The Castle, is in the bag as it were. Over the weekend I got the whole thing finally laid out in ThiefEd. Yesterday I got all the doors working and made placeholder animations (which are decent enough to pass muster should time become more of a factor) for the traps. I also built an elevator, which actually serves a gameplay purpose.
Now I just need to go through and get all the traps installed. Thankfully I did most of the scripting as I built, so I don’t have to go back in again like during The Cliff Saga. The traps will be interesting though, since they require timing, which implies a lot of playtesting as I go. Not to mention the fact that almost every screen has traps in it, sometimes several. I don’t expect it to go quickly, but I may surprise myself.
In any event I’m already building The Tower in my head, using the leftover puzzles that I thought of as I built The Castle.
– Something that has surprised me further, even though it shouldn’t, is ThiefEd. It’s bloody bulletproof. For some basic reason, it just works, all the time, every time. I don’t even think about it. I just boot it up, open a screen and get to work. There is no magic incantation, it requires no sacrifice, it demands neither love nor tribute. It just is. In the next post-mortem (the post-post mortem, like a zombie autopsy) I’m going have to put that squarely in the Good column.
– If you read this (although I think only I do) you’ll notice that The Prison, is done and oranged. All done, at least from my perspective. Me and The Tester have decided that it runs great, works perfectly and we wouldn’t change a thing about it. I call that polished and hence call it finished.