Good news and bad news

The good ones first: today, I finally got the rain working the way I wanted it to. Also after working through the whole weekend, the skeleton is actually intact and the game is nearly completable. Just a few things to fix in the ending and we`re set. The cutscene-videos are also now nearly done, only two more cutscenes need their images. I`ve put a couple of screenshots of the slideshow-videos below, just so that you get the idea. Tomorrow, I will make the last two videos and start focusing on the character-animations.





























Then the bad news: I had a recording day on sunday and all the days recording are unusable.
For some reason the volume went so low that even after amplifying, the volume level is much too low. Also, the filesize of the game will be pretty huge. Right now, with just the scripted game and one song the complied size of the game is 12mb and if I`m correct, after putting in the .avis and rest of the music (6-7 songs) the filesize will be over 100mb.

Anyway, I will be having a studio-day on friday. That day I will be recording the guitars for the soundtrack for the 2nd time and also Keith`s voice in cutscenes. Voice will be provided by yours truly. The piano-parts of the music will have to wait two-three weeks, so I can forget the estimations of the game being out earlier than predicted. Instead, the end of April still seems pretty accurate. Hopefully so at least.

My head hurts...

...for making another longer-than-healthy day with AaS. At least the item-graphics are done, now only graphics I need are the cutscenes, which I plan to do with Adobe Premiere, in .avi -format. It`s just easier for me to put all the things I`ve planned together that way. The scripting went also forward and by the looks of it, I think I`ll have the skeleton done by the end of the week. I also added a new puzzle to the game which I hadn`t written beforehand(meaning I improvised it today). It may not be that good, but at least it explains some things better and -of course- longens the game a bit.

Looking good, now I`ll rest my case and go enjoy a bright sunny spring day. :)

Món Day

Whew, a very lazy day. I`m actually amazed I managed to pull myself together to actually doing this today. Nevertheless, another room has been completed with puzzles and script. Only 4 to go, yay! I hope to get the skeleton of the game together this week, so that I have enough time for the cutscenes, music and beta-testing. No problems, so far. Better get some sleep now, me be dead tired...

Party!

Yes! Finally my classes are over for this week and I`ve also done all the backgrounds for the game. Now it`s time to party like it`s nine-teen-ninety-nine! I will get back to After a Shadow on Monday. As I don`t have to keep any classes for the next two weeks, I`ll have all the time for the game I want so hopefully I`ll get it to the condition where I can release it. But for now, let the good times roll!

Ne-vah!

No, not even if I try as hard as I can, I can never keep up with my promises to myself and so, one background still remains to be drawn. As with some objects and couple of NPC:s. And the rest of the week goes attending other matters, so I`ll be virtually unable to make any progress this week. I`ll try hard tomorrow, but time will tell do I really have the chance to get to designing again. Nevertheless, one more screenshot from the game:

















The image still needs a little work, like some objects around the house to make it feel more real but after the core-game has been completed, I`ll have time to attend to those matters better. Graphics aside, everything is looking bright good, except the fact that I still can`t make that darned rain-plugin to work. Other bugs and problems so far have been fixed. Finally the first dialog works as it should, which helps me a lot with the upcoming dialogs. It seemed that I couldn`t change the global graphic variables from the dialog-script, but I had to create a completely new script for that action, which was started from the dialog-script itself.

Anyhow, I still seem to be on schedule if nothing surprising come up on the last couple of weeks.

Caffeine

Another manic pair of days are again behind. Yesterday was basicly hell on earth, so I could not make much progress. On the good side, two new rooms are now crafted and I`m a step forward solving the problem with the dialog. Only two rooms are now left and some of the items so the graphics are starting to be intact. Hoping to finish them by the end of the week, if I can get the time from somewhere.

Toilet humor

Okay, two work-filled days are now behind and the results are two new rooms and some new item-graphics. Next week I hope to have some time to finish the graphics. If that goes well, the game may in fact be ready a little earlier than predicted. The two new rooms are both toilets. With them I had the chance to try out a little different staging. Example of the result below.


















I`ll continue working on the game next monday. In a week, I`ll be wiser about meeting the deadline.