STILL working on that monolith level! Whenever you finish a level in a game (developing, I mean, not playing.. unfortunately..), you think you've finished and you haven't. After the building, there's the texturing. After the texturing there's the vertex colouring. After the vertex colouring there's the tweaking. After the tweaking, there's the grouping and processing for the programmers. After that, there's the re-texturing, prop additions, banging your head against the wall and more besides.

It does look like we're not going to make it for our demo deadline of next week (I thought it was the end of last week - coo..!), though at least by the end of this week, I'll have absolutely nothing monolith or tunnel like to be getting on with! I'm going to try and produce some characters soon as well - I have a few earmarked to be getting on with, though I think we'll be helping out getting the city level optimized and finished for poor ol' John, who is also producing textures for the city level.

It does seem like we're up for Mission:Impossible at the moment, because everything seems to be against us, including my old mate, time. At least there's the comfort of knowing that there is going to be less messing around with the other levels than we have with the monolith level. It's all been one big learning process at the moment, and I'm learning an awful lot, including advanced techniques in panic, fear and also electroshock treatment. I'd love to get a front end produced, though designing it is going to take some time as well.

What's a guy to do?

The whole monolith level is done!!! Almost!!!! There are some minor things to do on it, but hark! It's vertex coloured, joined together and textured up and it only cost us blood, sweat, tears and stress lines! I am pretty excited about this little fact, because it means I don't have to wake up any more and worry about tunnels in any way whatsoever... until I start work with Toks on the swamp level in April. (sob!). Mark assures me there will only be two tunnels, though the actual structure of the level will be a bit of a logistical nightmare - it's a donut shaped level..!

The programmers have returned from the brink of polygon hell, and I am pleased to announce that from my shattered viewpoint, I can see a bike moving around in a lovely cannon with the ability to fire missiles and use its hefty machine guns. The only problem is that the free-floating weapons are unfortunately being messed up on our rather sub-standard exporter. This is the same amazing exporter which doesn't allow Multi-Sub objects, and also ignores vertex colour at its peril. Which is a shame, because we spent a week and a bit simply lighting everything in the entire level..! There will be amendments to the level, though you can bet those amendments will be small but plentiful. We have one light in the demo. Yep, just the one.

Cheapo Congratulations screen when you kill the demon biker at the end of the demo.

I do have serious doubts about the exporter, beause it is ruining our fun. While I type, we're testing out a Nintendo GameBoy Color (sic) development kit, which I would LOVE to work on - heck! 2D graphics!! No 3D modelling..! Sod the fact you can do almost anything on consoles nowadays, I preferred it when you had limitations and you knew what those limitations were.

I am much more optimistic about Hellgate now, which is a great thing to say. Things are starting to gel together, and it is really satisfying. Over the weekend, I'm very tempted to start on my share of the baddies I need to model. I've been promising poor ol' John (who has been working on textures for the city) that I'll get the city optimised down, but this monolith level has really took it out of me and Nick. Thank God it's (almost) over!!

I feel like cultivating my already growing stubble into a beard, though I'm resembling Shaggy from Scooby Doo more and more as I talk. And that includes my need for food and gangly posture.

We are SOOOOOOO lucky to be in such a fortunate, if forced position. As the demo stands at the moment, it is looking VERY promising! The bike has pretty darn close to collision detection as we're going to get, the horrific level known as "the hardest level to begin with" is more or less propped up and alas, without vertex colour due to the crummy exporter we're using. Oh! And we have four flavours of weapon - missile, grenade launcher (which can be aimed with the pitch of the bike), machine gun and gatling gun. We've got what Ernie lovingly calls "explosion spheres" which also use collision on the walls.

First sketch of the Horny Dog logo. Note the other team logos will appear in the Stuff section soon...

What is cool is that the machine guns and gatling guns can spray walls as well with bullets, and it shows! The bike itself has also undergone some cosmetic changes, and it would be nice if we could get the moving tail in there for the demo. We have some very cool boosters, which really add to the power of the bike. AND! We have sounds as well, and when I was looking at the level in action, I realised that is was indeed a very cool thing to be working on a computer game - heck! If I ever go to work in a business suit and tie, I'll gladly shoot myself.

So the demo is ready for the deadline. The deadline. Hmmm. This is the deadline whose date magically changed with each day. Now we've been staying late working for this deadline (oh, and much needed playing of Quake 3 Arena as well, though playing this game in office hours with this so-called "deadline" wouldn't of looked too good. Greg and Gareth were working all hours of the night getting the code sorted out, and also I had to go through and finally bang the last nail onto the coffin of the monolith level.

