It's the 29th today. Should be seeing my wife on the 3rd or so. Apparently it can be quite a process to make it to here from across the world. I don't remember it being that difficult when I came back from deployment. Basically I showed up at the airport in Bagram, Afghanistan, got on a flight and left. Of course, I took a three week detour in Germany, then went to Qatar for a few hours, then left.
See, when you're deployed, you don't pay taxes. So I jerked around for the better part of a month until the 30th on "official" business, went to Qatar for a few hours until the 1st of the month, then left 5 minutes later, netting me a whole month of tax free pay.
So yeah, I kind of scammed you tax payers. My bad.
Now here's something that's always kind of gotten me. Alright, so if you can travel the world in 24 hours, and if you're always going backwards through the time zones, is it the same day when you get back to where you start? You know what I'm saying? Because if you leave like Atlanta at 4, and travel 4 hours to Los Angeles, it'll still be 4 o'clock when you get there, which is kind of weird. So I figure if you leave Atlanta at 4, travel around the world in 24 hours, it'll be 4 in Atlanta. But will it be the same day?
Because Superman may have been right in Superman 2 when he spun the world backwards to reverse time if that's the case. Because if it works that way, you could travel around the world really fast, and get off of a plane like 50 years later and be really old, but it's still the same day! Weird, right? Of course, you'd probably be an idiot for doing that, unless like you really, really need to grow a long, white beard for some reason.
I don't think it works that way though. It's probably the same time the next day, which really offers you no time travel advantages.
So, with all that in mind, I'm going to completely switch topics. The "good" path for the main quest in the city is completely done, and the "bad" quest has a small section to add. I could be done with it tonight if I don't decide to play Civ 4 instead, which is looking likely.
So what does that mean? I'm probably not going to be done in a few days if I do my list and extras. I could just finish up the "bad" way and call it a day, but I'm not going to do that. Probably won't get a good test in that way either, and frankly the section can be failure prone and I'm doing a lot of new things I haven't tested past my computer (which, I learned from Ch 1, doesn't mean it works everywhere. This engine is...not so good I think). I built in some fool proof stuff that's a little cheesy in case it does and all of the journal entries fire regardless instead of being planted into the cutscene, so even if it fails you can still continue. Do you know how hard it is to start a cutscene in the middle of a battle? I've pulled out some stuff, but Chain Lightning, Weird, Circle of Death and a few other spells have a propensity to fail it for some reason...a lot of stupid delays in the damage scripts I think that keeps the player in a combat state despite scripts to clear that state. It's only a handful of classes that can cast these spells, and they may be beyond the level range of the mod, but better to be safe. So I leave them immortal, change their faction instead of dying, so you can talk to them instead of the death script failing and you being stuck, which is corny but a middle ground.
But it's good progress, the end is near.
Anyway, since I won't make my deadline I'll just wait and add another small section like I was talking about and do my list of extras. It's really not much, but with 4 days left, it's not going to happen. Plus there's been some new mods out so it's all good, right?
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Monday, July 21, 2008
How many text tags can exist at once?
That's five.
Well, anyway, after pulling my hair out for the better part of the week, I've finally made some progress. As many of you know, or not depending on if you've been paying attention (and really, the literacy rates these days...) I'm on the last leg of the journey that is building a mod too big for one person to build. I expect to have the critical paths "done" by the end of the week. That is, if things go differently than they did this week. Because it was a huge pain the ass.
But, y'all cats will see why. You're going to trip.
In retrospect, I think I'm doing it the stupid way. The final (not really, I'll come back to that) quests of the mod modify the mod so much that I should have just made another mod with duplicate areas and just filled it in. Now I'm paiting hundreds of waypoints and spawning and deleting stuff every other cutscene. But screw it, it's already mostly done.
It's pretty wild though. Hopefully it doesn't suck because getting the thing to work properly has been a huge hassle.
Anyway, now back to what I was talking about two paragraphs ago, the "final" quest. See, the thing is, the city portion is open ended, so you don't necessarily have to do that one last, and when it's done you can keep going with sidequests. What I'm concerned about now is whether that's a sufficient "ending" to the module. There's two quest chains that are required to proceed to the third, and currently non-existant, chapter. So you could do those two first (well, probably not because you'll need a level or two and some gear to have a shot I think), and then do sidequests until it's done, which I don't think is a very satisifying ending.
So I was thinking about adding on the beginning of Chapter 3 as the ending of Chapter 2 instead, so at least it doesn't end on a diretionless sidequest frenzy. What do you all think?
