Plan for Justin Mette
by Justin Mette · 10/27/2001 (9:40 am) · 0 comments
21-6 Productions
Weekly Team Meeting - The team meeting this week was excellent. It was the first time we have successfully used Game Voice to have a real conference call :) It was great to hear everyone's voice instead of the darn text chats. At any rate, the two week trial period has passed and everyone has decided to stay aboard. The team is really starting to gel and understand the evolving vision of Myrmidon.
Web Division - We are strongly considering expanding the 21-6 work realm to cover web development and e-commerce contracts. All the programmers on the team can build these types of applications with their eyes closed. In order to ensure there is supplemental income for the team throughout this next year while developing Myrmidon, we need to consider exploring other ways for the company/team to generate this income.
21-6 Server
Image Gallery - Justin finally released the first (albeit basic) version of the Myrmidon Image Gallery software, which allows the artists to upload their imagery with comments to the 21-6 web site. Currently, this section of the site is still protected but will soon be opened up to the public.
Myrmidon Artwork
Concept Art - Don, Lucas, and Kierston have immediately started using the new Image Gallery to post some great images. This last week was the most productive for the art team since its inception. Concept art for a Myrmidon (including action poses), the Moon Landscape in the Research Station Mission, and the Research Station itself have all been posted.
Myrmidon Design
General - In preparation for Phase Two, which starts on November 1st, Marlo and Dave have been leading the charge on detailing the appropriate parts of the design required to build the features in Phase Two. The entire team is responding well to the forums and the ideas they are putting forth. Therefore, our weekly status now includes a specific section for design topics in order to publicize more detail on the game itself.
Characters - Classes, Attributes, and Death were all discussed in detail this week. There were some amazing ideas presented and we were faced with some hard decisions about direction. We are attempting to blend the fast, satisfying play of Tribes 2 with RPG elements of Asheron's Call and its very easy to lean towards MMORPG's when designing these topics. Reminding ourselves of the original intent for this project, which is to get a game published with GG, we decided to scale down the design in this area. In reviewing other games for inspiration, Diablo 1 really stands out as an excellent example of how to simply deal with many of these topics and generally represents the direction we are going with Myrmidon.
Enemies - Three different bad guys have been devised around the general Myrmidon storyline. These are Terrans (humans tracking down the defect-Myrmidon), a race of instectoid aliens that are indigenous to the many worlds explored in the game, and a race of robotic species that have only recently started to appear in the Terran Empire. The different characteristics, behaviors, and attributes of these enemies are now just being discussed.
Team Work - Another key design point for Myrmidon revolves around team play. The two inspirations for Myrmidon, Tribes 2 and Asheron's Call, both foster team play and we want to continue evolving this aspect of game play. We started to explore the possibility of a commander in the team who is responsible for providing direction to the team. Also many other creative ideas for encouraging, and sometimes enforcing, team play have been presented.
Miscellaneous - Other topics started in the forums this week by Marlo but have yet to blossom include: Items, Mission Objectives, Mission Completion, Safe Area, and Combat.
Myrmidon Development
Project Planning - We are starting to work on the project plan for Phase Two. There will be a much more defined schedule for Phase Two as we have a lot more people to coordinate between and a great deal more work to accomplish. One of the first things we are going to do is merge all the Myrmidon-specific changes to TGE 1.0 with TGE 1.1 in order to take advantage of the work Tim, Rick, and Mark have done on the engine (thanks guys!).
Bug Fixing - This was the last week for development of Phase One. We are essentially testing the Phase One release on all the computers the team owns and fixing bugs. Around 15 additional bugs were found this week, of which 10 were fixed. We are hoping to label the source control system on Thursday morning and start working on Phase Two.
Help System - Justin implemented a basic hyper-link help system that reads from external text files for content. We are using this medium as a way to describe the new features in this version - like dynamic mission elements and the new camera system. Other basic background information like the storyline and the keyboard bindings are also described here.
Personal Log
Home Office - I am often surprised at how much time it is taking to get the home office prepared for supporting me full-time. I have received the new machine from Dell and been configuring it for the last two evenings. I have also moved the 21-6 Server and Molly's new machine (my old one) into her office connected with a KVM switch. Why is every cable I need for this always 6 inches too short? Anyway, I will be glad to have all these piles of boxes, instructions, twist ties, etc cleared out by the end of the weekend so I can focus on more important things :)
Weekly Team Meeting - The team meeting this week was excellent. It was the first time we have successfully used Game Voice to have a real conference call :) It was great to hear everyone's voice instead of the darn text chats. At any rate, the two week trial period has passed and everyone has decided to stay aboard. The team is really starting to gel and understand the evolving vision of Myrmidon.
