Blood and Lyrium - Monthly Report
So, I decided to do some accounting today to see where I am at with the overall module progress. Seeing as my target is to release the module before Dragon Age 2 ships or more accurately, at least a month before Dragon Age 2 ships, the latest I can shoot for and still hope to have a decent-sized audience would be the beginning of February. That is just 4 months away and I still have a ton of work left to do!
Levels: The biggest time sink for my module will be building the required levels. At this point, I've realized I cannot build every level I require from scratch so I'll end up reusing some of the official levels for the house/tavern/etc interiors. Sure, they won't exactly match up with the exterior layout in many cases but I think it is a small price to pay for an early release date. Even with that, I still have a few levels, mostly exterior, to create (it's unfortunate that none of the Community Contest entries really fit in with what I want):
- Small exterior levels - usually as entrances to other areas or for encounters - 6
- Big exterior levels - full-blown villages/town - 3
- Interiors that cannot be reused from the OC - 5
Story - 100% (I am really happy with this!)
Quest Design - 80% (need to check the feasibility of certain ideas)
Companion design - 40%
Custom Classes and Abiltities - 30%
2D Art - 0% (icons mostly but there are a lot of them + some other stuff)
Level/Area Design - 80% (on paper ;))
Level/Area Implementation - 25%
Conversations - 20%
Scripting - 10%
Cutscenes - 10%
Monster/Encounter Design - 0% (I should really start on this)
Custom Systems - 20%
Overall, I would say the module is about 20% complete. Now that the story is set and the overall quest arcs are almost finalized, I can start focusing on the implementation. Of all the things above, 2D Art is really not my forte - I will have to ask if anyone from the Community Creations forum can help out. I also wish we could hold an interior level Community Contest so I can get some free levels :p
Plan for October:
- Test and finalize quest design
- Finish the custom classes' implementation
- Finalize level design on paper
- Finish the small exterior levels and at least one big exterior level
- Complete quests/conversations/plots/etc for the areas designed till today.
One last thing I'd like to point out to potential modders (not just for Dragon Age) - Mengtzu has made an excellent post on encounter scaling and learning curves for the player when playing a module and how modders can try to avoid some of the pitfalls related to those. I will definitely be re-reading that blog post when I start my encounter designs and monster tactics.
October 1, 2010 at 8:36 PM
Good luck! I'm glad you enjoyed the learning curve post, I hope it does help with your encounter design (uh, don't make it as hard as Classic Week, that's definitely on permanent heroic mode). I'm thinking about doing a few posts on how I scripted some of the encounters, too - my scripting is really basic, but it turns out you can get a lot of cool variety out a few simple tricks.
I've pretty much decided to switch my next modding project to something smaller than I had planned, myself. I was researching some development methodology stuff, optimism bias etc at work and decided I had to be more realistic :< Luckily the community competitions seem to be producing some really useful stuff for smaller mods.