Adarakion Developer Diary: Issue 45

Greetings! Yes, I’m back from my holidays, refreshed, with new vigour and ready to redouble my efforts!  Whilst it’s great to have a break, I do feel a bit pressured on my return. It’s like you’ve spent the past year building momentum and keeping the ball running, to have a week off really feels (personally) that I need to regain my composure and start pushing that ball again. Whilst I think about it, I’d like to take the opportunity to say thanks to Matt for filling in for me last week, he did a sterling job!

So, where are we at. Well, a quick reccy of things would suggest:

a) Feature freeze on Project 2 (bar 2 small changes I want to make) – Matt mentioned this last week, but basically we could keep going forever adding new bits and pieces but at some point we need to say “Right, that’s enough or it’ll never get released”.  That’s not to say that we wont continue to improve it but the improvements will come after release.

b) Website – been a topic of hot discussion amongst the team and to a large degree I’ve been keeping my nose out as much as I can (ultimately we will all be involved in whether the site is go or not) but my sense of style is pretty much non existent – with that I mean that I do have some style, its just not evident most of the time. This will be confirmed by all who know me, especially the Mrs!  More on the website stuff very soon (certainly within the next couple of weeks)

c) Team – as the team grows (with Marty our new Artist) we all need to be sure and certain as to our roles within the team, and where we all fit in.  This might seem like a simple thing to resolve but it really isn’t.  We all have a good idea where we currently sit and what we are doing, but it’s far from clear (to this point most of us pitching in etc. a little ad hoc) so we need to clarify these points at this stage, and also make sure that any future positions are clear as and when the team grows again.  This is  made a whole lot easier when everyone sits in an office and we can have a chat. Much harder when every member of the team lives (literally) in a different corner of the UK.  This doesnt make it any less important and it is something that needs to be clarified for morale, commitment and direction.

d) Project Blast! – with Project 2 nearing completion, there’s certainly less for the team to do as a whole and so I think that the time is probably right (with Marty and Phil now as an art “department”) to get the ball rolling properly with Project Blast! from both a code and asset perspective.  Obviously you have all seen (if not, look at the previous diary entries) how Blast! looks at the moment however as that work is being taken as a prototype the chances are the finished article will look one hell of a lot different, with a much more modern “feel” to it.  This is going to be our first proper project (proper defined as aimed at XBL/PSN platforms) and its going to take a lot longer than our current project to bring together.  I’ve written a rough technical design document for Blast! which at some point I will let the team pour over and dissect. As Blast! is a large and complicated project, it’s paramount that we approach it professionally and stick to the design doc as much as possible when coding.

So that’s me at the moment I think… I’m also going to start pushing to see if we can announce our first project over the next couple of weeks – you guys have been very patient with us and it is fully appreciated, we’ve spent a lot of time and effort getting to where we are at and we want to share that with you chaps.

Thanks again for sticking with us, see you next week!