Tom Time...

Tom has now been added as an author to the Blog. So it could get interesting. You should be able to see the development process from both sides of the coin....

Que endless moaning about development decisions made by someone who isn't a programmer ;-)

I hope Tom is going to post a bit about what he is doing and what he is trying to create for the game.

Cheers,

Al

Well hello there!

I can post to our blog now, so I thought I'd introduce myself.

I'm Tom, I'm busy working on In The Beginning... Software in general. I'm mostly working hard to make sure than Realms of Life and Death gets out the door at some point in the next millennium, but I'm doing some other stuff too.

I built our first complete iPhone app last week. It's a simple little GPS application that doesn't need any maps to work. It's great, because it gives you your position *so* fast compared to the other GPS apps I've used, it doesn't drain the battery anywhere near as fast because it's not using your internet connection, and it can provide you with a load of useful information, without you waiting for the phone to load a map and show you where you are, hopefully it'll come in very handy when I go out geocaching. I'll post here, when it gets into the iTunes store, and you can all download it :).

In the mean time, I think I need a beer, and a sit down, and a relax :).

Tired

I am lying in bed, I am very tired... I got a job and had to go to actual work. Which pretty much got in the way of me achieving anything today...

On the plus side lots of things have happened!

• Had good meeting with business gateway, have future meetings arranged for writing a business plan in early November.
• Got the social phase of part one of soul quest one complete. I don't really have a name for the first soul quest yet. But it does involve a dead Goblin King (who is on fire).
• I have put the first secret bits in to the game. Go Go Easter Egg Gadget.
• Have meetings to arrange with intellectual property rights guy
• Have meetings to arrange with bank, accountants.
• Business registration should happen early November! Roll on grant money :-)

Does that really count as lots of things? Well, sod it, it felt like a hell of a lot happened. I feel like momentum is building on the project and that it is going to sweep me along for the ride.

I have to find a way to get more work done. After work is hard, during work at lunch time is hard. I really need two monitors, a desk and plenty of drawing space. Going to have to make use of voice memos and notes on the phone if anything springs to mind.

I think generating all of the content is going to be a long haul. Still it will be worth it. In the mean time I have to learn to lead two lives (much like Batman). Be a successful, charming and well dressed private landlord registration scheme enforcement officer by day.... And a very tired games designer by night.... Wait a minute that isn't like Batman at all!!

Oh and at the weekends I also need to be a Dad and Husband.

Big shout out to my wonderful wife for giving me the chance to do all of this stuff. Couldn't do it without you. You are just great! Love you loads. This is as hard on you as it is on me. I understand that and love you for it.

Progress!

I feel like we are making progress. I am sitting in the loft having just played around with the first tool that Tom has completed.

We call it the monster tool (not sure why it isn't just to do with monsters). It allows us to load up classes, stats, powers, skills, classes and races. Lets us tinker with the setup for each of the above elements. It is very cool. Very happy with it, something tangible to play with that isn't my flow charts for dialogue! Woop!

A big thank you to all of those who helped with suggestions for how to deal with branching dialogue options! The winner of the unofficial competition is Cleodhna! Her suggestion to try using Omnigraffle was fantastic.

Omnigraffle is a program that allows you to generate flow charts of varying designs. It allows for a lot of editing options and the final results are relatively easy to generate and easy to follow the flow of dialogue to its conclusion. So big thanks. I am sure that some sort of prize can be arranged in the (probably distant!) future...

Level 1 of Soul Quest 1 is in progress. I am currently working on the social phase of the level and realising how much work I have let myself in for.... I think we are aiming to be very ambitious with the game and the level creation is quite taxing from a creative standpoint. Trying to make level 1, Quest 1 a bit harder than the opening level, highlighting new options and things you can do. All of that without making it too steep a learning curve.

I have a business gateway meeting tomorrow and a meeting with the bank next week. So time to go and do some dialogue trees!

Cheers,

Al

Stuff is getting done... Honest

I have meetings arranged with business gateway on 13th October. The business manager at the bank on 19th Oct and I am waiting on the accountant to phone me back! I am doing things, it just feels like all I am doing is the bits that are not really that much fun....

I feel like I need to get stuck in to some creative stuff, which is what I am going to try and do after I finish this post.

Lots of things are getting in the way, life is often like that.... Trying to get Ben to sleep through the night and sleep training has left me feeling like I have been run over by a train, the reversed over by a train, then parked on by a train and then asked for my ticket by the conductor... I am now scrabbling around in my pockets for loose change before passing out!

