This Past Week

Most of the time spent this past week has been away from the toolset unfortunately.

First, there was the bazaar. I got into it a day late but once I realized you could get 500 points per Twitter challenge you win, I was hooked. I thought it will be easy enough to win a few challenges and get a decent score up to snag some t-shirts or lithos. I did end up winning 7 challenges but found out soon enough that the 'click-points' was a real leveler - so much so that people who hadn't even won a single challenge had thousands more points. I had to resort to posting my 'referral' link in the various threads in the Off-Topic forum and in end, won the last but one auction for a set of Mass Effect t-shirts.

Then, there was a map-making competition for Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic for which I was one of the judges and this was the last week of judging so I had to put in some extra time to play-test some of the maps I had put aside for a re-test. For those that don't know, AoW:SM is a turn-based fantasy strategy game similar to MoM and the HoMM series (though with much more depth compared to HoMM).

I did manage to get some work done in the toolset though. I finished a big interior level - the biggest in Act 1 of the story and started the process of piecing together the quests and dialogs. I am also slowly coming to grips with how lighting works and how the different types of light (and colors!) interact with each other. I still have some finishing touches to add to the levels - 'prop-discovery' is and will be an on-going process, I am afraid.

I have started working on the start area too, which will be an exterior level. This level will have 2 exported area layouts and one will be visible from the other in-game (one is a mountain-top and the second one is a village at the foot of the mountains but some distance away). My level-building skills face a real test when doing an exterior level so this one will likely take another 4-5 days to complete, at minimum. Next post will have some screenshots!