Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Modding Injury!

Well, that makes it sound more than it is - but think my little finger is getting problems from how i hold my mouse when modding - not a great sign of how long I'm on the toolset! I think its also from how i sit when typing. But on a toolset free break for a few days so see how it goes.

Speaking of typing, I downloaded PowerBar plugin for the first time the other day - i've always been a little wary of plug-ins in case of becoming too reliant, and patch issues, but this is pretty good. And the typing link? It has a feature that performs a word count on the module, breaking it into journals/conversations etc. This was interesting; given i have only 2 small journal entries done, and 99% of the text is from conversations, I'm on a word count of 25,000. Interesting, but given that thisis chapter 1 only, and that its a small, scene-setting chapter, i'm not sure if this is over-the-top. I know Thay has >35,000, but is a longer playtime beast than this chapter, so I'm wary of swamping the player with too much text. I always knew the campaign (and chapter 1 specifically) would have a lot of dialogue, but i might have to watch this. That said, the kind of player that doesn't like reading too much isn't going to be the kind of player i'm aiming this mod at...

Anyway I hope things will come out of a pre-alpha I'm planning on chapter 1 soon - aimed more at getting feedback/comments than bug-hunting specifically. I suppose its a bit like the census that hollywood studios do for films to gauge the public reception, before selling out and rewriting the ending to include buxom beauties that need rescuing from their skimpy outfits in the hope that it pulls in more audiences. Not that i'd sink that low.... although now i mention it.....

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

How are you making out these days, Wyrin? Still suffering from tool set injuries? Looking forward to your next project. Keep up the good work. :)

Wyrin said...

THanks for the support!
Coming along OK - got 3 days off work this week and I'm hoping to break the back of this first chapter. I stupidly came up with other non-plot central ideas so have spent the past few sessions building a non-critical area (26x24 exterior) that the player might never go to... Once I stop doing things like that I might get somewhere with the main plot, but at the moment its my excuse not to finish it, by adding in new things i think....