So, after developing various things that involved Dematol, I decided to take a break... Again... Hopefully it will be for much longer.

I have been doing a lot of brainstorming about many concepts while sitting through my training sessions.  So I will discuss some of these things, as I don't have any actual updates.

Also bear in mind that the Unison Ability system will be greatly updated, allowing Aramus to have many different abilities with many different party members.  So, perhaps you are fighting a monster that does Area Of Effect damage, but you can only bring 1 party member.  Then, it might make sense to bring Clopon, so that you can perform Whirlwind Heal.   

Finally, the plan so far is to be able to have Unison Abilities between different party members, where Aramus does not have to be a part of it, much like Lenin & Lenina's Antipode.  Again, there will be areas (the plan anyways) where perhaps you can only take 2 party members.  Their Unison Abilities will definitely be a factor in your decision.  This should all help the replayability level as well. 

Well, I will be back at my hotel at 3:30 pm tomorrow, and all of my co-worker will be on their plane back to New York.  So I should be able to get A LOT of development time in.  Till tomorrow...

So, I was sitting in my hotel room trying to think about what I wanted to work on, and I was stumped.  There is so much, that I sometimes get overwhelmed.  Luckily, there are new custom systems/abilities that need to be done, so I broke out the old editor and went to town.

One such example if a new custom ability I created for Clopon.  I already had the foundation code scripted, so adding her ability literally took about 25 minutes.  Best of all, when I tested it out, it worked perfectly.  A year ago, I would have been working for a day to get something similar done.

In fact, that is another reason why I just resort to scripting when I don't know what else I want to work on.  I feel so comfortable doing it now, and since it has to get done eventually, I just do it.  Another reason is definitely the fact that I am a full time programmer.  So, after learning all of the processes of the company I work at, adding that same methodology to my own scripting just happens.  My old supervisor would be very happy:)

I have also been throwing around the idea of releasing some of my scripting systems to the community, but since so much of it is dependent on my module (Last Resorts, Unison Abilities, etc.), I don't really know what good it would do anyone.  I would have to make it a lot more general...

Well tomorrow, I will probably do some more scripting ,as I will most likely only have a couple hours of development time.  It is the last time that I will be having dinner with my co-workers, so I guess they want to do something special.  Maybe I can weasel my way out of it a bit early to get more building time...

I do want to bring up something that community member lebowski brought up on the main download page.  He was essentially concerned that I was spending too much time updating The Coming, when I could have been spending that time on Cry The Beloved.  I totally see where he is coming from, so I just wanted to clear some things up.

In total, I only spent 4 days away from Cry The Beloved.  In the big scope of things, it is not that long at all.  Also, as I have been alluding to, there are reasons that I cannot speak about at the moment for why I have been making these last minute updates.  Anyhow, just wanted to let everyone know what the state of everything was.   I am in full swing of Cry The Beloved development, and I do not see myself stopping for major The Coming updates anytime soon.

First off, for those who are easily offended, do remember that I am an IGNORANT American who has never really traveled before.  I will say it again...I am an IGNORANT American who has never really traveled before...You have been warned...

After talking to some people, I find out it is better to use Canadian currency, as the taxicabs will give me horrible exchange rates on US currency.  So I walk outside, obviously looking like a tourist, and proceed to be bum rushed by taxi drivers asking me if I need a ride.  I tell one of them the address of the hotel, and they say they know where it is, and that it will cost 10 dollars (Canadian).  "Hmmm" I think...Wouldn't they just wait to see what the meter says?  So I hop in the cab, drive literally 4 blocks, pay the cabbie, and go into the hotel.  I was so tired, I was not going to argue why it cost 10 dollars to drive me 4 blocks in 3 minutes...

So, I attempt to check in, and I am promptly told that I do not have a reservation.  Anyone who doesn't read these updates on a daily basis should know that I booked through expedia.com, who disregarded this particular hotels e-mails stating that they were booked.  This much I knew.  However, when I attempted to find another hotel on Friday, expedia.com called the Cosmopolitan to confirm I did not have a room, and they surprised us both by saying that they did in fact have a room for me.  So you can imagine my shock when it is very late, I am wet, and some guy named Joshua is telling me that I cannot stay there.  Normally, I would have turned on "prick-mode", but I was honestly too tired.

