Agh! Fu'm.. *gurgles* ...chit!
*Wipes away dribble from chin.*
Building can be sooooo frustrating! I am so close to having the Beta ready, but have been plagued with problems, mostly to do with PC behaviour, and by PC I mean machine and not player. As some of you will know my Desktop died a while back, but I was fortunate enough to be in a position to rescue my work and continue on a laptop that had been bought about a month prior to the desktop dieing. Now my laptop is on it's last legs. I guess it hasn't coped well with the heavy duty use I've been putting it through. First it started refusing to shut down, now it even struggles to start up. Sometimes it just keeps blinking through start up, and it was only through blind panic combined with trial and error that I discovered holding down control, alt, and delete for some bizarre reason breaks the cycle and lets it start properly.
Fortunately buying a replacement desktop was always on the cards, and the laptop failing helped give a gentle nudge to the wife that now was the time to buy, and today my new machine arrived, complete with Windows 7. For a dreadful moment I thought the new Windows was making the toolset behave very strangely, but having gone away to calm myself down, I convinced myself that the new work I'd done today may have been the problem, and that I should just go back to the older save on the laptop and try again. I'm pleased to report that it looks like my suspicions might have been correct, in that it wasn't Windows 7 giving me aggro, but rather my scripting. I'd been working on a scene where I wanted everyone to start of neutral so I could get some dialogue in, then have some of those present turn nasty, but for some reason I couldn't get the people I wanted to attack, and then all manner of default scripts started throwing errors at me. Having had a hunch that some of my include files were clashing in some way, I decided to tackle the issue from a different angle which involved some careful manipulation of factions to get the outcome I wanted.
Patience people. I'm nearly there. There's a few days I won't be able to work on it, but I'm confident I'll be in a position to give it a run through very soon. I just need to check the difficulty in some places, as I've now implemented game over occuring if the henchman dies. It kind of makes sense with the story, and makes the module a little more challenging. There's also a means of the henchman avoiding an immediatte death in the same manner that the player can re-spawn, so it's not all doom and gloom.
Right... dunno about you lot, but I need my bed!
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Monday, November 09, 2009
Yet more progress has been made, partly due to some help from Lance Botelle, who managed to implement my henchman being able to use "Soul Crystals" in the same manner as the player character, which was kind of essential really if I want to be able to release a Beta soon.
Areas are about 99% done, with the decoration of them being about 95% done, although these might be expanded on a little come the final version.
Great progress has been made on the henchman conversation file, to the point that he can say the same thing in a different style depending on his reputation score with the player, which should give good feedback to the player as to how they are getting on with the henchman. Although feedback is currently present in the form of reputation adjustment alerts, my intention was that these should only be present in the beta and removed for the final release. Lance however has thrown a spanner in the works by suggesting it would be better if they remain. My argument is the henchman responses should be enough feedback and that the alerts detract from immersion. Maybe I'll open up a poll for opinion once the beta is online.
Things are getting quite complex towards the end now, as conversations are increasingly having to depend on journal entries etc., with multiple possibilities presenting themselves. For example, I have a travelling merchant met early on who re-appears at a different location later in the game. Although it is a different location, it is one that the player has been to previously without the merchant present, so a trigger checks where the player is in the story, spawning the merchants cart and merchant if applicable. Not only do these changes to scenery occur, but I then also have to account for how well the merchant might know the player at this stage. Did the player talk to the merchant before? Did they do the quest the merchant had? It all amounts to several headaches when trying to manage it all. All the more reason to have the thing playtested.
Not long now for the beta! *fingers crossed*
Areas are about 99% done, with the decoration of them being about 95% done, although these might be expanded on a little come the final version.
Great progress has been made on the henchman conversation file, to the point that he can say the same thing in a different style depending on his reputation score with the player, which should give good feedback to the player as to how they are getting on with the henchman. Although feedback is currently present in the form of reputation adjustment alerts, my intention was that these should only be present in the beta and removed for the final release. Lance however has thrown a spanner in the works by suggesting it would be better if they remain. My argument is the henchman responses should be enough feedback and that the alerts detract from immersion. Maybe I'll open up a poll for opinion once the beta is online.
