2-25-10: After many, many months of planning, writing and gathering graphics, I finally actually started assembling the game.
3-9-10: Still working on the first room. Have sketched up some rough designs for the new GUI and CommKey screen (now a GUI as well). Figured out how to not only have inventory items displayed as small black and white versions of themselves (like many of Sierra's point-and-click games), but how to make them highlight when over a particular hotspot.
3-10-10: Trying to get the highlighting cursors to work properly. Was unable to make a suitable "Thought" GUI, so I opted to make the window transparent and color the text gray. (As it turns out, transparent text window GUIs aren't possible, so I made a white text window with "fuzzy" edges and black text instead.)
3-11-10 through 3-19-10: Sporadic work, mostly on scenes from The Most Offensive Adventure Game Ever. Finally got Judith to throw a rock at the bird and fixed a problem with unhandled_event.
3-20-10: Almost finished the last intro cutscene (have only finished the rough outlines of the "Thalia removing wig" animation that follows it, however).
3-22-10: Almost finished "Thalia removing wig" animation.
3-24-10: Finally finished the intro and title screen sequence, ready to start on the game proper.
3-25-10: Finished Tlotzin's left/right walk cycle
3-26-10 through 3-27-10: FINALLY finished all of Tlotzin's animations...for the FIRST screen he appears in. Lots of rotoscoping was involved.
3-28-10: Yesterday's entry wasn't completely true, I had to complete one more animation for Tlotzin. I then imported all of the animations into the game and started working on Thalia's animations for the opening scene. I also tried to figure out an easy way to implement the seperate head and body system I planned on using and eventually settled for having Thalia's sprite followed by a sprite that is invisible except when it is needed (i.e., when her body moves at the same time her mouth does). In these cases, she switches to a talk view with her body gone, while the other sprite becomes her body, which does whatever animations it has to do before turning invisible again, while Thalia's talk view reverts to its default one.
3-29-10: Mostly animating. Almost finished the opening cutscene with Tlotzin and Thalia.
3-30-10 through 3-31-10: Working on animating Sledge in the Grim Fandango scene and the closeup of him that appears during his first conversation with Thalia.
4-1-10: Working on Sledge's walking animation.
4-2-10: Imported Sledge's walk cycle into AGS. Working on the Grim Fandango scene.
4-3-10: Worked on Discworld 2 scene and music, worked on The Big Red Adventure scene.
4-4-10: Worked on Yodle's animations, captured more scenes from other games
4-5-10: Worked on scene from Tlotzin's game (Aztec temple)
4-6-10: Still working on Tlotzin's scene (mostly adding 2D edits to the rendered image)
4-7-10: Working on Tlotzin's scene, just about finished 3D model of CommKey, finished Kay and Thalia's conversation
4-8-10 through 4-11-10: Worked on SQ4 scene, decided to use scene from WarCraft Adventures for the optional "Imprisoned" scene, added bits to the script
4-12-10: Worked on script (Inca 2 scene).
4-13-10: Collected and edited sound effects, worked on the script. Came up with blaster sound effect by taking the sound of a balloon being inflated and adding "Through the skull" Flanging effect and a "Spin the record" Doppler effect to it in Goldwave.
4-14-10 though 4-15-10: Not too much work done.
4-16-10: Added tidbit about low-res characters only being able to see in 16 colors and high-res characters being unable to make out details of low-res objects to the conversation between Thalia and the Manhunter extra. This idea came to me as I was trying to get to sleep the previous night (I MIGHT have subconsciously been inspired by Jasper Fforde's latest novel, Shades of Grey, but I'm not sure). I've also been sketching lemurs to get a feeling for Qoppa's anatomy, and realized that a monsterous, overmuscled lemur looks a LOT like a modern werewolf.
4-17-10 through 4-18-10: Decided to use unused scene from Torin's Passage for the room Uglaz is imprisoned in. Did rough sketches of him manacled to the wall. Did rough sketches of the junkyard for the finale and started work on it in Bryce 6.
4-19-10 through 4-20-10: Worked on junkyard scene.
4-21-10 through 4-23-10: Still working on junkyard scene and various pieces of dialogue (almost finished dialogue between Yodle and Thalia in the KQ7 temple). Started work on the second MOAGE scene, created 3D wheelbarrow and shovel for the scene.
4-24-10 through 4-25-10: Miscellaneous work, mostly writing. Decided on which room to use for the game's final scene (the General's house, Broken Sword 2) and spent a lot of time capturing screens from the game and splitting them into three seperate layers to use with the Parallax Scrolling Module. I discovered an interesting glitch which causes SnagIt to erase various objects from the scene whenever I make a screen apture, which made things a lot easier for me.
4-26-10: Working on room with the slider puzzle.
4-27-10: Writing dialogue, working on slider puzzle room and puzzle box room.
4-28-10: Added missing dialogue to various scenes in a linear pattern, getting as far as MOAGE 1.
4-29-10: Finished drawing MOAGE scene (Jeb's house).
4-30-10: Lots of animation: the sheep growing shocked and swimming away, smelling the biscuit and coming closer; Jeb sleeping, waking up and talking and Thalia getting up from the tree stump (which I added to MOAGE).
5-1-10: Worked on Sledge's animations (throwing and pulling the rope, getting up from the table in Grim Fandango), imported sprites for SQ4 scene.
5-2-10: Worked on SQ4 scene, finished the "Hiding from roger" scene, started creating dialogue with Ichabod (my very first).
5-3-10: No work done today.
