Progress reports

[JPS]

My new keyboard arrived today, and I'm in the process of isolating myself from the world to write for a week or so. After that there should be a real progress report. You know, with progress and stuff.

 

Now if I would only stop hitting F13 instead of backspace...

[JPS]

The good news: I'd say that I'm about 75% done. For some odd reason, not writing regular progress reports and spending the time on writing mod stuff instead really seems to work...

 

(I should probably point out that this means that I'm about 80% finished with about 90% of the dialogues, not that I'm completely finished with 75% of them. That's just the way I work, and unfortunately it means that my "not letting anyone see my unfinished work" syndrome is still getting in the way of useful things like previews and proofreading and coding. And I really owe the poor guy who offered to do voice acting an apology. )

 

(Oh, and to those of you who checked my numbers and noticed that 80% of 90% actually means 72% of the whole and not 75%: )

 

The bad news: Real life strikes again, and I probably won't get anything done for the next two weeks. At all. I'm hoping to get some serious writing done over the holidays, but don't expect to see anything happen in the way of previews, release dates or further progress reports until early next year. I was planning to be done with the SoA part by then and well into the ToB material, but this is just the way it is. Sorry about that.

 

As always, the forum is open for comments, questions and general encouragement, but I probably won't be around a lot for the next couple of weeks. Not that I have been around much for the last two weeks either, but anyway...

[JPS]

Yeah, it's definitely time for an update.

 

I was planning to use the holidays for writing, but as it turned out I spent most of the time on going through the material, re-evaluating the plot, and generally making a fuss about things that were working out pretty well as they were. I'm alright now, though.

 

That means that I'm pretty much at the same point as I was before Christmas, as far as the amount of written material goes. I suppose that this whole reevaluation business counts as work as well, but it was work that I hadn't planned. But on the other hand, I had planned to be finished six moths ago, so I should have learned what my plans are worth by now...

 

One of the things I looked over was my working schedule, however, and I think I'll be using my time more effectively from now on. Instead of only writing when I have a large chunk of time availiable (or only writing "when I feel like it", which I've also tried, and which led to a really good dialogue being written in June, and some serious editing being done in October), I'm trying to write something every day, no matter how small.

 

I'll let you know how it works out.

[JPS]

So far, my "write something every day" experiment hasn't really worked out, so I'll try another approach:

 

Starting tomorrow, I will finish and post one dialogue every day until I'm done. I'll start with the core lovetalks, and then I'll move on to quests, flirts and other secondary material. It's about time we get to see some results here.

 

Wish me luck...

[JPS]

All right, just to get this off to a good start, I didn't write a word today.

 

I recently uninstalled BG2 to try to do a full install (which requires some annoying workarounds under Mac OSX, if someone happens to be interested), mainly bacause I had problems with one of the CDs (disk 2, if you're taking notes). Well, it turned out to be a bit difficult to install the game without one of the disks, too...

 

I'm basically just filling out the blanks at this stage, so I can write just fine without having the game installed, but I've just wasted a day on this, so I'm a little bit annoyed at the moment.

 

If all goes well, I'll actually get around to doing something tomorrow...

 

Oh, and do I win a price for modding a game that I don't even have a working copy of? You know, for devotion, or something.

 

Umm... with my track record, I should probably settle for "something".

[JPS]

My plan is working even less well than I imagined. And it was such a nice plan, too

 

Reall life hits me pretty bad until next week, at least, so don't expect too much until then. I might be able to get something done over the weekend, but that's all.

 

I'll let you know when things look better again.

[JPS]

The good news: I'm not dead, and the mod isn't dead either.

 

The bad news: I haven't really had time to do anything for the last month, or whenever I was here the last time. Everything's still in an annoying state of "almost finished, but not quite". Things are looking a little better on the real life front, though, so I should be able to get things done sooner or later.

 

can You tell how much work left, starting from now on? biggrin.gif I would be much happier if I knew how much I must wait until I be able to see this great mod in my game (muahahaaa devil.gif) Ouh tongue.gif I know I'm impatient, sorry for that

 

It depends on how you count. If you count the number of dialogues and so on, I'm mostly done (there are still blank lines in most of them, and some of them should probably have more branches, but I'm generally getting a feeling that I'm closer to the end than to the beginning).

 

That doesn't really say a lot about when I will be finished, though, and that would probably be more useful to you. I don't know, but it sould be relatively soon. That's probably the best answer I can give at the moment.

[JPS]

I've gotten a little bit of editing done, and I've written some new material, but I still don't have anything that I'm ready to show anybody. I realize this is probably because of me and not because of the actual state of the material, but anyway...

 

I'll try to keep you informed about how things are going, but I'll probably fail miserably and only show up once every other week until the end of May. After this prolonged stretch of not getting anything done because of university work I'll be back to my regular schedule of not getting anything done because I suck at getting things done (this term basically ends on May 27. After that you have my permission to bug me if I look like I'm not doing anything).

[JPS]

I've moved a number of posts that were not progress reports to the thread Comments on Progress Reports, in order to keep this thread unclutttered. Nothing wrong with the posts themselves, mind you, they were just in the wrong place.

 

I've got two weeks left of this term, so as you might imagine modding hasn't been my highest priority. I'm trying to read through all of my old material again so I'll be able to start working directly once the last course ends, but apart from that there won't be any progress until Friday, 27 May.

[Kania Blade]

I'll murder anyone, who will dare to try to hasten you in any way, JPS... and then eat him

(I've been waiting for 3 years. So, if I can wait for some more time, the others can as well, no? )

Edited May 15, 2005 by Kania Blade

[JPS]

Friday, 27 May.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Er... could we pretend that I said "Sunday, 5 June" instead?

 

Thanks.

[JPS]

All right. I'm back.

 

I might have a somewhat unstable internet connection for a while, but I finally have time to write, and will just have to post things when the connection is working. It should be very temporary anyway; the important part is that the Term that Ate my Soul is finally over.

[JPS]

All right. I'm back.

 

I might have a somewhat unstable internet connection for a while, but I finally have time to write, and will just have to post things when the connection is working. It should be very temporary anyway; the important part is that the Term that Ate my Soul is finally over.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Well, that certainly didn't go the way I expected.

 

I didn't quite disappear from the face of earth, but it was pretty close a couple of times. I could tell you what took so long, but it's a long and terribly dull story and I would probably not be able to resist the temptation to lie a bit to make it sound more interesting. And you wouldn't want to make me a liar, now would you?

 

I'm sorry about not keeping you informed, even if it would only have been a bunch of "Oops, looks like I won't be back this week either".

 

Now, I have a vague memory of something we used to do here... what was it again? Oh yeah, modding.

[JPS]

A progress report:

 

The writing is going well, all things considered. I'm working a lot more slowly than I would like, but that's nothing new. Also, it seems like I end up neglecting the forum pretty badly whenever I manage to catch up with the writing, so don't expect to see a lot of me until I'm done. I suppose I could make an appearance a little bit more often than once every month, though. Say, once every two weeks...

 

I still have no particular deadline in mind, but at least I'm beginning to see the end of it now.

[JPS]

All right. I reinstalled Baldur's Gate II today, for about the 75th time, and expect to actually have some free time later this week (or at least time that I can spend on non-university stuff without feeling too guilty. Guilt-free time, perhaps?).

 

Expect... something.

 

These announcements are just getting better and better, aren't they?