Thing about that is, I got my wife's leave date, the 2nd of August. Which is great for the family here, but not so great for you all. I was originally projected to be the 7th. So I basically lost a week of time to finish this.
So bearing in mind that if I add an extra chunk, it probably wouldn't be out until September. I could probably get that done before she comes, but my list of "extras" wouldn't make the cut, which I want to do at least some of them.
I guess we'll see how much time I have left later this week and take it from there.
But what do you all think? Weird non-ending now, or a month delay for another 15-20 minutes for a better ending?
Well, anyway, after pulling my hair out for the better part of the week, I've finally made some progress. As many of you know, or not depending on if you've been paying attention (and really, the literacy rates these days...) I'm on the last leg of the journey that is building a mod too big for one person to build. I expect to have the critical paths "done" by the end of the week. That is, if things go differently than they did this week. Because it was a huge pain the ass.
But, y'all cats will see why. You're going to trip.
In retrospect, I think I'm doing it the stupid way. The final (not really, I'll come back to that) quests of the mod modify the mod so much that I should have just made another mod with duplicate areas and just filled it in. Now I'm paiting hundreds of waypoints and spawning and deleting stuff every other cutscene. But screw it, it's already mostly done.
It's pretty wild though. Hopefully it doesn't suck because getting the thing to work properly has been a huge hassle.
Anyway, now back to what I was talking about two paragraphs ago, the "final" quest. See, the thing is, the city portion is open ended, so you don't necessarily have to do that one last, and when it's done you can keep going with sidequests. What I'm concerned about now is whether that's a sufficient "ending" to the module. There's two quest chains that are required to proceed to the third, and currently non-existant, chapter. So you could do those two first (well, probably not because you'll need a level or two and some gear to have a shot I think), and then do sidequests until it's done, which I don't think is a very satisifying ending.
So I was thinking about adding on the beginning of Chapter 3 as the ending of Chapter 2 instead, so at least it doesn't end on a diretionless sidequest frenzy. What do you all think?
Thing about that is, I got my wife's leave date, the 2nd of August. Which is great for the family here, but not so great for you all. I was originally projected to be the 7th. So I basically lost a week of time to finish this.
So bearing in mind that if I add an extra chunk, it probably wouldn't be out until September. I could probably get that done before she comes, but my list of "extras" wouldn't make the cut, which I want to do at least some of them.
I guess we'll see how much time I have left later this week and take it from there.
But what do you all think? Weird non-ending now, or a month delay for another 15-20 minutes for a better ending?
Monday, July 14, 2008
Vacation != Me
A little comparison operator humor in the title. Could be my lamest joke to date. Determing that may be my next poll.
In any case I'm back, fully fingered, mostly because I didn't actually light any fireworks this year, with the rest of that because being I'm not an idiot. See, last few years the cops have been hammering down on illegal fireworks, and in Wisconsin the legal ones basically are either snakes, sparklers, marigolds (kind of like sparklers, used to light better fireworks mostly), and 3 inch tall fountains.
So there's really no point in even bothering with that, I'm not going to lower myself to lighting sparklers just for the sake of lighting fireworks. I like to think I'm a better man than that. A man who appreciates a good mortar or finding a dud from the 4th on the beach and throwing it into a campfire.
Speaking of Wisconsin, and again bringing up brats, where I'm from there we have a brat fry basically every Sunday year round. Not "we" as in my family, but like going to the parking lot of basically any business establishment anywhere and finding a group of people cooking brats. Which nobody else in the country does, and I find that bizarre. I mean, they're good as hell and an any time of day type meal. Although here in Tennessee, they seem to like to sell either pit bulls or shoes in all of the parking lots. I'll leave that to you to decide which is better (hint: a brat fry).
I also managed to golf for the second time this year, which was a lot of fun. Not that I'm any good at it, ignoring that I did hit this beautiful 250 yard drive that split the fairway. I'm almost at the point where I can hit the ball every time without messing up and rolling it 50 feet because I topped it, but not quite past hitting 3-4 putts every hole.
In any case, I got back a few days ago, and rather than putting up a blog post like all "I'm back" and then talking about nonsense and then people are like "welcome back I guess" or "I like your blog follow this link to some kind of money scam I can't read because the site's in Spanish", I waited a few days so I could say something about my NWN2 campaign. Yeah I know, even I forget sometimes that's what this blog is really about.
Anyway, I've now finished all of the noble house quests, which basically leaves the last section of the main quest and I'm, more or less, done. I have a list of "extras" I want to add, like more companion interjections, some item hunt crap, maybe a pick pocket system and some consequence encounters from how you treat NPCs, but none of that is really critical and I'll do it as long as time permits. Because my wife is coming back for 18 days from Iraq in August, and this WILL be on the Vault before then (thank you again to everyone who's tested throughout, it's really because of that I can pop it out a week or two after the content is done). How much extra is directly related to how much time I have left after finishing the main quest.
