Plan for Jerane Alleyne

*sigh*, it seems like my woman is good for nothing but breaking my heart, and I always return...well on with it...

General Progress
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Well the site is still down, but it shouldn't be too much longer. In any case we should have a good deal of new things up, so it won't be for nothing. Our main concentration has been in getting our work completed for our in-house final build in June, before we make a full public release of a public demo soon after. Unfortunately we won't be able to present anything with Garagegames at GDC (mainly due to a somewhat fatal bug, and a few other things), but we hope at least to be ready for IGC this year...just need to set aside some cash for airfare :P

Creative Progress
In the time our site remains down, I though about posting up a screen shot of one of our new player models that was completed by one of our artists, and that I skinned, but I might hold off on it a bit more to get a few more player models done. In any case, the work goes on to get these player models done. We want to have about 3 types (varying in size and some animations, etc) from each of 2 of our races for the in-house game build.

While we have all the final animation sequences in (aside from some tweaking due to size variations), we have run into what appears to be a limit of 32 animation sequences for a player. While this isn't a big problem, we are interested in finding a solution. Our primary animation sequences are in, but some of the extras for filling in a few gaps would be nice. For instance, I never liked the way players switched weapons. Because the armthreads are blended sequences, they don't transition smoothly, so I wanted to add some 'transition' sequences between switching weapons...and they tend to add up. A few others (falling down in different directions, limping) will hopefully make it in once we get into this further.

A new map is being worked on now by our new level designer, set to be an 'urban combat training' map. We will build on this for things like triggered events and destructible buildings later on, but for now it will be a basic map. While we are not aggressively looking for level designers, we are interested in gaining a few, mainly for going over the design style and getting familiar with the tools and materials. For more information on what we are looking for in a level designer, please check here if you are interested.


Programming Progress
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After our lead programmer came back full swing, we got a lot of things completed. Location damage, which shows up on our display HUD, additions to the profile and inventory system, our internal components for the mechs being functional and able to take damage (along with the pilot), and a few triggered events (damage to arms or legs will cause smoke/fire to emit out of the area). The addition of more responsive bots make me happy, as I now have something more to shoot at :D

Right about now we are in the debugging phase, getting rid of a few particularly nasty ones that crept up. After that we'll be back on, refining the new features, and adding the remaining stuff to finalize the player class. There are 2 more player classes to finish (Tank and VTOL), but they should go faster after the core stuff has been done. Making a habit of concentrating in the player and gameplay features now, and tackle all of our visual enhancements later is our train of thought. It's nice to make things pretty, but its still gotta play right. While we are making significant progress with our few programmers, we are on the look out for at least 1 to 2 more. You can check out what's required here if you're interested.

That should be it for now. With any luck, the site should be back up by my next plan, and I'll be much happier.