Web Division - We are strongly considering expanding the 21-6 work realm to cover web development and e-commerce contracts. All the programmers on the team can build these types of applications with their eyes closed. In order to ensure there is supplemental income for the team throughout this next year while developing Myrmidon, we need to consider exploring other ways for the company/team to generate this income.
21-6 Server
Image Gallery - Justin finally released the first (albeit basic) version of the Myrmidon Image Gallery software, which allows the artists to upload their imagery with comments to the 21-6 web site. Currently, this section of the site is still protected but will soon be opened up to the public.
Myrmidon Artwork
Concept Art - Don, Lucas, and Kierston have immediately started using the new Image Gallery to post some great images. This last week was the most productive for the art team since its inception. Concept art for a Myrmidon (including action poses), the Moon Landscape in the Research Station Mission, and the Research Station itself have all been posted.
Myrmidon Design
General - In preparation for Phase Two, which starts on November 1st, Marlo and Dave have been leading the charge on detailing the appropriate parts of the design required to build the features in Phase Two. The entire team is responding well to the forums and the ideas they are putting forth. Therefore, our weekly status now includes a specific section for design topics in order to publicize more detail on the game itself.
Characters - Classes, Attributes, and Death were all discussed in detail this week. There were some amazing ideas presented and we were faced with some hard decisions about direction. We are attempting to blend the fast, satisfying play of Tribes 2 with RPG elements of Asheron's Call and its very easy to lean towards MMORPG's when designing these topics. Reminding ourselves of the original intent for this project, which is to get a game published with GG, we decided to scale down the design in this area. In reviewing other games for inspiration, Diablo 1 really stands out as an excellent example of how to simply deal with many of these topics and generally represents the direction we are going with Myrmidon.
Enemies - Three different bad guys have been devised around the general Myrmidon storyline. These are Terrans (humans tracking down the defect-Myrmidon), a race of instectoid aliens that are indigenous to the many worlds explored in the game, and a race of robotic species that have only recently started to appear in the Terran Empire. The different characteristics, behaviors, and attributes of these enemies are now just being discussed.
Team Work - Another key design point for Myrmidon revolves around team play. The two inspirations for Myrmidon, Tribes 2 and Asheron's Call, both foster team play and we want to continue evolving this aspect of game play. We started to explore the possibility of a commander in the team who is responsible for providing direction to the team. Also many other creative ideas for encouraging, and sometimes enforcing, team play have been presented.
Miscellaneous - Other topics started in the forums this week by Marlo but have yet to blossom include: Items, Mission Objectives, Mission Completion, Safe Area, and Combat.
Myrmidon Development
Project Planning - We are starting to work on the project plan for Phase Two. There will be a much more defined schedule for Phase Two as we have a lot more people to coordinate between and a great deal more work to accomplish. One of the first things we are going to do is merge all the Myrmidon-specific changes to TGE 1.0 with TGE 1.1 in order to take advantage of the work Tim, Rick, and Mark have done on the engine (thanks guys!).
Bug Fixing - This was the last week for development of Phase One. We are essentially testing the Phase One release on all the computers the team owns and fixing bugs. Around 15 additional bugs were found this week, of which 10 were fixed. We are hoping to label the source control system on Thursday morning and start working on Phase Two.
Help System - Justin implemented a basic hyper-link help system that reads from external text files for content. We are using this medium as a way to describe the new features in this version - like dynamic mission elements and the new camera system. Other basic background information like the storyline and the keyboard bindings are also described here.
Personal Log
Home Office - I am often surprised at how much time it is taking to get the home office prepared for supporting me full-time. I have received the new machine from Dell and been configuring it for the last two evenings. I have also moved the 21-6 Server and Molly's new machine (my old one) into her office connected with a KVM switch. Why is every cable I need for this always 6 inches too short? Anyway, I will be glad to have all these piles of boxes, instructions, twist ties, etc cleared out by the end of the weekend so I can focus on more important things :)
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