Hey, that was kind of a pun!

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Well first off, let me start off with getting your opinion. If you'll recall from last time...and if you can't recall you simply need to scroll down, man I suppose it's about a good yard or so after that last lengthy rant I made (what's next, airline food? Ever have that stuff? Not bad, I don't think. Especially on Midwest Airlines, really makes you feel like a first class flyer in coach, honestly. But then again, I don't mind a good Swanson mircowave dinner, I'm not a real classy guy.), that I thought this area I've been working on would come out awesome.

What do you think?

Yeah, it came out great.

Problem is that's pretty much where I'm leaving off until I get my copy of MotB. I did the short segue area to the next module, all that remains is the interior area, the cave complex that's connected to the waterfall area I made just yesterday, and the full first mod will be complete. Thing is though, I need both the Fell Troll and large mushroom placeables, and I want to check out the new cave tileset before I go any further in case I want to use that.

So, yeah, dead in the water until the 10th when my copy should be sitting on my front doorstep. And even then I'll probably spend several days making my hak work, testing the first chapter and the second one for bugs introduced by MotB and adding in whatever I want to use.

All considered, I would guess probably 10 days from today, at the most, that I'll be having an open(ish) beta test for the first mod. Which is a huge milestone.

Alright, so whatever. Four days lost time kind of kills me, you know? I could be well along with some other stuff by then. But there's a few things I could do in the meantime, make a few blueprints and update the companion dialogue, but that's not even a days work, you know? So it's lost time.

It's weird, I'm not sure what the hurry is, either! Mental disorder?

Send your speculations to me! Maybe I'll post up the funniest one next time around.

oldirtywick@aol.com

Peace!

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Good news here is I finished the area I was working on last time in it's entirety, and I'm about half way to getting something that's screenshot worthy in the next area, should have something to show in the next few days. I think this new area I've been working on is going to look awesome, if my placeable boulders, water, and textures have any bearing on what you consider awesome in an area. My philosophy? Can't have enough boulders, water, and texture (well, 6 really. And I only used 5. I guess you can have enough of those two, but not boulders? I don't know.) And I'll have MotB in a couple of days, right in the knick of time to put that Fell Troll to use!

And this freaking McAfee?. I'll tell you what, when that thing installs an update that requires you to restart your computer, it doesn't play. And by that I mean it reminds you every few minutes until you do. At least Windows just pops a little bubble up, MacAfee? has a full blown bell ringing noise and a window that takes up the bottom right corner of the screen...even if you're doing something else. Better hope you dont' accidentally click the restart button when aiming for that healing potion! You'll die, but the consolation prize is that when you're computer restarts before you have a chance to save, even if you lived you'll be back at square one.



One thing that I've found since my wife left is that I have a lot of spare time to watch TV. Like, a ridiculous amount. So obviously, I've been taking full advantage. Don't get me wrong, I'm staying busy modding, matter of fact I may have caught me a case of carpal tunnels syndrome this week, but still my TV is getting quite a work out.

First, let's get the part that makes me look like a huge jerk out of the way. As I was watching the "news" (yeah, it's the Daily Show, followed by the Colbert Report. Funny thing there is I don't even like the Colbert Report, but because nothing else is on and it's at the half hour mark so even if something I wanted to watch was on it'd be half way done, I peep it. Plus it's on after South Park.) I heard about the Presidential veto on the Health Care plan for poor kids. Despite John Stewarts best efforts to make it look ridiculous, which he did, I'm in favor of it!

Call me heartless if you want. The thing is though they were pushing for a tax on cigarettes to finance it. For real, I can't even smoke in public buildings anymore like anywhere in the country, they're already, on the dollar, taxed enough to fund an entire health care system (if they wanted to), and the cigarette companies are legally forced to cop the bill for the anti-smoking ads, and if that ain't enough I have to watch that sickly looking black guy with the giant glasses quote mine from the 40's about muppents and whatnot every commericial break (You know what I'm talking about, dude is all "In 1856, big tobacco said they'd shut down production if the muppet movie sucked. Well, let's see what they say now". Yo, dude that said that probably died of cancer a long time ago, n00b). And to top it all off, I'm probably going to die of cancer.

