lack of props
  • Land was too flat

Once I got going, I was able to put together a nice set of props to make the level look more realistic. After that, I raised/lowered/smoothed out the land so it didn't look so... perfect... Not realistic for the ground to be at a 0 degree angle. Lastly, I sprinked more trees around to give the level a fuller feeling.

The main problem I have at the moment is that I'm having one hell of a time trying to ingegrate my "Fall" color trees into the level. TimelordDC (where is that guy?!) put together a wonderful tutorial on it a while back, and I immediately integrated some into the game. That was maybe 2 years ago? Since then, I've added them to maybe one or 2 new levels, and things worked fine. However, when I try to add them to this first level, it looks good in the editor, but once I start the game, the tree models are replaced with other ones. As usual, I'm sure it's going to be something very small. Something left over in an override folder or something.

Once I do fix the issue, I may be able to put out my first promotional video for the game. It's a 3-4 minute long cutscene that occurs towards the beginning of the game in the first level. I had flirted with the idea of releasing it before, once I realized I needed to do some level polishing, I backed off. We'll see...

Tomorrow, instead of banging my head on my keyboard sorting out the fall trees thing (that's something better served for the weekend), I'll move on to a pretty small level that needs a minor face lift. I'm guessing it won't take that long at all... Here's hoping...

Till tomorrow...

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Ah, good old Maxi. I remember this theme quite well, as it hasn't changed much since the original Soul Calibur. In fact, I loved it so much, I made it the default battle theme in The Coming :) Enjoy!

 

3/13/13 -Wednesday: BURST OF VO INTEGRATION TO DO...

To take my mind off the mindless level polishing I've been doing, I happily devoted a bunch of time to integrate some VO from RP Singh and Alexander Baxter.

With Alexander, he has just finished off another batch of contextual conversations, ones you can start up with your party members at any time, assuming you've passed a certain point in the game. I think I've mentioned this before, but I had a similiar feature in The Coming. However, I believe you could just talk to them about anything right from the start, not needing to hit certain points in the game. I wasn't entirely sure if people like it or not, because folks tends to complain about things they don't like, rather than praise things they do. So for Cry The Beloved, I dropped the feature, mostly because I wanted to get the damn game out. Lo and behold, comments started popping up about how they missed it. SMH... This time, I knew I was going to bring it back, and while I'm not that huge a fan of writing, I have had fun writing these.

As for RP Singh, he was just doing adding more VO to an existing character he currently voices, as well as giving a bunch of different lines with various accents and such for 2 new characters that have at most, 4 lines each. Nice to see that he can handle multiple characters/accents with relative ease. I still need to send him a video of his work so he can see what it currently looks like.

Tomorrow, I've got some Ossian related work to do later in the night, but if I'm lucky, I can squeeze in some more level polishing...sigh...

Till tomorrow...

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I'm going to get back to Soul Calibur V music in my next post, but I simply cannot let the opportunity pass without giving a shoutout to rappers who respect video game music, and more importantly, some of the game that were released during the pinnacle of the golden age of RPG's.

Said game is Chrono Trigger. I'm not going to go over the merits, because if you're like me, you already know, and if you weren't playing it back when it came out in 1995, you're most likely not going to start now.

What is amazing is that when it was taboo to listen/enjoy video game music, I was all over the soundtrack to this game, and almost 20 years later, it's popping all over the place. Observe:

And then, of course, there is a Chrono Trigger/Jay-Z mashup, Chrono Jigga.

It's like these guys are talking directly to me :)

3/9/13 -Saturday: MAJOR POLISHING EFFORT UNDERWAY...

***Tries to muster some energy to write***

Yeah, it's been that kind of day. I started in earnest the effort to make the 2nd exterior level I've ever created in this game (back in like 2010) look presentable. Since I like bullet points, that's how I'll tell you how bad it was.

  • Was using a horrible looking rock/moss texture for my "rocks", instead of a better looking "lava rock" one
  • Water line is the same height as the land, making my "coastlines" just look really...odd...So embarassing...
  • Floating trees all over the place (sometimes when you place trees on hills, they don't go all the way down)
  • Total lack of artistic skill when trying to make "mountains".