Luckily the manager walked by, overheard the conversation, and alerted Joshua to the fact that some people had canceled their reservations.  So, I was able to get their best room, a $500 Suite for the price I was quoted on expedia.com, which was $185.  This is where the trip started getting interesting.

I do not want to go into much detail about how nice this place is, so you can check out their website if you want, but my suite is essentially my own personal apartment.  I have a kitchen, a fountain (yes, a fountain!), a living room, my own washer & dryer, my own personal slave that will get me anything I want at any time of the night, 2 flat screen TV's, hardwood floors, and a terrace looking out at downtown Toronto.  That was karma for putting up with some much stuff earlier in the day.

The next morning, one of my co-workers came by to drop off some of his stuff, as he has to literally check into different hotels every night since he got screwed out of his reservation here.  We got some continental breakfast, and called a cab to take us right outside of Toronto to the office where we are getting trained.  So, as soon as we get in the cab, we ask the driver if he takes a credit card.  He says "No, I only take cash".  I then point out that I see a credit card swiper in the passenger seat of the cab.  He then proceeds to the tell me "Okay, I will take Credit Cards".  Are all taxicab drivers like this when it comes to tourists?

The training lasted from about 10:00 am to 5:00 pm.  Afterwards, myself and 2 co-workers went out to some fancy restaurant for dinner.  You really don't know how good it feels to be able to east whatever you want, at the expense of your company:)  In all seriousness, I only spent about $30, so it isn't that bad.

All in all, I am really beginning to like this Business Trip concept.  I feel like I have been here forever, but it is only Monday night, and I won't be leaving until Saturday.  I am sure I will experience a lot more weird events during my stay.

Well, off to sleep with me...I promise to tell my co-workers I must work on my game tomorrow night.  Although I thought I would be able to get lots of development time in, I really am missing out on those 4 hours I usually spend on the train going to/from work everyday.  Oh well...Missing a day cannot hurt me that much.

Well, today went exactly how I planned, which is a first:)  I got on the train for Toronto at 8:40 am, and it all started from there.

So what were some of those issues?  Well, mostly the different ways that you can complete quests.  As some of you may or may not know, one aspect I want to bring to Cry The Beloved is more role-play elements, so the user doesn't feel controlled as much.  What it comes down to essentially is allowing the player to finish quests how they see fit (within reason of course...).

Another thing that took up some of my time was conversations between party members.  Now, anyone who played The Coming should remember that I mainly used cut-scenes for exchanges between Aramus, Clopon, & Challseus.  Some people liked that.  Some didn't.  Well to those who didn't, I am compromising with you.  Any scene that is not really dramatic (i.e. needs stylistic camera angles) will for the most part be handled via the normal NWN conversation system.  For those who loved the cut-scene, do fret yet:)  You will still have lost of cut-scene to feast your eyes on.

Examples of cut-scenes from The Coming that could just be a normal NWN Conversation are the dialogs that take place between Aramus, Clopon, & the various Boundary Wardens in Aribine.  Remember when you tried to go to South Shinkara Forest, and you got a cut-scene where Aramus/Clopon received info on how they could leave the town?  Well, that could be a simple conversation.

So, the frustrating thing about adding more conventional dialogs is making sure they always fire.  Any builders out there know that if you call StartConversation() and the object that is supposed to be talked to is busy (i.e. just got done with a fight), it will not fire.  Now, I know you can call ClearAllActions(TRUE) on the object that should be talked to, but it does not always seem to work for me.  I'm sure there are some minor points I am missing about it, but boy do I miss my cut-scenes:)  They ALWAYS fire without any issues...

