Yesterday, the other team in our offices recieved their PS2 development kits (basically beefier PS2 units) and although their mammoth monolithic looks could spell doom for the so-called "humble" Dreamcast, one thing has been overlooked - the fact that there is little or no help with libraries on PS2, plus as I type, they can't get the things started...! So, no demos to look at just yet, and that's if Sony could be bothered with including any.

As for Hellgate, after the omnious yet essentially damp entrance of the PS2 (I had to touch it...ooooo!), things are going extremely well. Thanks to Mr Sega, we have loads of libraries, demos and something on screen straight away. We now have essentially two main caverns seperated by tunnels, and the bike can now be controlled! There is a physics engine routed in there, which can be altered with Gravity (typing in 9.0 gives Earth mass), Resistance (top speed limiting) and Mass (overall acceleration which can be controlled with the amount of weapons you have).

As I was saying before I was carted off home, basically the physics engine is being rejiggled until the feel of the bike is absolutely right. Gareth, one of the programmers on the Hellgate team, is working flat out on a collision detection engine - meaning all we have to worry about is building models, though building them while thinking about what could bugger the physics engine. Our bike is looking better, though over the weekend I'm going to improve the backend of the bike as to our boss's request (though why if it's going to be the base-level bike in a series of seven?).

We now have a compromise over the lighting! Ernie, another programmer on the team, has managed to produce a volume light without the lighting. Basically, it's a cone of light which is really a filter which gives everything 20% more white, plus casts light onto geometry unevenly! This should mean that speed won't be a worry, as the Dreamcast isn't actually calculating light - in other words, we're cheating. This also means more room for demons, etc. We're going to have every cavern lit in 3DS Max 3 and then vertex coloured from the scene lights - which will give each cavern a much more tastier appearance. This, plus all the textures will make for a lovely looking game....

First build of the church with no vertex lighting and primary textures applied. Later on, the church will be revamped with lighting props like volumetric lighting from the stained glass windows and also torches on the ground, as well as polygon optimisation to get rid of all those unneeded polies which could slow down the game. Note the stained glass window on the left which can be seen in the Hellgate screenshots section.

I guess that this first engine will be constantly revised until it IS possible to have real-time light sourcing. It would be a shame, and also daft if we didn't have lighting from explosions, etc. I also had a meeting with the team to discuss the status panels, speedos, etc. Mark (Game design/tester) gave me a cool idea on the pentagram-styled speed dials. Very cool idea! I wanted the weapons to appear from the bike as semi-transparent, as if we had weapon select at the top of the screen, this would distract you from the actual gameplay of the game. Wipeout gets away with this because you can only have one weapon at a time. I think we have a definitive list of weapons, and in the game you'll know when you have acquired them by different floating weapon pods around the bike - may as well add to the bike instead of modifying it.

We had an idea about setting the last level in a pentagram, racing against the devil. On the five spikes of the pentagram are five elemental powers, which the devil could use for his powers against you, then you have to adapt your playing style each time. This could be very cool, and the prospect of modelling a 3D goat's head in the centre is even more cooler... a goat's head which looks at you as you go by! Whoa!

I've just finished modelling a huge church level, which is very, very shape intensive. I've managed to keep to necessary geometry (a useful phrase, no?). The church itself was designed by Mark and I had the omnious, though eventually enjoyable task of building the thing. At the end of the build, you do get a satisfactory feeling that you've created something which will be used in the game, plus have an essential essence to the gameplay. I want to try and produce a huge stained glass window setpiece, which will have a demon bursting from it. We've talked about having a monster made out of stained glass, but it's been done before in Young Sherlock Holmes and that visually gorgeous game, Medievil. Originality!

Burte is still our enemy - though we are getting new people in constantly, and we currently have two artists awaiting interviews as I type - one of which could be perfectly suited for what we're doing on Hellgate. Whatever happens with the art side, you can never have enough artists...!

This Head Artist tag is getting a bit weary - I feel like Captain Kirk when he's promoted to Admiral, and yet the poor sod wants to still be a Captain. I'm getting a lot of the art team hounding me for stuff, and as usual I comply - even though I should really be qualified with more than one pair of hands.

At the moment, we're tackling the problem of texturing the church without making it look too much like it's all been ripped off from stock textures off the Max CD...(!). I've managed to put some artistic licence in there and produced a demonic stained glass window set piece, which is already sorted out to shatter and leave behind any fragment remains in the archway. Nick is concentrating lighting the church and tiling the walls with (stock!) brick, while I managed to get the floor texture sorted out and looking pretty luvely. I already need to do a major tile texture on the floor (256x256..!). It should most definitely be done by the end of the week.

Finished texture sheet for the stained glass window of the church, plus flooring details. I say it's finished, but it won't be.

We have an even more solid level structure now, with a huge vast city on the first level - think Driver with demons. The city itself looks like a total pain to model, and that's after building a whole church level! The game model has also been much improved, with now a back view (accessible with the digital pad) and an interior view (from the Hell's Angel's perspective!) which looks very, very dangerous. We need to model a more high-poly front of the bike to add detail to the interior view, along with a... dun, dun, darrr.... a speedo! A speedo with glowing capabiliities! I actually had a meeting about this as soon as I entered the offices early in the morning, and I thinking I'm starting to wake up with demons on the brain..!

Also, we recieved two new recruits to the madness known as Hellgate and subjected them to the loose hotch-potch, errr..., I mean constructive plan of attack which is going to set our game out from all the others. I also have to produce a load of renders and wire-frames for that oh-so-cliched look for some publicity DTP which might be going out to prospective companies who may release it. Who knows? It is scary that I've got all this work to do, and not much time to do it, and although my nights are sacred, I might have to overrun with the work on these so-holy-of-days. Sob.

Ernie is working on an .avi player (he must be bored..!) while a rare appearance of Kenny always seems to fill us with purpose. At least we don't have to develop on the PlayStation 2, where it sounds like the whole team want to chuck the perfectly sleak omnious monolith out of the window. Can't wait, the console whore...

Panic stations! We had a meeting yesterday and basically I need to stop what I'm doing with the texturing of that darn church, and get straight down to producing the entire world map for the game. This means basically that simple geometry will probably suffice, just as long as we have the entire world map as a MAX file, and then we can talk about placement of tunnels, etc.

The programmers have thought about splitting the level up into managable chunks, so it will improve on the speed. We're going to have to draw up loads of lines in the model before we physically start hacking the level to pieces. By the end of play today, we should have all the caverns in half finished/finished simplistic forms, plus some tunnels which Nick is working on.

The dreaded monolith level in pieces, top down. Click on the image to enlarge..

It looks like I'll be hard at work over the weekend as well, getting some baddies modelled(!). We're aiming for around five baddies - harpies, cultists (lower poly count), gun turrets, baddies with ramps on their backs and also machine gun wielding baddies on foot. This is easier for the level designers to start producing positions of these baddies. Building them shouldn't be much of a problem, but actually getting them textured will be a different matter altogether. Texturing can be the best and worst thing about producing models.

Toks (new bloke) and the Quake level-design bloke whose name I've forgot, are busy working on weapons design and building as well. Toks also produced some rather cool harpies characters which will be used in the actual game - with long, flowing hair which will probably be noticed at 400mph down a tunnel full whack. We have a final deadline date of 11th March to get everything ship-shape and fixed into place. Hopefully we should have reached a great stage by then. It seems a little daunting to come up with a playable level in around two months (two months?!?!? pickasso_reborn), but I think liberal sprinklings of late nights and midnight oil should suffice.

Read an article in the Edge magazine about Development Hell - "marriages break up, friendships disintegrate..". Yipe.