5-4-10: Making up for lost time -- Worked on Ichabod's dialog some more, and implemented the different "conversation ender" system: If Thalia ends the conversation after picking one or more topics, she just says good-bye, but if she DOESN'T chose a topic before ending the conversation, she just says "Nevermind" or "Forget it" rather than a formal end to the discussion. This was inspired by Toonstruck, which did the same thing. It also makes sense too -- why would a character start a conversation with another character, then say "good-bye" and end the talk without even talking about anything?
I also discovered booleans today, and found that I should have learned about them long ago -- a lot of the variables in ATIJ were simple true/false equasions, but since I didn't understand booleans, I used integers instead, with 0 meaning "false" and 1 meaning "true" -- most of the time, anyway. Also repaired problems with the inventory window and the buttons on the main menu screen which had developed problems over the last few weeks, unbeknowest to me. Added dialogue for Ichabod, Felicia and Terrence.
5-5-10: Not much work.
5-6-10: Writing dialogue, creating Jimmy's walk cycle
5-7-10: Almost finished SQ4 room (worked on doorway, Thalia's arriving and leaving, messages, etc.)
5-8-10: Working on CommKey GUI, figured out how to get text to appear when the mouse cursor hovers over a button (I'll use this to make the names of destinations appear in a box above the appropriate icon on the CommKey screen).
5-9-10: Painting MOAGE 3 and 4 backgrounds, working on CommKey GUI, figuring out how to arrange the icons on the screen.
5-10-10 through 5-12-10: Working on MOAGE 3 and 4.
5-18-10: Working on Billy-Bob's walk cycles, worked on MOAGE (including hired hand initial pose).
5-19-10: Working on Toonstruck scene, added interactions and animations for most characters (Maggie the dog, Scot, FPFP lady), working on Duke's animations, working on "Ichabod gives collar" animation.
5-20-10: Working on SQ4 scene, finished collar exchange scene, almost finished CommKey GUI (had to create a unique function for opening it since the lights refused to animate no matter where I inserted the Animate.Button line). Added nearly all of Duke's animations to game, ready to implement the Multiple Idle Views module to implement them. (Surprise, surprise: the module doesn't work in AGS 3.0. Had to figure out an alternate way, which took a lot of time and effort [still need to add more frames to Duke's animations].)
[5-21-10 through 5-25-10: Out of town, no work]
5-26-10: After much trouble, got Duke to randomly pant and scratch himself, hold still when he's talking (and use the correct animation when he's talking), and randomly pant WITHOUT scratching himself. Also working on the animations of Thalia showing him the commkey and the collar. I ran into some truly frustrating problems when I found that I didn't get any responses when I clicked on the cave or Toshi in the first scene, and a strange hotspot which I didn't draw was taking up a sizeable portion of the screen. As it turned out, both problems were caused by invisible characters that I hadn't rendered unclickable.
Later - Solved another frustrating problem that suddenly popped up with the mannequins in SQ4. They would always appear in front of Thalia when she was supposed to be in front of them, no matter where I set the baseline. The only solution seemed to involve declaring the objects' baselines in both their windows AND in the script. Also added messages to Toonstruck scene, need to add doorway animations. 5-27-10: After much trial and error, I completed the animation of Thalia giving Duke his collar and imported the frames of Duke wearing his collar.
5-28-10: Made definite progress in Grim Fandango -- placed several characters (including Sledge) and implemented their animations. Had to do a bit of looking around the AGS forums to figure out how to get a character's mouth to move while he said something in the background (who'd think that a function called "SayBackground" WOULDN'T make a character's lips move during his/her dialogue?). Considering giving Sledge single frames in his diagonal view slots to make his turns smoother.
5-29-10: No work done today.
3-30-10: Added Jerrod and his dialogue to Toonstruck, added door opening animation to same screen.
3-31-10: Created several idle animations for Sledge in Poser (as well as solving a problem that was making animating him difficult -- I had foolishly put him in pose on the base layer that was different than the pose I wanted to start from, and for a long time, I had no idea how to transfer the pose he had on the other layers to the base layer because past attempts to create poses from that pose had had resulted in errors.)
6-1-10: Created all but one idle pose for Sledge.
6-2-10: No work today.
6-3-10: Completed and exported all of Sledge's idle views, ready to start work on thalia and sledge's first meeting. EDIT: And as it turns out, an odd glitch made Sledge's hand appear much too big in all of his animations, meaning I had to edit each animation, and tomorrow I'll have to re-export all of them.
6-4-10: Worked on GF scene, added conversation with Galahad and the first one with Wynonna and Steve, having trouble with Sledge's background speech.
6-5-10: Added closeup of Sledge and nearly finished first conversation between him and Thalia -- it just needs a bit more tweaking.
6-6-10: After trying at least two different modules, FINALLY found one that allowed me to rescale Sledge to 75% when he is in a room with the smaller version of Thalia. Also just about finished the conversation between the two of them and now have to increase the speed of all of the frames in Sledge's idle view since there's no other way to adjust their speed. Also learned the hard way that variables listed in GlobalScript.ash don't work the same as ones in the Global Variables window.
6-7-10: Working on animation of Sledge pointing gun at steve (ATIJ-SledgePoses2). Got up to pose where he half-lowers gun, need to do animation of him returning to default pose.
6-8-10: Not much work today.
