Well, I released the first test version of Trajectory Zone (single player only) to the team.
Feedback was surprisingly positive, and my task list that resulted from it is *MUCH* smaller than I had expected it to be! There’s 33 items on the current task list, and some of them aren’t mine (Eric Forhan, for instance, is now experimenting with using smaller terrain sizes instead of the default 8 size. Makes a HUGE difference on how smooth the terrain is, but I wanna see how it affects FPS. This also makes levels smaller, which is one of the problems we encountered – the action is way too slow to start with on a large level.)Â
Most of the fixes in my list are in the 30 minute or less range to fix ’em. Wow. I was expecting to find some seriously ugly, deepseated bugs and gameplay issues. The biggest, and potentionally most painful change I want to make is to do a merge with HEAD. I started to do that once, and it wan’t a good thing. I’ll give it another shot, and see if I can get it running – mainly, I’m wanting to get it integrated so I can get the Mac version up and running properly.
After the team and I get the current task list complete, I’ll build TZ Single Player Test 2 (now with installer power! 😉 and see how that goes. If it goes as planned, I’ll take the few remaining tasks and finish ’em, and we’ll start releasing the game to a beta crew to start pounding on, and see how well it stands up to more scrutiny.
Honestly, I think we’ve got something that’s gonna be pretty solid. I’m now lookin’ forward to what the first beta group has to say about the game. We’re finally at the point where I can start getting really excited about things 🙂
Today is my birthday. Woohoo! Tis’ actually nothing special (I’m 29 Mark III now), but had a pretty good but tiring weekend because of it. Had to play the part of an English Gentleman in a parade in the morning on Saturday, then party a bit Saturday night out at the farm. Unluckly, it was high 90’s in Kansas. (Only – considering it’s reached 109 already this year, it could have been MUCH hotter on Saturday). That left me braindead and tired on Sunday – yet another day with no game development done. Oh well – “all work and no play”, right?
Justin Mette  (Jul 29, 2003 at 08:53)
Happpy Birthday Davis! Sign me up for the Beta of TZ please :).
Frank Bignone  (Jul 29, 2003 at 10:24)
Happy Birthday Davis !
Please, post some screenshot of TZ in the dev snapshot too.
Nicolas Quijano  (Jul 29, 2003 at 13:18)
Excellent !!! 8p
As Justin said : sign me up for the beta of TZ, pretty please 8p…
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr  (Jul 29, 2003 at 13:36) Â
Justin: Thanks for the Ogg info ya sent me earlier – that’s gonna save me a hell of a lot of headache I think!Â
Frank: I’m gonna wait just a LITTLE longer before I post screenshots. One of the bugs is a display bug, and I need to retexture the Aliens for the single player mode – right now, they look like they have been painted with primer 😉 (Primer gray, primer green, primer black… really!) And Eric has sent me a new test level for using terrain size 4, which makes things look SO much better IMHO. I’ll probably fix up those two items first, and then take a screenshot with Eric’s new terrain. Should look very spiff then 🙂
Nicolas: Mac version, I assume? ;-)Â
Ya’ll are definitely in on the beta. Probably shooting for 7 – 10 people on the first betas, then about 20 for the nearing final betas.
Pat Wilson  (Jul 29, 2003 at 13:50)
Congratulations!