Things are getting quite complex towards the end now, as conversations are increasingly having to depend on journal entries etc., with multiple possibilities presenting themselves. For example, I have a travelling merchant met early on who re-appears at a different location later in the game. Although it is a different location, it is one that the player has been to previously without the merchant present, so a trigger checks where the player is in the story, spawning the merchants cart and merchant if applicable. Not only do these changes to scenery occur, but I then also have to account for how well the merchant might know the player at this stage. Did the player talk to the merchant before? Did they do the quest the merchant had? It all amounts to several headaches when trying to manage it all. All the more reason to have the thing playtested.
Not long now for the beta! *fingers crossed*
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Playability Approaches!
I am drawing very close to releasing the Beta of Chapter One, although my dream of releasing the final before the new year might be wishful thinking depending on how much needs fixing once the beta has been playtested fully.
I have about 95% of the areas complete, and have completed a cutscene where the player manages to escape from a room in an unconventional manner, making use of an item that they own from the beginning of the game that appears to be little more than a character embelishment, so I'm quite pleased that a more useful function for it is now implemented. The event takes place in the castle that is to host the final stages of the game. Followers of this blog may recall I re-designed the castle to take advantage of the new tileset that came in the last patch. It's been a bit of a nightmare linking all the doors, but now a majority of the placeables are in place it's really feeling like a castle.
I noticed the recent poll requested more info about the player character. I guess this is because due to concern of being forced to play a pre-generated character, but i wouldn't regard this as a weakness to the module. On the contrary, it's allowed me to concentrate on the story and better tailor the module. I don't want to upset my voters though, so for their benefit here's a little backround on the player character...
He's a male Dwarf by the name of Gerbilaf Bandiwide, who is a miner based in the heavily Dwarven populated coastal city of Kerral where rumours of plague have started to surface. He starts the game as a 1st level Fighter, owning a few unique items not usually associatted with a starting character, being a silk handkerchief, a mining pick, and a smoking pipe. He starts the game in his favourite local tavern after a hard days work at the mines, where there's a brief discussion of the strange black winged creatures recently rumoured to frequent the mine.
Gerbilaf is Neutral Good. Although he can't stray from this alignment during the game, there are plenty of alternative routes through conversations that have different outcomes and still fit within the scope of his alignment, including opportunities to use skills such as intimidation. At one point, it's even possible to intimidate a foe before combat so that he drops his sword.
I'd love to talk more, but this will simply delay the beta, so I'll end my discussion there. If you'd like to be involved with playtesting, keep an eye on this blog for notification of when the beta is available.
Happy gaming all!
I have about 95% of the areas complete, and have completed a cutscene where the player manages to escape from a room in an unconventional manner, making use of an item that they own from the beginning of the game that appears to be little more than a character embelishment, so I'm quite pleased that a more useful function for it is now implemented. The event takes place in the castle that is to host the final stages of the game. Followers of this blog may recall I re-designed the castle to take advantage of the new tileset that came in the last patch. It's been a bit of a nightmare linking all the doors, but now a majority of the placeables are in place it's really feeling like a castle.
I noticed the recent poll requested more info about the player character. I guess this is because due to concern of being forced to play a pre-generated character, but i wouldn't regard this as a weakness to the module. On the contrary, it's allowed me to concentrate on the story and better tailor the module. I don't want to upset my voters though, so for their benefit here's a little backround on the player character...
He's a male Dwarf by the name of Gerbilaf Bandiwide, who is a miner based in the heavily Dwarven populated coastal city of Kerral where rumours of plague have started to surface. He starts the game as a 1st level Fighter, owning a few unique items not usually associatted with a starting character, being a silk handkerchief, a mining pick, and a smoking pipe. He starts the game in his favourite local tavern after a hard days work at the mines, where there's a brief discussion of the strange black winged creatures recently rumoured to frequent the mine.
Gerbilaf is Neutral Good. Although he can't stray from this alignment during the game, there are plenty of alternative routes through conversations that have different outcomes and still fit within the scope of his alignment, including opportunities to use skills such as intimidation. At one point, it's even possible to intimidate a foe before combat so that he drops his sword.
I'd love to talk more, but this will simply delay the beta, so I'll end my discussion there. If you'd like to be involved with playtesting, keep an eye on this blog for notification of when the beta is available.
Happy gaming all!
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