It Seems Builders Aren't Players

I noticed this little exchange on Berliad's blog the other day and it got me thinking again about an old topic I've considered in the past (read the comments section). In the days after I completed the NWN1 campaign, I played tons of modules. Then, once I started building and actually got to the point where I began to complete modules, I virtually stopped playing. Honestly, playing games doesn't really do a lot for me anymore. Even the NWN2 OC, though well-done in many respects, failed to captivate me. And the funny thing is, I'm not the only one. Very few authors that I know of spend any amount of serious time playing other modules.

I think there are two main reasons for this. First, I guess I play through modules now, and I see exactly how things were done. I now find myself less interested in the story and more interested in the artistic decisions that have been made, the way the modules were put together, the quality of the writing (or lack thereof), and - art being as it is (i.e. subjective) - I inevitably start thinking, "I would have done it this way" or "why'd they make that decision?" It really kills the immersion. This isn't to say that other authors don't do good jobs, and I'm not trying to sound snobby; I guess I'm just saying that, unlike when I was "just" a player, I know too much about the nuts and bolts behind the scenes to be wowed anymore.

Second, it only takes a few short hours of living through another person's story before I inevitably start wanting to tell my story. I literally have more stories in my head than I have time to tell / make them, and going through other adventures feels like I'm wasting what little time I have.

All I know is that, generally speaking, I find less satisfaction in playing than I do in building. I will say that I tend to build, build, build before testing at all, and so the first time I walk through a module I built, it's fairly complete. I inevitably think, "Wow! Here's the world and characters I envisioned brought to life!" And, well, let's just say that's a pretty big high. It's a much bigger high than I've ever felt actually playing a game.

Maimed God's Saga Update
A lot got done this week. I began work on the male PC love interest, Verona, in earnest this week. I ended up fleshing out her past and her characterization, and as a result, certain changes had to be made. A quick rundown topic by topic:

Dialogs
I wrapped up two more major conversations including one that will be a major encounter. Also, because of Verona, I needed to add in another conversation to Act I. That conversation I knocked out quickly. Finally, I polished off Tancred; all his dialog is now written. That means that 20 of the 21 conversations I need are done, leaving only Verona's. That's a big one, though, so I'm still only 71% done with all the writing I need to do for Act I. None of the scripting has been finished for any of the newly-written dialogs though.

Journals
All done. Not a huge amount of journals are necessary for Act I, but what I do need has been completed. Again, the scripting has not been finished.

Blueprints
I finished off every creature and item blueprint I need for Act I except for the mountain lions I spoke of a few posts ago. For that, I will need to wait for Mask of the Betrayer.

World Map
As indicated in my previous post, this is 100% done as of this week. An in-game screenshot is now included. Obviously, I still need to implement the scripting that turns off the travel point icons until they should be available, but I'm counting that as scripting. The actual map is done.

Music
I began to look into software packages that will allow me to make realistic-sounding tracks. Hopefully, I'll have more to report next time.

Matrix
I added a line for the blueprints, as that is really a separate function from any of the other classifications I had previously. The new matrix now looks like the following. Things are starting to shape up nicely.

TMGS Progress Report (in %)
	Act I	Act II	Act III
Area Design	100	0	0
Dialog	71	0	0
Blueprints	100	0	0
Scripting	35	0	0
Journals	100	0	0
World Map		100
Intro Movie		0
Music		5

Progress, Progress, Progress...

It recently occurred to me that my last three posts had the word "progress" in the title, so why not just devote an entire title to those eight letters...

Anyway, after a particularly fruitful exchange on the BioBoards and combined with the comments posted last time, it is obvious that the Civ III map won hands down, so that decision is made. Not only that, but the map is pretty much done and so without further ado...

Big Progress (Sort of)

A Little Scare
Sorry for the lack of updates. I had some exciting news to release to the world, but then we had a bit of a scare regarding said news that threw last weekend into complete turmoil. I was an emotional wreck last Sunday and Monday. Luckily, we seem to have come through the scare OK, but I'm going to have to defer writing about the entire affair until a later time, as we are still mulling over legal recourse and I'd hate to put things in writing quite yet.

