Meeting Day

As you may know, today was meeting day which means Lee downed tools and talked almost endlessly for 4 hours, then went to a restaurant and talked for another three hours. Dispersed with driving and emails, I can pretty much report that my coding has been 'extremely minimal'. The great news is that we have a good plan on what to delivery to you guys in the coming weeks and months, and we think you will approve. Much too early to reveal what those decisions are, but I am pretty sure it's the right course of action which will ensure Reloaded development retains a focus on the most important elements. 

Thanks to my involvement in the 'holy trinity of coders', I can report that work on the new level we are creating for you as a benchmark and the AI system that fuels it looks to have gone well today and I will be taking full stock of the progress made Tuesday AM.  Already seeing some great videos showing the new behaviors, and especially the characters response to sounds which had been a concern in the pre-Monday version of the AI.

Handy Tip : If you are starting out in the world of coding, and wonder what on earth a whole day of 'meetings' can accomplish, I can entirely sympathize with this attitude as it's one I shared for many years learning my trade as a programmer. What I have learned in later life (gosh I must be old) is that a clear and deliberate plan (and sticking to it) can produce enormous clarity of purpose in what one does, and such laser-like focus can achieve amazing things in a very short amount of time.  It can seem rather single minded at times, but in a world filled with very convincing distractions, having an ethic of pure focus can really work wonders when you are attempting to produce something of merit.  I am prepared and willing to make this commitment to an intense program of concentration and I hope you eventually enjoy the fruits of this effort.  And now back your scheduled programming...

I still have a lot of emails to go through, and plenty of action points from today, so Tuesday is going to be an interesting mix of activities, not least of which is to assemble a build for internal testing.  My gut feel now is to test, test and test until we have ticked the next major tick box, which is good game-play. To achieve this, I think it's the AI of the characters that will make or break us, and the majority of my attention will rest on how this game play unfolds when playing our latest sample level. Fingers crossed for Tuesday!