TUESDAY, 18 OCTOBER 2011 BY EARL (SIGNET)
Development on the SoF video game continues. This weekend is Blender weekend, where I hope to learn to use Blender properly and can start creating renders for the game.
Due to time issues, I plan to create each of our characters in 3D and generate the walk and attack cycles from there using renders from various angles. That is the theory anyway…
THURSDAY, 1 SEPTEMBER 2011 BY EARL (SIGNET)
As you know we have temporarily stopped development of Annor while the team devote their time to a new, smaller scale project. We can now reveal a few scraps of information about the new project.
Skies of Ferena
This project is a small scale 2D rpg for handheld devices. The first installment in the saga takes place in a steam punk style world of adventure and piracy. You will take the role of Brevan, a soldier from the Lorefeld army and journey across the skies unraveling mysteries and discovering treasure.
The target plat form will first be Windows Phone 7, eventually followed by iPhone and Android in no particular order. It will run on phones and probably tablets. Eventually we would like to develop the series further on other handheld devices, perhaps onto consoles and PC one day.
You will travel in a party of four and can control any of the four main characters during combat. The party level up as a group with specific weapon choices available per character. Signetware will be developing this project with the Signetware Studios audio team handling sound and music.
The current stage of development is artwork, one of the most time consuming stages of development in the 2D game. Once initial artwork has been completed, some early development screenshots will be published here. After that you will have to wait until further artwork has been completed and the games website is up and running.
If nothing on this project is listed here by November, then check the Signetware website for development news.
MONDAY, 18 JULY 2011 BY EARL (SIGNET)
Well this may not seem like good news but there is more to come.
I am officially putting the project on hold as I am currently busy with a much larger Signetware project. Details of this project will follow in the coming months but at the moment I can reveal that it is game related.
The good news here is that this project will benefit Annor, and allow us to perhaps move away from NWN2 completely. I didn’t hear back from Bioware regarding the use of the Aurora engine, but plans are still in place to take Annor away from a D&D engine built for D&D games and put it where it belongs.
All the work done so far will be ported over to the new project. In an ideal world we’d love to get our hands on Bethesda’s Creation Engine, it would suite Annor PERFECTLY. We dream….. but my god I will try! Perhaps if I start now, a year or two of begging letters will have the desired effect. Perhaps our new project will impress.
Time will tell. Thanks for sticking with us, and please don’t wander too far!
WEDNESDAY, 20 APRIL 2011 BY EARL (SIGNET)
It may seem like very little is happening. Which isn’t far from the truth.
After changing job I had found out that I now had to move to London (not job related). I have spent the last month or so doing that.
Last month I also suspended development. This was for a different reason entirely.
There is a massive amount of modeling work I need to do before I can finish a preview video. The problem is, Blender have been changing the API to their beta 2.5 release with every iteration. The folks who wrote the import and export plugins decided to wait until 2.57 was final.
There are still some issues regarding the plugin but I think they will be sorted soon. 2.57 has just been released. I expect to have a little time once the plugins are stable to re-acquaint myself with modelling and learn to used blender. Then development will continue. I move at the end of next month. Hopefully for the last time.
By mid June I think everything will be back on track. By September I will hopefully have a video. Before then there will be screenshots as normal.
Take this as positive news. I’m happy to finally get things sorted out.
TUESDAY, 15 FEBRUARY 2011 BY EARL (SIGNET)
I am slowly getting things organised.
Very soon I will be able to continue development, as will Relentless.
WEDNESDAY, 2 FEBRUARY 2011 BY EARL (SIGNET)
Hi everyone.
Just a quick update.
I have placed development on temporary hold while I sort everyday life out. Probably going to need a new job in less than 4 weeks so I am trying to find one.
Rest assured, development will continue in 1 month at the latest. I have alot of ‘almost done’ things to show off.
FRIDAY, 14 JANUARY 2011 BY RELENTLESS
Happy new year to you all,
Over the last month neither i or signet have had much free time to really work on the project. I have used some free time i have to polish up the songs currently made for Annor, but my main priority at the moment was to complete alot of course work for my BTEC in Music Engineering.
I have finally sent off my UCAS application, lets hope i hear back from a Uni to continue my studies. Now that the busy time of christmas is over, friends and family visits as well as work set to be handed in, it is time to look towards the Annor project again.