Now that I've been firmly classified as the most discriminated against group in the country, now you want ME to foot the bill for poor kids health care? What? Yo son, what have you done for me lately, you know what I mean? I don't think I owe anybody a damn thing there, I'm already financing a ton of stuff on the like 7000% sales tax, including ads against a product I choose to use. Why don't they tax bannanas or something so everybody can share the bill, ya dig? That's what's up. But nah, everyone hates smokers anyway, so no one will care.

Well I got news for ya buddy, Bush cares. Of course, the President didn't put it into perspective like that, he kind of rambled and came off as an idiot. But who's counting? The important thing is I, and trust the analysis here, single-handedly won a battle I didn't even know was going on.

But anyways, it's not all bad news. Did anybody catch those new Saw 4 ads during commericals? They're actually pretty clever. They take place during the whole commercial break. Your TV will go all static for a second and show that creepy doll thing that the Sawmaster or whatever uses to talk to his victims with, then pop out and show a commercial. Then they'll do it again only the thing will talk or laugh or something. They do that a few times, then they run the ad for the movie. I think it's pretty awesome...except that it's for Saw. I knew the second I "saw" it (my bad) that it was the Sawmaster doll. If it was some unknown movie or something (and especially if they didn't air the ad at the end of the break for the movie), that would be crazy.

Now it's too late to really creep people out during commercials though, because if some other ad tries it, it'll just be a ripoff of Saw.

I also have to say I saw the most unintentionally funny thing in my life this week, so all of that is completely forgiven and all is right in the world. What could I be talking about? UFOs in the Bible on the History Channel. If you can peep that on YouTube? or something, you've got to check it out. Hilarious.

Yeah, but I'll post screens next time around.

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Right, so I mentioned the branch in the plot last time. It's complete, fully, and working properly. I took me several runs through, from beginning to end, to make it work right. In those several runs I have a few facts for you:

For me, it was bug free. A couple of minor annoyances that I "fixed" without testing because they were pretty simple.

It took about 7 hours with me poking around, actively looking for ways to break it. Took about 5 when rushing. That's pretty long!

Overall, I believe the quality is much higher than the first chapter.

The bad news is I still have to do the other branch, which I jumped on already. It's going to take a while, and in mid work I'll get the expansion (I settled on a preorder, so I should have it on the 10th if the extra $6 for next-day shipping pays off, which it almost certainly won't.) which is going to throw a monkey wrench into everything, unfortunately. In a way, I'm not looking forward to it. I'll probably spend at least a full day merging 2das, testing this and that, and fixing what the additons will break. I'll also need to run through chapter 1 and tweak it with new stuff.

But, in other ways, it's going to be great. The Red Wizard class, obviously, is going to be a great addition, as is the new tattoo models for heads. There's probably going to be a load of other stuff that I'm going to love.

Plus, I might actually play it. Real talk, I didn't even finish the OC yet! The OC is kind of lame to me though, for some reason. I don't know, I just don't like that there's no character developement I guess, the companions are really boring. All of them. Period.

Anyway, here's a few screens to keep you busy. It's my first real forest area, and I think it looks great. The next area I'm going to do, when I finish all of the conversations, cutscenes, stores, scripts, etc. for this area is going to blow your mind when you play it through. I've actually been waiting to do this area for about 6 months! It's going to be tough to top the ship graveyard, but this'll manage, and since there will be much fewer placeables, probably be faster too.


Finally, I promised a plot synopsis, so here it is. I'll try to keep it spoiler light, but if you want to stop reading now, I won't be mad at ya.

You start out where you left off, with Mur Vhol defeated but still living, and charged with leading a caravan of survivors to Velprintalar and away from what will surely be the battle line between Thay and Aglarond.