So all in all, today was a very productive day.  The reason is because I couldn't be distracted by anything on a train for 12 hours without the internet.  Lets say I was at home for 12 hours.  I can guarantee you that I would have surfed the web for 3 of those 12 hours.  I would have taken a long break to watch the History Channel, while having something to eat.  That would have taken up about 2 hours.  So, this is exactly what I needed to get back in full swing of development for Cry The Beloved.

I did manage to work with my auto installer again, but in terms of development, I did not really get into it.

Fear not though.  I will be back in the full swing of things tomorrow morning, as I am actually taking a train to Toronto.  And since I got an Executive Seat, I will have my own outlet to plug my laptop into.  Add in the fact that the trip will take like 12 hours, and you can imagine how much work I will get done.

Which brings me to the title of this update.  Damn expedia.com...For anyone who doesn't know, I am going to Toronto, Canada on a business trip all next week.  Myself & my co-workers booked our hotels through expedia.com.  

Finally, I am going to do some research on some new types of compressions.  I will probably pick the brains of people from the GNU Project, as they always have something new up their sleeves.  I would have to say the WORST issue I have with development is size issues.  I HATE being constrained by what I can do.  I mean, if size didn't matter (don't let that fool you guys out there, as much as a woman says it doesn't, it does:)), then I would be so much more happier.

So, the worst possible thing that can happen to me happened this morning on the train ride into Manhattan.  After successfully adding the additions to the upgrade/summoning system, I planned to go through the module once just to see if there was anything else I wanted to change.  I also planned to study every cut-scene in the game to see if there were spots I could add some of Vaei's Additional Animations.

Anyhow, after playing on the train and a little bit at home, I have finally made it to Challseus' house, and defeated Oracine.  I plan on going back to South Shinkara Forest to kill off all of those pesky little Shinkara Shadows...Which brings up another point.  How in the hell has anyone gotten to level 5 in this game?!  I currently have 4600 XP at level 3, and the game is almost over.  That is quite sad really, when I was the person who developed the damn thing:)

That said, it is going to be a little tough to test out Clopon's new summon, if I cannot even get to level 5...Hopefully, between the rest of the Shinkara Shadows, the Pack Leader, Defenders Of Legacy troops, and Merchants outside of Dematol, and I can get halfway to level 5.  Then, I guess I could go back to South Shinkara Forest and fight some more Worgs...Also, if anyone cares, or even still reads this thing, the new functionality of the upgrade system worked just fine.

Once I am done with this latest run through, I am going to add a DM entry area to the game, where you can skip the intro cut-scene if you want.  Then, I can finally wipes my hands clean of The Coming...For this update anyhow...

Till tomorrow...

Adding it was easy.  Now, I have to play through the game again to make sure everything is perfect.  It was actually interesting to watch the opening cut-scene of the game in the Garden Of Roses.  It had actually been some time since I have seen it, so that was a sort of treat:)  Of course, being the perfectionist that I am, I was finding tons of things I could have changed in it to make it better.  I have learned the art of restraining myself however, so I will just leave it alone.

So, implementing the new summon wasn't hard.  Adding all of the options to Clopon is the most difficult.  Not really difficult, but just a lot of busy work.  And testing...And since I haven't gotten more memory yet (what the hell am I waiting for...), going back and forth between the toolset and the game is annoying.  Very annoying...

Well, as I mentioned yesterday, I began modifying the current item upgrade system to allow for different items/properties.  Well, it just happens that some of the new parts of the system can actually be patched into The Coming.  So, when I make my next update, people will be able to upgrade the stun time, stun distance, and # of enemies they can stun when using Illuminate.  I am also thinking about lowering the amount of wolves iron you will need for many of the current upgrades, which I will patch into The Coming as well.  

My Grandmother from Chicago, Il came to visit today, so I ended up going to my Mom's house to see her.  We would end up going to a local restaurant, before the night was over.  Nothing too interesting.

I did however do some work today before all of that.  After taking care of the dialogues I received from the writers, I started scripting some of the new functionality for the upgrade system.  As I already had a system in place for The Coming, adding in new items/abilities was easy.

