Road to the Heart (shameless plug)

Quite a few of you have expressed interest in my nusic, so I thought i would share the good news. My singer songwriting partner (David Van Delinder) and I have finally released our second CD - "Road to the Heart". It is available now on CDbaby. Should arrive at Itunes soon. We issued a pre-release signed version a few years back, but were never happy with it. This was the first album we recorded entirely in our basement studios, and between the time we started, and the time we "finished", much had changed. We had new equipment, new software, and of course, new knowledge. So we revisted the tracks, redoing vocals, in some cases redoing whole songs, and changed out one song for another. I think it was worth the time and effort. You can hear the sample tracks on CDbaby here. The full version of "Winter Promises" is on the CD.

There are also 2 "fantastic" (IMHO) Christmas songs, "A place where I belong", as well as "Midwestern Christmas". So give it a listen. If you like what you hear, whether you purchase or not, please leave a review - we would really appreciate it.

Have actually started working on the mod some - its taking a while to get back into the swing of things, but with the season's first real snow hitting today, its definately putting me in the mood. Hope everyone has a fantastic Holiday season!

Hiatus

Figured I should update since its been a while. Had a minor setback with a crash - however all is well and most of the work was recovered successfully. Have not has much time to work on the Mod. Hope to get back to it this winter. Being a social service provider in the State of Illinois means funding is short, and when payments from the state are late, things get tense rapidly. What little free time I have has been spent on the music side of things. Its great therapy, and in times like these it keeps me going.

Wanted to also share my new web site. It focuses mostly on the music, so if you liked "Winter Promises", and would like to hear more, give me a visit here. I have posted some finished songs, as well as a few "works in progress". David and I (David Van Delinder - mu partner in "crime") are just about to release our second cd, "Road to the heart". It should be on Cdbaby in a few weeks, and Itunes shortly thereafter. Hope you like what you hear!

Messing with Custom Load Screens

Managed to pull myself away from the olympics for a while. Ran into a mental block while wrestling with one of the plot twists, so I decided to tackle something I have been meaning to get to for a while - custom load screens. Came up with a few very basic designs and then dashed off into the toolset to set them up, and test. Many thanks to those of you who have "gone before". I would have never figured this out on my own! While there is still a lot of experimenting to do before I get just the feel I am after, it is always a gas to see things functioning "in game" as they are supposed to. Initially, I had the screens loading properly the first time, but then failing when I returned to an area. Turned out to be an error in the way I was saving them (24 bit vs 16 bit tga files). Once I sorted that out (16 is the way to go), all was smooth sailing. Have included 2 variant of the screens captured "in game".

Thought I would post an update just to let everyone know that Winter Promises is still alive and well! Everything slowed down considerably just before Thanksgiving when my desktop machine had a major crash. The good news was that I had just backed up to a zip drive, and didn't lose a thing (I would have lost everything without that back-up). That meant, however, that I was limited to my laptop for a while, and everything slowed down considerably. Then came the holidays with visits from the family, and also helping out with the beta testing of Trinity. And I must admit to being a "little" distracted with Dragon Age.

However - the work goes on. The Desktop machine has NWNII, MOYB, And SOZ reinstalled, and all is good to go. I have been working on updating the world map to integrate the newest content, as well as re-visiting conversations and quests with the same purpose. Only one screenie this time. Those of you who played Price of Honor will remember the good mayor Deeds (Christine's father). This shot is the interior of the Deeds household, where our hero is about to speak with the hired help.

Hope everyone had a great Holiday! And hey - if you aren't one of the more than 500 players who have already checked out Trinity by E.C. Patterson - give it a try. You will be glad that you did - it is fantastic!

New Areas - The Plot Thickens

Time to check in and summarize the latest progress. Been very busy in the yard trying to get ready for summer. Major landscaping this year with a new retaining wall. Also had a family reunion and saw some cousins I hadn't seen since we played together as kids. Lots of fun, in spite of overwhelming heat and humidity. We had over 70 people in attendance - all camping out for the weekend at a site in Wisconsin. 

I have been busy on the Mod trying to finish up the needed area's - though it seems that just about the time I think I have them all, I find the need for yet another. Above are scenes from the "Inn of the Twelve Travelers"(inside and out). as well as a shaman's cave (internal) and some Dwarf halls - both outside and in (thanks to RWS). Lots of set decorating to do on the dwarf halls, but the other areas are close to "good to go". Besides "decorating", I still have at least two more internal areas to complete. Hope to get back to plotting soon - the main outline is done, but lots of details remain to be completed.

Hope everyone (in the U.S.) had a great and safe Holiday.

Long Holiday weekend

Took a few extra days over the Memorial Day weekend and when not doing yard work managed to spend some time with the toolset. Finished a new swamp exterior which ended up with the exact feel I was going for - and that doesn't happen all that often! After reading a post at the community site, I spent considerable time experimenting with ambiance - the end result being that I began populating my Oasis area with folks doing various things besides just standing around. Ended up using 3 different methods, but all are "playing nice in the sandbox". And I'm learning - which is half the fun. Still have a considerable way to go, but the more I do, the quicker it goes, so when I tackle the next area, it should only take about half the time. 

Began work on a new external area for a side-quest tentatively called "The Inn of the Twelve Travelers". Perhaps next post I will have some screens of that ready for viewing. In the mean time, I have included some shots of the new Swamp.

Map up and "running" in Game

Sorry about the long delay between posts. Have been busy at a steady (if somewhat slow) pace. I finally finished working through Sunjammer's tutorial on World Maps. What a great tutorial. It is well written, clear, and went without a hitch. I started with the Map I had used in the intro movie of Price of Honor. Dumped it into Photshop, and cropped the area I needed - then sized to 647X647 pixels. Next got rid of all the roads which wouldn't have been there at the early setting of the mod. Removed all the text, as I wanted a different font. Finally I added some color tinting to the mountains, forest, and lakes. Dumped it into Illustrator for the background, site locations and titles. Finally added a background and compass arrow. Then exported as a TGA file. From there I just followed the tutorial substituting my file for Sunjammer's. The great thing I discovered was that if you forget something on the map (which I did), you can just go back to the Illustrator file, make the change and export the file with the same name and answer yes when asked if you want to replace the previous file. Game doesn't seem to know the difference. Which means I can work on the map as I go - adjusting to plot changes as they come up. I have included a early screenshot of the map "in-game". Its fairly close to what I was after - especially considering my limited computer graphics skills.

Other than the map, I have been busy editing the sites from POH that will be re-visited in Winter Promises. I'm just about finished with that part. Then I will begin work on at least two more new exterior areas that I need. I have already started work on the conversations, and quite a few rough drafts are in place.