Which should be quite a bit, even with an alternate "evil" ending I'm adding. There's one, possibly two areas to build depending on how far I want to take the main quest sequence, but most of it is spawning things and a few cutscenes, I expect to be "done" by the end of this week if things go well.
So that's pretty much that.
Really Late EDIT!!!!
I almost forgot about this.
So anway, I usually have a TV series I like to kick back and watch from time to time. Having seen Oz, Rome, Deadwood, The Shield, and waiting on The Wire, I'm in between shows now. I remember when I was a bit younger, they used to play anime on the Sci Fi channel Saturday mornings, so I've seen like a handful of them. I always thought they were kind of cool, but I don't even know what's good and what's not besides Ninja Scroll.
So I went on a little digging expedition to see what's what, and here's what I came up with. If you all have seen these joints, let me know what's good:
Boogiepop Phantom: The name is awful in pretty much every way imagineable, but these Japanese, evidenced by their RPGs, wouldn't know something cool if I kicked them in their collective asses (still mad I haven't gotten a letter from them like all: Hey Dirty, you're cool!"). It's supposed to be some Twilight Zone type horror stuff, though.
Elfen Lied: Another awfully named horror type joint. Not sure who exactly Elfen is, but he (or she, it's a bit androgenous) is apparently full of it. Um, not sure what to say here. There's a half naked broad on the box?
Gantz: See what I'm saying? Boogiepop, Elfen, Gantz, it's like they pulled their titles out of a Shining Force game. This is supposed to be like ultra nasty horror/action, which works for me. One of the things I discovered about anime is that they are big on using all of their blood red colored ink.
Gungrave: Well, this one comes in a blood red cube instead of a box, which again attests that they Japanese really like their cartoons bloody, or just have an affinity towards red. This one is about a guy that comes back from the dead to kill, which is awesome. However, they kind of dropped the ball by naming the hero "Brandon" instead of "John H. Gungrave" or something like that.
Hellsing: Well, this has nothing to do with Hugh Jackman, Andrew Jackson, Action Jackson, nor "Downtown" Willie Brown, though those last three may come as no surprise. Pretty similar though, guy fights vampires and whatnot. Looks a bit dull, but who knows?
Noir: This looks a little on the artsy side to me, but there's supposed to be a lot of killing popping off. Whatever, I don't know.
Serial Experiments Lain: Again awfully titled. Also about a 13 year old girl. However, it's supposed to be more horror themed and weird, which could be fun. What can I say, the Japanese even like their animated horror stars young. And there's also probably a lot of blood and other weird crap.
So, any input? I know somebody who reads this likes anime, don't be shy now.
In any case I'm back, fully fingered, mostly because I didn't actually light any fireworks this year, with the rest of that because being I'm not an idiot. See, last few years the cops have been hammering down on illegal fireworks, and in Wisconsin the legal ones basically are either snakes, sparklers, marigolds (kind of like sparklers, used to light better fireworks mostly), and 3 inch tall fountains.
So there's really no point in even bothering with that, I'm not going to lower myself to lighting sparklers just for the sake of lighting fireworks. I like to think I'm a better man than that. A man who appreciates a good mortar or finding a dud from the 4th on the beach and throwing it into a campfire.
Speaking of Wisconsin, and again bringing up brats, where I'm from there we have a brat fry basically every Sunday year round. Not "we" as in my family, but like going to the parking lot of basically any business establishment anywhere and finding a group of people cooking brats. Which nobody else in the country does, and I find that bizarre. I mean, they're good as hell and an any time of day type meal. Although here in Tennessee, they seem to like to sell either pit bulls or shoes in all of the parking lots. I'll leave that to you to decide which is better (hint: a brat fry).
I also managed to golf for the second time this year, which was a lot of fun. Not that I'm any good at it, ignoring that I did hit this beautiful 250 yard drive that split the fairway. I'm almost at the point where I can hit the ball every time without messing up and rolling it 50 feet because I topped it, but not quite past hitting 3-4 putts every hole.
In any case, I got back a few days ago, and rather than putting up a blog post like all "I'm back" and then talking about nonsense and then people are like "welcome back I guess" or "I like your blog follow this link to some kind of money scam I can't read because the site's in Spanish", I waited a few days so I could say something about my NWN2 campaign. Yeah I know, even I forget sometimes that's what this blog is really about.
