Backup system in place

It's one of those things that every self-respecting software engineer knows must be done but never is - versioned backup. I've been guilty of that myself - I've been putting off doing a full backup for a long time now. Many a time, when I know I am going to try something that might break what's been written/directed till now (because I don't know what exactly that is going to do), I check in the script/conversation/cutscene into the database but that's only for designer resources. For art resources, I've been sticking to having multiple copies and rotating through them on each save.

Now, I've run into issues with my levels in the past which made me up the number of copies from 5 to 10. Still, it's always been in the back of my mind to get a good backup system in place. I finally bit the bullet and did that yesterday.

Since I am just one developer, I wanted something that was simple to set up and use and that I'll never have to worry about. After some research, I decided to use AutoVer. It's free, folder-based backup with customizations that can be applied to each folder and most important, comes with a basic versioning system. I downloaded it and added the folders used for Dragon Age modding to it first

• Levels folder
• Level layouts - it takes way too long to export everything again
• BaL root folder that contains all other work (2DAs, images, icons, etc)
• BaL module override folder - containing all the other mods that I plan to use
• Tools folder - different DA:O and other games' tools that I currently use (I don't even know where I got some of these)

I also checked in all my designer resources and exported the database and backed that up too.

Now, the funky thing about AutoVer is that it constantly watches those folders and backs up any change you make! While that's a good thing for certain resources like 2DAs or scripts and you can customize how often you want the backups to be done, I still didn't want to go that route. So, I set up a scheduled task to export the database every Sunday evening and start AutoVer to do an incremental backup at that point. So, I'm all set now - the only thing remaining is to do an automated backup to Skydrive (25 GB free space!) every month or even every week. There is a nifty way to create a mapped drive of your Skydrive folders but haven't tried it yet.

In between, I also managed to submit a head morph for the Mini Character Contest. It's for a character who will be making an appearance fairly early in BaL and who has an interesting back-story too - not a companion though.

Vaelina - my entry to the mini character contest

Other than this, I've been tying up a lot of loose ends and placeholders I had in place for testing. While I was doing that, inspiration struck and what was originally a mundane battle in one of the starting areas is now more tightly integrated with the lore and the combat setup is also a little more complex. It should now provide a satisfying finale to an area where almost every dialogue and action is heavily lore-oriented.