As far as what I polished, the main thing was implementing the skipping functionality for cut-scene I created over a month ago. I had a policy to do it while it was still fresh in my head, but along the way, I got lazy. Hey, even I can be lazy sometimes! 

I get up around 10:00 am, and after showering, eating breakfast, and checking my e-mail, it is about 12:00pm, which is when I get to work. I try to make this time count, as I don't have any distractions. During this time, I try to work on difficult stuff that needs my complete attention. Around 2:00 pm, I have lunch, watch Judge Mathis (religiously I might add), and do minor work. This minor work usually entails dialog editing fixes from Jason, or even more annoying things, like rebuilding the entire module after adding a new hak to it. After Judge Mathis is over, I get back into more difficult things. Around 5:00-6:00 pm, I check my e-mail again, and then get back to work. A bit after that, I have dinner, and get back into developing. Around 11:00 pm I tried to write my updates in this very blog, and then go back to light developing until 2:00 am. Rinse, repeat. Let's see if I can do this for another 16 days:)

At this point, I just decided to make it a polish day. You know what, it was quite fun. It felt so good to start knocking these things out. Again, it always feels good, but it feels better when I can devote 7-8 hours of it in one day. In those 7-8 hours, I was able to glue a lot of the pieces together. Because of a lot of other things I fixed over these past few weeks, I am really excited to go through the game again. Since there are many different ways to do things, I myself haven't gone through every possibility (even if the ALPHA testers have). But, I have to be strong, and finish up all of the main parts, so I can release a BETA in the coming weeks.

It was a busy day at the Cry The Beloved forums as well. I can't really talk about it right now, but there are 2 threads where most of the team has been giving me great ideas for some new ideas that just came up this week. It feels great to be able to post a thread asking for ideas, coming back a few hours later to see a lot of responses:) Also, after working on the aforementioned cut-scene, I decided to knock out a bunch of bugs that have been reported over the past few weeks. I didn't fix all of them, but it still feels good to get those that I did, out of the way. As expected, it is better to have more people ALPHA testing the game, as I get more people doing weird things I would have never thought of.

Tomorrow, I will work on some dialogue for some party members, and then perhaps work on another short cut-scene that has needed to be done months ago. Again, I could work on putting the finishing touches on one of my new systems. Every time I complete I major milestone (i.e. aforementioned cut-scene), I always find it hard what to focus on. I am sure I will figure something out:)

Anyway, I was lucky enough to finish up all of this work. Thank god I was on vacation, because if not, it would have taken me at least 2 days to get it done otherwise. Now tomorrow, I will be able to start work on the cut-scene. Funny thing is, the cut-scene won't even be that long. The things you do for 45 seconds of pure beauty. I really am a perfectionist. I really need to be part of a team, so that these perfectionist outbreaks can be controlled:)

Anyway, being the only Junior left (after my friend quit), I used to joke all the time about how if everyone quits, I will end up becoming the Director of the team, or even better, CTO:) Well, once we were down to 4 Vindigoers (as we liked to call ourselves), I had to take on more responsibilities. Now remember, even though I program for a living, and make video games, I am not a technical person. I don't take part in conversations about the newest version of Java, or the fact that it is going to be open source, or that Python is the best new language. I don't care about that stuff. I just want to make games...

All of that said, I still took on a much larger role, and for that, I was rewarded with 2 raises and 1 promotion within a 6 month span. I am now a Senior Software Engineer that makes much more money than when I was hired a Junior a year ago...All of this, and I really don't want to be doing what I do! Actually, my boss commented that I was more of a people person than technical person, and that I should really be managing, not down in the grind, programming.

So, why did I just turn a Long story short phrase into a long story? Because, now that I am the only one left, there are lots of pieces of the system (and this is one hell of a big system) that only I know. Especially when it comes to the server code, I really know where everything is. So, before going on vacation, I wrote up as much documentation as I possible could. Well, wouldn't you know that the few things I missed were things brought up today:( The thing is, I am too much of a nice guy to not help people out, even though I am on vacation, so I don't have to explain what I did this morning...Oh well...

After a long day of not being able to work on the game, I finally got into the groove around 9:00 pm, and started working on the next sequence. One problem I was having was trying to script things so that when the PC clicked on certain NPC's, they totally ignored him. I already have some scripts for this, but not for when the NPC was currently engaged in a looping animation. A quick search on the scripting forums found the answer to my question, and I was able to move on.