6-9-10: Almost finished implementing Sledge's "threatening Steve" scene, and with much difficulty, implemented most of the footstep sounds for Thalia. Decided not to include footsteps for games that were VGA or older (with the exception of The Dig) since the footsteps sound too big for smaller characters, and most games in those resolutions didn't have footsteps to begin with. Also, the Save button disappeared from the Save/Restore GUI for no reason I could determine (fixed now, though). 6-10-10: Almost finished with GF; hunted down some music for the en route to MOAGE/TBRA scenes, still having trouble with Sledge's mouth moving when Thalia thinks something before she talks to him for the first time. EDIT: Fixed problem with Sledge's mouth, also fixed problem with Thalia being played by two different characters when using just one with multiple views works just fine. Do NOT use cThal_small for anything from now on.
6-11-10: Working on "en route" scenes, working on Sledge's VGA and SCI views.
6-12-10: Still working on "en route" scenes, finished importing Sledge's SCI and VGA views.
6-13-10: Not much work done.
6-14-10: Almost finished "en route to MOAGE" scene. working on Sledge's EGA view.
6-15-10: Working on "en route to TBRA" scene
6-16-10: Almost through with "en route to TBRA" scene
6-17-10: Starting to implement first MOAGE scene, finally set all of the frames in Sledge's idle view to -5, since there's no other way to adjust the speed of idle animations (yet).
6-18-10: More work on MOAGE scene.
[out of town for 3 weeks]
7-10-10: Worked a little on MOAGE, worked on dialogue, worked on KQ7 temple scene
7-11-10 through 7-13-10: Not much work done
7-14-10: Worked on MOAGE, implementing MOAGE2
7-15-10: Working on GF scene (commkey code)
7-16-10: Implemented the commkey codes for the first half of the game (have yet to test them, however), had some problems with Jeb's dialog, fixed them after some trouble.
7-17-10 through 7-27-10: Very little to no work done
7-28-10: Added sheep to MOAGE2 and tweaked the room in various ways. Also figured out how to solve a problem that cropped up while using the DistortChar Module with Sledge: When I distorted his idle views, there was no way to restore them to their original dimensions. My solution was to create a character that used Sledge's idle view as its walk view and distorting it whenever I distorted Sledge. Amazingly, it worked!
7-29-10: Worked on small things in various rooms: Grim Fandango, The Gene Machine, The Dig. Finished the transition from GF to the two "en route" screens.
7-30-10: Finished "Sledge lassoing sheep" animation
7-31-10: Implemented "Sledge lassoing sheep" animation, almost through implementing "Sledge pulling sheep" animation, need to work on "Thalia helping sledge pull sheep out" animation and "thowing biscuit" animation, animations in MOAGE will come later.
8-1-10: Was successfully able to move the CommKey's lengthy code into a seperate script! Also working on linking various rooms up and the "pulling sheep" animation
8-2-10: Working on "Thalia pulling sheep out" animation, fixed some problems with Jeb's dialog, ready to import jimmy's sprites, added the two special characters this game requires so far ("e" with a tilde and "o" with an umlaut).
[no work on 8-3-10?]
8-4-10: Importing sprites to KQ7 temple scene, added door to that scene, working on "Thalia pulling sheep out" animation, decided to have Sledge take off his gun (!!) in the outro scene (which means animating new walk and talk animations for him -- oh well).
8-5-10: Created scanning animations for Sledge, working on integrating them into the game, working on KQ7 temple scene.
8-6-10: Just about finished the "pulling sheep" animation and integrated most of the sound effects for that sequence.
8-7-10: Finished the "picking up pouch" and "picking up shears" animations for the MOAGE screen and added dialogue for each.
8-8-10: Imported new font for "Meanwhile..." scenes, created "Thalia showing shears to Sledge" animation and animations of Sledge taking the shears, carrying the shears and carrying the wheat
8-9-10: Finished integrating the sequence where Thalia gives the shears to Sledge. Having trouble with the animation of Sledge carrying wheat
8-10-10: Fixed "Sledge carrying wheat" animation, working on "Thalia taking wheat and shears" animation, managed to implement a "Meanwhile..." screen after many tries, working on Mr. E/Bum animation, implementing more characters into temple scene, decided to remove the two lions from the scene so it wouldn't be too crowded, added Yodle to scene.
8-11-10: Recorded snipping wheat, crushing wheat, stripping wheat and grass rustling sounds, added Jeb's head turning animation, working on "Sledge jumping on altar and grinding wheat" animation, added "Thalia walking onto porch" animation
8-12-10: Finished the very long animation of Thalia taking the shears and wheat from Sledge, integrated some of the sounds
8-13-10: Worked more on the "Sledge grinding wheat" animation.
8-14-10: Finished "Sledge grinding wheat" animation, implemented it and accompanying sounds into game.
8-15-10: I wish I'd discovered how useful Dialogs are much sooner! I moved most of the "one-shot" conversations (ones with no options) from the main script into seperate Dialogs, freeing up a bit of space. I also finished implementing the animations and conversations of the bum and Mr. E and added sound effects for Thalia putting something into and taking something out of her pocket, plus taking and putting away the wheat.
[lost day?]
8-17-10: Added Jimmy's walking animations and worked on TBRA cutscene, working on "Sledge scanning puddle" sequence and tweaking the CommKey's functions (almost all the rooms in Act 1 are linked up now).