Of course, leading a caravan of common folk across the better part of any area of Faerun isn't without it's dangers, and Aglarond is no exception. Along the way you will suffer setbacks, each with multiple solutions, as well as allowing a deeper look into what was once one of the greatest empries of elves and the way it's descendants interact with the now flourishing human conquerors; some elves don't forget so easily. Explore the small fishing villages and their customs, or take a walk through the beautiful but deadly Yuirwood. You'll also have a chance to develop a deeper relationship with one of your companions, or ignore that completely.

When you reach Velprintalar, you're allowed an open ended experience in the city, calling upon your previous experiences in chapter 1. The thieves guild is in Glarondar is attempting a takeover, and you may get to take part in either stopping or helping them. The Simbul is a witch queen, and magic is common there, but is always a dangerous and unpredicatable ally. Meet some of the noble houses and delve into their affairs. Sidequests, folks.

After a banquet in your honor in the palace itself, you will learn more about the impending war, as well as your key role in winning it. Embark on a journey to decide the fate of Aglarond itself. Mur Vhol is pivotal, but can he actually help Aglarond, or is he the key to it's destruction? Only the plot can say for sure.

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First of all, be on the lookout for an upcoming post about what's what in the next chapter. I realized recently, through someone else's pointing it out to me and no real input of my own, that I've divulged next to nothing except miniscule details about it.

But anyways, I did a quick test run of the first complete path for the first module in the next chapter, and it failed the test miserably. Inexplicably, a companion that I added for a single dungeon to help out freezes the game and causes it to become non-responsive when you try to add them to the party. It worked fine a few months ago when I first did that area, but just won't work. And I've been pulling my hair out for two days, including tearing apart the area and another in trying to isolate what's causing it, trying to figure out why. All to no avail. The bug only reproduces after the cutscene intro, in which no odd scripts or strange variables are introduced. I can pull the companion out to a new area and add them with identical scripts no problem.

Well, I threw in the towel (and in doing so, broke out a backup to replace it which, until it was too late when I realized it, was a few days old and I lost some work) on that and gave them a hearbeat script to stay close and made them immortal. It's cheesy and stupid, and honestly I hate to do it, but I'm kind of at the point here where I just don't know what else to do.

But whatever, that's life. I always move forward, and that's been holding me back too much. I might come back to it and it might, through a miracle, work, using the same anti-miracle which broke it.


Anyways, so this was our big weekend, the last fling so to speak, for me and my wife. Well, having a fling is tough when you're towing around a three year old and she's preparing for a 15 month leave of abscence. Naturally, it didn't work out at all. Originally we wanted to go to Chattanooga, which is supposed to be a tourist hot spot and therefore there's a lot of crap going on. But when we found out it was four and a half hours away, we decided against that and opted for Gatlinburg. Here's a fun logic problem like what you may, or may not, see on an SAT test (I wouldn't know), Chattanooga is to Gatlinburg as Las Vegas is to what?

I don't know, Reno probably. It's just not as good. Probably. We didn't have time to go that far either, it was 2 and a half hours away and between the packing of large duffel bags full of equipment and cleaning the house because said packing tore it all up and the wife didn't want the dog sitter to think we were filthy (she's the same broad my wife will be rooming with in Iraq) we just didn't have the time. Logic your way out of that one, champ.

Nah, but we saw the movie Dragon Wars: D-War?. Now, let me tell you that they fraudulently advertised this movie to hell and back. First off, they didn't mention anywhere in the ads for it that the word "D-War" was in the title, probably because it's f-ing stupid and I wouldn't have gone to see it if I knew that. Secondly, the movie itself is just a mish mash of plot holes and things that don't make any sense, so really the remainder couldn't have been a plot hole to begin with. Finally, this thing should have went straight to video. I mean, they had a real opporunity here to make the movie as advertised: Dragons fighting with humans kind of in the way. They didn't go that route. Instead they took the first hour and pulled an Ang Lee (Incredible) Hulk deal, where it was really boring and ultimately unimportant to the typical guy who wants to see the movie. You know, I don't know what to say. At some point, and if it were me it'd be when writing the script, but for others maybe during filming, when you realize that everyone, literally, is not going to care about the plot you tried to throw together and are just there to see some dragons fighting and exploding things. But then I guess they'd only have a few minutes of footage, so it's a tough call.

