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Read last weeks SITREP [Here]
Team debriefing
Kim (ZPSHicks)
Game Director
"Since our last SITREP (two weeks ago) things have really started moving in a direction and at a pace that's seriously grinding away on the time remaining before we'll all be playing Deadlock against/with each other (soon)!
Just as exciting, I must admit, is the fact that our Swedish neighbors at Mojang have reached +4Mil "pre-orders" on Minecraft and in the same period of time (two weeks since our last SITREP) have sold +$2Mil worth of their remarkable indie game from a "small" website, true inspiration right there, Congrats!
I've finished Iteration 02 on the CR1 map and will start on iteration 03 next week and have already tweaked a lot based on all your great feedback, thanks! :) ".
Mikael (heks)
Lead Programmer
"This week we finished and delivered our first successful sprint in a while. In case you don't know what a "sprint" is, it's a small period of time (usually 2-4 weeks) in which the team commits to delivering a bunch of tasks that, at the end of the sprint, has hopefully made the game better. It's a way for the team to gain momentum, awareness and track progress on what they're trying to create.
I've continued work on the networking of the marine and also been researching/testing hosting options for Deadlock, both of which went better than I'd hoped. "Playing" on a lossy dial-up connection and connected to a dedicated host at this point actually looks okay.
Overall it feels like we've got a lot more momentum than a couple of weeks back - here's to hoping it will continue like that! :)".
Jesper Andersen (Scribblehead)
Concept Artist
"Very cool news from my part, i've now been a permanent resident at the offices of ZPS for the last 5 days and will be so for another 4 weeks :)
I'm almost done with all of our weapon class sheets (missing grenade launchers - not my favorite weapon type though :P), its been a ride getting these done - but soon we can finally look back and pick out specific parts or whole silhouettes…. To tell the truth, we've got enough weapons by now to fill 10 games.
We've been dabbling with an idea involving setting up fictional weapon developer companies so that we can tie in the fact that an SMG might look different than a sniping rifle. I've been throwing a couple of names at Kim, most are throwbacks to movies or books and authors that i'm familiar with - but everyone is more than welcome to post ideas for names companies. Right now we're looking at splitting up the companies by continents, focusing on Europe/Russia, Asia and North America…this isn't set in stone at all, it's just the initial ideas.
Next up is doing more in-depth weapon designs (i've kinda started with 2nd iterations on the pistols) and i've promised Kim i would look into making a few concept passes on the Deadlock map….mighty excited! :D".
"Two geeks licking the screen (Guestcropper: heks himself)"
Anders (cptKickASS)
Lead Artist
"Weeks have gone by, Finally things are aligning for full implementation, and not stacking up in Limbo. The Character now renders more correctly. I created a shader for the glass on the helmet, and I implemented a shit load of post effects on the character prototype. I also worked on the pipeline, so that we can add events to our animations. This led in to adding some of our character sounds and script on the character. Next week Heks and I will start moving all prototype code to the actual replicated pawn".
Jess (NecroSonic)
Level Designer
"The team is primarily focused on getting the netcode and the character controller up and running and making it all presentable on the map you saw the first iteration of already. As such there is not a lot of level design in the pipeline for now. I am awaiting the cool new modules to go from concept to actual models that I can use build awesome stuff, but untlll the character controller is done Anders will have his hands full making that. Being a bit impatient I have started to look into Maya myself to see if I can help out in creating the modules that I need. I have most experience using 3DS Max so the Maya interface is still pretty strange to me but slow progress is progress none the less.
Besides that I am sketching away on random ideas that I will try to implement once the modules are ready".
Nicolai (Reese)
CEO & Composer
"Management and admin tasks overload, nothing much else to say"
Thanks for your support and feedback on our community website.
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All the best,
Nicolai (Reese) & the team at Zero Point Software
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O_o wow. that looks ALOT better than the last version, the graphics have been updated tremendusly