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 :).

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