Being the type of person who likes to accommodate others, I decided to do him this special favor.  There wasn't much of a code change.  I just had to test it thoroughly before giving it to him.  So now, when he starts the game, he will be brought to a DM area where he will be asked what story he wants to play.  From there, everything else will be the same, except for the fact that he will be using his own character.  

Anyway, I continued tweaking certain elements of the boss battle I have been working.  The biggest thing is the difficulty of it.  Combat is getting a lot more complicated as well as elaborate.  In The Coming, I more or less knew what items/abilities the player would have, but in Cry The Beloved, there is more customization, which means I will have more combinations of tests to perform.  Although it is a daunting thought, I am definitely up to the challenge.

Lastly, I have found this music track that I simply CANNOT wait to get in the game.  I literally have been listening to it on repeat through iTunes all day.  The music I have been using so far is really putting the music of The Coming to shame.  So much that I almost want to go back and change some of the music from The Coming.  Well, I won't go that far...Seriously though, I just get SO inspired when I listen to music like this.  I am the biggest day dreamer in the world, and when I get going, I just don't stop.  I can literally picture the scene that will use this music in my head.  I know every angle and elevation that I need to get in the shot.  I'm almost to the point of stopping everything I am doing now and creating that scene.  However, I know that I should finish what I am doing, and get an ALPHA out.  Sigh, so many things to do, so little time...

In between watching football, I managed to get some development done as well:)  First off, I finally got in 2 new custom tracks.  I have been procrastinating for a long time, but I finally bit the bullet and took care of it.  Essentially, I had this one track that had 2 parts in it that could have been used as 2 separate tracks...

I have just about put the finishing the touches on a new boss battle.  It is a very time consuming process, as I really want all of these types of battles to be unique, as well as special.  When I say special, I mean I want the player to feel very good after successfully beating said boss. I want to bring back those old school feelings of accomplishment.  For any of you Legend Of Zelda fans, just think about how you felt after you beat those knights in the 1st dungeon of Legend Of Zelda - A Link To The Past:)  I have to admit that I had great fun while fighting this battle this afternoon.  Add to that the new music I just converted (see above), and everything just felt as if it was really coming together.

I of course have other loose ends to tie up, such as certain enemies not being affected by Illuminate, although in retrospect, that doesn't seem like that would be such a bad idea...I also really, really, really hope to have an ALPHA out soon.  The input of community members is great, and getting it this early in development will lead to a better released game right off the bat.  We'll see...

I also spend much of the day listening to various tracks that I want to put in this game.  Honestly, when I completed The Coming, I thought I could never get together another soundtrack of the same caliber.  I was wrong...So far, damn near every track in Cry The Beloved is just as good, if not better.

In fact, there is so much good music to pick from, that I am having issues picking just the right one.  Of course, I guess that isn't a bad problem to have:)

I did a run though of the 1st and 2nd floors of the dungeon today, and compiled about a page worth of issues to deal with.  To be honest, that is all that I did.  I am coming to that point in the development where I am starting to get burnt out:(

My thought process is always something like this.. "I have to spend EVERY waking moment on Cry The Beloved so I can get it out before people stop caring about Neverwinter Nights."

In reality, if I don't develop for one day, the world won't come to an end...And that is that:)

So I'm creating this new creature, and it has the blueprint for a wizard, so it should be casting spells and whatnot.  For some reason however, it just seems content with running into battle and using melee attacks, rather than magic.

Essentially, summoners should be able have more than one creature summoned at one time.  So, I added the core scripting that would allow it.  Since the system was already quite flexible, it wasn't hard at all.  I tested the end result on Clopon, and I was quite satisfied to say the least.  Now, via conversation, you can choose which summons you want her to summon while in battles, as well as some other minor things.  So say she has the ability to summon an aqua constituent, as well as some other creature.  Now you can set if she should summon the aqua constituent as well as the other creature, OR you could opt to have her summon 2 aqua constituents instead.

That said, I am very happy with the results.  As soon as I was done with the refactoring, I loaded up the module to make sure all of the functionality for Clopon's summon was working.  Everything worked like a charm.  I could explicitly ask her to summon an Aqua Constituent, as well as unsummon it.  In battles, after the summon would die, she would automatically summon another one.  My Unison Ability code even recognized the Aqua Constituent, so when I performed Whirlwind Heal, the Aqua Constituent was healed.

