The lull at work, that is. We have one more deployment this weekend which should take a couple of hours at the most but other than that, there's not much going on at work. I've started compiling a list of things to complete over the next 2 weeks since this will be the time when I can focus on developing.

Towards that, I've been concentrating on wrapping up Craggy Island as best as I can and barring one issue where ambient animation is not resumed once combat ends, everything is good to go from my end. Sometimes, even the smallest thing that you know you could probably get to work while you are asleep gives so much trouble and that was the case here with codex entries not appearing. After a lot of debugging, it was due to the infamous duplicate GUID bug. Anyway, all's good now.

The focus for the next 2 weeks is going to be tying things together in the new areas and creating NPCs and ambient behaviour for them. And then, finish up the remaining abilities for the custom classes since those will be needed to play-test these areas.
I do have to spend some time to finish my PBEM tourney for Shadow Magic. Now that I am at the semi-final stage, I want to make sure I go all the way through and regain my Championship crown! So, I'll have to spend some time to map out the strategy for the finals - assuming I win the semis, of course!

Till later...

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In my earlier post,I had mentioned that I would be able to get the level I submitted for the contest tweaked and ready by the weekend. Well, that didn't happen. In spite of the long list of ideas I had on Friday, the weekend for the most part was a complete bust. I had to work on a production-critical demand issue and after spending almost an entire day on it, I was drained. I did open the toolset but I couldn't even get myself to write a simple trigger script - completely blanked out! Towards the of the weekend, I finally wrung out some energy to fix some of the glaring omissions in the level - floating buildings. I also went through the level in-game, both in tactical camera mode and third-person view to find anything else that was amiss and I recalled Mike's comments about the carts balancing on wheels and went about fixing those.

Where are those invisible oxen?!

I did manage to have a long conversation with Daeltaja on Sunday evening and have a list of things I need to complete for Craggy Island - minor scripting stuff for the most part. The one important thing I'm overdue on is getting a play-through done so I can get a feel for the current state of things. I plan to get that done with today so I can finish the work required from my side - after all, I volunteered for this so I definitely don't want to be the one holding things up!

On the Shadow Magic front, two of my first round games were won successfully and the last one is in progress. I want to win this too so I can be assured of a second round slot - with the modified swiss sytem we are using, two wins might not cut it if the opponents don't get many points. I would probably need to spend some time preparing for the second round once the map is announced and that will likely happen toward end of this month.

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Yep, in plural!

I had been toying with the idea of submitting the Leeward level to the Community Contest. However, it is not *technically* a finished level since the village is not complete. The incomplete areas are not accessible in Blood and Lyrium but that wouldn't be enough reason to make that entry a valid one according to the contest rules.
I had started design work on the next big area in BaL, a village called Evermist. This would be a crucial area in BaL so I had spent some considerable time to make sure that all I needed could be presented properly.

Design on Paper

Given that I had the design work complete around middle of last week, I decided to take the plunge to try and finish it before the contest deadline. It is a fairly large level (192 x 288) and I've decided to use a lot of elevations and custom-built houses which makes it even more time-consuming.
At this point, the initial prototyping is done and it is looking pretty good - by my own low standards :)
The contest deadline is just 6 days away so I will be slaving away at it whenever I get some free time. I would love to hear any suggestions or feedback on the posted images either here or at DANexus or in my project feedback thread so feel free to share your thoughts on the level.

The view from the Chantry

The other contest, rather competition, that I am participating in is the Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic PBEM 1vs1 Tourney. Historically, though I've been a Singles Champion, I've never been able to see a 1vs1 competition through to the end. These tourneys typically go on for about 5-6 months and in both competitions held in the past, I've been forced to forfeit due to RL delays. Hopefully, this time, I can play till the end.
Of course, I haven't had much practice since I haven't been playing PBEM for nearly 9 months now but as luck would have it, my first round is relatively easy and I hope to go through to the final 16 without any major hiccups. Here's hoping!
Being on the forum staff, I'll also be helping out with the organization (setting up threads, resolving any disputes, etc) a bit so that is going to cut into the time I can spend on DA.

Too many things going on!
Till later...

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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!

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