Anyway, I've now finished all of the noble house quests, which basically leaves the last section of the main quest and I'm, more or less, done. I have a list of "extras" I want to add, like more companion interjections, some item hunt crap, maybe a pick pocket system and some consequence encounters from how you treat NPCs, but none of that is really critical and I'll do it as long as time permits. Because my wife is coming back for 18 days from Iraq in August, and this WILL be on the Vault before then (thank you again to everyone who's tested throughout, it's really because of that I can pop it out a week or two after the content is done). How much extra is directly related to how much time I have left after finishing the main quest.
Which should be quite a bit, even with an alternate "evil" ending I'm adding. There's one, possibly two areas to build depending on how far I want to take the main quest sequence, but most of it is spawning things and a few cutscenes, I expect to be "done" by the end of this week if things go well.
So that's pretty much that.
Really Late EDIT!!!!
I almost forgot about this.
So anway, I usually have a TV series I like to kick back and watch from time to time. Having seen Oz, Rome, Deadwood, The Shield, and waiting on The Wire, I'm in between shows now. I remember when I was a bit younger, they used to play anime on the Sci Fi channel Saturday mornings, so I've seen like a handful of them. I always thought they were kind of cool, but I don't even know what's good and what's not besides Ninja Scroll.
So I went on a little digging expedition to see what's what, and here's what I came up with. If you all have seen these joints, let me know what's good:
Boogiepop Phantom: The name is awful in pretty much every way imagineable, but these Japanese, evidenced by their RPGs, wouldn't know something cool if I kicked them in their collective asses (still mad I haven't gotten a letter from them like all: Hey Dirty, you're cool!"). It's supposed to be some Twilight Zone type horror stuff, though.
Elfen Lied: Another awfully named horror type joint. Not sure who exactly Elfen is, but he (or she, it's a bit androgenous) is apparently full of it. Um, not sure what to say here. There's a half naked broad on the box?
Gantz: See what I'm saying? Boogiepop, Elfen, Gantz, it's like they pulled their titles out of a Shining Force game. This is supposed to be like ultra nasty horror/action, which works for me. One of the things I discovered about anime is that they are big on using all of their blood red colored ink.
Gungrave: Well, this one comes in a blood red cube instead of a box, which again attests that they Japanese really like their cartoons bloody, or just have an affinity towards red. This one is about a guy that comes back from the dead to kill, which is awesome. However, they kind of dropped the ball by naming the hero "Brandon" instead of "John H. Gungrave" or something like that.
Hellsing: Well, this has nothing to do with Hugh Jackman, Andrew Jackson, Action Jackson, nor "Downtown" Willie Brown, though those last three may come as no surprise. Pretty similar though, guy fights vampires and whatnot. Looks a bit dull, but who knows?
Noir: This looks a little on the artsy side to me, but there's supposed to be a lot of killing popping off. Whatever, I don't know.
Serial Experiments Lain: Again awfully titled. Also about a 13 year old girl. However, it's supposed to be more horror themed and weird, which could be fun. What can I say, the Japanese even like their animated horror stars young. And there's also probably a lot of blood and other weird crap.
So, any input? I know somebody who reads this likes anime, don't be shy now.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Vacation
I'm going to visit the family over the 4th, so I'll be out for the next week and a half.
Alright, that's all.
Alright, that's all.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
4 To Go
The other day at my daughter's gymnastics class, which I don't participate in leaving me a good chunk of time to sit around and do nothing in a building that's not my house, I picked up this magazine they have. One of the things I like about my dentist is that he has Sports Illustrated and ESPN magazine; I'm not a real big sports fan, but it beats the hell out of Ebony or Redbook or the other BS that's at the gymnastics place. But I did check out this Entrepreneur (or something like that) magazine, which had Mark Ecko on the cover. Apparently the dude is a billionaire.
Then it occured to me that I don't have any of his clothes in my wardrobe, which, you'll note from earlier I have about an hour to kill with little to do, got me thinking why I don't, you'd, or perhaps I'd, think I'd like those kind of clothes being a big hip hop fan and all. But I don't really get in to those stupid urban/rapper clothing lines that much. And I figured out why: Most of these rappers look like they raided their grandma's old clothes box.
Seriously, look at these guys. I guess the last thing I want to do is take fashion advice from guys who wear diamond earrings the size of a marble, shiny tennis bracelets, and fur coats (dude, my mom wants a fur coat).
I do want to know how they keep their hats on, but can never keep on their shirts, or some kind of half-shirts like they couldn't decide what goes where even if it looks a little suggestive in a bad way.
Also, here's a hilariously misleading condom ad.
