Bremsstrahlung

Since I don't feel like going to the work of updating my scenarios page just now, I thought I'd write a bit here about what I'm working on.

My oldest scenario in progress, Wizards' Expedition is sort of hibernating. After the very negative reception my description of it has gotten from my fellow designers, I can't say that I feel all that much like sharing it with them. They'd only whine that they didn't like it.

Another project I've been working on for sometime goes by the cryptic acronym PVoMDwtDMoR. I won't say too much about it besides that it will be one of the greatest, most epic stories ever told, will have dazzlingly beautiful environments, and excitingly new and challenging game-play like no one has ever seen before. Or it might be a complete joke.

Next comes Blades of Rogue which is really virtually finished. The only remaining problem is that I've been unable t pin down why windows users have complained about the game breaking down when they play it; as far as I can tell there's nothing going wrong that is my fault (or that I can fix), and in my own testing on a Windows system, none of the alleged problems have ever manifested themselves. This has left me a little bit at a loss for what to do, since I don't want to release a scenario that screws up peoples playing experience, but on the other hand, I can't see whether there anything I can do about it, or even if the problems are real. So I've been letting the scenario sit, even though doing so solves nothing.

Next came an idea I had while listening to the theme music for A Fistful of Dollars: essentially a 'western' scenario using crossbows instead of six-shooters. I still love the idea, but it's on hold in favor of the one I had a day later:

The most recent idea, and the one currently receiving the most of my attention is a jungle scenario with the characters seeking a fabulous ancient treasure. ONe of the goals of this scenario is to reuse some elements that I spent a good deal of time creating for Wizards' Expedition, but which didn't really fit into it. Added to these is the ancient temple which is the player's goal and also the setting for a deviously clever idea I had. I intend to keep it secret until the scenario is ready for release, when I'm sincerely hoping it will be an exciting surprise to players. (And there happens to be a contest coming this summer, so it would not be inaccurate to surmise that I'm doing my level best to compose a killer entry.)

As if having ~4 scenarios in various stages, I've also undertaken a number of projects to create utility programs to aid in designing. There's Graphic Adjuster, whose version 2 is stable and usable, but not intel/Leopard compatible, necessitating a ground-up rewrite for version 3¹. AScript, intended as a text editor specifically suited to Avernumscript, is nearly done, but has some glaring bugs that I really need to get around to squashing. Oh, and 400+ documentation entries to write. THen there's the 3D Editor. I'm increasingly feeling that we've pushed the original editor framework to its limits; it too needs to be started anew. The trouble is that even though it still lacks desirable features, the existing 3D Editor has so many already that duplicating only the major ones will take months, and supplying them all even longer. Then, there's the specter that's always looming around when I speak of the 3D Editor, the Windows port of the same. I'm not a Windows programmer, and between the different platform, the antiquity of the program in question, and the sheer number of changes I've made to the Mac version, it's a task I would dearly love to avoid. Unfortunately, no one else is rushing to do it either.

Having listed all that, I feel good because I've reminded myself of a number of things that had been slipping from conscious consideration, but I'm also alarmed by the amount of work that I've stacked up for myself. Still, I love each and every one of these projects, and I really do want to complete them all. We'll see how it goes.