On the plus side I am also finding time to volunteer at the citizens advice bureau on a Tuesday and Thursday. I am still waiting to hear if I have this temping post in Ayr.

Tonight I should be having a meeting with Tom, who will be handing over some tools for me to play with using the developer kit. Some stuff to do with monster and character editors. We are hoping to have a map interface next week so we can load tokens on to it and complete the AI. The AI has ground to a halt as Tom needs to be able to plot the location of everything and make them figure out where they need to go and what they need to do. This is apparently hard if you don't have a world to plot them on!!

I need to get the first of five Soul Quests written. This is going to take a long time. I need to trawl through all the links people have been sending me regarding dialogue tools. Thanks for all the help guys! I think once I have written this I MUST look at some dialogue tools.

I have my extra monitor working with the macbook. It is pretty sweet, a really nice wrap around system. Place the monitors wherever you want in relation to each other!

Other things on the horizon.....

I wrote some notes of game number 2 that I had kicking around in my head! I had to get them down before the ate up my ability to think about anything else. I have a working title... Sector 7.

Hoping for my copy of Rogue Trader RPG to turn up next week, but I doubt it will!

Trying to dig around for some stuff to make Battlefleet Gothic Terrain with for use with the above RPG product.

So time to sign off and go do some actual work......

Cheers,

Al

Distraction

Baby sitting, wedding, hangover..... These are the reasons I have for getting nothing done over the past few days!

I need to get down to work on Monday. Although lots of things need sorted out! Why can't you buy extra time from ebay?

I need to get content done, must sit down and write up some stuff for the the first part of the game. The game is split in to five main quests, each quest will have a number of missions or adventures in it. Each one of these needs a lot of detail put down in black and white.

• Plot
• Artwork detail
• Social phase detail
• Scouting phase detail
• Attack phase detail
• Maps for the realms of life
• Maps for the realms of death
• Creature statistics
• xp awards
• Loot tables

and the list goes on and on. Each element needs sufficient detail in it so that we can construct the artwork from it as well as code up all the different elements required to run through the adventure. It seems to take a lot of time to detail each adventure. The first one took me about a week. Although I hope this will get easier as time goes on. At least I have a structure to work to now.

One of most complicated bits to get right is probably having branching dialogue options in the social phase that actual mean something tangible in the later phases of the game. This is made doubly difficult by the fact that the game can enter the realm of death at any point. This transition brings about an entirely new set of characters that can be interacted with, all of which require branching dialogue options that make sense.

On top of that I don't even have a good way of recording the dialogue options. For the first level I ended up using excel and bookmarks so I could track along the screen and make sure they made sense. I am sure iworks (pages) would have helped in this regard, as it seems to be determined to piss me off and not let me read anything I have written I have decided to give up on it for now! Maybe I will have the chance to puzzle this mystery out some other time.

Now to go and thump a grumpy cat who is trying to destroy the ironing pile.....

Cheers,

Al

ARGHHHHH!!!

I am trying to come to terms with my past.... I used to slag off a Mac with a smile on my face. Now I have to admit having my first mac has been a bit of an experience so far.

It began with the delivery guy turning up and a slight tremor of excitement began to flutter in my tummy. The dull brown box gives way to a shiny white box, with a nice picture on the front... I open the box and start to unload the contents, everything seems so sexy. It is all nicely wrapped and well placed. It looks so fantastic. Almost like you would expect a posh shop to wrap up that very expensive piece of lingerie you bought for your wife.

It smells good, it looks good, it feels great.... Then you switch it on and you kind of stare at it blankly for a few minutes... What do I do now? How does it work? Why has windows not annoyed me yet? Ah, no windows! You do a little dance in anticipation of a life filled without random driver conflicts and the blue screen of death.

You install iworks, you load up pages. You start to cry.... You can't see anything in the little text box you created and typed in to. How does this work? I have used word for almost 15 years, it is like going back to school! I still haven't figured that bit out yet....

You open the mail client, it asks for your email address. You put it it expecting it to go mental at your hotmail account... Why wouldn't it? I do after all. It loads up your hotmail account in one smooth go! This can't be correct, is this the world I have been slagging for years on end. I start to feel a bit silly about all the snide remarks.

I understand why people fall in love with their MacBooks. I do. I think I might just have fallen in love with mine, even though she still hasn't surrendered all her secrets to me! Now I must retreat from this overlong and unnecessary blog post.... You see I have work to do, wonders to create and a word processing package to figure out!

On a more serious note, I also have a job interview tomorrow and had better get back to figuring out where I can park near the office I am going to.... Hello iphone.... I feel almost dirty, in a good way!

Cheers all,

Al