8-18-10: Made "Thalia making lasso" animation and "Thalia giving lasso to Sledge"/"Sledge taking lasso" animations
8-19-10: Incorporated giving/taking lasso animations, just about finished implementing actions for lassoing sheep sequence, made mockups of some of the inventory items
8-20-10: Did some writing for various scenes (including the text for Sledge's final exam), working on the "Jerrod gets stuck to Sledge" scene, added scanning ray to puddle scanning scene in TBRA
8-21-10: Worked on "Jerrod gets stuck to Sledge" scene, added sfx for scanning doorway
8-22-10: Created and added SFX for Jerrod getting stuck to Sledge and unsticking himself, finished Thalia's stripping wheat animation (plus sound effects) and folding arms animation for her down-right view.
8-23-10: Created and implemented "Thalia picking up flour" animation, working on Mixed-Up Fairy Tales sequence. (also, for some reason, the variables I implemented to determine which room Thalia and Sledge visited first wouldn't work when I tried using it to redirect them to the MUFT screen, so I had to create two new variables to do the job)
8-24-10: Working on MUFT sequence, finished animation of Thalia vaulting over gate (she helps Sledge over it first)
8-25-10: Finished animation of Sledge leaping over gate (with Thalia's help)
8-26-10: Finished animation of Thalia returning shears, working on animation of Thalia tossing bag to Jeb
8-27-10: Added clock animation and sfx to tbra, finished animation of Thalia throwing pouch to jeb, started working on qoppa's sprite
8-28-10: Worked on Qoppa's model sheet (decided to animate him in Flash and export him as a series of unsmoothed frames), finished and imported Jeb's alternate talk view (holding pouch), created function for returning the shears, implemented "Thalia getting up from stump" animation
8-29-10: Misc. work, created new variables, working on Sledge's scanning interactions, adding dialogue to various scenes, just about finished adding messages to KQ7 temple, almost finished kids dialogue. Also experimented with Flash CS5 for Qoppa's animations and started working on scenes from The Neverhood, Bud Tucker and GK1.
8-30-10: Working on Bud Tucker, GK1 and Neverhood scenes, added most of Macmorn conversation, working on "thal shows biscuit to sheep" sequence
8-31-10: Finished and integrated "thal shows biscuit to sheep" sequence
9-1-10: Decided to skip the animation of Jeb jumping out of his chair and running up to Eulabelle, opting to just cut to him standing in front of her instead to save time and work.
9-2-10: Working on Jeb+Sheep walking animation
9-3-10: Finished Jeb+Sheep walking animation, working on animations after sheep rescue
9-4-10: Implemented post-sheep-rescue scene, working on qoppa anim, also working on puzzle box design and puzzle structure (needed to reference Snake Blisken's Spinlock module in order to figure out how to do some things)
9-5-10: Working on Qoppa animation, finally got an incomplete mockup of the puzzle box lock working after much trial and error (as usual).
9-6-10: working on scene where Thalia gives flour to Jeb, working on animation of Jeb taking biscuit from Ma and throwing it to Thalia
9-7-10: working on "jeb throws flour" animation
9-8-10: finished "jeb throws flour" animation
9-9-10: Fixed problems with "jeb throws flour" animation, fixed a couple of minor things
9-10-10: Finished and implemented "sledge putting up dukes" and "sledge tapping toe" animations, finished "thalia turns to look at sledge" animation, integrated yodle's talking animation
9-11-10: Created and integrated Thalia's "holding arms out" animation, integrated most of Qoppa's animations in the kq7 temple
9-12-10: Created more of Qoppa's animations, working on implementing them into game, integrated "scanning qoppa" sequence
9-13-10: Worked on qoppa's animations
9-14-10: no work done today
9-15-10: Adding text and events to various parts of game, added descriptions for most of TBRA
9-16-10: Various small tasks
9-17-10: Worked on puzzle box model, got the dials puzzle just about finished
9-18-10: Working on "Thalia picking up puzzle box" animation
9-19-10: Finished and integrated "Thalia picking up puzzle box" animation, starting work on qoppa taking box and giving pen
9-20-10: Created and imported animations of thalia showing box to qoppa, qoppa taking box and showing pen
9-21-10: Finished box/pen exchange, just about finished returning pen sequence, ready to start work on animations for Sledge's final exam
9-22-10: Almost finished Sledge's final exam cutscene
9-23-10: Finished Sledge's final exam cutscene, working on Neverhood scene following it, implemented "We don't need to go back there" messages for MOAGE and TBRA once the assignments in each of them have been completed (not 100% sure if they work yet)
9-24-10: created and implemented the "threatening jimmy" animations and finished the conversation with jimmy, created and implemented thalia and sledge's reaction to tlotzin's bad news, working on tlotzin giving permit to sledge animation
9-25-10: Working on Neverhood scene, working on Tlotzin turning around animation
9-26-10: Just about finished with Neverhood scene, working on GK1 scene
9-27-10: Almost through with GK1 scene, implemented new inventory window image (of the inside of Thalia's pocket) and animations of Thalia picking up and examining the toothbrush and the note
9-28-10: Finished and integrated animation of Uglaz, finished conversation with Uglaz cutscene, starting work on KQ7 temple, part 2
9-29-10: Working on MOAGE 3 and Billy-Bob's walking animation
