Just had a rather enjoyable meeting about our next moves with Hellgate as a demo for E3. Unfortunately, all the top brass seem to be up for travelling down to LA, while us poor paupers are left sweating buckets to make the demo as gorgeous looking as possible. The monolith level may actually be rejigged somewhat so it will be a lot more easier to move around. There has been call to making the tunnels from scratch again, but after my baptism of fire over the texturing of tunnels, it looks as though I'd rather get the existing tunnels and amending them for the new level. After all, the work has been done on them, and it would be daft to waste that.

May 11th is our next (supposed) deadline, which means that the swamp level which has been delayed a little at the start of the month, looks like it will have to wait while we improve on the other levels. Ernie's warned me that we can't have vertex colour (AND texture colours!) between 0-20 and 205-255 RGB values. Unless, of course, we want the televisions of punters worldwide to burnout. (Hee, hee...!)

It's been a strange day today - a blur of ideas, a flurry of vocal activity. It's been hard trying to shoehorn into my brain the enormity of what everyone is enthusiastically suggesting. One of the main suggestions is over the city - which at the moment is crashing the Dreamcast due to the size of collision data. What Burt suggested in the meeting was that we put a large crater into the city and ruin the surrounding buildings. I kind of like this Akira-ish style, because of the fact the hub could be slapbang in the middle of the crater, and it could be ideal for the delapidated look which could be what we're looking for. I do like the idea of the crater, though thank God John's away on holiday at the moment. Burt had that look in his eyes that it could well be a good idea. Yipe.

It's demo disc time! Again!

Now the road to the May 11th deadline concerns getting the front end produced - some of the lads want the front end to be fully 3D, and although this means we can produce an absolutely amazing-looking front end, I'm still a little unsure. It could work, but at the moment I'll do it all in 2D and we could integrate the 3D element in there when we have the luxury of time to do it in.

Codies don't want Hellgate, though Take 2 Interactive are very interested. I'm glad that Codies don't want Hellgate, because it means that we'll have to do everything "realistic" and probably need a co-driver demon to co-pilot your craft and shout instructions to you. Only kidding. This demo needs to be pretty slick in order to impress and get a deal sorted out at E3, and I'm up for the challenge of producing something amazing out of the monolith level. The problem with that level was the fact we had designed it at an early stage, when everything was still in its infancy, and now our old design doesn't fit with the new gameplay ideas. I do want to produce a cool front end, though, and hopefully it'll all come together. Late nights are a definite possibility.

Recently got an appraisal of glowing niceness - my 3.5 months of Head Artist experience seem to be doing rather well, against all of Burt's doubts over the new team and the young fresh-faced team members of Hellgate. I'm proud to be part of a team who is enthusiastic, talented and I'm happy of the total and utter lack of anything resembling ego.

Which I like. A lot.

All systems go! Or, in other words, "Arrrrgggh! Late nights again!". We did it when the Tokyo deadline loomed, and looks like we're doing it again. I don't mind, of course, as it gives us all a chance to play Quake III Arena. Last night I got the record for the highest negative score in the office. Totally intentional, of course. :)

At the moment, time has been very tight indeed for the E3 show on the 11th May. Our deadline is a little before then, giving us about a week and a half to panic ourselves silly and lose some more hair. I've been working all week producing a luvely shiny front end for the demo. We can cut some corners with it, but instead we're deciding to get the front end well out of the way and finished for the game. I'll be busy producing other stuff as well - graphics for the deathmatch levels (how many frags, etc.), the rest of the front end, and also helping to finish off a rejigged version of the monolith cavern for the demo.

Nick has managed to carve a nice niche in game design, and along with Mark, has come up with the final level spec of the monolith level. It seems to be more sensible now, as well as having some meaning to it after our emergency gameplay idea. Burt's currently on holiday, which means that we haven't got him peering over our shoulders while we slog away. A bonus? Hmmm. We need some funky tunes and more sound effects from MC Wright pretty soon for the demo. At the moment, we do have some tunes playing in the background, but they've been stolen from some CDs from Andy's thrash metal collection. It should be alright, though. We hope. Lawyers can be gits, especially American ones...

First ever front end screen, complete with bitmaps inverted so programmers know where to slap those bitmpas down.

What else? The hub is getting a re-design from myself, with John building the hub, Nick is also working on the hub and some of his wacky level ideas. Toks has produced an incredibly huge kick-ass end of level baddy, as well as some quality FMV, though if you take the FMV into account, our storyline goes something like this - Bloke walks up to bike which looks demonic, starts bike up and zooms past towards a spooky castle. Hmm. Not exactly the plot we've scripted, but it'll do for the moment. Besides which, I know many gamers hate plot in their games. Give them mindless violence and blood every time...

Andy is putting the finishing touches to one of the two deathmatch levels being provided for the demo. It is definitely the make-or-break feature of Hellgate, seeming it could well be online as well. That WOULD be amazing. I did have an idea where if you knew someone who had internet access, they could put pictures of your mug on the web, you could use your Dreamcast to download those piccies and on Deathmatch, have those photos above your head a la GP500 for PS2. That would be pretty smart. The graphics have to be a certain size though, but that shouldn't be too much of a prob. Who knows?

The front end graphics should all be done by the end of the week, and as I type, Ernie is programming in all those lovely alphas and XY coordinates I provided for him. It's cool to think that a few months ago we had a very early stage of development, and now it's on course to being amazing. If this game does really well, Hellgate 2 is most definitely on the cards. Even looking at the title "Hellgate 2" gives me deja vu - maybe in another life I've already worked on Hellgate 2... and 3... and 4... (etc. etc.)

Let's hope for the inevitable sequel they don't split Horny Dog up as a group. They can't be that silly...

Can they?

Yipe. Long gap in the diary must mean only one thing - it's deadline week! What with the Tokyo Game Show already out of the way, just as we were recovering from that little shock to the system, we get another in the shape of E3. All this week has been late nights aplenty, and as I type, I realise that the weekend is an illusion. The sheer fact I don't have to work on a Saturday even though I'm going to work on a Saturday is punishment enough. I have to work on the weekend!!!! Noooooo!

I've also had to engage my developer mode, meaning working late nights, playing Quake III Arena in various forms of play and also drinking plenty (and I mean plenty) of Red Bull. It's what has been keeping me awake this past week and now it's all catching up with me. I am totally and utterly exhausted, though it has definitely been worth it. We now have a fully-functional (demowise..!) front end for E3. There are still some things we need to sort out on it, but what is there is definitely good enough. Designwise, I am very happy with what is there and me and Ernie have managed to communicate reasonably well for an artist and a programmer..(!).

Everything has most definitely been on "go" with the final draft of the monolith level getting built, final custom plug-ins which Greg has produced for his "favourite" software program, 3DS Max 3.1, props in the game being slotted in, the main hub getting re-designed, rooms amended, new bits added, monsters and power-ups added, new bike animation, mini FMV movies, and everything else inbetween. It's been hectic, though not stressful in the slightest. Enjoyable? Yeah, actually, very much so. I guess I'm in the right job... :)

I'm currently typing this out on home, and I fear that sleep will soon get the better of me. The internet connection I'm on is running extremely slowly due to the fact a certain little virus ravaged through 1 in 3 business computer systems (I'm guessing a few internet systems, or people downloading updates for their virus software), and I need my daily fix of daft web sites. Then again, sleep does seem like a very nice option for me to go for. Hmmm.

I'm working Saturday.

Oh, God.