A lot of how I works really depends on how much in the groove I am. Sometimes, I cannot be distracted at all, and other times, I just lose focus, and watch TV, or read everything related to NWN/NWN2 on the web. Another term I could call it would be momentum. Or, inspiration. Sometimes, I am so inspired, that I have total focus. Once this momentum builds up, I could easily work for 4 hours straight, without being interrupted. I need to find ways to do this for the next 3 weeks.

Oddly enough, even though I don't want to program for a living, the one thing that I can always do, and stay focused with is scripting. Perhaps it isn't simply programming I don't like, it is just the type of programming I do. If it revolves around a game, then it is fine, I guess. Unfortunately, as things begin to wind down with development, I am finding that there are less things to script. I have damn near completed all of the custom systems, so the only thing left is cut-scenes, and other minor monkey work scripts. In fact, the thing that needs to be done more than anything is a ton of conversations. I know they will get done, but I think I left a little too many of them in favor of writing scripts. For Rose Of Eternity - Chapter 3 - ??????, I will try to balance things a bit more. Even better, maybe I will have a full time writer, who has the same ambitions that I do. We'll see...

At this point in the game, the player will be experiencing a lot of story development, and when I can't just show it via the standard NWN dialog interface, I will be using cut-scenes. Since it will be so late in the game, I think people will be forgiving for it, because frankly, they will be caught up in the story so much that they won't mind watching these cut-scenes. Now, I am not saying I am going to have like 10 5 minute cut-scenes in a row. Nothing near that. However, there are really only certain ways for me to let the player see certain events, and the normal dialog interface wouldn't cut it. I mean, I am trying to make a cinematic style game, and we all know how those can be towards the end. I really want the final sequences to be things people will remember while I work on Rose Of Eternity - Chapter 3 - ??????????.

A lot of the monkey work included the work of gluing a lot of the sequences I have been working on together. That in itself is easy enough, but I ran into a lot of bugs that I introduced with the last bunch of work I did. So, I had to test it, find bugs, squash them, rinse, repeat. Not very fun...

Well, as a reward for a long day of monkey work, I am going to cut this update short, and go through some more edits. As boring as it might seem, I actually like doing them. At least it gets me away from the bugs:)

Jason had edited all of the journal entries for the game, so I went through them and fixed them when I was waiting for code to compile at work, or when I was running some job. It was a nice change of pace.

After work, we took out one of our co-workers for drinks, and dinner afterwards. It was sad to see yet another close friend leave, but alas, that is the world we live in.

I really hope to get a lot of work done tomorrow, since I slipped up today. At least I didn't not work today because I knew in the back of my head I had a vacation coming up:)

As for what I did today, well, there is no way for me to talk about it without giving spoilers, so I can't really comment:( I probably won't get that much done tomorrow night, as yet another co-worker is leaving the company, and we are taking him out for drinks tomorrow night. I am going to bed now so I can at least finish up some dev work on the train tomorrow.

So, I have been debugging and testing a particular boss fight scene for a while. It started out quite normal, but as I normally do, I have been adding custom abilities and Last Resorts, to make the fight as unique as possible. As always, I don't want players to feel like they have been doing the same thing over and over again.

I also toyed with the AI of certain ranged party members, to attempt to have them run away from enemies when too close. I was obviously prompted by the discussion that occurred at the Cry The Beloved forums yesterday. I was content to leave it, but while at work, I got to thinking about how cool it would be for that to be an option the player could pick, via the party member's dialog interface. So far, so good:)

Funny enough, a month ago, I was planning on using the 2 weeks off to finish what I was able to finish this week! Now, don't think I am skimping on the implementation, because I have been able to get everything I wanted in, and even more. Better to under promise, than to over promise I guess.

