Sounds and Scrums

The majority of my morning was taken up with adding to our growing database of sounds. Now that the art style is confirmed and finished textures are being mapped onto the finalized models we should be able to go through and see which sounds fit the worlds. Listening to 20 screaming sounds first thing in the morning isn't pleasant so I was kinda glad when (dare) dave come down for his meeting.

Managed to get some handy feedback such as a few camera tweaks we can make to make the world a bit easier to view for the users and also highlight the need to start getting finished assets in ASAP. This is something we've postponed for a while since we needed to ensure that all assets were at the same level to avoid wasting time making a redundant build - hence the reason we havent had a new build since the 2nd :'(. Still though since then there has been big progress so with any luck we should be ready for our Friday build to test (break) over the weekend.

We also had a visit from Nick from Zoe Mode about Scrum management / production technique. Its quite a different methodology than you see in most industries as it relies on being dynamic and adaptable, it was also kind of interesting to see how we've sort of adopted that method of working organically over the last 6 weeks (^ see earlier posts about redundant project plans and the fabled Gantt chart). He had a lot of analogies that rang particularly true for me such as Buzz Word Bingo and "resource controller" posturing (Sharpie feels my pain) and most importantly it highlighted the fact that it was the right choice to try and do this democratically and not rely on uber-detailed project plans.

Edit: used word interesting x3 in as many sentences .... brain ...melting

We also spoke to Simon whop had loads of great suggestions for work AI work arounds, that mean we should be able to reach the island population of 41! It came at at really handy time as Rowen has been struggling with the AI implementation and this is pretty much the perfect time to switch to the new method and avoid previous pitfalls. Currently hes got one test bed sorted for importing characters (and avoiding the 23step implementation technique which is always a bonus :)) and has just exclaimed "Lovely" after gargling with rage so I can guess its going pretty well.

Other than that Art is going well - have the building texture set up now ready to start being mapped to the models and player character is fully modeled and almost finished being skinned so ... yeah - tough going but were getting there ^_^

ThE LuCiD DrEaMeRs