Seriously, it's an insult to people who frequent movie theaters, and an even greater insult to those who don't, like me. I go to the movies like once every six months, and when I waste my time on something like that...I don't know. I just don't know.

It's not a good movie I guess is my point.

But I did get to see the Dungeon Siege trailer, which because it's a Uwe Boll film, will be awufl. Check this out though, and tell me this isn't exactly what's going through your head.

"Oh, sweet, the dude from Crank! That movie was awesome! Wait is that Ray Liotta? ...playing a wizard? Kind of an odd casting call, but-

Dungeon Siege? Isn't that a video game? A hack and slash dungeon crawler, right? Why not just make a game about House of the Dead, a very average arcade shooter?

Ah, I see. It IS an Uwe Boll film. Well, that explains a lot."

I'm a little puzzled that Jason Stratham, the dude from Crank which was awesome, and Ray Liotta, from a few movies none of which I thought were particularly good however he is famous, are in this movie. It's an Uwe Boll film, I can't stress that enough, and therefore is going to be awful, forget that it's about Dungeon Siege.

The weekend just got worse from there, including the inexplicably popular Chuck E. Cheese, where the food is awful, the games kind of suck, and it takes like $50 to get a slinky (I did hit a 200 ticket jackpot, by Chuck E. Cheese standards is huge, which was barely a dent in the lunchbox we ended up winning with two adults combining their efforts), but we made the most out of it.

Well, anyways, I guess that's about it. Tomorrow, I'll test it from start to end and write out a big thing in chicken scratch on graph paper about what I need to fix, and then we're off to the races! Peace!

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And I've been back a minute. Times are tough in general, that much I know.

First thing's first, the Vegas vacation was a bust. I didn't win any money, of course. I tried a new system for a few of the table games, and they all turned out to be idiotic. I also didn't accidentally run into Criss Angel, but I bought a t-shirt. There was this tee I wanted, probably the dopest tee ever created, but the f-ing thing was $100. I'm a fan, but not that big of a fan, ya dig? For whatever reason, we didn't really take a whole lot of pictures, but here's one of my and the ol' lady at some Chinese restaurant that was really cool, way too expensive for me to even think about eating there, but you can't really see it in the picture and have to take my word for it. But you know what, I ain't never lied to you yet. Trust the analysis.

Moving along, modding has been a bit slow as well. We'll get to why in a bit, but in the meantime hit up these screens and peep what I've been up to. Well, to compliment my ship graveyard with walkable ships, I had to put in some ship interiors. Obviously, this was problematic because, well, there are no ship interior tiles. So what I did was use the standard interior and made walls of logs on the inside and filled them up with ship-y looking stuff. It worked out pretty well all considered. Of course I'm not done yet, but the bulk of it is. Then there's filling in the stories and encounters and it's a day.

On a sidenote, this part of the campaign is just getting massive. The whole of what I've been working on the last few months is an optional path, and it's huge by itself. I haven't test ran the thing or anything yet as a whole, just parts, but I'm guessing there's at least 4 hours of play there if you rush it. That's out of hand for what I considered to be a slight diversion. But the good news is what's left after I complete what's in the works now (could be as soon as the end of this week, but I doubt it) is a mere 4 areas and I'll have a small beta test for the first of three mods for part 2 set to go.

Also of note is the campaign itself. I've been messing with it so much, modified the rest system again to accomodate a plot elements, adding a ton of custom models for equipment and such, that the next update (either at the next patch of MOTB) is going to have an override (and people are scared of this like the boogie man for some reason) for the things to work right in part 1. I think it's worth it. Who's not sick of the old weapon/armor models? Of course, pretty soon I'm going to have to go through part 1 and reintroduce items with changed models. So tack that on the to do list over the next few days.

But anyway, probably a little curious as to what's holding all this up. Long story short, my wife is going to Iraq next week. So we're all pretty bummed around here and finding the motivation is harder than sparing the time. But the family will be straight as long as I'm around and when she's gone I'll have a lot more spare time than I'm used to so, I imagine, I'll probably get a lot more done over the next 15 months than I would otherwise. But the closer it gets to 7 days from today, the less time I'm feeling even doing this.