9-30-10: Working on Billy-Bob's walking animation
10-1-10: Finished and imported Billy-Bob's walking animation, created thalia's "transformation" into billy-bob, ready to work on billy-bob's talk animations and hired hand character
10-2-10: No work done
10-3-10: Tweaking Billy-Bob's animation, working on hired hand's sprite
10-4-10: Did most of hired hand's animations, working on moage 3 scene, finished marie's "morphing" animation
10-5-10: Working on MOAGE 4 scene (implemented Billy-Bob's footsteps and animation where he walks over the crest of the hill), importing various scenes, working on rough draft of CommKey layout
10-6-10: Working on animation of Tlotzin
10-7-10: Just about finished animation of Tlotzin, started importing frames, imported Thalia's animation where she talks to him in his game, partially integrated tlotzin's body and arm animations
10-8-10: Importing sprites to KQ7 temple (part 2)
10-9-10: Importing sprites to KQ7 temple (part 2)
10-10-10: Working on Tlotzin conversation, created and imported door animations for Tlotzin's game and MOAGE 3, implemented interaction messages in Tlotzin's game
10-11-10 through 10-15-10: Not much work done
10-16-10: Added parts of Yodle's and hired hand's conversations, adding ichabod and eulabelle conversation, working on Eulabelle's sprite for KQ7 temple, working on Thalia's kneeling animation when she talks to yodle
10-17-10: Finished Thalia's kneeling animation and the animation of Yodle handing the clip-on to her, working on animations of Thalia hiding behind piano in Action vs. Adventure and close-up of action (newly added)
10-18-10: Just about finished evil Thalia closeup, working on Phantasmagoria scene and kay's animations, adding music, working on scene with Thalia and Kay and animation of Thalia grabbing Kay by the hair
10-19-10: Adding and searching for music, working on animation of Kay wriggling in Thalia's grasp
10-20-10: Not much work done
10-21-10: Imported and integrated animations of Thalia grabbing Kay, working on animation of Thalia punching Kay and the animations that occur after it
10-22-10: Working on animation of Thalia punching Kay
10-23-10: Finished animation of Thalia punching Kay, working on Thalia's animations following this plus the "fade to reddish black" end of the scene
10-24-10: Working on Thalia's hunched over animation and the accompanying animation of her straightening up in Action vs. Adventure, working on Action vs. Adventure scene, working on "behind the scenes" document, working on action vs. adventure dialogue
10-25-10: Working on Action's various animations in first A vs. A screen, working on animation of smoke from hole in piano, imported sprites for hole in piano
10-26-10: No work done
10-27-10: Working on Action's flip animation, finished smoke animations, working on A vs. A cutscene
10-28-10: Working on working on A vs. A cutscene, working on CommKey codes for Part 2 (much pain). Also fixed strange buy that had appeared in the KQ7 temple in parts 1 and 2 where a pop-up GUI would disappear shortly after being opened. Oddly, Yodle's animation (which was on a timer controlled by variables) seemed to be the culprit -- when I made his animation a simple long loop, the problem stopped (which is strange, since there are several animations in the part 1 room [and various other rooms] that are on similar timers, yet they don't cause the same problem. Also finished most entering/leaving sequences for Tlotzin's game, MOAGE 3, kq7 temple, phantas, and toonstruck (pt 2)
10-29-10: Working on animations of thalia when she's hiding behind the piano
10-30-10: Working on animations of thalia when she's hiding behind the piano
10-31-10: Just about finished animations of Thalia behind the piano (more than 50 frames) importing them and working on more of action's animations, nearly finished initial cutscene between the two of them, created and added action's blaster sound and the sound of the piano getting blasted, need to add wood splinters on the ground around Thalia
11-1-10: Working on A vs. A intro scene
11-2-10: Working on various interactions in A vs. A scene (including the actions necessary to get to the next screen, trimming the wig, showing it to Action, etc.)
11-3-10: Working on Simon the Sorcerer cutscene, finished materializing animations for Thalia, started work on puzzle box room
11-4-10: Working on animation of Jeb dumping dirt into pit
11-5-10: Finished and integrated animation of Jeb dumping dirt, adding interactions to MOAGE 3
and 4, working on "picking up shovel" animation
11-6-10: Working on shovel animation
11-7-10: Finished shovel animation (except for glove and putting away shovel)
11-8-10: Finished and imported putting away shovel animation and Action's idle animation
11-9-10: Several small tasks, added jumpsuit on/off effects
11-10-10: Created hired hand walk cycle and talking animations for MOAGE 4, working on animation of Billy-Bob hiding
11-11-10: Finished hiding animation, working on hiding cutscene
11-12-10: Working on hiding cutscene, finished hired hand's up walk
11-13-10: Working on hiding cutscene, working on drawings of other men
11-14-10: Some work on drawings of other men
11-15-10: More work on hiding cutscene and the drawings of the men
11-16-10: Working on animation of hired hand taking device
11-17-10: Finished animation of hired hand picking up and throwing device, working on implementing it
11-18-10 through 11-19-10: No work
11-20-10: Some work on the digging cutscene, fixed errors in leaving/entering MOAGE 3/4.