Actually, one thing that is very soothing to me is music.  Lots of the music you heard in The Coming, and will hear in Cry The Beloved is music I listen to everyday.  For those of you who don't know, 95% of the story of The Rose Of Eternity was brainstormed while listening to music from such artists as Enya & Yanni (can't believe I am admitting I love Yanni:)).  While listening to that music, I used to daydream so much about how I wanted to develop my own RPG, so when I listen to that music now, it brings a smile to face, knowing that I am achieving my goal:)

Anyways, now that I have my lovely new custom summoning system in place, it is time to start cranking out some custom summons.  I really look forward to jumping into that tomorrow morning.

For instance, I totally forgot about the code that checks if you have an Aqua Constituent summoned, as well as the code to have Clopon unsummon them.  If this were a year ago, I would be really pissed, but I know better now...I know that all of this refactoring is going to benefit me in the long run.

Anyhow, as far as I know, he does not program.  Game Designers usually do not.  I wonder if I will ever be able to give up programming if I get that far with my dream...Of course, deciding to program or not in my own development studio is that bad of a problem to have:)

Till tomorrow...

P.S.  Anyone out there remember Super Mario Bros 3?  Of course you do!  Anyways, this is widely known, but I actually just got a chance to watch it tonight.  It is a tape of someone beating it in 11 minutes.  The skill of the player is uncanny.  For instance, if you remember the last World, there are many airship levels, with cannons being shot around.  The player must have gotten like 36 1-Ups by bouncing back and forth on top of them.  You really need to see this...

In between watching football, I decided that I wanted to add another summon to the game.  It was at this point that I decided I needed a overhaul of the scripting system I used in The Coming.

And for you scripters out there thinking, "Why in the hell is it taking you a day to add summons", you must realize that I don't mean just simply adding some custom monster to the party.  This involves allowing them to take part in Last Resorts, be healed by Whirlwind Heal, allowing Clopon to determine which one she will summon in battle, etc.  The list goes on...

It took me about an hour to decide on how I wanted to implement it, but once I got going, things started coming together very nicely.  I believe that by the end of tomorrow, Clopon will be able to summon her Ice Constituents as she previously was.  Then, I will begin to add the new ones I was thinking about earlier this morning.  I am really looking forward to diversifying the current set of summons:)

For example, the developers said that you can at any time take control of a party member, and go somewhere with them.  This opens up so many possibilities for interactive areas.  Perhaps in some dungeon, you need a party member to stay standing on a pressure plate, while the rest of the party goes to another part of the area.  Now, this is certainly possible through scripting in NWN1, but to have the ability right out of the box means so much more to me.

In my opinion, the main advantage will be combat.  Perhaps we can get back to that Infinity Engine complexity of fighting.  The way my module works, that would be a godsend.  Performing Timed Unison Abilities would be so much more easier now if I could explicitly make each party member perform their part of the ability.  I can actually move Clopon back away from combat, instead of hoping that her AI makes the right decision.  I am really excited about the possibilities.  Going back to redo The Coming & Cry The Beloved is appearing to be more of a possibility now as well...

So, the morning started off horrible.  It was the coldest day of autumn, and the train didn't have the heat on.  I was so cold, that I didn't have the heart to even attempt to develop.  I could barely feel my fingers, let alone type on my laptop:)

Finally, I apologize for the quality of these updates this past week.  Work (my real job) has been hell lately, and so I have been leaving my house at 7:00 am and not getting back till 9:00 pm.  Once everything settles down at work, I will be able to explain to them that I really need to take a vacation.  I really feel that once I get my vacation, I will get my energy back, and get back to developing more on the train and such.  As of now, I have only been doing about an hour each way, and sleeping the rest.  In fact, I am going to sleep early tonight so that maybe I could actually develop for the full 2 hours on the train tomorrow morning.

Although I am not going to use it as extensively, I still don't want the players to have any issues with it.  I already had a plan, but when I did my run through today, I could see how things could get slightly annoying for the player.  I was beginning to contemplate changing up the design of it a bit.

