Update of 12.

Well my updates come further apart, although they seem to be feeling close together. I find myself consistantly looking for a new position so I can get the money worries out of my face so I can worry about the things that really matter. I've been feeling unproductive as of late mostly because of the bills rolling in and me having just enough to cover expenses.

The module has sadly taken a backseat as I reprioritize and try and get some extra sleep and hopefully an interview. 12 days have passed since I last updated here and I just feel like I'm lost in the shuffle of my own life. I have even begun taking less of a role in the Game Design Challenges where I found myself weekly. I leave every day at 7:30 and get home around 6:00. That's almost 12 hours gone to work alone, leaving me with 8 hours to sleep and 4 hours to get things done. It almost seems like my entire week is about to be come scheduled from waking moment to pillow time. We shall see, maybe that will make me more productive... also, should I schedule free time?

Branching Out...

I have been busy as of late thinking about a new job and currently working at HMV. Sadly I love the people I work with, but it's not paying the bills. I am currently looking into a tech support job at Telus, while I work on my module, portfolio and my resume. I've also taken up jogging, because I am apparently in good shape on the outside, but rotten on the inside.

I just got my Module Making book in the mail and hopefully this will give me a bit better of an understanding of scripting. The part of my module I'm at right now involves creating the city layout in the toolset, but there are certain triggers and things I need to understand before I go further. Also, as much as I want this to be my career I still want to enjoy Edmonton a bit more anyway before getting into it. I mean don't get me wrong, if they called tomorrow and asked I'd sprint right over for the interview. But I know that once I get a position in there I'll pretty much move in and learn from as many people as will allow me. I plan to learn as much as I can about every aspect of game design once I'm in a company. I want to especially know testing, marketing, design, and the whole implementation phase. But for now I will deal with the jobs I do have and work towards my goal of working at Bioware... some time soon hopefully.

Burnout.

So I've been working, busing, sleeping and generally in that order for the past few weeks. I kept coming up with story ideas, discussing them with my friends and coworkers and they've been a great help. Sure at the time a comment like "That sounds like Lord of the Rings" doesn't seem helpful, but it was very helpful and made me change the scope of my project. The project has been revised many times already and in each revision I have learned something new. Revision 1 was I knew nothing about the module editor, 2 was understanding the conversation editor, 3 was to cut the scope of my story down, 4 was what order I should do things in and now I'm on to the 5th chapter.

Currently my story is about your character who is charged by the fates to help overthrow a crazed king. You meet 3 others along the way and they will all help in your battles. The only thing I want scripting wise is to figure out a way to enable automatic healing. For example, instead of having to rest between battles when it's safe, I want it to assume you would and just heal you back to full mostly to keep the story going between battles instead of stopping and wasting a minute or two per battle.

Either way the newest story is short, to the point and action packed. I just need to figure out how to actually start it off once all the characters have been completed and the areas finished. Anyway that's it for now, back to work for me!

The Sacrifice.

After passing up many hours of gaming today, I have become active once again in my moderator duties on Game Career Guide's forums. I also wrote out my revamped idea for a Neverwinter Nights module and ordered a book on NWN Scripting. For the moment I know exactly how I want things to go, it's just a matter of transferring it into Neverwinter Nights. Also, I'm trying to figure out a way to make a script that will allow for more freedom during play.

The concept? I want a list of people for you to kill and you get to choose the order, but it will have to increase in difficulty as you progress through the game. Hopefully the forums will help me out and if not, maybe my engineer friend can lend a few ideas. Also, I want a random event that can alter who you're targeting almost like confusing, but messing with the view so that you the player chooses to attack the wrong person! I'll let you know how that goes... Back to the module making, oh and my musical choices this week consist of three things: Stratovarius, Richard Cheese and Powerglove. Look them all up if you've never heard of them!

Till next time!