That's the economics conversations about done. Now on to the individual alien conversations (where characters talk about things specific to themselves and not just the things they happen to believe).

I mentioned the badtime bedtime books the other day, and have since started a little web site about them. Here is a sample comic, some background, and a checklist of the other stories. The site isn't finished - apart from the sample comic there aren't any pictures, but it's a start.

Why am I wasting time on other stuff when I have a major deadline for the Les Mis game? I wrestled with that one. But long term it all contributes to the master plan. A good writer should write what he knows, and learn from the best. Consider this as research! I realize that to someone who didn't grow up with British comics the Badtime books may seem like nothing special. But trust me. I see things in those ideas that you don't. Either that or else I'm blinded by nostalgia. :)

Still adding space conversations. Given the number of characters and locations, each conversation will be short. But it gives a taster of what could be expanded if people like that part of the game. It's up to the users, I'll adjust the second version based on feedback from the first.

More space conversations today. And also persuing my interest in Bad Time Bed Time Books. If I get a chance I'm going to buy some old ones and make a web site so people can see what I'm on about. They sum up the kind of humor I want in the 'kids world' part of the game. Eventually.

Wow, that was amazing! Five minutes ago I mentioned the "bad time bed time books" in the blog. I Googled them out of curiosity, and only found one passing reference. Then I tried Google's blog search, and guess what? It had already archived the post I made FIVE MINUTES EARLIER! That is scary. And slightly disheartening, since mine was the only reference. I guess that means there's no fan pressure for them to be reprinted. Sigh.

Today I'm "housekeeping" on the game - archiving old work, refining ideas that have been sitting around for a while, emailing potential testers, that kind of thing. The most enjoyable part is tidying up the "Not The Fantastic Four" plans. I may have mentioned elsewhere that I like some of the old Fantastic Four comics, and a later release of the game will contain a homage to them. But I have to be very careful not to infringe on copyright. So I've been finding public domain characters from old novels that capture the spirit of the FF without actually BEING the FF. Then going through the old comics to find my favorite ideas and seeing if there are similar stories that I can tell, then adapt them in the direction I like. I won't be spending much more time on it today (or this year), becase I'm just tidying up loose ends for arciving purposes, but I'm going to REALLY enjoy this when the time comes. Another idea I'd love to add is a homage to the Bad Time Bed Time Books. And if you know what they are, you get an extra ten bonus points. :)

I've added a screenshot from the "death of Eponne" sequence to the screenshots page. The newest screenshots are at the bottom of the page. Now for a change of pace I'll add some alien conversations.

Spent ages yesterday on the "dying Eponine" animation. Don't expect too much, it's mainly because I don't have professional tools. A "proper" games studio could knock something like this up in less than an hour and it would look ten times better than my modest efforts. HOWEVER, the point is that a "proper" games studio simply would not do it, because they could not justify the investment in such a niche project. But me, on the other hand, I'm crazy enough to do create a game like this on almost zero budget, even if it takes me forever to do a simple task. The bottom line is that sometimes amateurs can do stuff that the professionals cannot.

Besides, it's kind of fun to see what results I can get with zero budget. And because I'm playing with video, some aspects of my animation will look more realistic than the best 3D graphics, because of how the clothes and flesh twist and fold and in real life. (And some of it won't, but there you go.)

Major announcement time. Well, more of a clarification really. As you may know, the game includes more than Les Miserables, but Les Miserables is the main story in the first release. My original plan was rather vague about the rest - just keep adding and tweaking or something. But I've been giving it some thought, and what will happen is this:

Each release will include TWO stories. The big one is the major novel (in this case, Les Miserables). The other one is something smaller, something fun or weird that I make up. Which may or may not be of interest to anyone else, but heck, it's my game and I'll add what I want! :) Plus it adds to the overall richness of the game world. The thing is, I have so much stuff I want to add, but I think it makes sense to add complete adventures and not just bits and pieces.