Anyways, as I said I was going to do yesterday, I went through the entire module this morning on the train ride into work, as well as during the train ride home.  I hit a couple of snags, but I have worked around them.  The main thing is this damn concept of having the party members start conversations with the PC.  In The Coming, it was so much easier to just have a cut-scene.  Now, since I am using more dialogues, I still cannot get it where the script always fires.  

For instance, there is this boss battle, and after it is over, I want a conversation to start.  Normally, I would use a cut-scene, but I know how I everyone feels about that...The thing is, say the monster is killed, and the person that is supposed to start the conversation was in the middle of casting a spell when they were supposed to start the conversation.  It might not fire.  Even calling a ClearAllActions(TRUE) (my apologies to those who don't know the scripting language, not care...) doesn't always work.  I do have an idea that I am going to try tomorrow morning however.

To prepare, I put the semi-finishing touches on this new custom obstacle.  When I say semi, that means that I will most likely come back to fiddle with it later.  I want to let some of the ALPHA testers tell me what they think about it before going any further.

There is something I need to keep in mind when implementing this dungeon.  For some reason, the walls in this tileset don't go transparent when the PC is behind them.  So, I have to stay away from creating too many small corridors so the player doesn't have to constantly zoom in just to know where they are.  Luckily, I always envisioned big areas in this dungeon, so I don't have too much to worry about.  Still should keep it in the back of my mind however...

I have a pretty good working version of this new obstacle.  As you can most likely guess, it is totally custom, so it took a while to get it up, as I had to start from scratch.  That said, I am very happy with the results so far.

For example, say you are in a battle, and Clopon uses Protection Of The Roses.  Now, from all of the documentation I gave the players (mostly from the in game Rose Of Eternity Manual), the player would know that her Last Resort would recharge in 10 minutes.  Well, in my opinion, that is not good enough.  They should be able to know exactly how much time is left.  Now, via conversation, the player can ask which ever party member they want to report how much time they have left until their Last Resort is recharged.  It is a little bit different for the PC, as you must go through the Rose Of Eternity Manual to find it out, much like you would to set if the PC should use Tonics Of Rebirth or not.  

I also did some minor work setting the foundation for party members being able to use 2 Last Resorts, much like Oracine did at the battle at Challseus' house.  Plus, even though I haven't implemented it, once party members hit higher levels, they will be able to earn new Last Resorts.  This is another reason I decided to add the ability to see how much time you have left.  

Tomorrow on the train ride to work, I will clean up how this info is presented to the player.  Right now, I have styled it the same way party members report to Aramus how much time they have until they can be revived.  Just have to sort out some minor issues...

I actually expect to move on to some other scripting tasks that have to get done eventually anyways.  I will have more to explain tomorrow.

In the morning however, I continued my work on the current floor of the dungeon, as I had finally come to a decision on how I wanted to proceed the prior night.  Not much to report, as it would all be spoilers...Rest assured that everything is coming together nicely. 

With that slight embarrassment behind me, I decided to work on the dungeon again.  It was around noon time.  So what do I do?  I stupidly turn on the History Channel, and totally get engrossed in a documentary about the lost city of Atlantis.  Anyone who has been keeping up with these updates know that if I am at home developing, I need to keep the TV off, or I will lose my concentration...Well, things haven't changed.

On a positive note (not sure if I ever mentioned this or not), I have about 20 days of vacation time left.  If everything goes according to plan, I should be taking my 1st week off in a couple of weeks.  Where am I going you ask?  I am going straight to my room, where I will attempt to keep the TV off, and get as much development time in as possible.  Spend my vacation time developing, you ask?  Damn straight:)  At this point in my life, I couldn't think of a better way to spend my vacation.  That should tell you you how much I am willing to do to get a job in the game industry.  I look at it this way.  Work like hell now, so I can enjoy the fruits of my labor later.  Hopefully, I won't get too burned out in the process:)

I also got to reflect a bit on how the development of Cry The Beloved is coming.  After The Coming, I have definitely gotten better at estimating deadlines and such.  Although I am a little bit behind schedule, things are coming along smoothly.  Sometimes, I look at the current areas I have and think that I am falling behind even further, but then I remember all of the time I have been putting into various custom systems, which would have to be done at some point anyways.  Well, I just have to keep it going...