I want to expand a bit on this last bullet point. I hurts too much to go into too much detail, but suffice to say, when I was attempting to make mountains way back then, I would just raise the ground in parts, maybe plateau it out, and be done. What happens is that the side of it ends up being exactly 90 degrees. Not really realistic, huh? Then, when you paint it with a texture, it just looks even weirder... Apparently, I must not have known about the smooth tool, which totally takes care of it. Problem, if you want a mountain that is x meters tall and y meters wide, you almost need to start with something about 2x meters tall and 2y meters wide, then use the smooth tool to slowly sculpt it down to what you want. So that was my night. Taking existing mountains, then making them bigger, just so I could smooth them down again.

At any rate, I know I always say that things have been looking better post polishing, but with this level, oh my god... I almost feel like any good will I wold have gotten for the game up until that point would have been washed away when players got to this level. I just had to do something... And there's more... Usually I've been able to do one pass in like a day. This seems like a 3 day project :(

Till tomorrow...

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Didn't really like this character (or, maybe didn't play the game enough to care), but I sure as hell love her music. Enjoy!

 

3/5/13 -Tuesday: WOW, CAN'T BELIEVE ALL THIS PROGRESS IN JUST ONE WEEK...

Wow... A week ago, I was sitting on my couch playing Fire Emblem: Awakening (one of the most memorable gaming experiences for me in a long time) thinking to myself, "Dammit, you know you should be doing that level polishing... Screw it, just one more battle...". A week later, I have a lot of results to show for my work.

Game design has such weird ebs and flows, and as I've described hundreds of times over the years, I'm in the upward climb at the moment. Every day on the train, I knock out some codex/lore related stuff. I mean, stuff that's been perculating in my brain for months, if not years. Anyway, then, at night, I'm doing various polishing passes on on all exterior levels.

Tonight, I kept the trend going by going back a few levels to add something I thought of earlier in the day. I try to make all levels as unique as possible, and after thinking about it for a while, I realized there was this easy change I could make to the 2 levels to make them stand out more. Well, easy changes, hours of lightmap rendering/level exporting. It's a shame that they're 2 different processes, or that you can't chain them together. That way, I could just kick off one job and go to sleep, rather than sit up waiting for the lightmaps to render, then kicking off the export. Meh, what can you do.

I think another reason I'm on a roll is because I have just a tad less stress in life. Well, maybe more than a tad... For one, once I came back from my cruise in late December, I was so relaxed and glad I didn't have to think about my job for damn near 2 weeks. I sort of got used to that warm fuzzy feeling, so my plan going back to work was to do just that... not think about it all the time. Before, I would be up to 11pm some nights working on stuff, just because. Now, I'm managing my time better. Now, don't get me wrong, I still put in the hours when I have to, but when I do, I'm not as stressed about it.

The last thing that has helped is that I've finally been given another work from home day. I've been at the company 3 years, have proven time and time again that I'm damn productive when at home (more so than when in the office, actually; read up, they're studies on it), so it was only a matter of time. I had secretly talked about it with my close confidants at work, knowing I was going to "pop the question" eventually. I was in an unrelated meeting, and the topic sort of came up, and I pounced. So now, I have Tues & Thu as my wfh days. This is how I had it at my last company, and it served me well. Never going into the office 2 days in a row is a blessing. Every time I'm in the office, and I know I don't have to come back the next day is like Thanksgiving and Christmas wrapped up in one shiny present.

Um... so yeah... Less stress = more development.

Till tomorrow...

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Here's another great SC5 track from Hiroki Kukuta. Enjoy!

 

3/4/13 -Monday: ANOTHER NWN ALUM HAS MADE IT!

Which NWN alum has made it, you ask? Well, none other than Luke Scull, perhaps more famously known by his NWN handle, Alazander. He's the author of the well received NWN modules:

Was the lead designer on the following expansion pack for Neverwinter Nights 2 (of which I worked on as well):

And now is the current lead designer for Ossian Studios on our latest iOs game:

In between all of that, turns out, he's one hell of an author, securing a multi-book deal with a publisher, and releasing the first in the series, The Grim Company. For more information on it, check out his website.

From one NWN alum chasing his dreams, to one who has succeeded, Luke, I nod my head towards you.

