Monday, September 29, 2008

Halloween

I'm more or less finished with the essentials of my Halloween mod, and it's been pretty thoroughly play-tested. That said, there is still one slight issue I have to deal with. Essentially, I need to check at the exit to my house to verify the player doesn't have any of my companions attached and remove them if they do. There might be a slight logic /continuity issue if they start my little adventure, leave to go do some other houses, and then come back, but I think I may opt for the simplest approach and just have the player "start over" if that happens. After all, I have no idea what may happen outside my little environ.

So, there's that one little script and then I want to add some extensions to a couple of the dialogs... in essence, I want the companions to joke around a little bit more. I may then add one or two extra rooms to Dracula's Castle with a couple "script-lite" encounters. Then finally, I have 7 more play-throughs from scratch (one for each of the possible companion cominations), and I'm done. The deadline is Oct. 13th, but I don't envision working on this past next Sunday Oct. 5th.

Once I ship the final version, I'll post a much more extensive write-up of exactly what I've done.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Halloween Mod in the Crosshair!

Maimed God progress since last post = nada

Of the three projects I mentioned last time:

I'm mostly finished with the proposal and will be completely after tonight. Check that one off the list.

My pictures have been organized and identified. I still need to do some filing.

Now what the NWN community is probably more interested in. The Halloween "item" for Bouncy Rock is shaping up nicely. In general, I'll be submitting a short sidequest that begins in my "house" in the main village. There won't be much in the way of combat, although there will be some, but it will be puzzle-heavy. Unlike all the rest of my work, it will also break the so-called "fourth wall" with regularity. It will be rather light fare, hopefully with a lot of humor and inside jokes for the NWN community.

I'll post specifics later, but it will feature most of the traditional gothic villains: Dracula, Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, etc., and the main point will be to advance through a series of puzzles in Dracula's castle. If anyone remembers the old game "The 7th Guest," it'll be a bit like that, although nothing nearly as elaborate. Right now, there are three puzzles, though I may add more if I get all the scripting for these finished and playtested and still have some time before the Oct. 13th deadline. To aid you, there'll be three companions who may give clues to the puzlzles if you're stumped. The identities of these companions may be a bit of a surprise... but I'll save that for next time.

Monday, September 8, 2008

Quick Update

I decided that I would allow myself the Labor Day weekend to work on Maimed God as much as possible and that I would thereafter turn to other projects with more immediate deadlines. As of last Monday, when I put TMGS down, I was mostly (80%) done with the Act III scripting and had done a significant amount of playtesting on Act III as well (maybe ~40%). I've done a ton of bug-squashing on Act III, and the first two-thirds of it is pretty polished.

The last part of Act III is fairly cutscene-intense as the story comes to a close. Once those individual scenes are scripted, there won't be many bugs to hunt down. Overall, I'd say Act III is pretty close.

However, since Monday, I've turned my attention to three projects, two of them non-NWN-related, that I simply must finish before returning to Maimed God. First, I'm going to categorize, annotate, and file the 400+ pictures I took in Europe. I'll make a post with some of my favorites when that's done. Second, I have a round of proposals for my own private business due on September 28th, so I need to knuckle down on that. Third, I have agreed to submit something for Bouncy Rock's Halloween project, and that's due October 13th. My idea is set, and I've finished a fair portion of it, but I'll wait until later to provide further details.

So it doesn't look like much progress will be made on TMGS until Oct 13th (or earlier if I can finish the Bouncy Rock stuff ahead of schedule).