On the train ride home, I sort of got stuck on what I wanted to do on the second floor of the dungeon, so I switched gears a bit.  I knew I have some new custom potions to create, so I went ahead with that.  Luckily, I already had a very good idea of what I wanted, so I was able to create 2 in less than an hour.  I shouldn't have to remind anyone, but when I say custom, I do not mean just taking an existing potion and slapping a new name on it.  These new potions have custom scripts attached to them.  There are many more to come, but I stopped at 2 for the time being.

I also was able to create the foundation of yet another custom ability system.  Now, some of you may be thinking, "Damn Challseus, how many custom ability systems are there?  I am starting to get confused...".  All of these custom systems will be well integrated into the existing framework on NWN, and they will (hopefully) be very intuitive.  Also, not every custom system is as complicated as the Last Resort or Unison Ability systems.  You have to remember, Rose Of Eternity was a brain child before I even knew of NWN, so many of the things I wanted to do with it aren't readily available out of the box with NWN, hence the need for everything to be custom.  In short, if you were not confused with a lot of the custom systems of The Coming, you will be fine with Cry The Beloved.  And do remember, the Rose Of Eternity Manual will obviously be greatly expanded, so no one should ever not know how to do something in the game.

I plan finish up the core scripting of the new system tomorrow, perhaps create some more custom potions, and then get back to work on the dungeon.

What I did do when I got back was sift through the countless e-mails I had received over the past 3 days.  I really feel overwhelmed at this point.  I desperately need to look at 3 new conversations Jason has edited for me, as well as getting some more conversation requirements to Amy and the other writers.  I really fell behind this past weekend, and I publicly apologize for that:(

I should be back in full swing of things tomorrow however.

So, I did not get as much development time as I wanted.  For one, we did not get back from the football game until about 6:00 pm.  After dinner, I promptly locked myself downstairs and tried to get as much done as I could.

I finished up a mini-boss fight that I had been working on for the past couple of days.  It involves the new monster I created, and I anticipate that 95% of the people who play Cry The Beloved will not be able to defeat this creature the 1st time through.  However, after learning the proper strategy, I think most will be able to survive the 2nd time around.

I hope to finish up more of the 2nd floor during the 6 hour car ride home tomorrow morning.  I obviously missed my mark of getting the 2nd floor done by the end of the weekend, but that'll happen in game development.  As an aside, I will never, EVER, get mad at developers because some game they had been working on was was delayed...I know too well the a small percentage of the issues that can arise...

After having some lunch, I did about another 2-3 hours worth of work.  To my surprise, I successfully finished implementing the 2nd custom monster of the dungeon.  This one is not significantly tougher than the previous one, although it definitely has a different way it should be killed.  To say the least, I am proud with how the design of these enemies has been coming.

Not much to talk about today, as most of my work was concept stuff.  I essentially created a new monster for the second floor.  The interesting thing about this new enemy is that it will interact with it's surroundings.  I do not want to spoil any more about it, but I am quite pleased with how it is progressing.  It is innovations like that which make me believe that people will really love Cry The Beloved a lot more than The Coming.

What I was able to finish up (more or less) is the 1st puzzle of the floor.  This one took some tricky scripting, but it ended up working in the end.  I just have to polish the effects, confirmation of puzzle success, and other minor things before I can move on the next room.

I will be going away to Buffalo this weekend for a football game (Buffalo Bills vs. Miami Dolphins), so I hope to spend much of tomorrow night getting as much development time in as possible.  It would be nice to finish up this floor by the end of the weekend.

So, the tricky part of each subsequent floor of the dungeon is to appropriately increase the difficulty of the puzzles as well as the enemies, without making it too annoying to the player. As I am a stickler for details, it might take a bit longer than I anticipated...

As far as what is done, I only just began to create the 1st puzzle of the floor.  For the sake of consistency, this puzzle has the same mechanics as the puzzles on the previous floor, but with a twist.  Hopefully, I will have more to report about tomorrow.