I am not even going to beat around the bush. I will not be trying to change the AI of party members. A year ago, I attempted to implement a way of having party members (i.e. Challseus) run from close enemies, but I never got it down. Say for example, he is surrounded by enemies on ALL sides. When he runs away, all he will do is run into another enemy, and as he runs, enemies will have Attack Of Opportunity on him. Perhaps someone has something more stable than my attempt. Either way, keeping the enemies away from party members like Challseus will just take strategic play. Let's not forget about the Rose Of Courage, which allows you to elicit the enemy towards you, away from other party members. Then, there is Illuminate. Really, when designing the custom combat, I already took all of those factors into consideration, so those who are used to Rose Of Eternity combat will be skilled enough at a certain point to rarely get into those situations. And if that particular tester is reading this, I will rewrite this, and a lot more at the forums tomorrow morning. I need to go to sleep quite early tonight, as I have a meeting early on in the day tomorrow.

Finally, I am very proud to announce that I have found the perfect track that will play during the final boss sequence in the game. This piece is actually a variation of another track that will be played during another particular fight scene. It is very epic sounding, and definitely the piece of music I want people to remember when they think of the end fight. As always, I can't wait to get it in game!

Anyway, after taking care of a few things, I heard someone pounding on the door. I go to the door, and I am surprised to find out it is someone from DHL. I am even more surprised to find out they are returning my laptop from Dell. Now, this is amazing, because I just shipped it out on Monday. Man, talk about speedy service:)

Now, this thing has to be very difficult. I want people to have a hard time with it, unless they go at it strategically. Lately, when I have been creating such fights, I have been remembering my days playing one of my favorite games, Final Fantasy Tactics. Man, I really miss games like that:)

At any rate, one of the reason I got so much done was because I ended up working till 12:45 am. With that said, I need to go to sleep now, so I can at least get 5 hours if sleep:(

When I got into work this morning, I noticed a post by Rick Sanderson, which took what I sort of came up with on the fly, and expanded it even more. This new ability will now be able to be more customized by the end user, making everyone's experience even more different. There are still some kinks to be worked out, but I am sure we will figure it all out. Really great to have co-conspirators working with me:)

So, when I got home, I began to work on this one particular cut-scene. Now, this is all new to me, because of the pacing of it. You see, historically, every cut-scene has more or less had a slower pace to it, with long, sweeping angles, and lots of spinning around. Yeah, I am tired of the spinning shot too:) Anyway, this new one is more fast paced, with lots of different shots within seconds of each other. I have to admit, I have been wanting to do these types of shots for a while, and there is no better time than now. I really need to expand my skill set, and this will be one more notch on the belt. I hope peeps like the cut-scene too:) Hey, look at it this way...It can't be too long, since there are so many various shots within seconds of each other:)

I have to admit, it was a bit of a struggle trying to get the timing right, as well as the perfect looking angles, but I finally got something I was happy with. One problem with me is that when I am working on something that isn't working, I will stay up an extra 2 hours until it works. I hate going to sleep knowing something is unfinished...Yeah, I'm weird...Well, off to sleep now, as I am currently happy with what I have.

On the train ride home, I was messing around with some scripts to add a new party member to the infrastructure. As you all may or may not know, I have one unified party member set of scripts that is very general. I have 1 sort of config file, called cast_manager.nss where I need to add in the respective party member. Once I make my changes there, everything is complete. It is a very robust system, and I am glad I made the changes last winter. Interestingly enough, this particular party member wasn't even supposed to join the team. When I began thinking about it at work, I wasn't sure if I wanted to fully implement them as a party member, or make them some generic henchman (shudder...). I then realized that I couldn't sell myself short, and since the infrastructure was there, I decided to add them. At this point in the game, when the player finds out this person is joining the team, I am sure their jaws will drop, and they will jump for joy! I would:)

When I got home, after a pretty big dinner, I got back to work on the bigger stuff, namely, the new sequence. More specifically, I began to script the opening cut-scene for the new area. I won't be doing anything I have never done in this cut-scene, so I don't anticipate it take too long. In fact, I already scripted the first minute and 20 seconds of it. It just so happens that the climax of the music that plays during the scene is at 70 seconds, so it was easy to coordinate everything up till that point. I am not entirely sure what I will do in the second half, but as always, something will come to me while I listen to music when I got to bed tonight:)

Today was really the quintessential day for development. I started around 12:00 pm, and I more or less worked until 11:00 pm. I mean, I took mild breaks in between and had dinner for 30 minutes or so, but for the most part, I just worked the entire time...Which is a good thing:)

So, I should just get this out of the way right now. This sequence I have been working on is the climax of the game. Now, The Coming didn't really have a climax, due to the fact that it was so short, so I have been waiting for a long time to create this scene. As always, I know what the intro cut-scene for the new area will be like, I just need to create the damn thing. But before I can do that, I need to prep the area. What that means is, I need to set the lighting, placeables, sound effects, NPC's, etc. I was able to do most of that today, along with some light scripting. The scene itself is too grand to work on during train rides to/from work, so it will have to wait until after work, or on the weekends.

