Finished My First Test Run

[dmpdesign]

Finally finished going through the whole game and testing this week while I was out sick.

My final save game has probably 85% of the items, and it took me roughly 9.5 hours (knowing where to go and using the debug speed + save anywhere really helped).

I imagine it will likely take a new player ~15 hours to beat and for someone trying to get everything probably close to 20 hours.

The good news:

-there was no need for any level grinding to progress through the game, so it should be relatively non-stop progression.  This is a big plus in my book.  The end game level should be 29-32 if you play straight through it without grinding.  This is good and is on par with the other king's fields.

-i swapped in many lower poly models for the objects that were causing most of the slowdowns, this appears to have helped the game play on slower machines.

-all in game enemies/weapons/armor and leveling have been balanced to my liking, so that annoying part is finally over.

The bad news:

- I have to rework the opening video, 600mb for that is unacceptable.

- I still have to complete the library map (the collector's area of the game) and it will be a pain in the arse.

- I still need an ending vid.

- Some cleanup is still needed on the in game text boxes, there are misaligned sentences galore.

But thats it, give me a week or so and I should hopefully have this thing ready for its beta release.

Tom, Im going to skip having you test it, I think I have debugged it pretty well, and if not, I can always patch it.

John, I need to pick your brain about some things I need to finish up, I will email you with some stuff I have on my mind.

[scott]

I'm glad you are almost done with it. (yes, I've come back already...) I still look forward to playing it. I hope you will finish it in a week like you said. (But it seems like you never meet the deadline you set) Seeing how close you are though, you could most likely meet this deadline you set.

[dmpdesign]

you are absolutely right, ive been terrible at hitting my dates!

I still intend on shipping my beta dvds out on the 15th...

The game is finished.  I am going through a third test run now and fixing any bugs I find and cleaning up some of the texts etc.

I added in some new custom models this last week to spruce up some of the backgrounds, and may dabble a bit in the animated water stuff john recently uncovered

(john I need to make animated red/green/gold water, I will have to ping you on how to turn on the animation)

I am finishing up the ending cut scene this week and the installer program that will come with the game.  So, in theory there should be no reason I dont hit the 15th as a launch day.

Keeping my fingers crossed.

[scott]

I can't wait to see what you where able to do with SoM. It seems all I was able to get done was writing the story-line. It's possable that if I play the game, it might make me want to try SoM again.
My book (It's not realy a book yet, and may never be published...) Seems to be coming along nicely. If I go back to SoM, I'm going to need to make another story-line for it. (It most likely won't be too hard.)
I've thought of trying again, but it seemed difficult for me. If I spend a little more time I could mabey get the hang of it. I'm still going to think about it...

I know I got off topic, but that happens a lot on here.