#shoker mod

[hatboyproject]

It's so wonderful that people continue to have positive experiences with the work I've done. I read every comment and every message -- I just don't always get a chance to reply!

I'm particularly proud of the consistency in feedback that I receive about matching the "voice" of the game. Mass Effect is written in a particular way and I've tried very hard to make it all feel like it belongs.

My work is absolutely the definition of a fanfiction mod. I don't think it gets much more fanfiction than what I'm doing -- but what's canon, in the end? It's fanfiction with legitimacy, and Mass Effect is all about crafting your own version of Shepard. BuoWare has said it before; every Shepard is "the real Shepard."

So, you know what? That means every Shepard who dates Joker is "the real Shepard," too!

[spaced0lphin]

“Not be a daily for a few days” I lie. I lie, lie, lie. Look! What’s this? A whole new branch of conversation? Wowzers. The FaceFX for the new section are entirely unedited please don’t judge meeeee. No commentary today, just a little benchmark. Video starts at around 10 seconds, I didn't realise I had set it off a little early.  All of these nodes are brand new, and exist in addition to the conversation thus far. You can have this conversation with him a few different ways. Unfortunately with the addition of new nodes comes the addition of fresh rounds of jank and cameras to fix, but we'll get there. The most important thing is that everybody says things to each other, and Joker has different lines depending on different situations. He's trying hard to open up and be serious here, and I think it feels in character still, but I have more ideas in mind. Now I know I can get new nodes working... Watch out. I might make a ton more trees. It’s difficult to write Joker in this conversation. I am trying to make him seem as though he is forcing himself to be more earnest than he’s usually comfortable with, here. There’s no way to effectively have this conversation without having him at least try to raise the portcullis, so I hope this comes across. Whoops, posted this on the wrong blog. Oh well.

[hatboyproject]

Did a lot of work on things today! My favourite task being splicing together like 25 takes to make the perfect version of a single line that I then proceeded to just rephrase entirely, nullifying my hours of fastidious fussing.

To be completely fair to me, it was the "Watching from the sidelines... what do you think about me and you?" line.

That is a very important line.

It's never quite sat right with me, though. In the original, I kept it so close to the vanilla line as, frankly, a kind of exercise in personal vindication. I wanted that line that had made me so sad so many years ago to instead spark joy with just one subtle flick.

But, I think rephrasing it works better. As it is, it's kind of awkwardly worded for such a personally revealing question. The original question is he's asking Shepard about what they think about him and EDI. It makes sense to be so blunt about it if it's about someone else. But this is the moment where Jeff properly lets his guard down for the first time, even if only partially, and only for a moment. Jokes and deflection will surely follow, but this question has to be real. So, we can do better. Jeff can do better.

I'm not agonising over every piece of the script to this same level of detail. If I did that, we'd be here until ME5 or whatever.

I would like to get this finished for N7 Day this year. Even in saying this, chances are high that I won't make that goal, but I'd very much like to aim for it. If I knuckle down and work on this every day, I stand a good chance of having something at least presentable by then.

I'm of two minds on whether I want to release video dailies or not, when I get to that point with this scene. On the one hand, keeping it a surprise and booting it all out the door at once would be exciting. On the other, seeing people get excited for my work gives me so much energy and motivation that I can really use. But then again, honestly, I'd also rather not kick the hornet's nest too much in terms of getting attention from people who don't understand what I'm doing, and are hostile to it. That's a concern, too!

I never did finish that follow-up video I intended to do about the talking points that arose from my meeting with the president of NAVA some years ago, but I think there could be value in laying all that out, because there still are a lot of misconceptions even as the debate has moved in different directions now.

Anyways. I'm here, I'm alive, I'm working on Hatboy, and I'd like to get it done this year. I'm tired of having my big art project just sitting there unfinished. Jeff deserves better, and more importantly, so do all of you!

