Choose Your Language

Saturday 3 November 2012

Back On Track!

First of all, just to let people know that The Althéa Weather System is now on version 1.04. The latest version fixes a bug where the weather changer timer was not suspended when a PC went indoors. This meant an incorrect error message showed while indoors and the weather timer was messed up for a short period. Please report to me if you find any other errors that you believe require addressing.

In the last week I have been getting back on track with writing the quests. I believe I now have many of the final quests that will be in the module in place, and am heading towards the finish line in that department. On top of that, Ryan of Eguintir's Ecologies has been hard at work putting the finishing touches to the final level that needs building for the module. Once I have that area fully integrated, I will be 90% complete, leaving me only the need to finish the quests and upload for Beta testers. However, I don't want that to sound like a release any moment, because there is still quite a few conversations left for me to do, as well as final balancing.

Following Their Marching Orders

In the meanwhile, my goblins are also back on track when it comes to following their waypoints. What it is about the original official waypoint system that makes them fall away from the planned path, I do not know. However, my own system works well, and is now finished, and works with scripted waypoints too. Here are my goblins showing me that they can obey orders:

Goblins Following Their Marching Orders!

And Take On Intruders!
Plugin On Hold

I decided to put my looking at C# on hold. For while I believe creating a plugin may be useful for me being able to create content more efficiently in the future, I do not believe that I should spend time doing that just yet. It would only serve as a distraction to me, and so I will leave this for the time being, and maybe look at it again, or another utility that may be as useful, in the future.

Reality Check

The "level of reality to fun" poll finished a short while ago, and below are the results. I was interested to see the degree of those who shared my own desire to keep the feel of the campaign close to "real" as possible. In translation, I believe that to mean keeping logical flow relatively high, or at least as plausible as possible and to avoid "simple" quests, or those that feel orchestrated. That is a hard task to achieve without spoiling the fun factor, but is something I still hope to achieve.

Erring Towards Realism Is The Preference

6 comments:

Kamal said...

I like that area. It makes me think of a fen with the vegetation and the fog, but then the mountains add drama.

Lance Botelle (Bard of Althéa) said...

Hi Kamal,

That's encouraging to hear, as this is one of my outdoor areas that I have tried to make. :) Perhaps there is hope for my area designs yet!

Lance.

Shaughn said...

The weather system sounds really interesting, I have been following your updates in the forum. Currently were I am in my prject I will not be looking further into it but it does sound really good.

I also like coloring and look of the screen shots. I would suggest adding a bit more sculpting in the base of the ravine. You have the steep walls then a very flat play surface, for the character and goblins. Maybe just adding some tinted boulders to match the cliff walls would breakup that flat look.

Lance Botelle (Bard of Althéa) said...

Hi Shaughn,

The weather system is one of those systems that (if you ever do decide to use it) is really easy to implement. And is flexible enough to suit most needs. :)

Thanks for the encouragement on the screenshots. I will try to do more with the area if I feel inspired, but it really is something that I do not know what to do with - even when told. For instance, I understand you say it would help to add boulders, but I don't have the artistic ability to know where they would be best placed. :(

That said, I will (as I say) try looking at all my areas before final release.

Cheers,
Lance.

Frank Perez said...

Looks like those who voted on your poll are all in favor of a middle-of-the-road approach. I interpret that to mean that the 9 voters like the way Bioware and Obsidian designed their fantasy RPGs and prefer to keep things that way. It's hard to draw reliable conclusions from the poll though, so it's really open to interpretation.

Lance Botelle (Bard of Althéa) said...

Hi Frank,

I tend to agree. With perhaps a slight bent towards stricter logical flow perhaps?

At the very least, it's also good to know there are at least 9 reader saround who (hopefully) will play my module. ;)

Lance.