Speaking of scripting, I ran into another issue, although it was solved within a few minutes.  So, I actually started working on Cry The Beloved BEFORE The Coming was released.  Then, after I released it, I ended up making various updates to it, that affected a lot of scripts.  Now, since I was using the same script set with Cry The Beloved when I first created the mod file, I should have updated those scripts too.  Of course, I did not...

A small example is the beam effect that is put on all enemies that are stunned when Aramus used Illuminate.  That was really a last minute decision.  A last minute decision that was made after I created the Cry The Beloved module file...So, while I am testing Cry The Beloved, I could not figure out for the life of me why the beam effects weren't being shown.  I finally realized I had old scripts.  Let this be a lesson to all module makers:)

Instead of beating myself over the head, I quickly moved on to some brainstorming.  So, at least I am learning a little bit:)  This latest system is not really complicated, and I will definitely get a good working solution by the end of the weekend.

I admit it is my fault, and that I have been slow in the process over the last 2 weeks.  I have to realize that they are not going to sit around and wait for me while I try to script the next big cut-scene/custom system for the module.  Essentially, I am getting my priorities in order:)  As an aside, I was talking about the entire process with the Director Of Downloadable Applications (my old boss)  at the office the other day, and she was the one who sort of inspired me to get A LOT more organized about the entire situation.  First thing was setting up a priority list.  In a nutshell, their work will always come first, and my own building will take the backburner for a while.

Moving on, another writer has signed on, and already finished his 1st conversation.  I liked it a lot, so he already has his next assignment.  I forgot to ask if he wants his name used or not, so I will not mention it for the time being.  The other writer that signed on a while back, the one who writes for the fun of it, not the fame, has been cranking away on many of the Rose Of Eternity Prophecies (this is the going name at the moment) I was talking about a last Monday.  I just received an update on it tonight, and this writer definitely has a skill in writing old prophetic words, as well as keeping it vague enough.

I started off the day thinking to myself "Okay, I need at least a day to devote to finishing the core scripting of this new custom system".  

What happens next?  I get stuck with this bug that takes me until 3:30 pm to find/fix!  Oh well, with my lucky, I wasn't surprised AT ALL:)

I have some non Rose Of Eternity related news as well.  Apparently, my company thinks I am important enough to send to Toronto for a week on business:)  As I am only 25, this will be my 1st business trip.  So, I have been hearing lots of thoughts from other experienced travelers, and they all tell me the same thing.  EXPENSE EVERYTHING TO THE COMPANY:)  

In all seriousness though, I plan to take advantage of this time.  Since I won't be commuting everyday, that will give me more time to build.  As a plus, the hotel has free wireless, so these updates won't stop.  Finally, since I love trains so much (and the company is paying), I will be getting a sleeper car in a train for the trip up there.  And since that is 12 hours, I will definitely make the most of that time as well.

As for screenshots, I apologize about the lack of anything new, but no one is interested in seeing pics of my scripts, and that is all I have been doing for the past couple of days:)  Any other screenshots are still too spoilerish, so you will have to deal with these Dematol shots.

I did begin the core scripting for one of the 2 new custom systems I alluded to last month.  Everything ended up working as planned, so I really have nothing to complain about (surprise...).  There is still a lot more scripting involved however...

Well, let me back up.  I did do some research, so I will talk about that first.  Essentially, I am trying to find a tileset to use for a dungeon.  Now, I don't want it to look like the stereotypical NWN dungeon, so I have been looking at custom ones for sometime.

That 61 MB would have been much larger (on account of the music files), before I went in and started manually editing the music files.  I mainly took all tracks the looped, and cut out the looped part, since NWN will automatically loop the file for you.  For instance, the track that plays when you are in Elloquince is actually half the original size.

So now, the problem is attempting to keep the download size down again.  Now, one thing I do have on my side is the fact that people who enjoyed The Coming will hopefully not mind downloading another 60 or MB for Cry The Beloved.  I still do not want to alienate people who are new to it, so I will be cutting size down wherever I can.