Imagine our surprise and distain when it was revealed that the deadline was in fact for next Monday. Whhhhhaaaaaatttt?! We hadn't been told about this until now??!? Hmmmm. Is this a new ethic of work, where we soil our undergarments with the impending doom of a deadline, only to realise that we didn't have to work like gits at all? The argument is that if we didn't work like gits for the past few days, we wouldn't be where we are now. Hmmmm. Work through unnecessary fear? Maybe.

Still, I am very contented with our demo, and now we can get to the task of adding demons to shoot, with their own paths, as well as getting a semblance of a game in there as well. Andy's working on loads of co-ordinates, while John is producing textures for his city "until his eyes bleed". Nick and myself have just fine-tuned the textures for the demo, as well as altering tunnels (not major changes, thank god) and animation god Toks has produced death animations for the biker and bike. Mark has volunteered his services for animation, which means learning Character Studio. Just as long has we have a design produced for this swamp level that me and Toks will be working on soon, we should be on track.

It's a heck of a lot better than the Pop Guru Playstation "demo" I worked on last year, where loads of time was lavished on the character designs, only to have the gameplay shoved into the demo as a rushed afterthought. Now we have a demo of a game I reckon could well be one of the best Dreamcast games to be released. I just know this is going to be a superb game, and the demo has given a sense of perspective about what we're working on. Four weeks ago, Alfin chucked down the gauntlet for reshaping this demo, and we've more than delivered. That makes me very, very happy.

The demo's been produced!!! Celebrations or a relaxed "phew" throughout the office ensue, and I for one am feeling a lot more healthier than I did on Black Wednesday, when Alfin decided to shove a ferret down each one of our provebial trouser legs and watched us run screaming. Now we have a demo, albeit one which is definitely not for inclusion for the Dream On CD on the Official Dreamcast Magazine. There's the next deadline!! Sometime in May, though with the way the deadlines have been going on throughout getting this demo finished, expect the actual deadline to be December. Or thereabouts.

Still, it does look like something which beats the pants off certain Dreamcast games visually. The game engine still needs to be tweaked and tweaked and tweaked again, while the vertex colour exporter has to be implemented. It's weird to think that all the lighting has been produced, and yet we can't even see it. Doh! A week of lighting and it has led to nothing. Well, a nice surprise if we can get things sorted out. I'm now busy working on optimizing the city level and hack down as many polygons as possible. The monolith level is currently around 50,000 polys, which was the limit we were given. Greg reckons we can have many more polygongs to play with once the engine has been rewritten. If this means that we'd be expecting fog on all levels, so be it, but the levels do look substantially more atmospheric with fog.

There's been a bit of a revolt at the moment. I had to hastily make a logo for our team, and also a team name, just to fill a space on the loading screen and menu. Now, it seems that my Horny Dog logo has been playfully shunted out of the way in favour for a more... how can I put this? Sexist? Well, we're now renamed and reborn as Team Horn, which I don't mind the name at all - just the fact the logo consists of a semi-naked woman with horns and a tendancy to show her arse. Any reviewer or punter who sees this first will think "Hmmmm... sexually repressed development team", and to a point that person would be entirely right.

What demo would be complete without its own controller screen? At time of writing, Strafe has changed to the d-pad, and B is now Free-look mode.

Even John has drawn up a Team Horny logo, followed by his idea for a team name - "1 Million Monkeys" complete with a very, very scary monkey logo. I really don't want to be around when they have a meeting about this one. Toks has been working on "that" Team Horn logo, and even when I've told him that we don't really have the time to fart around with logos yet, still they're produced. It just shows what little power I have over my art team. I don't want to be a ego-filled arse and live up to my job title, I really don't, but I can see why some people do pull rank. Jed from the Liverpool office has a tendancy to pull rank at every opportune moment, doing him no credit in the favours department.

My diplomacy shattered, I'm resorting to getting my head down and working. And working. And working some more. I really do want to get this swamp level looking absolutely gorgeous. Planwise, there will be loads of water, waterfalls, swamp land and (by my choosing, at least pushing my oar in a little) an Aztec/Inca feel with ruins covered in greenery, huge statues and more besides. This level should be a lot more easier and quicker to build, because we spent some time actually planning out the monolith level and trying to tweak the exporter all the while trying to shove it into the Dreamcast. And I yearn for an absolutely incredible front end.

But I am very proud of the demo, and my outlook is much more different - I do feel like we can get this game produced and finished, and I can't wait to see the finished article. Heck - I actually PLAYED the demo, as did all of our team. You can't believe what an achievement this is, and the feeling is good. Now as long as we don't get hung up on stupid logos, I should be happy.