11-21-10 through 11-22-10: No work
11-23-10: A little work on digging cutscene
11-24-10: Just about finished digging cutscene, working on conversations with yodle, imported most of the animations for taking and tinkering with device, working on device conversation
11-25-10: Working on device conversation, finished animation of yodle giving laser cutter to Thalia, working on inventory item icons and cursors, implemented several lines of code to change the shape of the inventory cursors
11-26-10: Working on Action vs. Adventure (part 2)
12-1-10 through 12-5-10: working on animation of Action putting her gun away, drawing her sword, jumping around and gesturing with the sword
12-6-10: Still working on Action sword animation, collected a few sound effects
12-7-10: no work done
12-8-10 through 12-9-10: Still working on Action sword animation
12-10-10: Importing Action frames
12-11-10: Working on intro to Action vs. Adventure (Part 2). FINALLY understood the SetViewport enough to make it work properly (in ATIJ I had to use a workaround by making an invisible character the player character and having it walk across the screen), made Part 2 pan up to reveal the sandbag when Thalia sees its shadow, working on animation of thalia reacting to and picking up sword
12-12-10: Finished and integrated animation of thalia reacting to and picking up sword, working on action's sword animation
12-13-10: Finally finished action's sword animations and integrated them into the game (the multiple, random, non-blocking animations were surprisingly hard to implement), working on thal's hopping backwards animation
12-14-10: Finished and integrated thalia's hopping animation and the animation of her cutting the ropes, working on rope animation (create new image of sandbag)
12-15-10: Created new sandbag image, imported several new sound effects, finished rope animation, need to start work on action getting hit by sandbag
12-16-10: Finished Marie's transforming cutscene and several other small tasks, including adding a variable that redirects thalia after she learns about needing a washer, work on Tlotzin's game
12-17-10: no work done
12-18-10: Finally finished "defeating action" cutscene, working on "picking up squash" animation
12-19-10: Finished both of thalia's "picking up squash" animations (both starting from same position in the game)
12-20-10: Integrated "picking up squash" animations, completed various small tasks (just about completed commkey code), finished 3 out of 5 of the knocking animations
12-21-10: Finished thalia's knocking animations and discovered great workaround for centering overlay text -- I wish I'd found out about this sooner! Finished most of puzzle box except for cutting hole/puzzle sequence, worked on dialogue for tlon scene
12-22-10: Finished animation of Thalia getting chili powder and implemented it (which was difficult because of conflicting objects, character and walkbehind baselines). Also worked in an occasional animation of Tlotzin drinking (which I had to make into a blocking sequence because I couldn't make it work as a non-blocking one). Also added code for most of the characters in the KQ7 temple
12-13-10 through 12-27-10: on vacation, no work done
12-28-10: Misc. work, just about finished puzzle box puzzle, working on sequence where thalia exposes puzzle box roof, working on Manhunter anims
12-29-10: Working on Manhunter anims and escaping box animation, created and added box opening animation
12-20-10: Working on Thalia's escaping box animation, almost done
12-31-10: Working on closeup of Thalia escaping box
1-1-11: Finished and implemented closeup of Thalia escaping box, working on animation of thalia emerging from qoppa's backpack
1-2-11: Almost finished with animation of thalia emerging from qoppa's backpack
1-3-11: Implemented most of animation from yesterday, working on animation of qoppa jumping on thalia, then the ground, then back to his original position
1-4-11: Finished animation of qoppa jumping on thalia, ready to start integrating it
1-5-11: imported animation of qoppa jumping on thalia
1-6-11: Finshed most of second toonstruck scene, Finished cutscene of qoppa jumping on thalia
1-7-11: no work done
1-8-11: added sound effects to escaping box sequence, refined escaping box sequence, adding sound effects to sequence where thalia emerges from Qoppa's backpack (and adding Qoppa's tail)
1-9-11: added qoppa's tail to toonstruck scene, working on sledge's animations for Inca 2 and the rest of the Inca 2 scene
1-10-11: created animations of thalia setting squash down, finished and imported sledge's animations from the Inca 2 scene, ready to start implementing conversation and interactions with sledge
1-11-11: Tidying up script, working on Sledge's Inca 2 conversation, working on squash shooting sequence
1-12-11 through 1-27-11: Out of town, no work done
1-28-11: Working on animation of Thalia putting coin and blasted squash away
1-29-11: imported animation of thalia putting coin and blasted squash away, working on code for the blasting squash scene
1-30-11: Finished blasting squash scene (except for sound effect), modified tlotzin's drinking animation when I found it caused a problem with the commkey GUI (if he took a drink while the GUI was open, the GUI disappeared and the game locked up), imported glass (need to add animation of thal picking it up), added animation of Yodle tinkering with mind-swapper, working on scene where thalia gives him the washer
1-31-11: created and added animations of Yodle adding washer to device, finished "giving washer to yodle" scene, added glass to toonstruck
2-1-11: working on picking up glass animation
2-2-11 through 2-3-11: Little to no work done
2-4-11: Finished picking up glass animation and sequence, working on picking up glove animation
2-5-11: No work done
2-6-11: Finished and integrated picking up glove animation, integrated "back" button, cut sledge's speech to thalia in Inca 2 short, added cut segment to his dialogue tree
2-7-11: added squash "splat" sound, just about finished two rooms on way to tlon, working on klunk's animation and prison scene
2-8-11: Finished and imported Klunk's animations
2-9-11: Working on Klunk's scenes, working on imprisoned scene
2-10-11: missing day?