But on to the update:
Those are two areas I did this week to further the noble house quests. As the title suggests, only 4 more quests to go, then the two final stages of the main quest and that about does it. Getting very close now, and not much to talk about, hence my tirade above and below.
Now, more Baldur's Gate:
Last time, I had just left the prologue on my quest to find out why people are trying to kill me and succeeding in killing Gorion. Turns out this involves a lot of walking and stumbling in to things. Since the only thing I know about so far is a pile of loot to the north I can steal from Gorion's corpse, that's the first stop:
Then I stumbled into more things, like these guys:
Meet Xzar and Monteron, two mildly annoying guys. One is near worthless in battle, the other when scripted tries to hide in shadows constantly instead of moving to his waypoint (also, the pathing in this game is terrible, again I'll chalk that up to age because the logarithms used today may not have even existed or been too costly to use). Anyway, didn't know this when I said it's cool to come along, plus a full party is better than nothing.
Anyway, I told them I had to go north to the Friendly Arms Inn to meet some friends instead of going south to Nakresh like they want to. Hopefully, I thought to myself, I will find some sidequests and and a CGI(?) cutscene. And I wasn't disappointed.
After arriving in town and being nearly murdered again, I found some more friends, Jaheira and Khalid:
I'm assuming because there is no more space for companions, that I have a full party. That means sidequest time. The first one I found was from what appears to be a completely nude woman who lost her ring.
Obviously I accepted, as it seems simple enough and I haven't seen a game yet that punishes you for taking quests, often puzzling why a "no" option even exists because you can just ignore them anyway (luckily, many BG quests you just get from talking to a guy...but you can ignore them.) I did that, killed the hobgoblin who had the ring, but his corpse was sort of behind a tree so I didn't notice it and continued north thinking it was up there, where I found a whole new batch of sidequests, including some bandits who you literally scalp, which is kind of nasty.
I don't know why an innkeeper would want to buy a dead guy's filthy bandit hair, but I don't ask those questions.
A little further north I found a farmer who's son is missing, which I'm supposed to find. After a very brief time looking, I ran into one of these things.
Notice my party is a little smaller? Yeah, that's because these things can literally explode your guys into a spray of body parts. They don't just regular kill them. It lead to this screen:
That's my hand melting away.
So after a reload, I did manage to win but lost most of my party again. I just wanted to see if I could do it.
But, after careful consideration, I decided I'm in the wrong area because these things are a little strong for a level 1 party; even Xzar with his 4 hit points and no offensive damaging spells was having trouble. I think that's why he bothered me to go south to Narakesh. He was punished for it, because I'm evil:
I made him wear a belt that made him a woman. Then Jaheira started bugging me too about going there, and so did my journal:
Most of the quests end in "by the way, maybe we should go south to Narakesh?" So I caved in, lacking another gender bending belt.
And here I am at level 2:
Then it occured to me that I don't have any of his clothes in my wardrobe, which, you'll note from earlier I have about an hour to kill with little to do, got me thinking why I don't, you'd, or perhaps I'd, think I'd like those kind of clothes being a big hip hop fan and all. But I don't really get in to those stupid urban/rapper clothing lines that much. And I figured out why: Most of these rappers look like they raided their grandma's old clothes box.
Seriously, look at these guys. I guess the last thing I want to do is take fashion advice from guys who wear diamond earrings the size of a marble, shiny tennis bracelets, and fur coats (dude, my mom wants a fur coat).
I do want to know how they keep their hats on, but can never keep on their shirts, or some kind of half-shirts like they couldn't decide what goes where even if it looks a little suggestive in a bad way.
Also, here's a hilariously misleading condom ad.
But on to the update:
Those are two areas I did this week to further the noble house quests. As the title suggests, only 4 more quests to go, then the two final stages of the main quest and that about does it. Getting very close now, and not much to talk about, hence my tirade above and below.
Now, more Baldur's Gate:
Last time, I had just left the prologue on my quest to find out why people are trying to kill me and succeeding in killing Gorion. Turns out this involves a lot of walking and stumbling in to things. Since the only thing I know about so far is a pile of loot to the north I can steal from Gorion's corpse, that's the first stop:
Then I stumbled into more things, like these guys:
Meet Xzar and Monteron, two mildly annoying guys. One is near worthless in battle, the other when scripted tries to hide in shadows constantly instead of moving to his waypoint (also, the pathing in this game is terrible, again I'll chalk that up to age because the logarithms used today may not have even existed or been too costly to use). Anyway, didn't know this when I said it's cool to come along, plus a full party is better than nothing.
