Figuratively and literally. Poor Ireland has seen some of it's worst snowfall over the past week; it's put the country at a complete stand-still. Luckily I live 5 minute's from work, so I've swapped the comforts of my car for wellies and a brolly. Seems the worst of it has past now, everything is turning to dirty slush. It was also budget day today, with everyones eye's glued firmly to the TV as news of next year's cutback's were announced.
It hasn't entirely effected me personally, I'll be down about a tenner a week; but the worst of it comes from a hike in college registration fees from next year onwards. €500 extra per year; could be worse I suppose. This budget will really hurt lower paid workers and those on social welfare. It's a sorry state of affair's over here, I can see a huge amount of emigration occurring over the next 5 years and rightfully so. The government has made a total shambles of the economy and we're the one's who have to pay for their incompetence.
Enough ranting then and onto Craggy Island progress!
Where are we.. Well Dahlia got her voice work back to me, she did a stunning job. She also drew on her film expertise and gave me some direction for how I should be shooting scene's. I've now revisited the majority of stages and reworked the camera's and dialogue emotions to at least some degree. It is by no means an easy task, its so time consuming and the pressure is beginning to mount as my target release date draws ever-closer.
Voice work is going a little slower than planned. While there is a large chunk of it done; I'm having trouble filling the last few male spots. Hopefully we'll see some movement on this over the weekend; I'd like to be hitting the 75% mark at least, by Sunday.
Timelord is working away on the final encounter and setting up VFX spawns for it. The scripting is done for that part but we ran into issue's with it last night, hopefully it won't take much work to sort it out. He is also working on getting the character templates to work, I have pulled my hair out with this for the majority of last week, might have to look at alternate routes if the issue persists. A part from these addition's, there is a small list of bug fixes and code tweaks that are needed to round off the project. Nothing major, nothing more than an hour or two's work I predict.
Oh! I did the final render for the Island itself, along with finalizing the atmosphere, sky and sea. I'm very pleased with the final result, it came out better than expected. Looking forward to showing you that.
I'm pretty exhausted. I gotta tell you, for my next project, I sure as hell will be looking to join or build a small team, there is just so much work involved in even a small module, it's incredible. I don't regret 2 manning it, in fact I wouldn't change that. It's been a steep learning curve and wake up call as to just how much effort goes into building content. I don't mean to frighten anyone away from it, nor do I mean to come off the wrong way here, but no wonder the majority of mod's never see the light of day; it really is that much of a commitment. I'm proud of myself for sticking it out, whereas I have given up on far easier things in the past.
Some people have asked me if I will release CI without full VO or otherwise, but the answer to that question is no. I know that it might be a mistake to not release as soon as a playable version is ready, but I feel strongly about holding it back until its at a quality level I'm totally happy with; which includes full VO and polish throughout. I want it to make as strong an impression as possible upon release. Craggy Island won't be perfect, thats a given. The script is not too sharp, the structure could be much better and it could be longer, more innovative.. the list goes on. But somewhere in the whole thing, as long as you come away with some sort of experience, good or bad (hopefully the former!) my goal will be fulfilled. You're feedback will pave the way for my future projects. While I think we've certainly struck one or two components on the head in CI, I'm very curious to here the opinion's of the players. You certainly begin to lose perspective when you work with something so closely for so long.
Anyway, I need my 8 hour's sleep, so I'll leave it at that.
Goodnight.
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