Sake is awsome ....

Went out for impromptu Wagamama last night, was definitely the right call. I don't know where that random aside came from, probably because I needed a blog title ....

Annnnnnnnnyway - today has been awesome. Managed to sit down and have a chat with Adrian about the whole production side of things. Since id written countless (about 5) planning documents that tended to have the max lifespan of a week I thought it might be best to hold off until I spoke to the professionals. I was a bit concerned that we are kind of at a critical stage right now and didn't want to rush off into the next 4 weeks or so without any direction.

The fact we have a playable build and are making steady progress through also helped because it allowed me to identify where the gaps are as opposed to starting from scratch. As i think i mentioned earlier as well I was preoccupied with the notion that it had to be crazy level of detail, when in actuality all you need to do is identify the cut off points for art and code guys. This made alot more sense as obviously the dynamic of our team is a lot different to a team of say 20 so were all in each other business to a certain degree. So now we have a shiny new and future proof (- ish, amendments as opposed to complete overhauls) that outlines when we need assets in relation to other sections of the game but allows the guys to determine how they get there.

This is awesome cos (not sure if reiterating here) but we don't really have the time or need for crazy levels of micromanaging. Most importantly everyone is happy with theplan and its all looking very feasible ... (i guess well see how that pans out ;) ) - Production Update

Art wise we are sooooo close to our proper alpha build. Just a case of plugging in the final bits and pieces to make it 100% feature complete. Dave has finished building the island up and has started adding textures and environment art such as trees etc (hes gunna do a monster update with more info) Ross has finished the rig and some basic animations for wing flaps etc as well as sticking wings onto a complete character so we can get him into a build to test camera angles etc.

Code wise Rich has been working away on the sequencer and has got some menu transitions in - as well as some nice place holders :) Rowens been plugging away like a virtools android working on some of our smaller features like the love arrows and context sensitive nudge items. Also coupling paths and all the other nice graphical touches - all good stuff.

Urrgh, just found out Dave and Ross have been using different Maya versions and so now theres 120 objects that need renaming :( ah well better it happened now than 3 weeks down the line :)

EDIT

So Dave just gave me a heart attack when he told me Maya had wiped our latest Island iteration - luckily Ross managed to find it amongst the ether and return it along with 4 new identical twin brothers. ^_^

Gradumeration

No Post yesterday as the intertubes were down - managed to get a fair chunk done though which works out well since, today was a little short due to graduation for some of the team. Pictures of us in funny hats and other general merriment to follow !



"Honkies gone wild"


SO the biggest thing about today and yesterday was the peak and trough-ification of our otherwise very linear tutorial stage into 4 staggered mini missions. Just finished putting the finishing touches and will need to be re written into actual text and dialog we can use in the final game but the feel and mission structure have been confirmed. One of the best things about Dare is learning the importance of methods that you are either unaware of or have had little exposure too. For instance in these mission structure I would have used to just pick arbitrary locations and people and shoe horn them into the game, but now realize its really important to consider the characters, their place in the world and most importantly how this immerses the player to avoid making glaring and out of place contradictions that will drag the player out of your world.

I mean one thing that always irked me about fixed camera angle survival horror games, is that a tooled up special forced agent / magical samurai can go toe to toe with the zombies and daemons but are frequently foiled by flimsy locked wooden doors or stacks of crates :(

From a game point of view this is a bit of a careful balancing act but was a really good exercise. Production wise things are progressing steadily, Dave is cracking on with the island and Ross has got a really nice rig up for the main player character. Rowen has managed to overcome the hurdles he was having yesterday and rich is making good headway with the sequencer.

Also having received our first comment on youtube we are official now E-famous. Even if it was just one of the other teams from Scotland trying to intimidate us with tales of uber productivity. Little do they know the awesome power of alpha build 2, official proven (by scientists) to make baby lambs cry.

Last I saw was Ross signing up for a youtube account to launch some kind of E-rebuttal, i think he took it kinda hard and saw it as a shot across the bows - actually Id better check since if hes got his own account he cant be censored - gtg!

..................

Team Lucid Dream


(Oh and also we got some rules through for the Bafta awards, which kinda adds a a sort of scary realism to the whole winning an award thing)

Safari Joe does it again ...

Despite a groggy start today has been really productive. It turns out we've been locked out of our designated gaming room again so looks like this evening will require some Snake covert sneaking. So whats been happening today ?

Had a few design thoughts following on from the chat we normally have with the EA guys about making stuff as simple for the end user as possible. While we can see the merit in that we don't want it to basically turn our game into stat watching so were building up a framework where we can try these things and cut them out / leave them in if needs be. The guys don't seem overly enamored with the game name either so were gunna look into alternatives - its pretty tough :)

Deliverables wise - made loads headway - Dave and I sat down and hammered out an ABC entity list as well as UV mapping some housing and carrying on with textures / scenery. Ross has also been working on modeling and skinning the player characters wings, got most of the main key frames sorted now so should have him in texture-less sometime soon.

Code wise Rich added some really nice touches such as a glow around NPC's that have been hit with the info arrow and an auto aim. Rowen has also got coupling working in our latest build, implemented a needs counter and got highlight paths done ! Pretty awesome stuff since it means were creeping closer to A.

Ive also been tearing apart Rich and Rowens baby and finding / replicating bugs all over the shop - on todays hit list air walking and fps movement in Bowcam.

More UT2004 carnage to follow - some punk slighted Tribes so its gunna get messy ^_^

ZOMG ! Pre-Alpha Goodness ^^

Pre-Alpha is up ^_^

So today has been a really good day - managed to get a whole lot done. Most importantly today was when we finally managed to merge our disparate prototypes and world into our pre-alpha. Its great being able to fly around and gives you a real sense of the world. Screenies don't really help demonstrate what we've got but hopefully THIS will.

We did want to upload it in its current state to let you guys get your mits on it and start breaking it but theres a couple of things we've got to do first. Namely theres the issue of getting fully keyboard and mouse compatibility. Currently its only really set up for the XBOX 360 controller, but shouldn't take to long to fix. We also went and put and FPS counter on the screen to help with a bit more feedback. We have some nice release notes and a handy bug tracking form to go along side it so probably be up tomorrow (?)

Kudos to Rowen and Rich who have been wrestling with this beastie for the last few days / weeks, that we can start plugging assets into.

Other news is that today we sent off our plan for our own web site which means we wont have to put up with comments from the denizens of Youtube and the likes - and also means well have a bit more control for feedback and uploading assets etc.

Camera guy was back - Ross managed to go a session without insulting an entire nation (his rant to follow, we've decided its safer for him to have his own page on the new site in an attempt to try and contain the rage).

Really good day - currently Ross is back to modeling the character and Dave is turning out some good texture work as well as putting together some image maps for Eleesos wings. Feels really good to have something more tangible up and running and should hopefully allow me to knock together a schedule for the remaining 4 weeks, which has been impossible up until this point.

More deluded ramblings and UT2004 smack talk to follow!

The Lucid Dream Team