Silverdrake's Blog
:
February 2011
Last Days of Winter
POSTED ON
02/27/11
Spring may not start until the end of March, but I feel that winter is beginning to lose its icy grip. I\'ve no new Sims stuff, I regret to say, but I\'m almost done with my Oblivion quest. The coding didn\'t turn out to be so difficult. Right now, I\'m working on recording voices and the rather cumbersome process of generating the lip files in the old construction set and copying and renaming them along with the mp3\'s AND wav\'s into the new construction set (a BIG UGH!)
I\'m also planning a new rl vegetable garden, and I downloaded the DA2 demo, which has beautiful graphics, but crashed when I was almost at the end. It\'s a little weird that DA2 and Sims Medieval are both coming out in March. Then there is the Witcher 2 in May, and Elder Scrolls V not until October. An embarrassment of riches!
I was thinking the other day that someone should make a Steampunk adventure game for PC, because I don\'t know of any (though I am not a rabid follower of game blogs). Think of the submarines and dirigibles! It could have amazingly eccentric characters. If I were a better coder, I\'d do it myself.
BTW, re-releases of a bunch of the old Sierra King\'s Quest games are now available for download . Fun, fun!
I\'m also planning a new rl vegetable garden, and I downloaded the DA2 demo, which has beautiful graphics, but crashed when I was almost at the end. It\'s a little weird that DA2 and Sims Medieval are both coming out in March. Then there is the Witcher 2 in May, and Elder Scrolls V not until October. An embarrassment of riches!
I was thinking the other day that someone should make a Steampunk adventure game for PC, because I don\'t know of any (though I am not a rabid follower of game blogs). Think of the submarines and dirigibles! It could have amazingly eccentric characters. If I were a better coder, I\'d do it myself.
BTW, re-releases of a bunch of the old Sierra King\'s Quest games are now available for download . Fun, fun!
Quests
POSTED ON
02/07/11
I\'ve been teaching myself how to make a quest in Oblivion. Yeah, I know it\'s not the Sims, but it makes me curious about the quests in Sims 3 Medieval.
So I made a bunch of characters, built various buildings, wrote the dialogue, a book, several letters, and charted out the quest stages, but now I\'ve run into a major problem:
ing
(why, why will this blog not return the word \"ing\" for me?? Everytime I save, the \"\" part of the word disappears. You see what kind of problems I have with code? I can\'t even write the word s-c-r-i-p-t. The Irony.)
I understand the logic of coding, the if\'s and dowhiles and variables and so on, but without a manual, I\'m having trouble translating what I want the quest to do into the way the Construction Set wants it coded. Basically, the problem is that I haven\'t written much code before. It gives me new appreciation for our ability to understand language: we can say something in three or more different ways, and if the person we\'re speaking to knows our language, they can figure out what we\'re saying. But a computer needs to know EXACTLY what you want in a certain format. I have to learn to translate English into code, and it\'s making my head swim with all the neurons... trying... to connect... ARGGGHHH!
I might put it down for a day and let it sink in, but my poor characters are rather lifeless at the moment. I think I could become obsessive about it, making sure they have things to do and stuff to talk about every day of their little pixel lives, even though they\'re just NPC\'s. But they\'re MY NPC\'s, dammit!
So anyway, I spent part of last evening trying to keep my sheep from wandering out of their pen, and when dinnertime came around, I thanked the Goddess for electric sheep. Whoever thought I\'d be rounding up electric sheep? Maybe this is all an android\'s dream.
Speaking of which, I was walking my dog one day, and someone stopped and asked his name. I said, \"Druid,\" and they said, \"You mean like the phone?\" I admit to being flabbergasted for a minute. I mumbled something about Celtic priests and walked away.
So I made a bunch of characters, built various buildings, wrote the dialogue, a book, several letters, and charted out the quest stages, but now I\'ve run into a major problem:
ing
(why, why will this blog not return the word \"ing\" for me?? Everytime I save, the \"\" part of the word disappears. You see what kind of problems I have with code? I can\'t even write the word s-c-r-i-p-t. The Irony.)
I understand the logic of coding, the if\'s and dowhiles and variables and so on, but without a manual, I\'m having trouble translating what I want the quest to do into the way the Construction Set wants it coded. Basically, the problem is that I haven\'t written much code before. It gives me new appreciation for our ability to understand language: we can say something in three or more different ways, and if the person we\'re speaking to knows our language, they can figure out what we\'re saying. But a computer needs to know EXACTLY what you want in a certain format. I have to learn to translate English into code, and it\'s making my head swim with all the neurons... trying... to connect... ARGGGHHH!
I might put it down for a day and let it sink in, but my poor characters are rather lifeless at the moment. I think I could become obsessive about it, making sure they have things to do and stuff to talk about every day of their little pixel lives, even though they\'re just NPC\'s. But they\'re MY NPC\'s, dammit!
So anyway, I spent part of last evening trying to keep my sheep from wandering out of their pen, and when dinnertime came around, I thanked the Goddess for electric sheep. Whoever thought I\'d be rounding up electric sheep? Maybe this is all an android\'s dream.
Speaking of which, I was walking my dog one day, and someone stopped and asked his name. I said, \"Druid,\" and they said, \"You mean like the phone?\" I admit to being flabbergasted for a minute. I mumbled something about Celtic priests and walked away.