Ossian Update
Suffice it to say that there were a slew of deadlines last weekend for Ossian that I just blew off as a result. I've managed to catch up on that front luckily.

The Maimed God's Saga
Side Quest
So progress on TMGS hasn't been as quick as I'd like either, but there are several things to report. First, after further examination of my storyboard, I've cut the potential sidequest I discussed last time. Everything seems to have enough "meat" as is.

Dialogs
I've managed to write an additional seven conversations, though the scripting has not been finished for any of them. I've also added over 4000 words to Tancred's dialog, bringing his total thus far to 7868. I'm getting close enough to finishing that monstrosity that I can project with fair confidence that his dialog for Act I alone will hit right on 11,000 words.

I also cut out one very short dialog, bringing the total needed for Act I down to 20. All-in-all, I've now completed 16.7 of the 20 dialogs I'll need for Act I, accounting for a cool 54.7% of the writing. The big reason the percentage is so low is because I'm also estimating 11,000 words for Verona's dialog, and I haven't even started that yet. So I could finish everyone's dialog but hers and still only have about 67% of the writing done.

World Map
I started looking into the World Map for the entire campaign, and I've made up the following two options. The first was made in the Civilization III map editor, and the second with the NWN2 toolset. I may also load Heroes of Might and Magic III back onto my machine and see what a map made with that editor looks like. I've provided an example of a HoMM III map for reference. They tend to have much richer colors with a highly-fantastical feel to the icons.

Please feel free to comment on any of them. I know which I'm leaning to, but I can certainly still be persuaded.




Total Progress
Updating my progress matrix from last time, I now stand at the following:

TMGS Progress Report (in %)
	Act I	Act II	Act III
Area Design	100	0	0
Dialog	55	0	0
Scripting	35	0	0
Journals	0	0	0
World Map		10
Intro Movie		0
Music		0

Great Progress... Until you look at the Chart!

More Maimed God's Saga Screenshots!
I spent a good deal of time on Ossian-related tasks this weekend, but I did get a chance to wrap up two more major maps. You want screenshots, I'm sure, so I'll start there. First, we visit a Lizard Man village in the deep swamps. Below that is a trip to "The Tainted Glenn," though you'll have to wait for the release to see what nefarious activities occur there.

The completion of these two now means that all the maps for Act I are done. However, while I was drawing them up, I began to think that I would perhaps require another small interior map.

SPOILERS!
This is because as I give more thought to the events drawn up for the two paths - either by land or by river - that will form Act I, I am beginning to feel that there is slightly less "meat" to the river path. I'm therefore heavily contemplating adding a small sidequest to the river path. In this case, I'll require one more thus-far unplanned area.
END SPOILERS!

Act I Progress
Again, the inclusion of the other map is by no means set, so for now - regarding Act I maps - "I'm going to claim that milestone. " Sorry, but I'm an engineer in the space industry, and we inevitably talk about what constitutes enough work to claim various milestones... but I digress.

Regarding dialogs, I now have 21 dialogs planned for Act I. All dialogs are classified as Tiny, Small, Medium, etc., and these classifications were used to help me at the planning stage to estimate a total of 27,860 words needed in Act I.

I have currently written 8.4 of those dialogs. The 0.4 is Tancred's, which is big enough for me to justify including fractions of it in my calculations. My original estimate for the words needed for these 8.4 was 9820. My actuals come in at 9323, so I'm not that far off. So the 9820 divided by the 27,860 means I am about 35% done with my dialogs.

I've been scripting conversations and encounters as I go, so I'm going to estimate 35% of my scripting is also done, though there's a lot less hard math to this case.

All This Sounds Good... Until We Look at the Spreadsheet
So I went ahead and drew up a simple spreadsheet to chart my progress so I had something to show people... doesn't look too good. There are, of course, a few things not included in the chart like item and creature blueprints, but these are pretty minor things.

