Friday with Means - February 25th, 2011 - The dust is settling
The dust is slowly settling here in Montreal and the systems are finally starting to come together. Macrosun has done some great work in getting things up and running again...which is a horrible, long and frustrating task...just like anything else where you put in weeks of work with the eventual goal of "having what you had before". Needless to say we should be up to 100% again within the next week and we should be seeing builds coming to TestLive not long after. On a personal note for myself and all the team members we are all finally getting settled in here in Montreal so the necessary "Life Stuff" should also stop interrupting our plans. (I finally finished moving my family into our new home last night at 4am!)
The Engine:
I am sorry if there was any confusion with the information I gave out before concerning delays. When I mentioned that this move would result in significant delays I should have specifically mentioned that this of course would also affect the engine work. We are not going to be able to release the engine in Q1 but we are still hoping for an "Early Beta" in Q1 or early Q2...but at this point it is still dependent on the release of the new version of the engine in Conan as to how much resource we will get in getting it set up and running. There are a few visual glitches (shadows, water and grass) I absolutely want repaired before we open it up...but we need external assistance in resolving those before we continue. I have to admit to being a bit critical of what I will allow outside the building with our expectations being so high. On a positive note the more time the artists get before we open it up the better the first versions will look. Work is getting close to complete on new bodies and heads and a great deal of the "high impact + most used" resources (trees rocks etc) are being upgraded at a good pace while we wait for the tech to come together.
Rebalancing:
Work has been going well and the feedback we have received on our recent releases has been constructive and largely very helpful. Work has begun in earnest on the MP document and the NT and Agent should not be far behind. More work will be done to the Trader profession and we will be releasing a new version of their nano document before we make changes. Once the profession nano documents are complete and a more complete bigger picture is in place we will be having another go at the perks, a round of feedback, and then it will be time to roll up our sleeves and get it into testing as soon as possible. We have spent a great deal of time on this initiative and I fully believe it will be worth the effort to have done this right.
Next week I'll take some time to speak about some of the work going on that is NOT engine or balance related...as there is a significant amount of great stuff in the pipeline that falls outside these areas.
We are getting ready to start registration for the 10th Anniversary event here in Montreal and hope to have that up in the next 10 days to allow us to run the best possible event on the right scale. We barely fit in the venue last time and we want to be sure to make sure everything runs smoothly here in Montreal.
Have a great weekend everyone!
