Still bugfixing. Al the crowds mean that some scenes take a few seconds to load. This led to blank screens or (worse) sometimes a character would be removed before the background, or stayed on after the background disappeared. So I added some code to freeze the screen while the stuff happens in the background, which makes the game look more solid. However, this has somehow messed with the "walk onto the scene" code. Instead of walking onto each scene, Peri appears seemingly randomly, facing in a seemingly random direction. This is typical of the kind of bug that appears when the underlying code is changed, and usually takes about an hour to track down and fix. There are a few other bugs that appeared relating to the new title animation, but I just mention it to let you know that I am working hard even though there isn't anything to show yet.

Couldn't get on the Internet yesterday, hence no update. The game is looking better and better. Spent yesterday tweaking and polishing (i.e. fixing major crashes LOL). As usual I underestimated how much tidying it would need before I could send it to the composer, but the big stuff is all done now (i.e. the most obvious ugly errors are tracked down). Tonight I'll either be carving pumpkins with the kids or compressing the game to send off.

That was a good day! I may have mentioned (about a hundred times) that some things take longer than expected, and other things take much less time than expected. Today was in the second category, I am very pleased to say! The screenshot above is from the title animation, one of the first things you see when you click on the game to start it up. I expected the title animation to take several days and possibly a lot longer, but it's nearly all complete after just one day!
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I originally planned to just send off the "pre-alpha test" game today, but the smoke bombs arrived yesterday so I was too impatient, like a little kid with a new toy, so I spent the morning grabbing smoke videos. My plan was for the introductory title sequence to consist of scenes from the game, interspersed by smoke. But the smoke videos just weren't good enough. I'll still be able to use them in the barricade animations, but I had to completely rethink the opening sequence. I came up with something completely different, and better (I think). I won't give away the secrets, but it involves the screenshot above. Bet that's got you wondering, eh? :)

That's the demo version done (without any story, it just shoiws the scenes and the main Peri animations). In the morning I'll send it to the composer. Also the smoke bombs arrived today so if it's sunny tomorrow I'll video them and see if the results are usable.

Well that was weird! I spent the last few days improving the Peri animation, and trying to get it looking better from different angles. So I'm very familiar with that fictional face. And guess what? Today I met someone who looks just like her. I wanted to say "hey, I'm making a computer game and you look just like the star" but it would either sound weird in a bad way, or they would think it was a chat up line (the young lady was 26, I am 39). No good could come of it . So I kept quiet. Hopefuly she didn't see me staring at her. It sure would have saved a lot of time if a few months ago I could have got video of her from different angles and drawn over them. But once again, I don't think it would have been a good idea to ask. :)
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In other news, today I ordered the joke smoke bombs, needed for the intro. All will be explained at a later date.

Today I'm making Peri fidget. She just doesn't look right standing perfectly still, so if you leave her alone now she does random stuff like looking around or adjusting her bag..

After saying I would not update Peri's sprite yet, today I'm updating Peri's sprite. That is, tweaking her side view (it still doesn't perfectly fit the front view), adding slight movements when she stands still (perfectly still looks unrealistic), and of course making her outline darker (so you can see her even when she's small.

That's better! I spent the day tidying up the scenes: making sure the crowds are in the right places, the Z-buffers work (for when you walk "behind" something), lightmaps (so characters are dark when the scene is dark) etc. And adding the last "big" crowd animation - the people walking up and down the main avenue. So the first navigable game world should be ready to send to the composer tomorrow.

