I should probably post something here so that my journal doesn't get locked... ;p
So, for the last half dozen months I've been focused on Ages of Ilathid stuff. Since AoI isn't realtime 3D (it's set up like Riven) I've been learning a lot about the features of Blender that aren't much use in Uru, i.e. procedural textures, high poly modeling, Blender's internal rendering system, ray transparency/mirroring, sculpting with high levels of multires, that kind of thing. I even did a bit of animation, which was pretty cool. ^^ I'm pretty happy to finally be producing some stuff that looks semi-photorealistic, even if you have to squint a bit to see it. Oh well, I keep on learning.
It hasn't been announced yet, but back in May we ditched our old forum (the public section is still up, but nobody's home in the private section anymore) and switched to the Redmine project management system. We had been having yet more problems with the old forum, and we finally got sick of it. In addition, Redmine offered some features that we had really been needing: better document storage, per-developer task list, subversion client, file repository (not quite what we needed, but good enough for now), and of course a more stable forum. Actually, this forum is missing a few of what I would consider essential features (for one thing, smilies!) but I can live with it. We've also adopted a new policy of dealing with/assigning a task for/deleting if resolved any threads that get to be over two weeks old. This has REALLY helped, and I only wish that we had started it sooner. The task list we have also makes it a heck of a lot easier to track what needs to be done and what's not getting done. The really, really nice thing about Redmine is that it lets you attach just about anything to a forum post. 38 MB .blend file? No problemo! I set the file repository settings to to like a 180 MB limit so that I could do a file dump of our game materials...only to have another dev mention that this might be too restrictive. Heh...
Right now the pinch in the pipeline is concept artists and modelers. We don't have enough of either, so I've put together a flyer that I'm going to print out and post around town. I'll probably try hitting up the Uru community later, but for that I want to put together an actual newsletter...or better yet a new version of the demo, which will be pretty much redone from scratch with improved everything. Sigh...I'm not fond of writing newsletters.
Another thing we've been up to is revamping the walkthrough. There was a lot of stuff planned for the game that was pretty much sugary fluff daydreams, e.g. "Ooh, and we'll have a huge castle with a zillion rooms and a garden and a lake and a river and a waterfall and a chocolate shop..." Nowadays we're being much more strict about what gets included and what gets cut--if exists only on paper and it doesn't contribute somehow to the gameplay or story, it goes. You might think that this would make the game smaller and less fun, but I think in reality the reverse is true. Cutting out the unnecessary and focusing on getting the maximum use out of a smaller group of elements has resulted in a flowering of creativity for puzzles as well as the development of themes. Let me give you a drastic example. Suppose you had an Age and there was a castle, a garden, a lake, a chocolate shop a river...and a waterfall. However, upon closer examination, you might decide that everything but the waterfall could go without hindering the story you're trying to tell. So you drop the other stuff. But that of course leaves you with a gutted Age with nothing to do or see and what fun is that? So what you do instead is develop a suite of waterfall puzzles. Maybe you redirect the waterfall, maybe you dam it to make a pond, maybe you turn a paddle wheel with it to produce electricity, maybe you hide a cave behind it, maybe you use the mist to create a rainbow to activate a color sensor to...but you get the picture. Since you're mostly reusing the same element over and over, you're not producing a lot of extra work for yourself, and meanwhile a cool, original theme has developed for the Age that will probably be much more fascinating to play with than the mishmash of sugar fluff daydreams that weren't really contributing to the gameplay. Furthermore, since you're reusing the same model (waterfall/mist/rocks) over and over in a variety of different settings, you're getting a lot more mileage out of your work. It's sort of like what Cyan tried to do with the pod Ages, but not as boring. ;p
Well, hopefully this will keep my journal unlocked awhile longer. Thanks for reading! ^^