PC

Well, the performance issues haven’t gone away overnight, but the repair pads work now.

I went back to the Proving Grounds to mop up quests that I’d missed. Did a few and then tried my first PvP mission. Well, sort of PvP. I wasn’t shooting other humans, but racing them. First up to the top of a mountain won the race… or wouldn’t have done if the end point hadn’t refused to respond when I got there. I should have won, but in the end I had to just abandon the quest. Gah. I filed a bug report about that one, you can be sure of that.

Then I did another mission where you were meant to kill enemies round a house, but they weren’t unique, so you could kill the same type of enemy elesewhere on the map and complete the mission in relative safety. Not sure if that’s a real bug or just an odd consequence of the design, so I didn’t file a report about that one.

Did a few more missions until I just couldn’t take another. I’m running out of missions, too. I’m getting tons of equipment I can’t use for another four or five levels and after the mission I just took I’m not sure if there are any more I’m ready for. The “main” mission I’ve got is for level eleven players and I’m only level four.

I suppose I should say something else nice. Well, I like the way that though all your weapons are ranged you can do melee damage by driving into enemies. You are in a big armoured car, after all.

Just a quick session. (By which I mean about an hour and a half.)

It’s become less interesting now that I know what’s going on, but it’s still compulsive. I just had what could have been my first three star movie get let down by a bad script and an overused set. Grrr.

And I still haven’t got any of my stars have any sort of friendships yet. Some of them have know each thirty years, for pity’s sake!

I’ve just written my own sci-fi epic, but the people I want in it are either working on a cheapo action flick I’m making to introduce a new star or so stressed out after the last movie that I daren’t put them to work. Time for some relaxation time for my stars. I wish they’d stop complaining about their bloody trailers. I’m doing what I can, damn it!

Apart from the odd script design, I’m definitely concentrating on the management game, rather than the movie-making tools right now, which is slightly unexpected.

I didn’t mean to buy this today…

I think I’m glad I did. It just made three and a half hours disappear like nothing, though. When a game does that I’m really not sure if it’s very, very good or very, very bad.

I’ve basically been doing things at random, feeling my way through the game. The management aspects I’ve got down, more or less, but the movie-making aspects I’m still learning. I only just unlocked the post-production tools and haven’t tested them out yet. But I’ve also unlocked some sort of colour film, which is cool.

I’m currently taking a break in the middle of trying to change my studio from one which churns out tons and tons of crap to one which actually makes half-decent movies. Not sure if that’s possible yet, but I’m going to give my actors and directors time to calm down between films and relax a bit. They’ve been throwing tantrums a lot lately, but new trailers and some pay raises seem to have helped. I’ve got a script that I worked on myself – it’s a sci-fi epic! – ready to go when everyone’s recovered a bit from the frenzied bought of low-budget film-making I’ve put them through.

So, anyway, the latest movie to be released by my studio, Romero Pictures, is The Quiet Gun – and if you click on the name you should be able to watch it. It even works on my Mac!