Finally! The crowd code (both walking and static) is complete, and here is the proof: Peri, plus walking characters, plus standing characters (and later there will be story characters as well). WARNING: this looks a bit of a mess, due to the characters being the wrong sizes, some of them float above the roof on the right, etc., but those things are easily fixed. The important thing is that it works, it's stable, and it doesn't tax the computer too much. What an ordeal! Like I said before, you would not believe the amount of time and complexity that's needed for an apparently simple task. Literally thousands of lines of code, probably hundred of hours (when you add up all the failed attempts) and tens of thousands of files (since every frame of every animation at every scale is a separate bitmap). It would have been much easier to do it a different way, but that would have been either unstable, too processor intensive, too expensive, or would have just looked wrong. Well it's done now and I am so relieved! Now I need to go and tidy up the sizes, positions, etc., and recreate the floors (so Peri does not walk through people). I'll also need to recreate Peri's animation to make it darker, but that can wait - I'm sure there will be other, unforeseen reasons to change it before the final game is ready. One other thing: The crowds have added more to the download size than I wanted, but it's not a huge problem. It's now looking like the final download size will be around 90 MB, which will expand to about 175 MB on installation. Bigger than I wanted, but still substantially smaller than the previous version was going to be.

Still working on the static crowds...

Not much to add today. Still working away on those infernal static crowds. You would not believe how many steps are involved! Plus it's my son's birthday today so I don't have as much time as I'd like. But there is still a good chance the first working screen with moving crowds AND static crowds may be ready by tomorrow.

"Wot, still no crowds screenshot?" Time for excuses, explanations and good news. First the excuses. Over the past few days I've created 80 animated crowd characters, about 100 animated crowd combinations, and I'm currently resizing them (which takes a long time for technical reasons), then I'll convert them into a format that the game can use, write some code, etc., and eventually there will be some screenshots to see. Clearly this has taken longer than planned. Meanwhile, other tasks (such as creating characters and planning the story details) take less time than expected, so over all this averages out. On the whole I am probably 4 weeks behind where I'd like to be, but that time will be caught up by the end of January, in time for beta testing (see below for why).
Now for the explanations. The main reason for the delay is exceptional and unwanted overtime at my day job, so I'm only getting about 2 hours a day to work on the game (and full days on Sundays and Mondays). The happens to coincide with crowd creating, which happened to take much longer than planned. When it takes an extra 2 hours, that becomes an extra day's delay. I hate delays as much as you do. Probably more, since this is just a game to everyone else, but to me it's all my hopes and dreams rolled into one! (Les Miserables is just the start, but to achieve everything else I need to get the first step right. And this is the hardest step because I'm learning while I do it, and have to fit it in around my day job.)
Finally, the good news. The extreme overtime will end at the end of November. And over November and early December I have three weeks off work (that's when I'll get the animations doen and make the teaser trailer to put on YouTube). During the holidays I should get 10 hours a day on developing, instead of 2. Then when my work hours are back to normal I will do zero overtime until Ferbruary. That is why I am confident that I can make up for lost time and still be on schedule for beta testing in February. So my apologies for so many delayed and not-quite-ready screenshots over the past month, but expect things to speed up in November.
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In other news, I've been reading over the comments on "Game design document 2.0" and am very lrelieved to report that apparently it does not suck. And thanks to the expert script consultant I should be able to avoid a couple of bonehead mistakes, and include a couple of important scenes that I carelessly left out of the first draft. "Game design document 2.1" will be ready by the weekend, as will the final background crowd screenshots (how many times have I said that?) and then it wil be time to step up a gear and do one of the really fun parts, creating the characters - Jean Valjean, Marius, Cosette, etc.

The best laid plans gang aft agley! I had planned to spend this evening putting the different static crowds together and (if that didn't take too long) making the first screenshot with walking crowds PLUS static crowds. But instead the kids wanted me to help with their homework. So hopefully I'll get more done tomorrow.

I was on track to have the first crowd-filled screenshot up by tonight, but the crowds were looking a little boring: the people just shuffled or nodded, which looked off, and there was no good reason for having them just stand there. So I added some orators to be the centre of each crowd. These are people who are talking at the center of each group in a public space. E.g. they might be talking about the revolution or something. They move their arms more than usual, which means more animation, which means adding 3 hours to the schedule, which means the screenshot will be ready either tomorrow or Wednesday. Sorry for the delay, but it should be worth it.

