Tale

We don't really need both then.

Bah. I've been struggling with my intro area. The plot justification was flismy. It's an obvious trap setup, but expecting the player to walk into it "because that's what they'd least expect!" And with no real skill opportunities. I'll just repurpose the area for something later. New intro idea jumps right into combat. Maybe a couple of skill opportunities, at least better justified. And maybe a smaller map.

I just watched the first season of Dollhouse. Fun show. Science channel had it as part of Joss Whedon weekend and I DVRed the whole thing. Now to find the cheapest way I can watch the second season.

Are you trying to paint expensive multiplayer games as something of a safe bet?

Wrote up some dialogue for major scenes. Okay, so it's basically two character introductions. One descriptive, one dialog based. I also figured out how to run conversations on map start. So that's enough work for me. I think I'll actually play a game for a little while. OOH, or read a book.

I didn't get the feeling of DA2 being ambitious, but more slapshod. Two thirds of the major plotlines are still very much in the Bioware vein. If we're to look at the family angle as them avoiding the standard plots, then we should similarly give credit to DAO for the Elf and Dwarf plots. But the city of Kirkwall had a nasty habit of breaking out into wars that threatened theentire region. I'd go so far as to say that Loghain's "I'm helping my people, but really I just hate those BLASTED ORLESIANS" is a bit better than Meredith's "Mages are dangerous, but really I'm just corrupted by ancient evil."

/gasp I almost preferred DA II to DAO. I wanted to prefer it. But

Because that's a ground up rework that affects core systems and design. It's not a small suggestion or easy to implement.

I'm hoping it's successful enough on Steam that they dedicate future games and patches towards the PC. The tablet interface is holding it back.

DAO = Glory? *laughs hysterically* Someone's allowed nostalgia glasses to tint the derp roads and the Tower, at the very least. Oh, that forest sucked too. And Awakening... still doesn't work? Glory, indeed. I love the tower. It's a surreal Metroidvania mini-adventure. A world where people take the shapes they want to take, and the dead think they still live. And you run around collecting powerups and new abilities to unlock other areas. What doesn't work in Awakening?

Done with the first pass on my first area. Basically walls and floors. Nothing outside the camera/play area. No scripting, convos, enemies, not even objects lying around to hide behind for the combat segment. So, I'm not exactly building at a breakneck speed. That should improve as I get more used to it. I spend most of my time picking out walls and screwing around with lighting. The lighting system is really opaque, even with the wiki. There's ambient lighting, I think I figured that out. There's directional lighting, which I may be confusing with ambient in function. And there's lighting direction, which I understand about as well as I understand the languages of various South American uncontacted peoples. Lastly there's point lights, which I have figured out! But never shine where they're supposed to.

There's no car props! Okay, there's two car props. Crushed cars. And a crushed truck. Two heavily decorated vans, an oversized van. A billion motorcycles. Heck, there's freaking boats! No cars.

*head desk* Insurance company wants to do an audit. They send us all the paperwork, we give it to my boss to mail it, he does not. Insurance company estimates what the audit should be. Boss throws a fit about how they couldn't have done an audit (since he never sent them the stuff). Insurance company gives us a chance to do a self audit, boss emphasizes that he might do it if he's around because it's not a priority for him. Then tells me to do it. Because he's so very busy supervising the guys building him a new pool.

It doesn't make sense that they should plan for it now, because they've specifically rejected the idea of planning this game around a controller. Or at least that's how I interpreted the statement from MCA.

I had originally planned to do mine as a three-parter, but I was confronted by three problems. Difficulty in carrying over choices from Act I to Act II if they're separate packs. Character building and foreshadowing in Act I that's completely unrelated to what's happening in Act I, but incredibly important to Act II. The ending for Act I sucks as an ending. So I'm combining all three acts into one pack, cutting out filler content, and adding a prologue. WELCOME TO FEATURE CREEP

I both hope and fear mine will be longer than that. I hope it's lengthy enough that it's satisfying, but am afraid it'll be so long I never finish it.

Enemies had a heal spell that healed 25 damage every time. That would have been a nice Heal II.

It's probably going to unlock Metro 2033 and Risen 1 as bonuses later. But don't take my word on it. If I had any interest in zombies or Risen 2, this would be a fantastic deal. I have everything else.

Dang, when you posted earlier I was hoping you had solved it. Is the problem that your story variables aren't being passed between scenes?

Oh man, I'm reminded of one bug that got passed around the office. My memory is faulty, so this may not be exact. The rifle the medic used should not be available in the game's time period. Or that the assault rifle sound was for the wrong type of rifle. And there seemed to be this one guy at Microsoft who kept submitting these bugs. Some guys on our end were criticizing it. But you know what, the art team fixed it.

Figuring out my first area that's not a box. With internal and external portion. I need to polish up space and give some combat cover. But first I'm trying to figure out lighting again.

No telling yet. Considering that it's not taking place on Columbia, all bets are off. That's a whole other batch of circumstances.

Is that set in an alternate timeline? Booker and Elizabeth don't seem to know each other. Yes.

Doc Wagon is basically the revive item. And no, I never found a healing spell above I, which is strange since it's numbered. The healing spell heals the most recent damage to a character, which is an absolutely fascinating system. If the last time they got hit was for 33 points, it'll heal 33 points. If the last time they got hit was for 1 point, it only heals 1. Which makes multi hit attacks a PIA.

Spent some hours last night figuring out lighting. Also trying to figure out saving character templates. It works in that the save file is there, but nothing pulls it up so I can recall the saved template. I might need to move it to the directories with the base campaign to get it to work, but that doesn't bode well for published content.