Some of the secondary stories will include:

• A quest based on the meaning of life (in the first release) - this gives me an excuse to roam around the other planets.
• Fairy tales. This was going to be a "main" story, but I don't think it really has a market on its own. The game isn't aimed at little kids (you need to be able to read) and any fairy tale quest will be fairly hit or miss (since I will need to combine several stories, Shrek-like, and I'm not a great writer).
• A homage to Zak McKracken, my favorite computer game. But taking great care not to infringe anyone's copyright!
• A homage to the 1960s Fantastic Four comic, another of my interests. Again, taking care to use only public domain stuff.
• People should write what they know, and I used to be a very active Mormon, so I may have something about prophets and eschatology. Kind of DaVinci code stuff. This is idea may even be shelved (its low down my list of priorities) but it's one of those things I think I could do well.
• Anything else that seems cool or fun to me.

Most of the effort for each release will go into the main story, but all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, so the "B movie" part will be something quirky and fun.

That's the "lifting gunpowder" and "raising the flag" and "falling off the bridge" animations done. Hopefully I'll get the big animation, the "death of Eponine" mostly finished today.

Spent yesterday combining jumping videos to make a "spinning in space" animation. I was using the middle frames from backflips, front flips, 360 jumps, etc. It was looking quite fun, but after six hours' work I had to cut my losses. The video quality was so poor that basically every frame would need to be completely redrawn, and that could take a week. The "spinning in space" idea isn't central to the game, so I can't justify that time. Oh well. It would have looked nice, but not nice enough to relase the game a week later than planned.

The intro thing looks promising. Some parts work better than others. It's kind of my response to the 3D graphics that dominate other games: this is low resolution and jerky (due to the way it was filmed) but it stil looks more realistic than any pre-rendered game, because it's made from real video!

Today I'm having fun with the videos I took yesterday. This game is unusual in many ways, so I think it makes sense to have a rather different kind of introduction, the first time you click on it. That's all I'm saying right now. :)

In other news, I also videoed footage to help with the "falling off the bridge" and "getting killed on the barricvades" sequences. And I noticed that my son is very good at backflips on the trampoline. So I took a lot of extra footage, and if it works well this may lead to a new "zero gravity" scene in the "non-Les-Mis" part of the game...

Yesterday's "climbing Valjean" animation looked rubbish (the climbing Carter animation isn't going to win any awards either, but the climbing Valjean was worse) so this morning I decided to do it properly, made a video of myself climbing a ladder, and used it as a template. The result was so much better that I decided this would be a good time to capture the last remaining video sequences: the improved author intro, and the falling-off-a-bridge and dying-on-the-barricades stuff.

I'm not claiming that the final result will be breathtaking, and I've always said that I won't try and compete with big budget game graphics, but I do have SOME standards. :)

Busy day away from developing yeaterday, so not much tiem spent on the game. Most of yesterday's development time was spent trying to get the character to walk down off the screen without crashing the game.

And I've been re-reading a book on how to write a good story. This game will live or die by the quality of its story. Nobody will care about the size of the game world if the story stinks, and the art certainly won't sell it. I think that story driven games form a MASSIVE gap in the market. Get the story right, and an amateur game can compete directly with the biggest games on the market. Get the story wrong, and nobody will bother to play for more than five minutes.

just uploaded the latest work in progress to a secret location for music purposes. A couple of people have offered to compose music for the game, but I don't know how serious they are. If they get back to me then I'll point them to the work in progress, so they can see how it looks for themselves.

Spent yesterday bug fixing (and doing little stuff like changing the install icon and adding "are you sure?" to the quit option). If you've followed this blog you have probably noticed that what I say I'll do and what I actually do on a given day are not always the same. :) But worry not, all that stuff was previously scheduled for later (I actually thought it would take longer) so no time has been lost.

That's the climbing rigging animation done. It doesn't look quite as spectacular as I hoped (it's drawn on the pixel level, so the final animation is relatively small) but it's still pretty cool though I say so myself. Most importantly, it helps to add the sense of "anything can happen" in the game. If you see a high sailing ship, there's a chance that maybe you could climb it. And if you're at the top there's a chance that you could jump into the sea and make a huge splash. Of course you have to find a really good reason in the context of the game, but it's nice for the player to think "maybe anything is possible."

The gunshots work really well with the smoke. I left that part on just running randomly for about ten minutes, just to enjoy the atmosphere. :) Yesterday I also created the "Valjean in prisoners' uniform" animation and today I'll have him climb the rigging and fall into the sea (true Les Mis fans will know the part I mean). Then I'll start with the "Valjean climbing in his regular costume" animation, as used in sewers and convent walls.