2-11-11: Imported slider puzzle, working on slider puzzle room and opening door animation
2-12-11: Rendered opening door animation (haven't added additional image effects to frames yet), finished animation of thalia picking up rock, working on imprisoned scene, working on rock throwing animation
2-13-11: finished rock throwing animation, finished most of defeating klunk scene, working on laser beam-frying sequence and other parts of imprisoned scene, decided on a whim to have thalia refuse to close her commkey when leaving the imprisoned room and leaving automatically when the player tries to close it three times
2-14-11: Attempted to tidy up the commkey codes (again), started and finished animation of thalia frying the rest of the laser beams (decided at last minute to have her accidentally miss one beam, then notice it and fry it as well)
2-15-11: Implemented beam frying animation, finished door opening animation (and dust billowing) in slider puzzle room, working on slider puzzle room, listening to free midis donated to the AGS community by Trapezoid (thanks! :) )
2-16-11: Trying to solve strange PNG export problem (Animation Shop 3 always makes transparent PNG files opaque when they are exported) -- it might have something to do with my having an older version. Working on manhunter's animations and thalia's actions when interacting with him, also working on junkyard scene
2-17-11: Finished and imported the manhunter animations, working on the dialogue and related scenes, worked on junkyard bg
2-18-11: Working on manhunter scenes, just about done (heard about news of Telltale's revival of KQ -- may change Tlotzin's line in the intro to refer to it, since it's far more recent than the MI remakes and sequel). Also found fitting creature to use in slider puzzle room ("Mr. Tusker", from poseAtier) and animated him roaring and lunging at Action, as well as copy+pasted a few lines of dialogue into that same scene
2-19-11: Just about finished with temple scene, finished and implemented graphics for all inventory items!
2-20-11: Working on action's animations in slider puzzle room, also completed animation of bum jumping out from behind rock pile
2-21-11: Working on bum's animations, imported most of action's animations
2-22-11: Working on more of the bum's animations, finished animation of thalia giving him the glove and him taking the glove, holding it and talking.
2-23-11: Finished and imported all of bum's animations
2-24-11: Working on animations in slider room, made animation of thalia jumping back from action
2-25-11: finished scene of jimmy sticking gun into thalia's back, made animation of thalia picking up marker, implemented bum's idle animations, working on left door opening animation for slider room
2-26-11: Finished and implemented left door opening animation, finished entering slider room scene, added bum's sfx
2-27-11: Added ominous music for conversations with yodle, added music for several other scenes, finished all of large door (action's animations, thalia backing up and cowering before beast, beast roaring and charging, fading footsteps and blaster shots -- also reduced size of dust animation)
2-28-11: not much work -- some fine-tuning of final slider room scene, added dialogue to tlon scene
[somewhere near the end of February, I crossed the 5000 sprite milestone]
3-1-11: almost finished animations of thal for pajama sam scene (with the multiple doors)
3-2-11: added entering tlon, placing device and leaving tlon animations, added zac mckracken scene and several running loops for thal in various resolutions, working on kq4 agi scene
3-3-11: added music to tlon, almost finished fleeing tlon sequence
3-4-11: Worked on KQ5 scene, almost finished with animations of mutated qoppa
3-5-11: importing and implementing qoppa's animations (decided not to make death possible), imported another vga running view, finished arrival sequence
3-6-11: Working on unhandled_event messages, figured out how to make custom properties work (in order to have different messages depending on whether the character the player is interacting with is male, female, gender neutral, or there is more than one character, e.g., "I don't think she'd want that"/"I don't think they need that", etc.), added nearly all descriptions to inventory items, created sledge's animations for kq5 screen, trying to figure out a way to make active inventory item unclickable (and possibly grayed out) and a way to make the inventory item cursor highlight while over another inventory item
3-7-11: implemented sledge's kq5 views, working on kq5 scenes, still having trouble with inventory
3-8-11: added more sound effects to kq5 scene, finally got slider puzzle working, added music for when creature appears in the slider puzzle room, implemented animation of sledge hopping over qoppa's tail in kq5 (which I didn't know I needed until I discovered that the tail was going to be blocking sledge's way when he walks up to thalia in that scene), finished most of scene that plays after sledge takes out qoppa, added animations of thalia pointing at qoppa, herself and the chandelier
3-9-11: Just about finished kq5 scene, working on junkyard scene (finished door animation, sledge and thalia coming through door, working on animation of sledge getting shot down and getting up again)
3-10-11: Finished and implemented animations of sledge getting shot down and getting back up, working on animation of yodle getting knocked back and talking
3-11-10: Had to redo animation of sledge getting shot down and recovering (plus animation of him tinkering with his blaster that was lost in a power outage). Almost done with scene of Yodle zapping sledge, then getting zapped himself. Working on animation of thalia bending over sledge
3-12-11: worked on animations of thalia bending over sledge, created and imported animation of thalia walking backwards
3-13-11: implemented animations of thalia bending over sledge, working on junkyard arrival scene and animations for action (also -- posted announcement for game on the AGS forums!)
3-14-11: finished and implemented animation of action walking and talking, added sound to swapper, created animations of action taking out and lowering gun, working on timer for "sledge" tinkering with blaster
3-15-11: finished arrival scene for junkyard, working on "running to tower" scene, created 3D model of Uglaz (to be used for rotoscoping), working on "uglaz jumping on sledge" sequence
3-16-11: still working on "jumping on sledge" animation, workin on crane cab interior
3-17-11: still working on "jumping on sledge" animation (painting over uglaz now), just about done with initial jumping animation, need to add anims of "sledge" struggling and uglaz talking.
Discovered that I'd left a piece of clothing off of Uglaz's body in the earlier scene where he is imprisoned, had to go back and add it.
3-18-11: just about finished "jumping on sledge" animation, working on various short thalia animations for the junkyard scene, working on animation of her running away
3-19-11: Attempting run-through of game, fixing various small glitches (including one where the touch cursor's unhighlighted form becomes an arrow after going to Grim Fandango -- I have no idea why), added messages for using inventory on thalia, added sound to uglaz jumping on sledge. Got as far as kq7 temple in regards to testing the game
3-20-11: Finished animation of action and thalia jumping when uglaz appears and thal talking to uglaz, just about finished junkyard scene (first part), workin on crane cab scene and keypad puzzle (had a little trouble figuring out how to code it, came up with an inelegant but straightforward solution).