Regardless of where I am tomorrow, I really want to move onto the next floor, as well as the next custom monster.  I can always come back later during the polish stage to make it look prettier.  It would really be nice if I could finish this entire dungeon in the next 2 weeks.  We will see...

A major part of today was getting a consistent look to the various objects that will be in these dungeons.  I want to get it to a point where if someone is playing through a dungeon, they will say "Oh, this must be a dungeon designed by Challseus".  I am currently using CEP 1.01, but I am thinking of switching to CEP 1.52.  I just know that they will have a lot more content for me to play with.  

As I mentioned before, I have finished creating a new custom monster, and I will start working on another one in the coming days.  The plan (although I cannot promise it will happen) is to have every monster/enemy in this dungeon to be fully custom (Last Resorts, special ways to kill, etc).  I don't plan on just grabbing something from the normal monster palette.  

It's sort of funny, because this new monster has been kicking my butt every once in a while.  If the designer of a module gets beaten by his own monsters, then the difficulty has to come down a bit:)  There is however a definite strategy that can be used to defeat them.  As with The Coming, I will leave it up to the players to figure this out.  As an aside, the Rose Of Courage (item from The Coming that taunts enemies towards Aramus) has been coming in handy as of late.  Funny how something I designed a year ago is still working...

If I am lucky, and ambitious, I should be able to finish up the 1st floor by tomorrow night.  Then onto the second floor, where things will start to get very interesting...

It's funny, because even though the Dungeon Of Trials was my first dungeon, I still feel as if this is my 1st real one.  The Dungeon Of Trials was more of a teaser.  I always had great aspirations of what I wanted in The Coming, but reality and time set in, and I just couldn't do it.  So, this is a long time coming.

Another thing I am happy about is the music selection.  I literally had about 7-8 songs that I was initially picking from, when I listened to a track that I haven't heard in a while.  I immediately knew it was perfect, so I converted it to a .bmu file immediately and put it in the game.  It was truly the icing on the cake, so to speak.

Well, being the realist that I am, I know that because of the depth of this dungeon, this is really only the beginning of a lot of hard work to come, but so far, I am really off to a good start.

Till tomorrow...

So, at first, I wasn't interested in the training (not that I can remember...).  Essentially, the company I work for purchased some software that is used to port J2ME games to various handsets.  For some reason, they wanted us to have a weeks worth of training with it...To be honest, I didn't care for it too much, but then I came to a realization.

One is this issue where enemies/party members can see/attack through walls.  My current workaround is to actually just make the walls double thick, so that even a monster/party member with the highest perception will not be able to be in range.  It isn't a bad solution, but let me tell you, I was very pissed earlier today while on the train.  I was thinking, "Great, here is another great tileset I can't use...".

Actually, NWN module deity Adam Miller has apparently made a fix to the tileset to fix said problem, and posted at the download page about it.  Unfortunately, it doesn't seem as if JDA is checking the page, so I am not sure if it will get in or not.  I am planning on e-mailing Miller tonight to see if he would send me the update.  Hopefully, he isn't too busy for the likes of me:)

So with my current fix in, I continued work on my new dungeon.  I created a new custom monster, which I think people will like.  I actually spent many hours fighting various numbers of said monster with a full party, to balance their difficulty.  As of now, fighting 1 or 2 at the same time is hard, but doable.  3 or more is currently posing a problem if I just rush in and attack.  However, if I make the use of Illuminate, Unison Abilities, Last Resorts, and the other custom abilities I have created, the battle is definitely doable.  

Many people said that combat in The Coming was very difficult, until they learned the proper strategies.  This IS NOT changing.  In fact, the beginning of this module so far is right on the same difficulty level as when you fought the Defenders Of Legacy soldiers in front of Dematol at the end of The Coming.

Going back to the monster that I created, when I say custom, I don't mean I only switched around stats and such.  As in The Coming, this monster has a Last Resort, and I am thinking about putting in some other custom feature (i.e. Shinkara Shadows fleeing from Illuminate).  My plan is to have 95% of the enemies in this game fully custom, with new and exciting ways of defeating them.  I don't want anyone to say "Sigh, I have fought this enemy in about 6 other modules...").  We'll see what I come up with:)