Finished the smoke effects and I'm just experimenting with gunshots. There aren't many sound effects in the game (though there's plenty of music) so I'll have to see how it sounds. Then I may as well get on with the "climbing rigging" animation. I just downloaded the latest version of DOSBox, and Animator worlks like a dream. It's like being back on my beloved 486 again, but faster! Wonderful.

I also noticed that the Screenshots page had "2006" next to each image. D'oh! Fixed. I don't know I forgot that it's now 2008.

Spent the evening creating smoke effects for the barricade scene. I'll try get a screenshot of it all working for the "weekly screenshots" page tomorrow.

In other news, I'm 99% decided to use BMT Micro as the eCommerce provider when the game is finally finished. It's a big name in game downloads, and has a good reputation. And it can offer CD versions of the download for people who want a hard copy. So that's one less thing to think about. :)

The 'deep conversations with the universe' are complete, and today I'll add the (shorter) conversations for the exploration screen, where you can jump into any part of the game world at random.

Last week I finally paid for the "No adverts" version of the newsletter. You know, that newsletter that comes out about once every six months. :) Since then the rate of subscription has more than doubled. I wish I'd done it sooner!

The development of this game is tied in quite closely with my day job (I work in the Post Office). When my day job is enjoyable I think 'I will take my time with the game and not rush it.' When my day job is less enjoyable I think 'I must get the game finished now! I have to escape from this rat race!" Obviously it's better to take more time on it, so I don't release a rushed, unfinished job.

Anyone who knows anything about the British Post Office knows that it's dying. Post Offices are being closed year after year, the organization has been losing money forever, and now it's losing core services to other organizations that can provide them more cheaply. As a result it loses even more money in a vicious circle of decline. And how does it respond? More pressure to hard sell, which in turn alienates customers and accelerates the decline. Most of us joined the post office because we love the public service aspect, but now we're just a sales force and I don't know anyone who feels good about that. (And national sales figures show that none of the staff anywhere have their hearts in sales.)

Yesterday we had another pep talk about meeting targets and using sales techniques to persuade people to buy things they didn't want when they came in. It won't get any better (because of the vicious circle noted above) so I am now actively looking for another job. I live in a remote rural area so it may take many months to find something (there are family reasons why I need to stay in the area) but there really isn't any other option.

Why am I writing this on the game blog? Because I don't want the game to look rushed. I don't want to feel any pressure to release it before it's ready, or to cut corners. The game has to be good, and so my day job makes a difference.

Lots of deep philosophical conversations with infinity yesterday. And some work on the smoke that blows past during the barricade battle. If nothing else, this game will be unique.

Well yesterday didn't go according to plan! Last week saw slow progress due to being on the road all day Wednesday, working long hours at my day job, and the complexity of writing long conversations. On Saturday night I wrote a small piece of code to make conversations much easier, and got a good night's sleep ready for a long and productive day on Sunday. I was just hitting my stride when we had a power cut!

The power was out most of the day, so no computer, no blogging, no game development, nothing. It's one of the prices you pay for living in a remote area. One windy day and BAM, no power for 12 hours or more. Still, the kids liked it since we cooked the food on the coal fire, did odd jobs around the house and played games til it got dark.

Today I'm adding more topics to the intro conversation. Long term I want the introduction to contain huge and deep topics. But they take a long time to write, and could easily sound pretentious and confusing. I think it's wiser, for the first release, to err on the side of caution.

As you probably noticed, I changed the look of the blog (and the guestbook) to better suit the main site.

I just upgraded the newsletter service so there won't be any annoying ads. It also lets me customize the welcome message. There's a link at the bottom of each page on LesMisGame.com

Nothing yesterday, I was away all day. But on Tuesday I worked on the opening conversation whare the hero learns about his past. I'll hopefully finish that part today.

I've been thinking a lot about what makes this game fun (or otherwise). As part of that I've firmed up the back story, the stuff that happens when you venture out beyond France and Les Miserables. The original plan was to invent a quest that lets the hero find the Ultimate Answers. But why invent quests when there are classic novels already out there, novels with cooler ideas than I could ever invent? So here's the scoop: the back story is based on The Pilgrim's Progress.

I won't be listing PP as one of the stories in the main menu, since this will not be a close adaptation, but anyone who knows anything about PP will recognize the names and events.