Anyway, I told them I had to go north to the Friendly Arms Inn to meet some friends instead of going south to Nakresh like they want to. Hopefully, I thought to myself, I will find some sidequests and and a CGI(?) cutscene. And I wasn't disappointed.
After arriving in town and being nearly murdered again, I found some more friends, Jaheira and Khalid:
I'm assuming because there is no more space for companions, that I have a full party. That means sidequest time. The first one I found was from what appears to be a completely nude woman who lost her ring.
Obviously I accepted, as it seems simple enough and I haven't seen a game yet that punishes you for taking quests, often puzzling why a "no" option even exists because you can just ignore them anyway (luckily, many BG quests you just get from talking to a guy...but you can ignore them.) I did that, killed the hobgoblin who had the ring, but his corpse was sort of behind a tree so I didn't notice it and continued north thinking it was up there, where I found a whole new batch of sidequests, including some bandits who you literally scalp, which is kind of nasty.
I don't know why an innkeeper would want to buy a dead guy's filthy bandit hair, but I don't ask those questions.
A little further north I found a farmer who's son is missing, which I'm supposed to find. After a very brief time looking, I ran into one of these things.
Notice my party is a little smaller? Yeah, that's because these things can literally explode your guys into a spray of body parts. They don't just regular kill them. It lead to this screen:
That's my hand melting away.
So after a reload, I did manage to win but lost most of my party again. I just wanted to see if I could do it.
But, after careful consideration, I decided I'm in the wrong area because these things are a little strong for a level 1 party; even Xzar with his 4 hit points and no offensive damaging spells was having trouble. I think that's why he bothered me to go south to Narakesh. He was punished for it, because I'm evil:
I made him wear a belt that made him a woman. Then Jaheira started bugging me too about going there, and so did my journal:
Most of the quests end in "by the way, maybe we should go south to Narakesh?" So I caved in, lacking another gender bending belt.
And here I am at level 2:
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Baldur's Gate
First of all, I've got your Subtlety of Thay needs covered here. So don't even trip on that. I guess I should lightly touch on the poll options: You all suck. Not much support for neither the Wild West or Kung Fu. That's cool though.
See for my next project, during my break between Ch 2 and possibly continuing, which I'll probably pick it back up one day but I need to switch gears for a bit, I was puzzling out what exactly I wanted to do. I had an idea similar to Seekers where there would be a central "hub" level, and you could go open portals or something to unrelated, random plots in an effort to get out of the "hub", but since that's pretty much been done by Seekers, and nobody really seems to appreciate the brilliance in such an idea, I'm going to go ahead and take a pass.
My other idea was to put something in the Chult area, because jungles and such haven't really been done outside of Tomoachan, but the new expansion pack seems to have that covered really well. However, I thought they didn't really do justice to Thay in MotB (yeah, the Red Wizards are good natured...kind of forgot to put the evil ones in there...), so maybe they won't make jungles cool?
Nah, it'll probably be pretty dope, and there will probably be a lot of cool jungle themed stuff too.
But, that leaves me with my last idea, which I'm not going to go into other than it's going to have a mild Wild West theme to it. Could have been Wild West/Kung Fu! But you all messed that up. For shame.
Nah, I'm not mad. Kung Fu wouldn't have been that great because you can't really go Shadowboxing vs. Crane style when everyone's a monk with 3 animations. Plus there's no David Carradine head model. But there's definately going to be some Wild West overtones happening, and it's definately going to be a lot smaller a project than this one.
In any case, I was talking about how I got GameTap and downloaded Baldur's Gate. Well, I tried it with a character and realized I really had no idea how the AD&D ruleset worked and didn't like my poorly statted multi-class Fighter/Mage because I saw everyone gain levels while my character was still level 1, a few thousand XP away from level 2, and with 6 hit points, so I started over. But this time, I documented it.
So, let's go!
In any case, from my previous run through I just know that resting is a MFer without healing spells, and to avoid dealing with it I'll just play a cleric. I know they need Wisdom, but I basically hit reroll until I ended up with pretty high numbers across the board since I have no idea what the numbers actually do.
It kind of makes me wonder with all the hating on 4E, did the same thing happen when they went from AD&D to 3E? Because this is kind of insane, and the lack of explanations in the game didn't help matters.
So anyway, with that in mind I chose the first portrait I saw, and since he doesn't really look like that nice of a guy and more like that giant from Fearless, so he's definately evil, nearly as big, but probably not nearly as strong. After all the other things I filled in that I didn't know what they were, I got to the name.
Allow me to introduce you to "Crazy Legs" O'Hooly, only named so because O'Flannigan and O'Hoolie were too long, but dropping the "" around Crazy Legs would have just been silly.
