A lot of rather excellent news comes to mind, so I'll just spit it out in whatever order it comes to me. First, Eric Reuter has graciously offered his time to create the last remaining map. This is the man who created the levels for the PDX HQ, which were acquired from the defunct GITM mod. Eric has worked on a rather large number of commercial projects, including:
- Unreal
- Half Life - Blue Shift
- Half Life - Opposing Force
- James Bond - 007: Nightfire
- Counterstrike: Condition Zero
Needless to say, we are very grateful for his help and are looking forward to seeing what he can come up with.
In related news, ZeroPresence continues to chip away at what is probably the most complicated and intricate level in TNM. I can't really say too much about it, aside from the fact that it's looking fantastic. This level will be the home of the brand new enemy that we've created totally from scratch (model, code, sounds, the whole deal).
That Guy has been smashing bugs in between his exams. His greatest achievement this week has been the implementation of the crouching state for NPCs. Hence, our NPCs can now crouch by their laptops and look cool. Jonas sent me a screenshot of this the other day, but I appear to have misplaced it. Something like that should appear as the POTW sometime this week...
Jonas and That Guy have also been discussing ways to take some of the boredom out of death. I mean, a spinning view of your dead body is all well and good, but we like to make work for ourselves. A much fancier camera move when you die has been tossed around, as well as the idea of a short video showcasing the consequences of your death at that point in the game. We'll see what happens with this, it could be rather interesting.
In order to give our voice acting a boost, Jonas suggested a system for managing and organizing the distribution and recording of lines. Master_Kale, of HDTP repute, has come forward and coded us up an absolutly fantastic system. He's currently polishing it, but it's about 90% complete and should be finished this week. His system will make things a *lot* smoother in the voice acting department. Perhaps Pointman will even be able to take a break from his vicious poking for a spell.
That's all for this week.
Salut!
