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*