TMGS Progress Report (in %)
	Act I	Act II	Act III
Area Design	100	0	0
Dialog	35	0	0
Scripting	35	0	0
Journals	0	0	0
World Map		0
Intro Movie		0
Music		0

Yup... a long way to go, but I still think I could make a Christmas release. That's what I'm aiming for, and there are still far too many unknowns for me to be able to change that conclusively.

Mucho Progress

The Maimed God's Saga
Well, this weekend saw a bit of a lull in my Ossian commitments, so I really poured on the effort with The Maimed God's Saga. The list of accomplishments for Friday-Sunday is:

• Completely wrote four conversations from scratch
• Completed all the scripting for six dialogs (including the four from above)
  
• Added ~ 800 words to Tancred's dialog (now up to ~3700 words - and not nearly done!)
• Finished a dozen or so non-dialog related scripts
  
• Made up about 20 item and creature blueprints
• Finalized plans and details for the only key sidequest of Part I that had not been planned yet
  
• Made one tiny map from scratch
• Got about 75% done with one of the really major maps that remained

All-in-all not much to offer in a screenshot, but a ton of work completed. Looking at the list of things left to do, I'm convinced that I could be in alpha-testing of part one with about three more solid weekends like last one. I would never have said something like that before last weekend, but it was amazing how fast I was putting stuff behind me!

However, Ossian will certainly come calling in the future, so it may be a total of six weekends for me to get three to actually work on Maimed God.

We've Been Promised Cats!

Maimed God's Saga Update
According to Lariam in the comments section from my previous post, we've been promised vicious cats in the Mask of the Betrayer. Hallelujah! "The Maimed God's Saga" can now continue carefree. Thanks to Lariam for the head's-up.

I finished off that map that was 90% done today, and a screenshot is provided. It's for the lower foothills as we leave the mountains. A few days ago, I only had 5 of 11 maps done for part 1 of the module. Now that's 8 of 11. Sounds much better. For some reason, I've been enjoying the heck out of map-making recently. I haven't made nearly as much progress on the writing or the scripting. Oh well, as indicated the maps are drying up, so it's going to be about the writing soon...

SPOILERS

The first chapter essentially has a couple paths one can take, by land and by water. All the land maps are now done and only three water ones are left. So if I hit the dialogs and scripting pretty hard, I could now finish one path through the first third of the module...

END SPOILERS

Ossian Work Ahead
By way of future plans, Ossian has come calling again. It looks like I have another "To Do"list for the next few days, so progress on "The Maimed God" will slow for a bit. Hopefully, this weekend I'll be able to start again.

I don't want to keep teasing people with Ossian news when I can say so little, but let me just reiterate again that you people are in for some really good times. Just trust me on this!

A Little Snag

Maimed God Saga Update
Well, I got my first chance this weekend to really work on The Maimed God's Saga, and I managed to put away both the map for the main floor and the cellar of The Mountain King plus I made some serious headway on another outdoor map. In fact, it's also about 90% done, so that means I now basically have eight of the eleven maps done that I need for the first part of the module.

However, I also hit my first major snag this weekend. There are no models for large cats that shipped with the toolset... I guess I never thought about it. Of course there would be large cats in NWN2, right? Well, if you thought so, you'd be wrong.

This all comes about because, as you've seen, there are a few mountain areas. I was hoping to have some mountain lions as potential adversaries. More than that, though, is that the mountain lions are pretty crucial to a certain plot point - I mean really crucial. Crucial enough for me to moan, wail, weep large tears, and gnash my teeth that they aren't present.

So the plan is to work on other things for now. I wasn't thinking I'd get the adventure out until at least Christmas. By that point, Mask of the Betrayer will be out, as will the so-called "Granny" pack that will make modeling creatures easier, and hopefully, these will enlarge the beastiary enough to have a passable mountain lion that can be retroactively inserted. If not, the "mountain lions" will have to be one of these scary creatures, and won't that just bugger all.