Hello! Yes, I'm still around though I still don't post here nearly as often as I need to.  Real-life concerns (work, mostly) have kept me running around like the infamous decapitated chicken for the last few weeks, but things are finally getting quiet again.   I try to encourage others on the team to make dev blog posts, but ... they seem to keep "forgetting".  Can't imagine why that would be.  (You all know who you are... I don't need to name names, do I?) 

As I expect to be making more frequent regular updates to the server starting in the very near future, we'll be splitting off a "release notes" section from the dev blog.  This way you'll have a single place to go in order to know what's changed on the server - and most importantly, when you need to download.  This practice will be carried over into open beta.  Speaking of open beta...

Ah, open beta.  That mythical siren, elusive as a unicorn and quite possibly as deadly.  While we do have some internal deadlines, the ultimate answer for "when" is "when it's damned good and ready".   While a few of us are suffering the itch to get in and start abusing players DMing again, there remains much to be done -- and we have a certain minimum that must be completed before I'm comfortable opening the doors to the ever-critical public.  I suppose we can give it a rough timeframe of "between now and April".   But anyway -- you'll be the first to know once we go live. 

Moving right along, here are some of the things I've been up to: 

• various scripting tasks and minor building for Khali.  We've also gotten an influx of new people lately offering to help -- and many of them are actually proceeding to do so after offering!  (But we still need more!)
• a new front-end for Audolo; hopefully much more user friendly, and does not carry the risk of tromping on important NWN2 system data like the current  Audolo program does.  If all goes well, it will also include a feature to direct-connect to a server from a desktop or web shortcut.  Though I'm working on it for Khalidine, it will be freely available and 100% compatible with any server that uses Audolo.
• minor enhancements and bug fixes to the Usability Tools plugin, which will be uploaded to nwvault in the relatively near future
• further development of some internal tools; all of which will eventually be released publicly when our 'turnkey PW' is released.  Public beta sometime in Q2 of next year if all goes well. 
  

Things I've not been doing, for lack of time: (All of which are still planned...) 

• GUI editor plugin, a collaborative effort with Sunjammer
• further enhancements to creature creator plugin 
• the remaining major enhancements to the usability plugin including folder-based organization of all module/campaign resources, and incorporating Ovocean's most excellent changes for mouse gestures and configurable key bindings.

And that about wraps this post up. 

'til next time!