Im hoping to see some form of Alpha testing soon, although Signet has had problems with his computer, he is a hard worker and can recreate, if not improve, what he had before… As for me, i need to get my ass in gear 
Happy New Year and have a great 2011, readers!
WEDNESDAY, 22 DECEMBER 2010 BY EARL (SIGNET)
The problem with NeverWinter Script is it fires and it is done. Instructions can’t be run midway telling it to wait and check again later. When it comes to things that should take time (such as digging or chopping trees) we have limited options.
The first is to run an on-hit system, requiring the player character to repeatedly hit a target object to run the script. This is perfect for chopping trees. The animation is there and it looks realistic. This doesn’t work so well for digging holes in the ground.
The second option is to pin the player for the entire time they should be doing something, playing an animation. The problem of course is that the player is vulnerable. However, this works for short period actions, such as drinking from the river.
Another option is one that I think is perfect for digging applications and others where a player must remain in position. This option involves running a check through the modules heartbeat script to check and make sure a player is doing something. This script checks that the player is still “doing” an action and runs the appropriate script.
Our mining script (digging side) involves the player using the shovel, and the character starts digging (using the nasty digging animation that puts the shovel through your knees). The location of the player is memorised and the action of “digging” is set on the player. A mound is created at the digging point and the heartbeat checks that the player hasn’t moved.
Assuming all is good then the deductions are calculated and applied to the mound and player until completion. Once the hole has been dug, the mine is ready and the mound is replaced by the “entrance”. Mining is complete.
This is an excellent way for our mining system to work. Not only does it ensure that the player doesn’t go walkabout in between, it also means that the player CAN go walkabout in between. If they get attacked, they can fight back and resume mining afterwards.
With just a few things to optimise and iron out, the action script and mining systems should be almost finished very soon indeed.
FRIDAY, 17 DECEMBER 2010 BY EARL (SIGNET)
Last night I set myself the task of testing some of the more core systems in Annor. This system is a little more obvious to players than the GENESIS system. It is all about mining and house construction.
NeverWinter Nights 2 and its predecessor use an area based system rather than a streamed seamless world like you would find in World of Warcraft. Each area is created in the toolset and you transition between each using doors or portals etc.
With me so far? Good. 
Annor will have a housing system and a construction system which means you can build a structure almost anywhere and go inside it. You can also dig mines. Great. We had a housing system in NeverWinter Nights but it was far from simple:-
Player builds house.
Server assigns a pre-built area to that house.
Database keeps records of who owns what.
That works but we had 4 different types of house and for each house we needed to create an area. We had 10 of each. This loaded our module with 40 areas just for the housing system. It also meant a maximum of 10 houses of one type could be made with a total of 40 houses.
Mess mess mess mess.
Last night I solved that issue. I am working on the mining scripts. It is a simpler version of the housing script in reality. Now we have 1 “Bell Mine” area that can be copied on the fly when the server is running. We can have 3 different people in 3 different mines. How awesome? Very awesome. In addition to this, I can make these areas persistent, loading up only when the server loads or a new one is created.
There are obvious problems. When a player leaves and the server restarts the “area” is gone forever. When the server loads up again and rebuilds the mines they are all “new”. So if the players location is stored when the player leaves, they will not go back to the mine. Instead they will start at the default starting location. I have a workaround. I have future ideas but for now I will be saving the players location *outside* the mines.
THURSDAY, 16 DECEMBER 2010 BY EARL (SIGNET)
We are almost back in business as far as Annor is concerned. I have a stable version of the server running. The GENESIS system has yet to be tested but so far things are looking up. Only two issues are facing me at the moment.
Some GUI elements are corrupt.
So far I have only been able to rebuild 60% of the database.
I ran in to many issues when setting up the GUI and the bits missing are the bits I had trouble with. Hopefully I will be able to recreate it again soon. I have new designs in place for the skills window which I hope will replace the characters screen. There are some major changes to make in the future so I must make room for them.
The database will be quite challenging. I can rebuilt most the skills/lifeskills tables from insert and fetch statements in the code. I will not be able to re-populate the tables with data. Unfortunately my original text records are corrupted.
Fortunately, I have since revised the way the skills system works and this may help me make changes to the database tables. Would be nice to know what the level boundaries were though!