What I will do on the train however is knock out some editing changes submitted to me by Jason Melancon. The man went crazy this weekend, giving me all sorts of edits. Hell, he even edited the journals for me:) The thing that makes me happy is that he took the initiative to do this, as I was only going to send him some dialogue to edit. At any rate, it will make the game better overall, and I am very appreciative. This will keep me busy at least for tomorrow on the train. When I get home, I will get back to the aforementioned climax scene.

I won't even give any predictions on when it will be done, but obviously, the earlier, the better:)

Till tomorrow...

That time will hopefully be coming in the next month or so. I really am eager to get feedback from as many people as possible, and yet, and I a bit apprehensive at the same time. No mater how good I think something is that I have done, in the back of my mind, I am always dreading the 2-3 people who hate what I do, and LOVE to be vocal about it. Ah, such is the life of a modder...

Seriously though, I can honestly say that combat will be the focus of my energy for at least the next 2 weeks. This is the one thing I always feel confident doing, and it doesn't get too frustrating. I already know what I want, so I just need to implement it, and move on in life:) Annoyingly enough, I still haven't been able to convert this one piece of music that I need for this entire sequence. Every other track has been working fine, except this one...It is quite annoying...I am sure I will figure it out, but it is annoying to play the piece of music in iTunes while turning the music off in the game, to simulate it during the test fights I have been doing these past few days...Oh well...

After getting home, I had to stop at my Mom's house for what was supposed to be a short visit, but ended up being a 2 hour visit. Long story short, she had computer issues, and since I make video games, she thinks I know everything about hardware, when I really don't:) Tomorrow, I hope to finish up my brainstorming, and get to more implementation.

Interestingly enough, Amy, who I had been chatting with was about to start playing through it as well. Unfortunately, she ran into a game break bug, which was a VERY good catch. Essentially, to get past a specific door, a check on a local variable is made on a particular party member. As all of you who played The Coming know, when you level up a party member, the current one is destroyed, and a new one is spawned in. Well, what must have happened is that the variable was set on said party member, she gained a level, and when the new party member was spawned, the local variable wasn't carried over. Now, I already have scripts to copy over certain local variables, so I just had to plug in the variable name, and it was all good. However, it was a very good find, because it made me do a check in the game for more local variables that I was forgetting to transfer over. Luckily, that was the only one I found, but I need to remember to add them to the script as they are created. So, thanks Amy, and sorry:(

Going back to David for a second, due to his play style, I think I might have to implement my first real nerf...For those that don't know what that is, it is basically when you take a previously powerful attack/ability, and weaken it. It has been known to cause riots in the MMORPG  worlds, but I think I will be safe from the bloodshed. Essentially, the whirlwind ability you get in The Coming pushes enemies away when they are hit with it. Apparently, it looks as if people can take advantage of this, by spamming it over and over again. Now, I am going to post a thread at the forums to discuss it before I take action. One solution would be to only allow enemies to be pushed away every 30 seconds or so. Perhaps 5 times a day...Perhaps the push distance starts out very small (i.e. 2 meters), but increases as Aramus gains levels...Not sure how to rectify the situation, but I am sure we will come up with something.

Another thing I have to do is get more music on my Mom's laptop. Currently, I only have about 17 tracks, as  I didn't want to put a lot of extra junk on her machine. However, I might stab myself in the eye if I have to listen to any of these tracks anymore...I know  I can use my iPod, but it is more convenient to listen to them via iTunes when I am actually using the damn laptop.

Back on topic, as for what I have to do, well, I will keep on implementing the sequence I started working on last night. I got a decent amount of work done on the train ride into work, contrary to the fact that I was tired as all hell. In fact, I still do not know how I forced myself to stay up...While at home, I worked on some of the AI for a party member, and also tweaked the statistics of a new enemy. I haven't given said enemy any custom abilities yet, as I still need to think that through.

