Sunday 29 July 2007

A decent week of progress this week. However, I have fallen victim to the horrible little ' Mr. Scope Creep' and the prolog is turning out to be much more expansive than I have originally intended. The extra work is within the main story flow though, so it has a high bang-for-buck. Also, since it deals with the core characters, it should hopefully flesh them out.

I also managed to find a day to go back and update 'Cry Wolf'. I didn't think I was going to do any more updates to it, but it became apparent that there were some nasty bugs that I had missed - and I took the opportunity to balance and polish a few other bits while I fixed them.

Having gone back over my 'Cry Wolf' work, I can defiantly say that PS:Legacy is a couple of steps up in quality on all levels. No time for pictures at the moment, will post something more expansive mid-week.

Sunday 22 July 2007

Weekly Update

Real Life has sapped up a lot of my time and energy this week, but not in a bad way (excepting lack of modding time). The only progress completed was some polish to the hide and seek segment spotlighted last week, which is working quite nicely now.

Such is the way with long personal projects, other stuff pushes in and steals the time away. Next week I should have less work though, so lots more modding time (so I hope!).

As a note, I did also manage to find a couple of hours to play the alpha build of Dark Avenger by Wyrind. Whilst it still needs a little clean up here and there, it is overall really nice - especially the open roaming nature that somewhat reminds me of BG1. I think even released as-is the module would hit a good position in the top module charts, and it is only Alpha so-far! Definitely one to keep an eye on.

UPDATE: I think the Dark Avenger release is final now!

Sunday 15 July 2007

Weekly Update

Has it really been a week already? Between work and other Real Life stuff I have been so busy this week and it has really just passed me by. I did manage to fit in some modding though, building about five minutes of gameplay for the prolog.

The prolog charts the early years of the PCs life, but just because the PC is placed as a character with a preset past, it doesn't mean they can't have any choice about things! As an example, one of the early parts of the prolog has the PC playing a game of hide and seek.

As the screenshot shows, there is quite a choice for PCs in different motivations. I decided early on that I wanted to move away from alignments towards a more organic style of choices. This frees me from the need to write the classic (and somewhat predictable) player choices, and opens up a more free-form way for players of alignment restricted classes to play. Basically, you play the character, not the alignment.

In other news, I decided to set the prolog within the Forgotten Realms, rather than a generic setting. After a quick question over at the weave , I decided on Yulash area just before the Time of Troubles which gives me a juicy background for town banter and such.

I have another busy week next week, but should hopefully get at least half way through the prolog build. No featured area this week, so a couple more shots of hide and seek instead (yeah, I know I am lazy!).

Sunday 8 July 2007

Weekly Update

With the completion of the final exterior prolog area, all the map building should be complete now. Of course, I will need to do some clean-up and possibly a few walkmesh changes for playtesting but area build is largely done now.


For myself writing dialog and area building are the most time consuming parts, so with the build out of the way and quite a bit of dialog already written I should be able to churn out some actual gameplay next week.

As I have made some mid week posts on the prolog, I wont highlight another area this week. Instead I have attached a few shots from the opening cutscenes and a couple more shots of the completed prolog area.


Thursday 5 July 2007

Mini update

As regular readers (are there any?) will know from my entries, I have been working on the prolog for the last couple of weeks. This Tuesday, I finished off the non-interactive part of this. I am now working on the interactive part, which makes up perhaps 10% of the module (about 20 minutes play time). All the interiors for this section are already built, and I am now working on the final outdoors piece. This is coming on really really nicely, and I thought I would show off what I have so far, as I think this area is by far the most visually attractive I have made yet.

It also features some nifty toolset tricks, but you will have to wait to see what they are!

Weekly update on Sunday.