There's some good news and bad news here, but I think I'll start with the good news.
Starting with the good news. Most of you have probably heard this already, but I have joined the bouncy rock team for work on Misery Stone. I've ran through the module and its areas, and its pretty phenomenal what Jason and Liso have done with the module so far. I'm not going to spoil anything or steal Jason's thunder, but whenever it is released on the Vault, it is going to hit the ground running. The writing is immersive and the mood and setting will just capture you immediately. I've already made a few areas for Misery Stone, and you should be able to see a few of them in the next update.
The downside of this decision is the effect it has on TN. Yes, more delays right? This isn't to say it has been forgotten. After Misery Stone, I have a few extra hands to help me through the weakest points in my module building career. And to clarify, Thayvian Nights is not the next project for Bouncy Rock Entertainment. It is and still remains a side project of mine.
What ends up consuming most of my time is bug fixes for cutscenes (which everyone learns to hate them) and writing lots and lots of dialogue for a scene you really want to get past. For me, its getting past the Aragaard mines you start off in. I have been overzealous with expanding on it. 7 areas total I have to fill with dialogue and quests, except for one. I've got 4 of the 7 fully complete. And the other three are close to being finished.
And on another note, have any of you guys heard of RSS Feeds? I've just recently learned what these are and started to use them to keep tabs on everyone's blogs. I haven't been able to decipher the cryptic code for adding an RSS Feed to my blog, so you can keep tabs on everyone's blog from my blog. An RSS Feed is basically something you can subscribe to to gather data from a site without having to go there. I'm sure you guys have seen the small orange icon with a sound wave being emitting to the upper right hand corner? You can click on that, which should appear in the URL box of any blog on blogspot. Doing that, will add an RSS Feed to your toolbar (except for IE, which it slaps it somewhere. Don't ask where. IE sucks! [yes, Hugie - it does! :) ])
And a little real life news as well. I'll be taking courses all summer and through Fall to get the very useless A.S. degree, so that I can finally go back to a university where I rightfully belong. This little game of ping pong between which college I go to is getting rather annoying. After high school, I went to a horrible university and dropped out of there and went to a local community college. Well, their little games with changing their classes around and not offering the courses I needed in a timely manner, forced me to go to the second local college (which is a 1-hour drive), which is where I am at now.
If any of you can believe this or not, I had a rather miraculous change in my major as well, which is one of the factors of my leaving the university. The others were way too expensive ($32,000 a year) and just a horrible experience. I couldn't name one thing good about that school. I originally was going for English, which I have absolute no idea what for. After taking a few rather boring courses in it, I decided it was not for me, and I switched to Computer Engineering. Most people don't jump from an Art degree to a science degree, but I am really adept in mathematics and calculus. The only part of my major I don't like is having to take Physics courses. Have any of you ever had to take Physics? Do you know how ridiculously hard it is? It is absolutely insane! And the teacher I had was absolutely lousy. What kind of teacher doesn't have office hours or gets upset when you have questions (and when he does ask if we have questions, he doesn't pause before he moves on to the next subject).
Anyways! Enough ranting about college, right? This post turned out to be longer than what I thought it would be. I'll keep this blog updated probably every other week. I'll notify you on the Bouncy Rock forums when I resume the progress for TN. Oh, and I'll be writing some of those tutorials in my spare time as well. I'd make a video for the Terrain and Texturing, but unfortunately, my internet would take a million years to upload. Already takes 4 minutes to load NWVault, and IGN has never been ones to have efficient webpages.
Bouncy Rock Entertainment
It is finally over....
Well, mostly anyways. I'll still be busy for the rest of the week, but the better news is that programming has officially ended. All that's left is 3 essays due in a few days...
There really isn't much to say, but I would like to ask a question to you all. Do any of you have any information on Mulhorand and the founding of Thay? I think that might be some interesting piece of information to incorporate later into Thayvian Nights. Probably scholars in Chapter 2 or something like that.
I'm mainly interested in just where Thay broke from Mulhorand and founded their home. Thanks, guys.
Tale of the Skadu
Throughout Rashemen, storytelling has been the backbone of tradition. Tales varying from the soul eater to the man that lost touch with the spirits. Each tale tells a story and teaches a moral to all that would listen. Through Krahz'gorr, you can hear many of these kinds of stories, but one in particular is that of the Skadu. The Skadu, or quite literally the creature of shadow, is a mythological creature that is said to emerge from the sins of the world and swallow it into a world of complete darkness for all eternity until. There are many variations to this, especially in different cultures. There are arcane scholars who claim a creature from the sky will fall to the earth and feed off the life energy of the world (this creature was featured on Wizards a few years back), while others would refuse to believe in apocalyptic theory.
Whatever the case may be for you, you'll find several Red Wizards looking for this creature to harness its powers and bring the nations around them to ruin. Is the creature real and/or as powerful as it is made out to be? Or is it simply another tale?