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The level polishing stuff just keeps rolling on and on. I'm actually surprised I've been so focused on it, but I'm gonna ride this wave until it ends! This particular level was more of the same, really. Minor terrain changes, more vegetation, some more VFX (i.e. fog), and lots of smoothing of rough edges around water and hills. It's damn near pathetic looking at some of what I used to have. *Shakes Head*

I started rendering lightmaps and exporting the level pretty late, and since it was taking so damn long, I'll actually test things out in game tomorrow.

Keeping up with the flow of things, I finished yet another codex/lore entry, and integrated it into the game. The only issue I may have with all of these codex entries is that they give 50XP by default. This may be okay, but I really won't know if it throws things off until I do another playthrough. If I do see that it messes up the balance of the game, I'll have to override the core script and add in my own value. I'll cross that bridge when I get there...

Till tomorrow...

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Today's song is amazing for so many reasons. For one, it's Mitsurugi's theme, and he's been one of my favorites since the first Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast way back in 1999! Hell, little bits of Aramus were sort of inspired from his fighting style. So yeah, it's great to continue hearing his theme game after game after game. The other amazing thing is that the composer is none other than Hiroki Kikuta. For me, that means one thing: The freaking composer of the Secret of Mana soundtrack, one of the most influential games in my life! To go from Secret of Mana -> Soul Calibur 5 is amazing. Anyway, enjoy!

 

3/3/13 -Sunday: ANOTHER LEVEL DONE... MORE OR LESS...

Well, I can say with a huge smile on my face that I have finished another level... More or less... During this polishing part of development, I've been doing the levels in phases/passes. For instance, I'll give a particular level a once over, and move on to the next one. Later, after I've played through the game again, I'll notice little things here and there, such as pathfinding issues. So I'll make notes, and go through another pass of the level. I'll keep iterating like this until... Well, actually, I'm still iterating, but I imagine I'll be perfectly happy at some point and stop!

The reason I do it this way is because if I was just stuck on the same level for days, I would go nuts. There's only so much I can take, level design wise, before I just need to move on. Interiors are one thing, but because exteriors are so much more complicated, it just involves a lot more work.

Tomorrow, I hope to knock out some codex/lore related things on the train ride, and when I get home, start on another one of the easy levels.

Till tomorrow...

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Hilde was one of my favorite characters from Soul Calibur 4, due to her unorthodox style of fighting, which consisted of a spear and dagger, and lots of "charging energy" moves. I was really excited to see what they did with her in the sequel, and while she didn't change that much, her music is hella good. Fun fact: This was composed by Inon Zur, the same guy who does the Dragon Age franchise. I'm not a fan of his DA stuff, but this is pure gold. Enjoy!

 

3/2/13 -Saturday: DAMN, ANOTHER MONTH HAS PASSED?

STATE OF THE UNION

Man, time sure has been flying as of late, especially this past month. I can safely say that, because of extra things going on in my life, the mount of work I got done was pretty good. Lots of codex related things, integrated VO, addition of extras to existing areas in the game, and last but not least, exterior level polish.

In fact, the level polishing is what is *really* keeping me from being able to do certain things with this game, such as videos for trailers and such. I may post whatever I'm working on at the time in this blog, with the assumption that everyone should know this is work in progress. With trailers, however, I'd like to put my best foot first, hence my willingness to spend that little extra bit of time on things.

All of that said, the level polishing has definitely been worth it. I already had the great results from the interior work I did earlier in the year, and now I'm seeing the fruits of that work in the exteriors. Granted, I've only done 2 main ones, and easy ones at that. Easy in that all I need to do is add props, and maybe some minor terrain work. Even still, they're looking much better than what I already had.

Next up, I'll have 2 more exteriors that need damn near a facelift, and then 3 more that just need a little dash of props here and there. I'll probably keep the harder ones towards the end, because hell, I like progress, and I'll get that with the other ones.

Finally... As I close in on finishing development, I'm beginning to think of other things I'd like to do, such as create recap videos for The Coming & Cry The Beloved. Yes, this game has been designed to be able to be played by anyone new to the series, but it won't hurt to have a little more context. This is just one of those ideas floating around in my head, but it's really just going to consist of someone reading a script, with some videos/music playing in the background. I'll pen the script first, then add in the appropriate video later.

But first things first. I have to finish this game!

Till tomorrow...

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Another good track from Soul Calibur V. One interesting thing I noticed about the soundtrack is that they use multiple artists. Perhaps they've always done this, but it definitely gives the score some nice variety. Anyway, enjoy!

 

 
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