33% of Chapter 2 enters internal beta...

...later today. I have one thing I have to do still, which is finish a companion dialogue file up. But that shouldn't take more than a few hours, and we're on to internal beta, which is a fancy way of saying I'll play through it beginning to end. There's two paths through this, and one is already internally betaed, but I need to do the other half, which I'll have done by the end of the day. I've already tested the path multiple times by itself, but I just need to run through it as a whole. Then I'll be opening it up to a wider audience.

But remember, this is just a third of the whole chapter 2, so there's a lot of work to be done yet. I like to split it up into manageable chunks, though, makes the testing faster and easier. But I need help! If there's one thing I learned from last time around, it's that I didn't test it adequately. But I'm only one guy and can only do so much, so if you want to help me out either message me here, at the official boards, on the SoT download page, or by e-mail and I'll get you hooked up.

Just to make this short, here's a few bonus screens!

And a number count:

Areas: 17
Words: 50,000+
Monster Blueprints: 30 - 20 with uniquely scripted special abilities
Items: 600+
Scripts: 175
Conversations: 137

Add that together with the first chapter and so far I've got over 50 areas, over 110,000 words of dialogue (which is full novel size), over 40 custom creatures, over 600 custom items! That kind of puts it into perspective for me how much work this really is. I've designed more maps than an FPS, written a full length novel, and coded probably over 100,000 lines of code.

Anyway, now the ranty part that a blog post of mine wouldn't be complete without:

So yesterday, after watching the "Sunday night line-up" (which is literally what I call what I watch every Sunday) consisting of The Simpsons, skipping King of the Hill and catching half of a bad movie on Showtime, Family Guy which is great, and American Dad which I can't help but feel the jokes that weren't funny enough for Family Guy get shoved into, I did a little internet surfing. I was supposed to be working on the campaign, but got distracted by something else (shiny!) I saw on the internet and led into a wikipedia journey through all kinds of topics that eventually landed on Cannibal Corpse, the death metal band.

You long time Google spiders may remember that I listen, nearly exclusively, to rap. You also might remember the Don Imus incident not long ago where he called the women of the Rutgers basketball team "nappy headed hos" and was promptly nominated for the head of the neo nazi KKK coalition. Well, I guess if you're European you might not have heard about it, so basically the guy had a radio show on some major network (honestly, I'd never even heard of the guy before that) and did a sports broadcast and said that, and basically everyone remotely involved with civil rights for African Americans thought he was racist. I didn't really catch it. Nappy is a reference to when your hair looks like you just woke up from a nap (hence, nappy) and is messed up looking, and ho is a shorter term for the word "whore". Basically, he called them ugly sluts.

I'll admit, he probably didn't mean it that way and there was some racial undertones there. This is further accentuated by his actions after the incident when he went on Al Sharpton's radio show to apologize, which Al accepted and still went on to try and destroy the man (moving him to XM radio where he's probably making more money than ever) and blamed rap music for coining the term. Basically, aside from the fact that I can count on my hand the number of times I've heard the term "nappy headed ho" on my hand in rap lyrics, he said (paraphrased from reading in between the lines) "you all can do it, why can't I?", at which point Al Sharpton set his sights on hip hop. But the aftermath of that is a story for another day.

What's my point here is what you're probably wondering. Well, this isn't really my point but we're getting there: Hip hop has been a scapegoat for the countries problems for too long while heavy metal gets a free pass. Let me just start out that I think the whole blaming any kind of media for influencing people is BS. Like when Steve-O from Jackass straps meat to his balls and wades through crocodile pits, you don't sue jackass when your junk gets bit off, he's an idiot and so are you, you know what I mean? Likewise, when you start selling crack (which the real reality is most drug dealers dont' make a whole lot of money anyway, just saying) and beating women because Jeezy "told" you too, you're also an idiot, and when you commit suicide "from" listening to heavy metal, you're still an idiot. Just had to get that out there.

We straight? Good. Now, if you want to blame some kind of media for messing up idiots, take a look at some song titles and album covers from Cannibal Corpse. I mean, if you're the type of person that likes to d-ride musicians over their music, focusing on the guy that talks about a 9 and selling dope on the corner hardly seems worth the time when there's a ton of metal groups out there with disembowled bodies talking about (and I probably wouldn't click on this link) raping corpses and such. Know what I mean? A little bit of crack and a gun hardly seems like it should be worth it to them when it's next to that.

But again, this isn't a criticism of Cannibal Corpse (that's coming up), but a dig at those jokers who are trying to shut these musicians down.

But, I've got to hand it to Cannibal Corpse. In a time when the music industry is taking a crap, these guys can keep the seats filled. I watched a (eh, go ahead and click that one. You won't understand a word the dude is saying unless you're specially tuned to understand growling and if you are probably won't care because you listen to death metal)YouTube video or two of them live (and honestly I was expecting something more along the lines of a Gwar show, but nastier) but it was pretty standard fare for a metal band: long haired dudes moving their hair around and playing instruments.

But here's where it gets fun. Now, I've been on this side of the table before, probably a lot more than you have if you like death metal, but my ultimate point here is being in Cannibal Corpse can't require a whole lot of talent. There, I said it. Obviously, it's a lot more skill than many of us possess, and by the stadiums they play in a lot of people like it (good for them), but I'm talking about relative to similar groups. Like in the way that Jay-Z is simply better in every aspect of rapping than Mike Jones, I'd say there's a lot of metal bands that are a lot better than Cannibal Corpse.

Now, like I just told a black joke, I'm going to say this: Some of my best friends listen to Cannibal Corpse. Personally, it grates on me after a few minutes and I'd rather listen to dozens of other metal bands, none of which I particularly like anyway so I suppose it's a moot point. Usually I just say "What is this, White Snake? Gay." when I hear them playing it.

And I don't even think it's because these dudes aren't talented or skilled, it's just the genre. Death metal pretty much is a dude growling unintelligably about nasty with a drummer hammering away as quickly as possible and repetitive guitar riffs. That's all I hear when I hear this stuff, as opposed to, say, Pantera, where at least they change things up.

I don't know. Probably put too much thought into a 2 minute YouTube clip.