The proper screenshot will be up tomorrow, but meanwhile here are two other pics.

TOP: screenshots from Assassin's Creed, the game that sold itself on having huge numbers of NPCs (non-player characters). But the latest in-game video shows the nearer we get to Assassin's Creed being released, the fewer NPCs we see. The screenshots show that there are only a maximum of 47 NPCs in any one scene, and most of those just stand around. So guess what! Les Miserables will have more NPCs in a single scene than Assassin's Creed! LOL! That really makes me smile.

Of course, my NPCs are not 3D rendered with sophisticated AI. But on the other hand you can talk to mine and have conversations - can you do that in Assassin's Creed? I have no idea, but I think it's funny if my modest little effort can do something that their multi-million dollar blockbuster cannot manage. And you don't even need a special graphics card for my game. :)

BOTTOM:

The other pictures are samples of the non-walking crowd characters in the game. I really enjoy creating these, it's my favorite part of making the game.

The design document has been sent to my crack team of critics for analysis (i.e I sent a copy to Arlene and I hope she has time to give it a quick scan). And tonight I'm writing some new "float character" code (technical stuff that allows Peri to walk behind or in front of crowds).

I have the next two days off work and hopefully can get most of the static crowd animations done. If all goes well, tomorrow's weekly screen shot will show a nicely crowded scene. But don't be too surprised if it's delayed until Monday. :)

That's the walking animations all done. Now to incorporate them into the game and see what it looks like. I should also have the detailed plan all typed up by tonight (or tomorrow if the kids want me to help with their homework* etc.)

*(The kids are getting older, and it's a long time since I did those topics, so my "helping with homework" is more and more a case of shuffling papers, saying vague things, and staring at their text books desperately trying to remember something, anything that makes any sense at all.)

Today I finished the detailed design. Still need to type up the last parts, then I'll send a copy to a couple of people for comments.

Nostalgia time... my interest in classsic books began when I was aged six, with the Badtime Bedtime Books, tiny humor inserts in a long forgotten British comic called Monster Fun. Ah I loved those little "books." I recently created a web site about them, and from time to time some collector will send me a scan of another issue. Last night I got a scan of The Scarlet Pimplyneddy, It's a silly spoof of the Scarlet Pimpernel, and so it covers the same general period and themes (very roughly) as Les Miserables. Deep down inside I really wanted my game to look like that all the way through, with silly cartons doing silly things, very quick to draw and just nonsense. But realistically I don't think anyone would buy it. Successful humor is not as easy as it looks. But it was so great to be reminded of my childhood...

I should have finished the tedious walking crowd animations by tomorrow night (tedious for me, hopefully mildly pleasant for everyone else!) then I'll put them in place and see it all working by the end of the week. And cross lots of fingers that it looks like it is supposed to. Also tomorrow I should be close to finishing the detailed story plan (though won't have it typed up yet).

Had a good two days typing up the detailed plan (50% done) and creating those incredibly-slow-and-tedious-to-create-but-hopefully-OK-when-they're-all-finished walking crowds (80% done). The walking crowds have been the great surprise of the whole development process really. Such a simple thing takes so long! But it's all good experience. And while another game engine might have been able to add them much more easily, I don't think it could be done any quicker without making the game run slowly (e.g. by requiring far more power at runtime) so I'm happy with the result.

Today's screenshot is the new version of the inside of the church. The old version (no longer used) was much darker and didn't look right with the flat minimalist characters:I like the "light" look of the new pic. One way that the game is different from the musical (apart from the slightly smaller budget!) is the use of light. The musical goes for a dark look, which makes sense in the confines of a stage. So I go for a light look, to emphasize the message of hope and redemption and infinite possibilities. Besides, I live in the north of Scotland, so I think of France as being a hot country near the equator :)

Of course, some scenes do have to be dark: the inside of the galley, or the sewers, or the night time escape from Javert. But not the church. The church, where we meet Mabeuf, is a place of hope and discovery. Being light makes more sense.