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Don't know about the rest of you, but I'm going to have fun. I've been to Las Vegas before, a few times, so I'm probably not going to see anything new. I'm actually hoping on two things to happen, but they're both long shots. The first is I need to find out where Criss Angel usually hangs out at. In case you don't know who that is, it's the greasy goth guy that does street magic that will blow your mind! I'm not really into anything goth as I prefer my colors bright and clean, not dingy and black, and I don't believe in any of those mysterious mysteries crap like magic or UFOs or that 9/11 was an inside job (matter of fact, I frequent the James Randi Educational Foundation, an old and not so gothic magician that, again, blows your mind, where I use my complete lack of qualifications to make the occasional off the wall remark that gets moved to the off topic area, but I learn a lot), but the guy does these magic tricks in and around the casinos in public randomly and I'd really want to see it live. Make no mistake, I'm an idiot and won't be able to figure out how he's doing it, but just the fact that seeing that he can in person would really make my trip. The second thing I want to do is win one of those $250 million dollar progressive slot machines.

But after the week I've had, it's hard not to want to have fun. Started out late last week having some teeth pulled out of convenience. I had to just get a cleaning done at the dentist, but seeing as how my wife is going to Iraq in a few short weeks, it seems prudent to take care of the little things that are extremely difficult to actually do when you're responsible for the home alone for the next, oh, year and a half. You don't really think about stuff like that before hand, like how being on pain pills, thus unable to drive a car or perhaps even stay awake for a few days, will ruin everything when no one is around to pick up the slack. But it wasn't all bad. Against my homie Berliad's better advice, I picked up a Wii and Super Paper Mario with it this weekend. Well, he was right, it did take a long time to get going and like him I tried to play with my wife and she got sick of it quickly just as his did. But that's not even the kicker, this this is only for one player! It's freaking Mario!

But I had to learn the hard way. Funny thing about the Wii is I rented a few games for it since I got it, and honestly I think the most fun game on it is the one it comes with so far. It's remarkably realistic as well. I'm actually worse at the golf game than I am in real life, which comes off as a bit of a shock because I'm terrible.

In any case, here's something to think about: Who uses a Coinstar? Reason I'm asking is I went to McDonald's after I took my daughter in to the doctor (she has contact dermitits. I'm no medical type guy (doctor? Wouldn't know what they call those guys), which is only half of the bad part of this week, the other half was when I took her to the emergency room for it and the doctor not so subtlely accused me of child abuse, which prompted a quick complaint at the hospital from me because it was insulting and ridiculous but probably didn't go anywhere (note: follow up on that), to pick up some breakfast. Now I'm not strapped for cash by any means...I'm not rich, but we're doing alright...but I paid in loose change. As a smoker who will smoke outdoors around my child, I'm used to people looking at me like I'm the most offensive thing they've ever seen. If you're curious about how it feels to be looked at like that, go somewhere, I don't care where, and pay with change. You'll see what I'm talking about, everyone in line behind you gets all mad, and the person collecting your kind of scoffs at you like you're less than a person. For giving them money.

So anyways, back to my point, I was recommended to find a Coinstar. Now being as how I mentioned earlier that I've been to Vegas before, I'm somewhat familiar with the concept of inserting money into a machine and getting less money back. It's kind of the whole principle of how Vegas works. But the key difference there is there's a remote possibility that I could get more money back than what I had originally inserted. No such luck with Coinstar. Obviously, my only reaction was to glare at them with my patented (pending) "Where's my burger you jerk?" look and call it a day.

But for real, when did coins stop being money?

And speaking of calling it a day, that's what I'm going to do now. I'm leaving Friday morning for my Vacation (with a capital "V" because it's going to be Awesome with a capital "A"), and since I got the area I was working on painted, and since said area was probably the most complex and time consuming area I've done to date, I'm good with where I'm at. We're calling it at 10:36 AM Wednesday. I will be back soon. Until then.

