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!

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...

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.  

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.

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.

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...

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...

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...

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:

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.

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:)

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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.

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:)

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:)

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...

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:)

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 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...

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...

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.

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...

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:)

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

Till tomorrow.

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.

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:)