In other news, my cat wanted to leave a message. She just walked on the keyboard, somehow launched Google and searched for the following:

~'#]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]k ccccccccccccc/...

The weird thing was that it came up with over 19,000 matches, over a thousand of which include the word "cat." She is obviously smarter than she looks.

I just worked out that there are only 650 hours of work left to do before the game is ready for beta testing in February. It sounds scary, but at the present rate of progress (including the delays over crowds) it means I'm on track.

650 hours sounds like a lot, but it's just realistic. Don't expect Shenmui (the world's most expensive game). Even a simple task like typing up notes can take ten hours. Coding the came then takes 360 hours: 30 plot points, each requiring four hours to code, four hours to write conversations, and four hours to test. Then about thirty characters, forty small animations, and so on and so on.

I've decided to break all the remaining work into hour-long chunks so it's easier to see progress being made at every point, and thus avoid the desire to procrastinate when some tasks seem to take forever. I'll keep you posted and let you know if it works.

I'm on a roll today! I always work better when unstressed. (When stressed I work worse, eat more, and spend time on fun web sites instead.) Well my work money has been sorted out (at least I think it has - I will know for certain on Thursday). My diet is going well - 63 pounds gone, just 7 left to lose. And the past two weeks has been almost windless! Cycling home the 13 miles from work has been fun! (Never thought I'd type those words!) So tonight I'm home from work earlier than expected, I don't feel like death, and I'm ready for a solid evening doing the most tedious animation jobs that I usually procrastinate. Excellent!

Still plugging away, adding two detailed plot point plans and two walking groups each day. I only have a couple of hours a day right now because of extra hours at my day job. I am only taking on the extra hours because, after 4 months, my new job still hasn't paid me properly and I have no idea how much I will be paid and cannot afford to take any chances. I'm seeing my boss about it today. Again. Once I know how much I am supposed to be paid then I can trim my hours accordingly and spend more time on the game. The time when I am my own boss cannot come soon enough. But realistically that might be a year or two in the future, so I cannot afford to annoy my day job boss and must still say yes sir no sir. Hopefully I'll have a better idea of where I stand by tonight.

Just an update on progress of this and that.
I'm currently finishing two detailed plot points per day in my lunch break, and there are 32 plot points altogether, so that is on track. The tedious adding of crowds is taking even longer than I thought - about half an hour per line of people, just because it contains several steps that cannot be automated (like positioning the line to start and end at the right place) so I'll probably just do one or two a day until the end of the month. I'm more looking forward to adding the static crowds, since this involves more creativity and (I hope) faster results. As mentioned before I'm a week behind schedule due to the crowd problems, and my day job involves very long hours right now. But I have three weeks off (mainly in November) and should get all the animations and the teaser trailer finished then, and hopefully be well into the actual coding.

It's scary sometimes to see how long even a simple thing takes, but it is also very reassuring to know that most of that is "learning curve" stuff. This means that the next story will be much quicker to add. And the next two will be quicker again, since they are shorter. Story 1 = Les Miserables, story 2 = War and Peace, story 3 = The Divine Comedy, story 4 = Journey to the Center of the Earth. I don't know how long Les Miserables will take to play through, but however long it is the game will get longer and longer as new stories are added, and it will become more and more fun as I learn from my mistakes. The goal of a new story every six months should be very achievable after War and Peace is done, and when the game sells enough I'll give up my day job and add new stories at an even faster rate.

Found a new church photo, and added some more crowds - the problems are solved but there is still the tedious job of making 25 different animations, taking about 15 minutes each. Gosh, that adds up to quite a long time, doesn't it? Whenever I have a tedious job that I know will take longer than I tell myself, then I always procrastinate by working on my other web sites. Like today. :)