So, I am essentially trying to come up with the hard decision of if I am going to put yet another custom tileset in the game.  So far, and I leaning towards doing it, and I will tell you why.  This is an assumption, but it will probably be one the tilesets in the CTP pack.  If so, then I can just say the module requires CTP, and hope that the majority of people had already downloaded it...

So, like I was saying at the top, I wrote A LOT of dialogue today on the train ride into work.  I was even surprised myself, because I actually had fun.  It really feels good to flesh out personalities/stories of characters from The Coming.  I see them growing right before my eyes:)  Now, don't get me wrong, I am in no way a conversation writer, and this little spurt will most likely end after I am done typing this:)  Just as a little tidbit, a lot of the interchanges between the party members have different choices, depending on how you want the PC to act.  The relationships you build with your party members will have a deeper impact this time around.

Finally, anyone who is wondering why I keep showing similar screenshots should realize that all of my new screenshots seem a bit spoilerish at the moment.  I hope to start getting some new ones.

Taking my own suggestion from yesterday, I decided to switch gears and start working on something else.  So far, so good:)  

I fixed up 2 major bugs (well not major, just really annoying...) with relative ease.  I also touched up the major cut-scene I was working on last week (funny how it seemed to take forever, but now it is done...).

What I haven't been talking about is how amazed I am that they can take a small set of requirements from me, and create characters that were just made to be in the game.  More specifically, they all know the story of The Coming like the back of their hands, so they put many different references to it in their dialogue, as if I was the one writing it.  Also, I sometimes give creative freedom (mostly when I cannot think of a personality, age, etc.) when they are creating these characters, and they still come out very good.  So, perhaps I am easily amazed, or perhaps I am not, but who cares... I am appreciative:)

To top it off, someone that started out writing little back and forths between 2 party members has moved on to collaborating with me to create the Rose Of Eternity Prophecies.  Essentially, it is the story of how the Keeper Of The Rose came to be, what the Rose Of Eternity really symbolizes, as well as some other things I cannot reveal at this time.  And to top it off, this gentleman tells me that he writes for the love, and not the fame, and therefore does not want his name mentioned.  Much to respect to him:)

Lets see, what else...As always, I am on the music hunt.  I literally listen to music for about 12 hours a day (8 at work, 4 on the train ride), so I have been narrowing it down for quite some time.  I also can brainstorm a lot easier with music on...So far, I truly believe the new music of Cry The Beloved is exceeding that of The Coming.  In particular, the battle music.  It is just more...how did I say...EPIC.  I will leave it as that.

Since I'm on the topic of music, to anyone reading this, DO NOT REMOVE THE MUSIC FILES FROM THE COMING.  At the moment, I will be using a lot of that music.  I have not decided what will stay, and what will not, but I imagine at least 90% will be retained.  That is not to say that I will not have a lot of new custom music...

When working on The Coming, I always had a general idea of what I wanted to do, how the game should flow, etc.  I never wrote up and design documents on it, or anything like that.  I just built, and made changes when I got to specific parts of the module.

Fast forward to today.  It isn't working the same:(  I spend all last night, and the majority of today working on something, and towards the end, I thought to myself "Hmmm, will this make sense to the player?  Hmmm, I don't think I want to keep this section like that".  Had I did more thinking before building, I might have realized this before doing a lot of work.

I didn't actually start developing until 11:00 AM, and I had to leave at 3:00 PM to get a haircut, so in that time, I tested out the combat with various party members & enemies in my test area.  Things are coming along just fine.  

After I got back, I began to work, then received a phone call reminding me that my 2 year old niece was coming over for a couple hours.  Funny how I forget things like that...

So, I actually went to sleep when I said I was going to last night.  That gave me lots of energy this morning to get some development time on the train.  I had about a page of minor issues that had to be completed, so I spent my time doing that.

Up until 3 days ago, I had been developing in a sort of chronological order.  Creating the aforementioned cut-scene was a bit of a departure from my normal routine.  To be honest, I was just so excited about doing it that I put other things on hold.  Now that it is completed, I can go back to the way I usually do things.  

