Dialogue (woes)
These past few days, for some reason or the other, I didn't feel like scripting at all. I know I have a lot of things to finish up on that end; hopefully, I'll hit the spot sometime this week. Instead, I've been writing...a lot, in fact.
First, I've started work on a concise story document that I will be able to use in the future as a reference when I need to discuss the module with anyone. This also helps me to view it from a high level and decide whether there are further opportunities to flesh out the story or add side-quests.
Next, I've been writing a lot of dialogue - completely new ones and changing/adding to existing ones too. One of the most complicated ones I wrote in the past week revolves around a game the player can choose to play - it has only a little over 1000 words but the amount of link-backs numbers in the hundreds.
It is an interesting game, I tell you...or rather, would have been. I forgot one tiny little thing - the Dragon Age engine will show only the first six options. And mine had 10 most of the time. I was kicking myself for not play-testing the conversation earlier. I was feeling more frustrated due to the back-end scripting that was also completed for the game but the testing was broken due to the choices not available to be selected. That could possibly be the reason why I am feeling a certain apathy towards scripting now. Oh well...
Now, I have to either (a) break the choices down into 2 sets, which would make the game extremely cumbersome or (b) find an alternate way to play it or (c) ditch the whole idea. Sometime back, FollowTheGourd posted an interesting idea for text-centric dialogues in the Alternate Dialogue Modes thread. I'll probably do a quick check with him to see if that allows for more options and if so, use it for this conversation. After all, even if I do plan to get my module voiced, I don't have to do VO for every single line. I'm thinking more BG2 style where the first line and important conversations are voiced but the rest are just texts. I think VO is highly over-rated anyway...
In other news, the judging for the Community Contest 2 - Prop Model finished on Thursday and the winners have been announced. You can congratulate the winners here and read about/grab the entries from the links on the Community Contest 2 Page. Show them your support, folks!