[hatboyproject]

Fortunately, I still had the Wwise project file for this conversation, so I was able to fix the missing ambience for my added lines. I think it sounds better now. My lines theoretically have the same environmental echo effects applied as the vanilla. I don't know, maybe it's my speakers but I feel like my lines are too echoey. It'll never be perfect, but hey! These facial animations can use a little bit of work, and it turns out the other dialogue trees were animated but not given expressions. So, I can do that real quick and finish it off.

[hatboyproject]

I've been finalising animations and testing things with different variables. Here's a different version of the conversation nobody's seen yet, this time featuring mShep because every time I post, someone's like, 'but what about gay Shepard where is gay' and I'm like yes, baby, I thought of you too, I have put tons of hours of work into you too, don't worry

[hatboyproject]

Just a little teaser to prove I am indeed back on my bullshit full time and I'm not just clicking around inside the editor mindlessly and screaming at my monitor, although that does happen more than I'd like to admit

[hatboyproject]

Updates

I spent the entirety of today tearing apart my old script for the Flux Bar scene, rewriting it, trimming it down, and getting some lines made for it. I've been teaching myself how to do things and such all day but haven't gotten to the point of actually making the conversation in editor, yet... too many things to do first. Seems like every time I go to address a step, there's four more steps I have to do first that I've forgotten about. Anyways. With the flow that I've planned, the conversation in Flux is considerably shorter, but there are a lot more variables... he'll comment on previous romances, or no romances, etc... and start to get into some stuff before being like, "Actually, I kinda don't wanna bare my soul in a tittybar? Let's do this in private." That sets the stage for other conversations in the bridge to make more sense, and will make the resultant love scene not take TEN ENTIRE MINUTES to go through. In short, pacing is better... Also, I just think I'm probably better at writing than I was a few years ago. Looking back on some of this script, I'm like... okay, it's not to "He would not fucking say that" levels, but it's sort of like... "Why would he fucking say that here and now." It's a bit florid, really, and I think it can stand to be a bit rougher around the edges. Some of the lines in the romance scene full on make me wince now, for real. I don't want to go too George Lucas on this and end up "Maclunkey"ing everything (look it up if you're not a SW nerd) but I do want to make it the smoothest it can be. In my mind, there are 2 moneyshots to this mod -- the "We're dating now" scene and the "love scene" at the end. Everything else is just gravy. Holy damn, I did a lot of work on the gravy, though.

[hatboyproject]

Here's a look at the brains of Hatboy, one layer deep. All the nodes raining down from the top left are things I set up today. Stuff coiled up in the bottom left is unused vanilla conversation that I clipped out. All that is new dialogue and logic gates (if this, he says this, if that, he says that) and Shepard's dialogue choices. I'm not even done setting up the conversation flow, I still have to find a way to make a few branches loop back or terminate properly. Laying out the dialogue in the editor always makes me catch things that I can't catch in the flat script stage. I HAVE FORGOTTEN TO EAT TODAY YET AGAIN. (It's fine, I splurged and got pizza.)

Fully half of that stuff is just "And then you dated this person, so I didn't want to approach you back then" and then it checks for whether or not the previous partner is dead, so that Jeff can be either gently sensitive about asking if Shepard wants to move on, or he can be a nervous piece of shit and stammer through asking you if you're still a thing with them or not.

I, in my infinite wisdom and definitely not hubris, insisted on making Jeff refer to previous relationships by name, specifically. The infrastructure was there, so why not use it? That was my reasoning. So, I've had to ensure that the game can check for every possible combination of relationships, plus fallbacks for the Shepard who remained single up until now, and it all has to tonally match and flow from one line to the next without sounding weird. I also have taken care to ensure that every dialogue path is roughly the same amount of replies as any other, so the player isn't punished with less story for choosing any specific route.

Why have I done this.

On the positive side, making him refer to the character by name makes it all feel more intelligent and personalised. On the negative side, LOOK AT THAT SPAGHETTI and I'm not even done winding up the conversation.

It's been nice that I can just carefully recreate the camera work from the scene on the original 2012 edition ME3, because Exkywor did a beautiful job reframing a few key moments that would be a real pain to lose out on.

I go bed now