3-21-11: working on interior of crane cab and animation of thalia arriving in crane cab
3-22-11: finished and implemented animation of thalia arriving in crane cab (plus sound), working on "game over, yodle" closeup, just about finished code for keypad
3-23-11: Working on keypad closeup scene, collected sounds for keypad and "game over, yodle" sequence, just about finished "game over, yodle" sequence, working on scene where uglaz gets pinned down
3-24-11: Collected a few scenes for the trailer, fixed problems with first slider puzzle scene, working on "uglaz pinned" and "'sledge' magnetized" scene (finished 3D animation, working on painting over uglaz)
3-25-11: finished and imported sledge pinned animation (decided to make uglaz's sword get attracted by magnet, need to add other debris getting attracted), working on final scenes in junkyard, just passed the 5900-sprite mark
3-26-11: working on animation of thalia walking to panel and pouring chili powder on it
3-27-11: finished and implemented animation from previous day, just about finished cab scene, working on cutscenes that follow figuring the code out (sledge pinning uglaz and getting magnetized, scrap metal attracted to magnet)
3-28-11: created and paint3d over 3D animation of thalia getting up from chair and poking action in the chest, plus all of action's actions except for falling down
3-29-11: just about finished all of animations for showdown with thalia and action - more than 98 frames (also discovered that Paint Shop Pro has a limit on the number of frames per image -- 100 or so). Decided to make thalia's "get out of my genre" line match her lip movements as she jabs action in the chest.
3-30-11: passed 6000-sprite mark, finished final cutscene with thal and action, pretty much finished cab scene
3-31-11: working on bs2 scene and game trailer
4-1-11: not much work done (mostly work on lsl6 and trailer)
4-2-11: working on sprites for qoppa and tlotzin in lsl6 scene
4-3-11: finished animations of qoppa and tlotzin, finished and imported animation of uglaz
holding his scabbard and talking, working on animations of sledge in the outro, created walk
cycle for sledge without his blaster
4-4-11: working on outro, imported all of qoppa's animations (still have to paste blaster into frames where he's holding it--resize 64%)
4-5-11: finished thalia's large down, up and down-left idle animations
4-6-11: finished thalia's large down-right and right idle animations
4-7-11: finished thalia's large up-left, up-right and left animations, incorporated her large idle animations into the game (after much trial and error), finished lsl6 scene
4-8-11: working on broken sword 2 scene, finished sledge pointing to the right, grabbing and stashing pouch animations, working on sledge and thalia closeup
4-9-11: just about finished sledge and thalia closeup, added music to lsl6 scene and bs2 scene, finished thalia turning around and talking animation
4-10-11: Not much work done
4-11-11: worked on bs2 scene, working on animation of thalia flipping commkey into the air and catching it
4-12-11: no work done
4-13-11: finished scene of thalia stepping through doorway, working on credits
4-14-11: got SSH's multiple idles module working (by replacing all the instances of AGS_MAX_CHARACTERS with a number), finished credits! finished small down, down-right, down-left idle animations
4-15-11: finished small right, left, up-right and up idle animations, uploaded trailer
4-16-11: finished up left idle animation, imported all small idle animations, created and implemented thalia closing her eyes and clenching her fists when action taunts her the third time exiting the slider puzzle. Also implemented functions for changing thalia and sledge's size and/or resolution to appropriate rooms -- something that I should have done in the first place. working on new inventory gui
4-17-11: working on GUIs (implemented Quit and Overwrite GUIs with plain text window instead of the gaudy blue/green swirl, also implemented "Are you sure you want to restart?" GUI), implementing speed and volume sliders
4-18-11: still working on guis (finished new save/restore gui and options, got difficulty GUI working), having trouble with options gui
4-19-11: not much work done
4-20-11: added music to imprisoned scene and added interactions for a few hotspots in the same scene, fixed options GUI, just about ready for a playthrough
4-21-11 through 5-2-11: Playing through the game, small edits
5-3-11: finally fixed small issue where inventory item cursor wouldn't highlight when over the icon bar
5-4-11: Playing through game
5-5-11: no work done
5-6-11: FINALLY got a workable multiple idle animation system integrated. Unfortunately, I'll need to go through the whole game and replace instances of thalia_idle_on()/off() with thalia_idle=true/false now.
5-7-11 through 5-10-11: not much work done
5-11-11: Got strange glitch in idle system fixed. Thalia would turn left, right, up or down when her blinking idle animation kicked in if she was at a diagonal angle -- adding several more frames to the blinking animations fixed this.
[not much work done]
5-24-11: Finally modified thought GUI so that it isn't so plain -- there's still the occasional pixel misalignment at the corners, but hey, you can't fix everything.
[not much work done]
5-29-11: Got about as far as beyond the action vs. adventure scene in play-testing the game
5-30-11 through 5-31-11: Still playing through the game. Got as far as the post-Tlon scene
6-1-11: Finally finished first playthrough, now doing a quick secondary playthrough. About 2/3rds through the new playthrough, I discovered that I'd forgotten to change the main character from cJud (Judith) to cEgo (Thalia), forcing me to start over from the beginning of the game again (ARGAFRGHAGAHRGH...)
6-2-11: Had to start over from the beginning AGAIN due to having to add another Global Variable, got as far as KQ5
[not much work done except for some testing]
6-8-11: Almost through with beta-testing, working on website, game very close to being released.