Anyhow, today was spent doing one thing, and one thing only.  Working on the cut-scene that I have been working on for the past day or so.  To my defense, I only worked about 40 minutes this morning before passing out on the train.  I did get about an hour and a half of time on the way home, but that was mostly spent listening to various tracks to make sure I really had the correct one.

I have been making good progress however, and I believe all of the difficult stuff is behind me.  I just need more time to get it done.

1 of those weeks will most likely be spent creating the trailer for Cry The Beloved.  That is unless someone steps up who has a real skill with video editing (*cough*cough*).  

I did some more work on the cut-scene this morning.  Now, when I say I did work, I don't mean I just scripted.  I did area design to make sure everything looks perfect, I messed with the lighting.  I tried various angles to get the perfect look.  I finalized the music that will play.  Lastly, I made the final decision on what will actually happen in the cut-scene, down to even the sound effects.  Now, I may seem crazy, but this is the sort of thing I went through when I created the opening cut-scene in the Garden Of Roses, and unfortunately, I have to live up to that standard:)

I started off by playing through the module to check for more outstanding issues.  After I fixed some bugs, I moved on to some new conversations I received.  Once that was done, I finally started laying the foundation for the cut-scene I mentioned on Friday.  As I said back then, this cut-scene has been in my head for quite some time.

The only problem is, what I envisioned is not easy to accomplish using the NWN toolset (big surprise...).  To be blunt, I am not happy with how things are turning out.  I am trying to get the area and lighting just right, and that will take some time...Although I know how I am, and that it will all work out eventually, it is still very frustrating...

So, first off, I did A LOT of polishing in Dematol, such as NPC conversations, placeable settings, sound effects, etc.  I really should focus on this last, but I couldn't help it, as I had so much time today.

To prepare for this, I did about 3 extra hours of testing, to make sure that they at least get a working game:)  As I am always craving feedback, I am really excited to see how others feel with how I am taking the series.  

I did a lot more work on a mini-game/side quest that I do not think I have ever mentioned.  I actually finished the core part of the scripting for it before I started doing daily updates.  I essentially added in the pieces to make it work for other party members...

So, what did I do today?  Not a lot...Again, since my friend was up, I hung out with him until about 2:00 pm in the afternoon (he had a wedding to go to).

Once I was able to go home and get situated, I began finishing up some of the conversations my writers gave me a couple of days ago.  I also finalized much of the game flow that occurs up to the current state of the module.

On another note, I was pleasantly surprised to get an e-mail this morning from someone who had just finished The Coming.  She actually took the time to make a portrait of Clopon in Photoshop (this was before she knew I was looking for artists).  At any rate, that was really nice, and put a smile on my face.  Another gentleman has asked to become an ALPHA tester, and he couldn't have come at a better time.  I am now getting to the phase of the project where there are multiple ways to do everything, and it will drain much of my resources trying to go through all of these paths myself.  Anyone else who doesn't mind spoilers who wants to ALPHA test can Contact Me.

As I have been stating before, these dialogues have many more roleplaying options to them, so making sure it displays smoothly (no missing nodes, no repeated lines, etc.) has been a lot more work than what I usually put in for conversations when developing The Coming.

So, this morning I woke up with a very bad stomach ache, so bad that I did not go to work.  I look at it as a blessing in disguise, because once I was better later in the day, I essentially got 8 free hours to develop, and that is ALWAYS good:)

Another small concern I had today was additions to the module that would attract more people to this style of module, without alienating those who already loved it.  Once such thing is added roleplaying options in conversations.  Now, for all I know, the majority of people who commented and voted on The Coming might not like conversations with 6 choices of dialog at the end of each node.  I am not going that way, but there are more choices than you had in The Coming.  I am walking that fine line of trying to please everyone.  Now, all you people out there must be thinking that it is impossible to please everyone.  Well, I am hard headed and like to do things my way, so I AM going to try:)