Good news and bad news

I am still modding. Last year I was very busy for a while, but not in a bad way. Didn't have a lot of time to finish the mod I was working on. Now, I had been working on that mod for a long time and I think it had some pretty good aspects. But after things started to settle down a bit in my day-to-day life, I just didn't have any inspiration to wrap it up. Not that I didn't have any ideas, they were just not suited to the mod. Not that particular mod.

So I wasn't having fun working on it. And since I do this to have fun, I decided to cancel that project and start a new one. I know it seems half-assed to quit working on a project that is almost finished, and maybe it is, but it was becoming a chore and there are already plenty of those in my life.

The mod I'm working on right now will be consisting of four acts, and will be set in the Silver Marches. The mod will start out near Jalanthar, and Jalanthar will be in big trouble. There will be four companions, and they're all mandatory for story purposes. I've tried the pick-and-choose method in my newly cancelled mod, and I just didn't like the fact that you can't really flesh out your NPCs that well in the limited time I can give to any mod.

Why four acts? Well, this mod will focus on the coming of age of a villain, and I for this individual I had four stages in my head - changing his morals a bit every time the story advances.

The title of this mod will be "Mara's Pride".

Project on hold, not cancelled

Hi all,

As you might have guessed, I've put the new mod on hold for a while. There is too much going on in my life (not all of it bad, don't worry) to work on it with the amount of attention that I want to give it. When (not if) I have more time to devote to it, I will continue my work. I am sorry to disappoint you.

Best,

Rasvar

I'm not quite dead!

Argh. I see it has been almost two months since my last update. In those two months, I regret to say there has been a neglible amount of modding. My job swallowed almost all of my time. So I'm basically at the same point as at my last post.

The good news is that I have a two-week break now, and I'm going to try to pick up where I left off. The bad news... well, actually there is no bad news :-)

Inspiration onslaught

While I thought I would just wrap Chapter 1 up nicely as planned, I couldn't help getting lots of inspiration as I worked on this bit. I decided to add 3 extra areas, plus a couple of sidequests. The main story is complete now, there are two major dialogues to write and all of the companion dialogue. Plus lots of smaller ideas, a worldmap, history feats and lots more.

Not to spoil anything, but I like the end areas. They give me a good Buffy feeling.

I will probably release chapter 1 separately from the later chapters, because those will cost lots of time too. So I inadvertantly started a series again. This one, however, will actually consist of multiple parts, unlike my previous attempt (being Azaelus).

Mysteries of Westgate

Just finished Mysteries of Westgate. I'm currently sick, so I had some time to spare. While I enjoyed it very much, for those in the know it will be no surprise that this means that Rose and Blood will have a lot to live up to. The comparison is almost unavoidable...

Mysteries of Westgate was very well done. The area design was superb, dialogues were witty, lots of plot twists, etc. etc. etc. Still, there are some aspects about Rose and Blood that I still think are cool . I just hope I'll be able to polish it to a level that the comparison won´t put people off, which is a risk.

Back to bed now.

Cutscenes for Chapter 1

After testing the first half of this chapter, I have set to work on the second half. This includes making cutscenes to tie the story together. Since I've been having a fair load of complaints about the storyline for Howls in the Dark, it seemed like a good idea to make what's happening clearer.

Furthermore, it also helps me to see where I want to go with this story, and adds character to the antagonists. And on top of that, it's nice and easy. No wondering about dialogue trees, checking whether available responses cover the entire range of player styles, none of that. Everything is under my control, bwahahahaha! Errm, forget that last bit, it's late and I should probably go to bed soon.

I've made about six of these cutscenes now, and I think they work well. When I'm done, I'll work some more on the buildup to the conclusion for Chapter 1, and after that it's time for my favorite chore: the fleshing out of the player's companions.

Working on part 2 of Chapter 1

Finally, I ironed out all the bugs I found in my first test round. Undoubtedly there are many more, but wel'll leave that until round 2. Today I had an entire day to devote to modding, a rare treat for me. The last time I had this much to work with has to be years ago.

Made some good progress, too. The first round of testing gave me many ideas to build up to chapter 2, which works quite nicely. Worked on a couple of cutscenes today, that turned out to be nice and dramatic. I'm pretty happy with the result :-)

It's interesting how some characters start to live their own lives in my head. Sometimes they just develop all by themselves, without much effort on my part. Hopefully you'll know what I'm talking about if I ever get this baby done ;-)

That's all for now.