Monday, November 17, 2014

Tying things together

So I received a comment on my last post from someone eagerly awaiting the release of the mod. Well, despite my silence, there has been ongoing work on the mod, and some fairly major milestones have been achieved since the last update.

  • All areas have been completed in terms of structure. There are a few combat encounters that need tweaking, but effectively all level design is 100% complete.
  • Epilogue text and slideshow have all been written in their entirety - this was basically the last significant writing to include.
  • Staging for almost all remaining conversations has been completed, and a lot of syncing, camera shots and animation has been touched up for remaining conversations.
On my to-do list before having a ready "alpha" are:
  • Finish remaining encounters.
  • Complete "glue" scripting to ensure appropriate transitions to/from certain "set" scenes / locations.
  • Use custom backgrounds for epilogue slideshow.
Things to do before final release:
  • Obtain and integrate remaining voice acting (some characters have proven extraordinarily difficult to find VAs for)
  • Fix a few animations for cutscenes - there are a few short action and romance shots.
  • Remove any bugs found from testing (there are bound to be some).
While that might seem like a fairly simple list, making sure that everything works is no small task - there are a *lot* of moving parts in the mod and a lot of references and consequences as a result of the player's choices during the adventure, so I have to make sure that all those bits work together.

In short, news is good and so is progress!