Before I get into anything else, Kintaii has been interviewed by a German Gaming site. The article can be found here in English here:
http://www.pirate-gaming.de/forum/vi...php?f=19&t=288
Original German version here:
http://www.pirate-gaming.de/specials...enior-designer
Lucky Waldgeist didn't have to translate that one
This week:
Every week we try and rehash the events of the last week to keep you all up to date with where we are with the many different initiatives we are working on at the moment. Sometimes sitting down to remember the events of the week is a horrible masochistic exercise as the week would have been better disposed of by my goldfish-like short-term memory.
I had hopes of being able to get a version of the new Collector instance on the Test dimension. Kintaii has outdone himself on this one getting it to work and I truly believe it is one of the most interesting encounters we have added to the game during my time here...and I'm certain I've never seen anything like it in any other game. We have been spending extra time during the last couple weeks making sure it works well and most importantly is fun. Our build process didn't like it. Our build process crashed any time we tried to include the playfield. Any debugging we could manage did not make any sense at all. For three days Macrosun and I banged our heads against the wall trying to get rid of the data corruption to avoid having to make the playfield again from scratch. A three day long trial of ten minutes of effort followed by 30 minutes of debugging followed by "How about now?"....and the inevitable "nope". After 3 full days, during which Macrosun quit a record 218 times, it was finally not fixed...but "fooled" into working. I owe Kintaii many, many cigarettes after this week. If it feels like this kind of thing happens all the time...it is because it does. It is now on TestLive in the final stages of testing...any volunteers and feedback will be greatly appreciated. Be warned...it isn't easy.
Things that DID get done this week:
Flaptoot's visa application was completed and processed for his trip to China to manage the production of the new versions of all the old AO heads. Full production begins with a team of ten artists + Flaptoot on April 5th in the Funcom Beijing Studio. We have been waiting a long long time to get this done and it is very exiciting to see it start. The head of the Beijing Office is a big AO fan and he was a huge help in pushing this issue for us. Some times it feels like we are some kind of "secret society". We are everywhere
Addtional polish and mechanics were added to the new "Collector" instance. New version on TestLive...entrance beside Instanced Pande. Try Try Try. I will watch you die die die.
Genele drove herself to the need for therapy in working through the daily missions and making sweeping improvements all week. Again...please give them a go on Test. I think (might be wrong here) the rewards are finally there to see...and argue about.
Mstrbstrd worked hard (after a couple 30th birthday inspired plague days off) on redoing more assets for Borealis.
The render team is getting closer and closer to an actual "real" client and the new build process is starting to smell close. I can't wait to have people besides us and the staff of Duke Nukem Forever trying this. Ha. Is it as funny when I do it?
Have a great weekend. See you in-game