Ok, so in a free moment while getting the current milestone out of the door, and waiting for the game to build the thousands of assets before i can test out some of the scripts, I thought it's time to create another blog.

This milestone has been the usual 'Get X quests functional and Y quests playable', but the next one, oooh, the next one!

By Xmas, we'll be having all the Core quests in the game ready to be played by Mr M himself, yes, that's his xmas holiday, playing through the whole game at home, he never stops working.

Most importantly this means the designs are finished, the speech written and recorded (most likely by me, with my dulcit tones), and placeholder sections for every single element of every core quest. We will finally have a feel of how the story fits together, how the character arcs work and how, ultimately the hero can choose to live their life.

Once Peter spends his holiday playing the game, he'll then come back with a mountain of feedback, this should be the last time that major elements of the story will change, but once signed off, it will be virtually locked down until release.

That doesn't mean of course that we don't have all the optional quests in, the seperate trees, the achievements, the secrets... They are all there in some form too, but they are all placed off the main core scripts and are of much lower importance at the moment.

So, the end of November and December will be busy times for the Script Department... Wish us luck! :-)


In response to a message i received from an interested fellow, i'll indicate here how one can give themselves a chance to get started in scripting.

1.   Coding background: Learn to code, generally using C++, if you can code, you can script, and then interviewers won't be concerned about your technical skills.
2.   Design background: If you want to stand out from coders, then spend some of your free time coming up with designs for your own scripts. This means designing levels in your favourite FPS or RPG. Neverwinter Nights is excellent for this. The more examples of work you have done, the better, in a recent round of interviews, this was the thing that made certain people stand out.
3.   Be enthusiastic: This is linked to no. 2. Walking into a Computer Games job interview and say 'I really love games, i want to make them, i have done a degree on them, give me a job.', won't get you a job. Walking in and saying 'I really love games, i did a degree on them, in my spare time, a few friends and I put a game together, i did the story design and scripted some of the levels.' or 'I wrote a whole adventure for NWN and put it up online, it got awesome ratings, you can download it.'. This all does require effort in your spare time, but it is much more likely to get you noticed than having a degree, because everyone else that took your course at uni, they have a degree too, and they want that same job as you do.

This is pretty similar for other areas of gaming too. It's all about portfolios, you want to be an artist?, learn to use photoshop etc, do some example art, a coder?, Learn to code, knock together some basic games, or a gfx engine.

With Systems such as XNA around these days there is no excuse not to be able to show your ability and enthusiasm to a potential employer the day you walk in the office.

Anyway, hope that all helps...

back to work!

Mike..........
(Oh god, 34 on Saturday....)