Finally, I was very pleased that Pokstair took it upon himself to write a detailed walkthrough of the new floors I created for the often mentioned dungeon of mine, and post it at the forums. Besides the fact that it gave me something else to do, it was great to see how others handled it. All in all, things are going great.

Keeping in line with my other goals, Phil is revising some dialogue for me, and David has delivered a new set of dialogue for me as well. Jason has some time in his busy life, so I can send him some more stuff to edit. Although she doesn't know it, I am going to ask Amy if she can help me with some more poem like content. Pokstair seemingly flew through the ALPHA, and gave me some detailed info on a particular enemy that might have to have its special abilities toned down. I suspected as much, so I figured I would leave it in, and see what the actual players had to say. Heh, Bjarne is actually going to go through The Coming to have a fresh character for the ALPHA. I feel so bad for him, especially since he will have to sit through all of those cut-scenes again:(

Best of all however, was the fact that I got an e-mail from David saying he was having some issues with the revised dungeon I had been working on last month. You would think that it is a problem, but it is not, because since it is completely optional, I wanted it to be difficult. I just hope it isn't something too hard, that most people will end up hating...

Tomorrow morning, I will begin to work on the sequence I put on the shelf a month ago when my laptop broke. Now that I am using an even faster one, there should be no problems. For those wondering when I will be done, this next sequence (even though it will be quite long) will be the last one...Minus some polishing and side quests, in terms of the main plotline, this it...This is it folks...I can smell it...

Till tomorrow...

I also had a very interesting morning, as I mentioned yesterday, I met my old boss and mentor for breakfast. It was great to be able to catch up and see what he was doing in life. As usual, he is just as busy, if not more than I am with his various projects and what not. Oh yeah, and he has a loving wife and 2 kids to take care of, so his plate is definitely bigger than mine, so to speak:)

On the train ride into work tomorrow, I will focus on some design work, mostly some new dialogues that need to be written, as well as a new side quest.

This includes packaging up all of the new music files I have added since the last one, as well as the module file, and perhaps a hak or 2 (I cannot remember if I added anything new...). Once that stuff is packaged up, I will upload it to my online hard rive, and post a link at the official Cry The Beloved forums. I will feel very good once I can put this behind me, and move on. And move on, I must...

Before I even get to that stuff tomorrow however, I will have to do other things. One thing that is very important to me is having breakfast with my mentor, and old boss, Ron Coleman. For those that don't know, he is the CTO of a company named Informeta, where I used to intern. In fact, that was my first experience as a software engineer in the commercial field. I will never forget my days at Informeta, or everything he has done for me. It will be great to sit with him and talk about everything that has happened since we last had breakfast (last October or so...). I am sure he will want me to go speak to his students at the local college where he teaches Game Design. As always, I will try to get out of it:) I am also curious as to how the company has been doing as well...I haven't heard much, and there wasn't much when I googled it, but I guess I will get the answers from the source in just a few hours. Speaking of which, it is getting late, so...

...Till tomorrow...

Any fan of Final Fantasy knows the dramatic change the franchise took when it released Final Fantasy 7 for the PS1. CGI movies were all the craze, and after the series ended up becoming the best selling one in the series, they ran with the whole CGI thing (in fact, most companies that made games for the PS1 early on jumped on the opening CGI movie bandwagon). However, things started to take a turn for the worse. Companies were more interested in creating pretty CGI and in game cut-scenes, and players were left looking for some actual game play. This really soured things, and now, besides for games like Metal Gear Solid, in game cut-scenes are getting a bad rep everywhere... I don't have the magazine with me right now, but Cliff Belinski, the lead designer of the Unreal Tournament series and the upcoming X-BOX 360 game, Gears Of War, has openly stated that he hates cut-scenes, and that he wants no part of them in his games. The developers of Half Life 2 took the same approach. You will notice that when you play, when people are talking to you, it is all in real time, so if you don't want to listen to them, you can walk away. Dramatic sequences occur in real time, so if you aren't at the right place at the right time, things can go sour very fast. The explanation is always the same...They don't want to take the player out of the action...

