Project Diary

Date of Release : Tuesday, February 25, 1997

Sound is now appearing in the game, hooked up to the AI. Hurrahs to Eric and Briscoe. Guards now hum, mumble, and otherwise talk to themselves as they patrol about (this is important, so that you can hear them coming and plan accordingly.)

Biped -- full skeletal motion -- is also in, which looks excellent. This has also gotten hooked up to the sound, so that each footstep a guard makes resounds with a clomp.

The guards also react to you as you move around; if they only sort of detect you, they'll mutter something like "what was that?", and make sharper shouts up to when they detect you and raise the hue and cry.

We did a demonstration of all this technology (as well as showed off our architecture) to the rest of Looking Glass last week at our company meeting; feedback was very positive, which is always nice. :)

Lots of other, less glamorous but equally important work behind the scenes. We can now clump pieces of the world together and move them around as if they were only one block -- sort of a "block protect" for geometry. This will make staircases a hell of a lot easier, and the designers are praising Doug's name for it (in addition to all the other obvious reasons to praise Doug.) The
artists are now making objects with which to fill the world; the programmers and Tim are working out the combat system; Dorian's testing Briscoe's AI code; Greg's in six zillion meetings; me, I'm back being Web Guy again. -jeff