Picture of the Week and Ask the Developer is paused for the next 3 weeks during our summer vacation. Both initiatives are back online from Monday the 8th of August!
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Read last weeks SITREP [Here]
Team debriefing
Kim (ZPSHicks)
Game Director "This week have been the perfect build up to "our" upcoming holidays (next three weeks); Plenty of creative conceptual ping pong with Cotta on his current assignment; selling a few concepts of our dynamic weather system (Rain, Thunder, Day, Night etc.) which have already helped me in the creation of a small day/night cycle lighting prototype in Unity.
Yesterday we had a very constructive design meeting with Jess (on our crazy ambitions to make a cool "Multiple Maps in One Map" Deadlock setup) which we're extremely excited about because it'll allow us to take Deadlock past other multiplayer experiences available in competitive FPS games.
The day/night lighting prototype as well as Cotta's masterful conceptual work will be online in a few DevBlog's once we're back from vacation. Please enjoy the summer and then I'll "see" you guys/gals on the other side!".
Mikael (heks)
Lead Programmer "This week has been all about "less talk, more code".
Although I've had a few concerns with Unity, the code now seems to be shaping up nicely for the end of this sprint (ending next wednesday). In short, I've been working on authoritative connection handling, marine spawning and possession, and client-side prediction/movement.
Since the other guys are going on summer holidays I'll have 2 weeks by myself, before Anders is back from vacation. In that time I'll mostly be looking at how we go about "pulling off" Deadlock in a meaningful way; how do we produce a game in ODD (Open Door Development) where we get the community involved in testing and feedback as early as possible, and as we constantly refine and perfect the game. It will be a challenge for sure!
I will also be able to research a network library that I just recently found, which (on paper at least) seems like a perfect fit for Deadlock. You see, I still have this nagging feeling that something might be amiss with the rather simplistic networking functionality of Unity3D; a feeling that was additionally fueled by Spectre1989's recent comments.
We'll see in a sprint's time or so..."
von Cotta
Concept Artist "SARA: Entry mismatch. Subject appears to be offline. No record stored this week"
"Deadlock taking form"
Anders (cptKickASS)
Game Artist "Last week was first week back at the office, and it still amazes me
the energy that the company contains. Currently I have part time at
the office.
I now have a new character rig for animation, and a rig for exporting
to the engine. The next step is to build the scripts to transfer the
animation to the engine rig, and exporting it to unity. Heks and I
started talking about the Character controller and the needs and
changes we have to make, for it to work with the network code".
Jess (NecroSonic)
Level Designer "Yesterday I went to ZPS headquarters for a briefing on Deadlocks level design. As expected Kim had some great (and mildly insane) ideas for the environment of Deadlock. The single biggest design choice is that Deadlock should not have separate multiplayer maps but rather a series of interconnected sectors that SARA can open/close/configure according to the training scenario that she is staging. A 2v2 scenario might use only a single sector sealing off the other areas, whereas a 4v12 might use several sectors.
It will be a challenge to design the individual sectors so that they work across multiple game modes and interconnecting the different sectors in a meaningful way that does not obstruct the gameplay in any of the game modes. But if IM is not gonna raise the bar in terms of level design for FPSs who is:)
Right now I am concerned with more low level stuff figuring out what kind of props we will need for the individual rooms, so that Anders may start working his magic ".
Nicolai (Reese)
CEO & Composer "I've finished a soundscape featuring different environment and mood settings for Deadlock, which means next step is to make it all work in-game as soon as possible".
InterstellarMarines.com Summary
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All the best,
Nicolai (Reese) & the team at Zero Point Software Join and follow us: 
Every time you mention the "one map with multiple gamemodes" idea I keep thinking but never coming up with anything. I'm sure I've played another game with the same concept, with one map being used in multiple areas. I just can't recall what game it was.
I think you're thinking about Killzone 2/3