At some point while poking around in the Creation Kit, I pressed the wrong button. I’m not sure what I did, or how I did it, but the result was clear. The faces in the preview window weren’t showing up. At least, not the entire face. There were no bones, no flesh, no hair and no muscle. All that was left was a ghoulish monstrosity of eyes and teeth.

This, of course, was pure serendipity. Mainly because it removed the natural instinct to make a symmetrical face. Now I could throw the sliders in all direction without compunction, and not be influenced by the sad face in the window, crying because God made her ugly. No, the lipless freak was always smiling. No matter how far I pushed the sliders, it never blinked.

So when I set out to meet my latest Frankenstein, I was caught off guard. “Bear-Foot” Froa was going to be a strong Nord woman with gnarly ass feet. She wasn’t supposed to be so goddamn…pretty.

In the past few weeks, I’ve tried to diversify the marriage pool. Taking into account the actors who are the most reliable, Hagravi Gray-Wave, Jaspar Gaerston, and possibly an Argonian male will be added to the list.  The last thing I want to do is add another human female. Froa, though, is just too adorable in her bare feet. I don’t want to change the face – I never question the Slider Gods – but I feel like releasing her like this will make her too attractive, and thus prompt a flood of marriage requests. In these instances, it’s better to write it first so the actor knows what she’s signing up for.

In any case, this is really just a protracted excuse to try out the poll feature. I’ve been wanting to put this thing into a post for some time, but I feared it would look pathetic given so few people would actually vote. That will probably still be the case, but at some point I need to make better use of WordPress’ features. I need to get wacky with the bells, whistles, and sliders, and stop worrying so much about the results.

Some news regarding the wiki. For the most part, the NPCs are up to date, minus a few that nobody gives a shit about anyway. You can even click on the unreleased folks like Arghus and get a RefID if you’re into that sort of thing. The quest wikis are still nowhere near complete, but I do hope to finish them by the next release, albeit without pictures and fancy trimmings and shit.

Naturally, things can come up that will throw a monkey wrench in those plans, so I have no idea if those hopes are unrealistic. These wrenches are typically good things in terms of content. Today, for instance, I thought up a new quest on the fly and got that shit halfway done(check that – ALL THE WAY DONE), so the wiki took a back seat.

Aranas also thought I should ask people to whitelist the site in AdBlock. While the revenue is relatively piddling, every little bit helps, and right now about 60% of all advertisements are blocked. I do think the ads are relatively non-invasive, especially on the wiki pages where they’re buried under the trailer video. The ads on the videos themselves are a little more noticeable, but still relatively benign.

In other news, I’ve also cast the Argonian Utei with none other than Lindsey Lorraine, one of the scribes on this blog. I’m sure when it’s done and a video is made, she’ll introduce it herself.

Gah, I really need to stop posting scripts to the front page. If you were expecting a new post, sorry about that. Since the end of the year is a time for reflection, here, have a bizarre screenshot of Zora I made back on March 4, 2012. Apparently I originally had her in leather armor before settling on the Scale Armor set she has now. I don’t even remember this, and I remember everything.

It’s easy to see why the change was made. The leather armor was a little too butch.

As for news on the next update, I’m pretty much finished with everything I want to include. Scripts are written, bugs have been squashed, everything is ready to go, save the voice acting. Given the time of year, that could be a good thing or a bad thing as far as a release date, as some actors will have plenty of free time while others will be too busy with family.

I will be tentatively shooting for a release in early January then, with the inclusion of at least one quest, but I’m not sure which of the three will be included. I might also add Gales of Guilt with Utei the Argonian unvoiced, provided all the other parts are finished. In which case, I’d put the (unvoiced) part in parenthesis like the picture above to alert players who turn the subtitles off. In any case, I suspect I’ll have a better idea once we move past Xmas and the New Year.