So, off we went to the Inn. After freaking out (I'm evil, remember?) at the Inn Keeper about his lame joke, he didn't want to talk to me anymore. Until seconds later when I clicked him again and checked out the inventory. Couldn't afford any good armor and have enough left over for a weapon, so I left to go get some more money. That means random tasks for strangers, folks! Because I can't pick locks and depsite my gigantic size have trouble cracking open drawers and chests. Need a rogue. Or is it thief?
I did a few like finding a book in cow feed, delivering a sword pretending like I didn't steal it and intend to sell it, until I found this gem: The combat simulator 3000. It's cool, because basically this guys summons opposition, except they can't hurt you. So what did I do? Summoned as many guys as I could!
Then I tried to unequip everyone's stuff and give it to my character, but when they dump you out of that area they take all your stuff. Touche Bioware, touche.
Anyway, I also found this quest:
You all see that I got the Rat highlighted? A rat in the cellar quest? Are you kidding me?
I think I'm going to give them a pass though. Could very well be that this game is old enough to be the origin of the rat in the cellar level 1 quest cliche. I didn't let it bother me and killed the rats.
So finally I had enough money to buy some stuff and headed over to the Inn. Got tore up from the floor up (sorry I can't think of anything that works with geared up. Geared up to the weird up? I don't know.) and split, ready to find Gorion. Told him yeah, I'm ready to go. Then he died.
Then I met Imoen, who seems a bit perky (and really, her portrait doesn't look like a young kid like the game says she is, or is that just me? And does she call you gay when you select her?) for an evil giant to be kicking it with, but I'm not walking around alone and somebody needs to break into cabinets for me.
And that's the end of today's Baldur's Gate. Next time, walking around the woods, seeing graphics glitches, and possibly several ambushes as I attempt to rest.
See for my next project, during my break between Ch 2 and possibly continuing, which I'll probably pick it back up one day but I need to switch gears for a bit, I was puzzling out what exactly I wanted to do. I had an idea similar to Seekers where there would be a central "hub" level, and you could go open portals or something to unrelated, random plots in an effort to get out of the "hub", but since that's pretty much been done by Seekers, and nobody really seems to appreciate the brilliance in such an idea, I'm going to go ahead and take a pass.
My other idea was to put something in the Chult area, because jungles and such haven't really been done outside of Tomoachan, but the new expansion pack seems to have that covered really well. However, I thought they didn't really do justice to Thay in MotB (yeah, the Red Wizards are good natured...kind of forgot to put the evil ones in there...), so maybe they won't make jungles cool?
Nah, it'll probably be pretty dope, and there will probably be a lot of cool jungle themed stuff too.
But, that leaves me with my last idea, which I'm not going to go into other than it's going to have a mild Wild West theme to it. Could have been Wild West/Kung Fu! But you all messed that up. For shame.
Nah, I'm not mad. Kung Fu wouldn't have been that great because you can't really go Shadowboxing vs. Crane style when everyone's a monk with 3 animations. Plus there's no David Carradine head model. But there's definately going to be some Wild West overtones happening, and it's definately going to be a lot smaller a project than this one.
In any case, I was talking about how I got GameTap and downloaded Baldur's Gate. Well, I tried it with a character and realized I really had no idea how the AD&D ruleset worked and didn't like my poorly statted multi-class Fighter/Mage because I saw everyone gain levels while my character was still level 1, a few thousand XP away from level 2, and with 6 hit points, so I started over. But this time, I documented it.
So, let's go!
In any case, from my previous run through I just know that resting is a MFer without healing spells, and to avoid dealing with it I'll just play a cleric. I know they need Wisdom, but I basically hit reroll until I ended up with pretty high numbers across the board since I have no idea what the numbers actually do.
It kind of makes me wonder with all the hating on 4E, did the same thing happen when they went from AD&D to 3E? Because this is kind of insane, and the lack of explanations in the game didn't help matters.
So anyway, with that in mind I chose the first portrait I saw, and since he doesn't really look like that nice of a guy and more like that giant from Fearless, so he's definately evil, nearly as big, but probably not nearly as strong. After all the other things I filled in that I didn't know what they were, I got to the name.
Allow me to introduce you to "Crazy Legs" O'Hooly, only named so because O'Flannigan and O'Hoolie were too long, but dropping the "" around Crazy Legs would have just been silly.
So, off we went to the Inn. After freaking out (I'm evil, remember?) at the Inn Keeper about his lame joke, he didn't want to talk to me anymore. Until seconds later when I clicked him again and checked out the inventory. Couldn't afford any good armor and have enough left over for a weapon, so I left to go get some more money. That means random tasks for strangers, folks! Because I can't pick locks and depsite my gigantic size have trouble cracking open drawers and chests. Need a rogue. Or is it thief?