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On another note, according to the poll currently, more of you would like to see more on creating skies and understanding the settings more than the rest. Which is a little bit surprising I should say. As far as that goes, I want to give those of you looking forward to it a warning in advance as to what to expect. Learning the settings for bloom and the perfect sky varies from personal taste and the type of colors you're working with. With that said, there isn't really one setting that works with every theme, so a little creativity and ingenuity might be involved. What I'll end up doing is providing scenarios and hopefully a thinking process that'll help guide you to the settings you're looking for.
I won't be doing Ayrin's bloom settings, because frankly, they cause more work than most of you want to get into. Ayrin had to create his own textures, paint the whole thing grey (which I sometimes do anyways) and even modify the SpeedTrees.
If you guys have any specific type of skies you want me to work with, speak now or forever hold you peace.
Poll #3: Tutorials
Right, so there's a new poll up. Pretty self-explanatory. You can vote for multiple answers if you want. I'll consider those as a I would like to see them all in one big tutorial. :)
As far as commenting, you can leave a comment here or anywhere (recent that is - I don't check old posts). Like say for example you chose Terrain and texturing. What I would like to know is what type of area are you looking at - a hilly grassland, gothic farmland, mountainous region, etc.
The tutorial will be written and not in a video format, but it'll be as descriptive as possible along with several images. I'll eventually probably do all of them. This way you get to see how to make an area Anduraga-styled.
Miscellaneous Shot
I was going back and redoing some of my earlier areas, and while I was playing with the sky settings, I got this image to show up. Thought I would share with you a majestic moonfall/sunset occurring at the same time. 
You're never going to see this in game though :)
PS: Thanks Ayrin.
Small update
I've been working on a small cutscene today that more or less wraps up one small sidequest. I still have a few quirks with it, like the unequiping isn't working like it should, and there's something funky going on with the FadeFromBlack and FadeToBlack lines. When the fading is on a line with a text node it seems to pause until the fading is done and then display the text. I was hoping for "at the same time" kind of deal.
Other than that only two more major things to do, and that segment would be complete. All considering, TN Chpt 1 isn't that far from being finished I would have to say. There are still some nuances showing up (i.e. A door not firing a random roll conversation every once in awhile - click again and it usually works), but nothing game-breaking. I have to get the slaves to move their lazy butts through the mines, and TonyK's AI should no longer be an issue.
Speaking of AI, I sure hope TonyK did something about using spells wisely. I told you guys about Krahz'gorr before. So, he's a Spirit Shaman and often a very lousy one at that, least until you possess him and work with him. The AI makes him such a dunce. He used to have Entangle, and he'd spam that annoying spell every time he saw an enemy. So, I had to remove that :) And as it would seem, I have to remove yet another spell. Whenever I ask him to heal me, he just casts Lesser Vigor on me instead of Cure Light Wounds. Is he a lousy companion or what?
Unfortunately this will be the last weekend I can work on TN until May 1, which is when all of my assignments will finally be out of the way. After that I'll have plenty of time! :)
A small complimentary screenshot this time:
No real update today
I haven't been able to work on the module that much this week. I've been having to work on that infernal Media Player programming project of mine, taking intermittent breaks here and there.
I've mentioned before that I've been highly displeased with Krah'zgorr's physical appearance in game. Well, Krah'zgorr was based off this very image below, and its what I envision Krah to appear like. 
Looking at that image and then this one: 
Not even remotely close. You'll just have to use your imagination I reckon. I also made a post on bouncyrock's forums detailing some things in Thayvian Nights. I wont repeat it here, but you can find it there: http://forum.bouncyrock.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&p=103#p103
And that's all I really have to say. Other than that, good luck to all participants of the OEI contest. Alot of the entries are unique, interesting and well-done. If I had to pick which ones to choose, I probably would pick
1) SnowPrefab XXL - Overall, this is a well done area. Some things I didnt like about it, but they're relatively easy to fix, so its not a big deal.
2) Post-Eden - This area has some flaws in it and texturing could be improved, but the overall concept here is very original and intriguing.
And runner up would probably be Yamato's area and then SGK. SGK's area is better designed and textured, but its less original than the other works I think. Not to mention he's a Hall of Famer. Need to give some other guys some love, right ;)
And the last thing I would like to talk about is Jonny Ree and Ayrin's recent works. If you've seen their stuff lately, you'd just drop your jaw and have difficulties getting it back on.
Jonny Ree's Beholder:
Ayrin's Island (my favorite shot of many he has):
With all this amazing work coming out all at once, makes me wish I knew how use Photoshop or 3DS Max. But don't forget to give these guys your undying support. They're doing a phenomenal amount of work for the community. So give em a big grizzly bear hug!