Well, I am a hard headed SOB, so I have a different perspective, which I stand by firmly. I think that if the cut-scene is directed to perfection (or as good as it gets), with the right story line, they can really get a reaction of the player that say, some normal text. I look at it like this. Video games are a visual medium, as are movies. I personally would rather watch a well directed cut-scene with full speech talk, then to read some dialog with someone describing to me what happens. Now, not everything has to be in a cut-scene (I know better now!), but if they are spread out accordingly, they can really serve their purpose. Plus, technology is getting better, so facial expressions are becoming more realistic, so with the right set of animators, whatever emotion you are trying to express to the end user is that much better.

And let's not forget about the game play, because I still believe it is more important than cut-scenes. My point is, the game play has to be there, AND it has to be great. I know it is hard to juggle all those things at once, so I in no way blame developers. I have enough stress in my life with game development, and I am doing it for free. I have no idea what it must feel like to have to know what you are making has to make money for someone...That said, I think if a player goes through 2 hours of real game play, the type of game play that is as good as it gets, they won't mind watching a 5 minute beautifully directed cut-scene, showing the aftermath of whatever the player was just going through.

Not sure if I ever explicitly mentioned this, but when I began designing Rose Of Eternity, I always imagined every scene as if it was in a movie. Not sure if this is the right approach to game design, but then, is there really one way to design an RPG? So, when it came to create certain sequences, it was already a no brainer that simple dialogs screen wouldn't do it justice. I don't know, maybe I am just dreaming again, and this isn't the future of console RPG's. But then again, I could be right. So, as everyone comes to the fork in the road and goes left or right, I will just continue to go straight...

Till tomorrow...

Luckily, I have garnered enough attention to not have to worry about it anymore. One thing that is guaranteed is downloads. How many people like my module is not known however, because technically speaking, even though I have 12000+ downloads, only 178 people have voted. How do I know if people really liked my game. Maybe only 500 out of that 12000 did...It's hard to tell in the community, but I guess votes are like the Nielsen ratings (which I don't really agree with, but oh well). Or worse, those damn Presidential polls that only a small % of people actually partake in, which determine how much the entire country likes/dislikes said President. Okay, sorry for that little tangent:)

Going back a bit, I just want to touch on the release date of this module. I would be stabbing myself in the neck with a switch blade if I gave a hard date, so I won't. I do want to apologize however, because anyone who has been following the progress of this game must have noticed the way I have been silently pushing back the release date. On the downloads page, it used to say Winter 2005. I changed that to Winter 2006, and hoped no one would notice, or assume it was a typo:) Then, it changed to Spring 2006. In short, this thing is a lot bigger than I anticipated. Maybe not so much in length (although the length is 2 times bigger than The Coming), but more so in the amount of custom content. And when I say custom content, I don't mean new cloak models, or horses, or something like that. I mean custom systems, essentially making this game vastly different from any NWN module. In fact, I really don't want to even refer to it as a NWN module anymore. I want to call it an RPG created using the Aurora Engine. Any reference to NWN will just screw up how the player will view the game. We'll see how long that lasts:) 

So, literally 10 months into production, and where am I, you ask? Well, after I make it through the last ALPHA release, I will begin the task of putting everything together. I still have to create the final sequences, which has to blow the player away. I have an assortment of sub-quests to finish up. Hell, I still have to find generic music for those that don't want to download the custom music (not really looking forward to that...). Then, there is the insane amount of polishing that has to be done. Luckily, I have been polishing a lot as I go (remember, I had 5 pages of stuff from the last play through), so it shouldn't be as bad as last time. I still have some more custom skills to create. I still have a lot of dialogue that need to be written by various writers, as well as a lot of stuff that has to be edited .I think the thing that makes me believe I can get all of this done relatively soon is the fact that none of it will be anything new that I haven't done before, besides the final sequences. I have already killed myself with innovative implementations earlier in the production, so that I could just focus on easy things the last few months of development. Well, there is one thing that will be innovative...One thing that I haven't done before. There is still a particular scene that has to be done...One particular scene that will define Cry The Beloved, much like the opening sequence in The Coming defined it. This one scene is definitely going to take me a week to do, but  I might be able to cut that time down if I do it when I take my 2 week vacation. I am actually looking forward to creating this scene, as well as reading what people  have to say about it. It's been a few years coming, but it's almost here. I can see it...It's the home stretch...Can I do it?