I did a few like finding a book in cow feed, delivering a sword pretending like I didn't steal it and intend to sell it, until I found this gem: The combat simulator 3000. It's cool, because basically this guys summons opposition, except they can't hurt you. So what did I do? Summoned as many guys as I could!
Then I tried to unequip everyone's stuff and give it to my character, but when they dump you out of that area they take all your stuff. Touche Bioware, touche.
Anyway, I also found this quest:
You all see that I got the Rat highlighted? A rat in the cellar quest? Are you kidding me?
I think I'm going to give them a pass though. Could very well be that this game is old enough to be the origin of the rat in the cellar level 1 quest cliche. I didn't let it bother me and killed the rats.
So finally I had enough money to buy some stuff and headed over to the Inn. Got tore up from the floor up (sorry I can't think of anything that works with geared up. Geared up to the weird up? I don't know.) and split, ready to find Gorion. Told him yeah, I'm ready to go. Then he died.
Then I met Imoen, who seems a bit perky (and really, her portrait doesn't look like a young kid like the game says she is, or is that just me? And does she call you gay when you select her?) for an evil giant to be kicking it with, but I'm not walking around alone and somebody needs to break into cabinets for me.
And that's the end of today's Baldur's Gate. Next time, walking around the woods, seeing graphics glitches, and possibly several ambushes as I attempt to rest.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
The Last House is Done
And it couldn't have come at a better time. Nothing particularly special about the time that it did other than I made what seems like dozens of dozens of bedrooms. Let me tell you, where there's only like 4 beds that looks nice, a handful of rugs, and a few cabinets, making bedrooms that look distinct from one another can prove difficult. And tiresome, for that matter.
But it's over, and I feel good. Want to see some screens of the last one? No? Well you're going to have to if you want to read the rest of this post, because I'm embedding them below.
And that's that. Next, I really need to sit down and figure out exactly how I want this to play out. I don't want it to feel thrown together, but rather a (limited, I'm not that smart) intricate plot that when you piece it together you're like "oh!", from 6 different points of view. I'll probably take a few minutes tomorrow to do that in between my nap and my post nap rest. Taking a nap can be tiring, I'm almost 26.
But yeah, that's where I'm at. I hope, by the end of the month, to be done with the noble houses, take my 4th of July break for a week or so, and wrap this thing up by mid-July. I was pretty close with the June ball park figure all those months ago. I'm a little peeved that I didn't make it, but that's life. I just don't think I can put the quality I want down on these last parts in two weeks. I can get quite a bit more done in another two weeks; it doesn't seem like much time, but for real, I spend at least 40 hours a week working on this. Another 80 hours is a lot of time.
But anyway, that's all I got. No off topic stuff this week, other than today I got GameTap and will finally play Baldur's Gate for the first time. I have no expectations of it, other than people talk about it like it's the next coming of Christ. That's an achievable standard I think. Dude was only a carpenter, right? Big deal, I built a shelf in 6th grade wood shop.
So if Baldur's Gate doesn't build me a shelf, I'm going to be pissed.
But it's over, and I feel good. Want to see some screens of the last one? No? Well you're going to have to if you want to read the rest of this post, because I'm embedding them below.
And that's that. Next, I really need to sit down and figure out exactly how I want this to play out. I don't want it to feel thrown together, but rather a (limited, I'm not that smart) intricate plot that when you piece it together you're like "oh!", from 6 different points of view. I'll probably take a few minutes tomorrow to do that in between my nap and my post nap rest. Taking a nap can be tiring, I'm almost 26.
But yeah, that's where I'm at. I hope, by the end of the month, to be done with the noble houses, take my 4th of July break for a week or so, and wrap this thing up by mid-July. I was pretty close with the June ball park figure all those months ago. I'm a little peeved that I didn't make it, but that's life. I just don't think I can put the quality I want down on these last parts in two weeks. I can get quite a bit more done in another two weeks; it doesn't seem like much time, but for real, I spend at least 40 hours a week working on this. Another 80 hours is a lot of time.
But anyway, that's all I got. No off topic stuff this week, other than today I got GameTap and will finally play Baldur's Gate for the first time. I have no expectations of it, other than people talk about it like it's the next coming of Christ. That's an achievable standard I think. Dude was only a carpenter, right? Big deal, I built a shelf in 6th grade wood shop.
So if Baldur's Gate doesn't build me a shelf, I'm going to be pissed.
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