Oh, you didn't think I was going to leave you without some screens, did you?

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So obviously, doing this kind of thing is very time consuming.

I have to trim the walkmesh out on land so I can see the walkmeshcutter, and transfer it to the water. It's kind of a hassle doing it at all, and making sure everything lines up right and is working properly...it's a headache. But you can't say walking around in a ship graveyard on floating planks and going from ship to ship isn't cool, right? Especially since it's going to be haunted! OOOooooOOOOoooo!

Well anyway, long story short I had some wisdom teeth pulled today and just don't feel like building. Probably won't until my mouth is feeling better. In retrospect, that's actually not a long story. On the plus side, I'm going to Las Vegas next week for a full week this time, so I won't be getting much building done at all until I'm back, and probably a lot more broke.

So, yeah, I was hoping to have the entire first module done by my Vegas trip, but that doesn't look like it's going to happen. Should be very close, though.

But, ghost ships! Am I right?

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Well, I've been sick a good part of this week. Still am a little bit.

So what, though? Doesn't stop me from building, and it doesn't stop me from taking a few screens and posting them up here.

Screens

Not really much to say about it. I madea lot of progress, including filling the town with NPCs and their respective conversation files. Last count I was at ~20,000 words, and we're at roughly 3/4 of the mod. Granted, there's at least another 2 mods left in this pieces, but getting this one done and having it tested is a huge step which isn't that far off at this point.

I got a little sidetracked and added this fun mini-game, kind of like darts, with a lot of options on how to win. It was cool, but only really amounts to a few minutes of play and a fun diversion.

If you'll notice in the screens, I've added quite a bit of custom content to the mod in the form of placeables. Nytir's joint is cool to work with and turned out really well, but I had a slight 2da problem that took a while to get fixed with it. I'm not worried about it now, I'll just modify it as needed. But it's a good addition to the mod and I'll make some heavy use of it later.

What else? Well, tried my chops at writing a little romancey dialogue. It came out alright, I think. What I've got going on is a cool split where you can go to point A or point B. I'm working on point A (and if you're good at rudimentary math and the alphabet, I have point B left and we're moving along). Well, you have to choose which companion you want to bring with you to said point. At that point it focuses mostly on character developement, and obviously a little duo combat as well as your companions strengths being utilized situationally. And it's actually quite detailed and unique to who you bring. On the other hand, it's basically tripling a lot of the writing.

But, you know! I'm on it, it'll get done when it's done.

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So, it's been ungodly hot here. Not that I'm surprised, though. After all, it's been, and this is a rough estimate because I don't actually own a thermometer, in the 90's since like March. But, being as how I'm originally from Wisconsin, the summer should be officially over as far as I'm concerned. And part of my marriage philosophy is to blindly agree to anything my wife says, I've been rolling in my old car, the one I had before we got married, which has no AC. It's like driving an oven. Slowly.

But, what are you going to do, you know?

Well, I'll tell you what I did: Continued work on an area.

Check the screens out, if you dare.

Alright, so I still need to add quite a bit as far as placeables, textures, grass, and trees go. And NPCs. And a quest. All considered, I think it looks dope, and everyone had better agree with me here. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get the walkmesh working with those stinking dock pieces? Even with the walkmesh helper, it's a nightmare. And it's not perfect, there's a few tears in it. I managed to get the tears on the dock itself to go away, but where it meets the land it's a little wacky. Of course, strategic placement of trees, plants, and placeables will make it so you don't know that. I suppose unless you just read that.

Yeah, but, man, you know? What a headache. Especially considering this area is one of my "split path" areas where, statistically, only half of the people playing will ever see.

Ah well. I'm really happy with the way that it turned out. And the sidequest will be pretty sweet as well.

All in all, I had a good day. So, uh, what's going on with you? Got a minute? If so, peep this entry in Maerduin's blog out. I said my peace on it, but it's a topic a builder can't get enough input on. You can post anon so let him know, and I'll read it and get the scoop too. Probably won't change my mind, but I want to know if I'm consciously being stubborn.

Alright, peace until next time.

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