Let the testing begin!

Well, it's just about that time! I was a total machine yesterday (mostly because of lack of internet access to distract me ;) )--I designed and completed 2 of the 4 remaining areas from scratch, I designed and implemented two huge campaign-wide quests (which work in parallel) mostly from scratch, and I started testing, taking a few screenshots along the way!

It was admittedly pretty rough for the first, oh, 2 or 3 attempted run-throughs; I came away with about a page of bugs, and I encountered showstoppers for every quest (side and main) I tried. However, after a few hours of chipping away, I've gotten rid of all bugs I hit so far, and I have only a couple of "suggested improvements to self" left to implement today. Of course, I also have this one quest to finish--the quest-giver's dialogue isn't done and two areas still need to be made from scratch and enemies need to be added to one already-made area, but otherwise it's looking good.


After that I'll have to write the "ending" movie and I'll be done apart from additional bugfixing, writing up a readme, and writing up a walkthrough that contains listings for all custom items and tips/solutions for all quests in the game. After that it's a few more polish things--placing water sounds, making sure animations are working correctly, etc.--and I'm DONE.


Oh, I forgot to mention, I also took out a handy-dandy pencil and paper and plotted out those 2 areas left to create, complete with sub-plot info, notes about which enemies go where--basically doing a blueprint of the areas so that when I make them today, everything goes nice and smoothly. I'm really happy with some of the "subplot" ideas I had doing this last night--this quest will hopefully be a lot of fun.


Another thing to note is that up until now I had been playing with a level 7 dwarven barbarian, and combat was fairly well-balanced; yesterday, however, I used a human cleric 7/fighter 1, and combat was just as fair! I'm not very good at NWN2's intricacies as far as playing it goes, but I'm pretty pleased with the difficulty level thus far. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised at how much I was enjoying myself overall playing through Moonshadows--I honestly wasn't expecting to be entertained since I made the thing, but I found myself having a genuinely good time! This, I suspect, is a very good sign. :) Alrighty, off to make those 2 last areas...!