So endeth another busy week, and things are starting to pick up with everything Hellgate-ish! The Deathmatch mode is being tweaked, with Andy producing more levels which fail to load up on my machine at home for some weirdo Max-styled reason. I managed to cut the bike down to 650 polys with textures, and now I'm being accused of putting too many polys into the bike because (and I quote...!) "both bikes look exactly the same!". Yeah, exactly the same considering the resolution difference between full screen and quarter screen. Doh! Maybe I should become a shelf stacker...

I've been busy working with John and Nick on getting the city level to a ship-shape condition, and at the moment, it is almost fully textured and almost ready to be slickly inserted into the Dreamcast to see how it's working from the ground level. You do need that when you've been working on levels on Max for so long, so it will be very interesting to see how it all looks - fog and all. Nick has finished flags and gargoyles for bits of the level which he's also textured. I've just finished working on the river bit of the level, which will act as a test bed for the swamp level's water sections.

The city will need props to be added - lampposts, litter bins, etc. and this has led John to produce a mammoth amount of signs for the level, with many in-jokes. The favourite? A motorbike with a line through it with the tag line... "Bikes? Fly, You Bastards, Fly!". Hmmm.... Nick and John are both looking at The Nomad Soul for poly/texture inspiration, and it may be a worthy purchase if only to see a digitised David Bowie.

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First build of the city in its almost-finished form. Note the spotlights - expect loads more throughout the game because they're ace. :)

Greg has piled plug-ins aplenty to make all our lives easier - now we can export stuff to the Jester custom .JDM format, and that includes... vertex colour!! Whhooopppee! We also can decide if materials are going to be volume lighting, grids, etc. though I can see us probably using this more for the deathmatch levels where you can do things like shoot through railings, etc. It's scary when you get addicted to the product you're producing, and this is particularly true with the deathmatch levels. I just can't wait to see what other weapons we can put in and play with.

We were wondering about the possibilities of getting Hellgate online so other people can play each other. There was talk from Ernie that we would need a very, very fast and a very, very expensive server in order to handle these multiplayer games, though there is the possibility of getting Sega's attention of this game, and also getting them to run a server for us. If Hellgate is going to kick serious butt as a multiplayer online game, and if people will buy Dreamcasts because of it, it is definitely in Sega's best interests. I do want to have a Hellgate web page up and running in glorious 640x480 resolution for Dreamcast owners to see and download extra stuff for.

Next week, I begin seriously working into the swamp level. Mark is slowly but surely producing stuff for it and also Toks is working flat out at getting the levels sorted out. There is the slight possibility that this level might have... gulp! Tunnels! But still, I am sure that the Aztec/swamp influence to the level is going to lend itself very well. The waterfalls should be pretty cool as well.

Codemasters came to Jester this week as well - by helicopter. Yep, I know what you're thinking, though I daren't not voice my opinions in this web page.... though they did like what we were working on and left the building with a "hey, we could steal that idea" look on their faces. Ooooops.

The city's looking great! And so it should seeming it is the first level you come across if you began playing Hellgate for the first time. John and Nick really have worked their guts out to produce something special, while I lazed around optimizing like a complete zombie. Still, geometrically the level is just about done - I still need to shoehorn the hugely impressive skull portal which John had lovingly built. He's busy working on a road system at the moment!

I finished the water section of the city, and for my first 3D river, it's pretty passable. The swamp level seems to have taken another backseat again, as I've been ordered to produce the long-overdue rider animations which I'm busy working on as I type (well, how can I when I'm typing this.. hhhmmm.) The front end is also being covertly produced at home, and come Dream On deadline, we should have a fully functional working front end!!

I am getting very excited about everything which is going on with Hellgate because it feels like it's all coming together. It's weird, but the deadline doesn't seem that impossible now we have a formula sketched out and a schedule we're sort of keeping to. Come on! It's our first game attempt, what d'you expect?!

Overhead view of almost all the city - it looks a little pants because it's not lit properly. click on image above for a closer look...

We've still got a graveyard level, an ice level and a hell level to finish and a swamp level to properly start - there's talk that the level is TOO huge with it's killer waterfalls, so there is shrinkage to be made! We're busying working on props at the moment, while Mark is busy producing a 3D nightmare for me to build. I can't wait! I also had some spare time on the weekend to produce a funky 3 frame burning skull animation for the memory card screen - all part of the front end service, sir...

Something else - the monsters need to be increased in size something rotten. We've built them to scale with the biker, but due to the perspective of the bike, they seem titchy. It looks like if they're three times as big, they'll appear normal size! Yep, I'm confused too. Oh, and Toks is working on a new speedo with motion detector (radar) as commanded by Burt. Just when I thought I had knocked the first stage of the city on the head.

One good thing - John mentioned that he has had nothing built which he designed as an architect - until now. Warm feeling about producing this game? Oh, yes.

Imagine the scene - a bunch of hardworking individuals want to go to the pub and stuff themselves silly on pub food. Unfortunately, we're still waiting for the meeting with Codies' Patrick to end so he can see what we have on offer for him. It's just gone 1.05 and now we're officially into our lunch hour. (sob!)

Things have been going well in the Hellgate camp - we now have a more definitive camera which zooms r-e-a-l-l-y close onto the back of the bike. It's causing minor clipping problems, but it's nothing Ernie can't sort out. Looks like the polygon optimization will have to be put on hold for the bike - it looks defined enough, and the boosters look lovely!

Toks' minotaur complete with grafted-on gattling gun from - yep, you guessed it. The bike.

What else? The monsters have now all magically increased in size, even though this meant a total headache over one of Nick's cultist models. You should see the game now - it looks populated! The huge minotaur now looks even bigger, and looks great stomping around in the distance. Increasing the size of the monsters was something which had to be done at some time, so why not a time where one of the Codies is going to pop round - albeit, a Codie with no helicopter.

Also Ernie has been working on gibs. Gibs, for the non-Quake playing fraternity, are basically body parts sprayed around after hitting a baddy. We're eventually going to be working on gibs for every type of baddy, which means taking apart the baddy and then redo-ing the texture to include exposed rib cage, blood, intestines and more. I managed to work on a temporary texture of a temporary gib complete with bone protruding from it. I checked out the superb Quake III gib texture sheet, and was inspired by it - and that DIDN'T mean ripping the texture off...

Ernie has also added a huge amount of blood to the game, and was at the stage where the fountain of blood produced from killing a baddy slowed the renderer right down, but produced a MASSIVE stream of blood. Which reminds me - for this last level of the game which Andy is working on, Muggins will have to go on the net and check out loads of gruesome medical internet sites for suitable disgusting textures. Whoooopee.

The city is almost, almost finally done on its first stage - we have a road system, a stone portal to pop out of (with the inclusion of a swirly tunnel with portal texture - yipe! Tunnel!) and huge towers with flags and skulls. We need to add loads of John's comedy signs and billboards, plus buff up the textures some more, light the city (which will take much less time than the monolith level, trust me!) and add John's already-built-but-not-yet-textured end of level baddy.

I've promised the front end by the end of May - the Dream On deadline, though I intend to make a completely gorgeous front end and one I could probably tell my grandchildren about when I'm an old video games bore.

God, I'm hungry.