Status Report

Hey, Sherriff! Great to see you! The worldmap is almost complete I am happy to say, Allyx is overcoming PC issues to do the red-dot-paths and then its all finished

The demo? Well, there are 4 story arcs to complete before beta testing can begin, and the third is underway, so since that began in January, u can see there is a good chance they will be done and beta testing will be underway in late March. Then there will just be the rush to get the voices etc done (can't do vocal recording til the dialogues are finalised word-perfect), and we're done

 

Fair enough!

The situation currently is that the final testing arc was recently released, and is undergoing testing: so at this point:

- The quests for the demo are DONE (being tested)

- The maps for the Demo are DONE

You've got maps to run around on, you've got quests to do, what more could you want???

Well, there is a lot of tidying up around the edges yet - a few weeks worth at the very least. Not all the clerics in the game currently heal, for instance - not all the maps have interesting things on them (I plan to make it BG-like, wherein every map has something to look at, something to open, something to steal etc - with consequences of course ). The random enounters need work: the merchants need to have their inventories finalised (and made respawnable): the portriats have to be optimised (a lot of them could be better chosen): the recruitable NPCs have to be polished. In each case these r things that are mostly done and just have to be finished off, but that still remains.

Then, the beta testing, and it can be released

More positively, while I am polishing and retouching this and that element of the Demo, the full mod is going ahead on several fronts. New portraits are being done, the Caves of Chaos maps are being done to an amazing level of quality, the soundtrack is hurtling along, other new artwork is being done and various folks are working on the Cave encounters. So its all coming together

Come to think of it, I will update this more often so people (including the modders) know what is happening. For the modders, I can say that our new wolf skins are now in and running around on their little paws.

 

Yah...

Its a fair cop, i haven't said much lately. Truth be known KotB has ground to a slow crawl due to work and family commitments at my end, which obviously sux this close to an official demo release. But the family commitments (visiting in-law) end tomorrow, and I have still been tinkering away, as have the other folks. A couple new dlg files arrived in my box this week and will be hacked in, and I have been working on the random encounters (fighting doors every time gets dull). So its slowly progressing

 

The beta is charging towards compoletion. I'm sorry I can't be more specific than that, but with so many different strands all coming together at once, you never know when completion won't just sneak up on you and goose you.

Here is an example of a new monster in situ (hope I haven't posted this before.)

 

Currently reworking some of the spellcasters to make for interesting spellcasting enemies.