1998 Diary
First Quarter
1998
Doom and gloom from Amiga. No one much excited about developing
for the Amiga any more. Hard to hire people. Group now consists
of myself, Liz, Rick, Ben and Ruben. Ruben is our musician and
is working on the CD music.
Had idea for
some sort of surround sound type audio engine using the 4 channels
of Paula. Spent 2 weeks testing the idea and asking friends about
coding practices for trig to calculate the position of the sounds
on the map.
Found major
bug in engine. REWRITE NEEDED! This is bad and will take 1-2 months.
Falling behind deadline for Sadeness but nothing can be done.
Hired new
graphics people, 2 map and 2 3D modellers. Work resumes on Dafel.
There are now 9 of us working flat out of Bloodline.
Third Quarter
1998
Converted core engine to C++ in a few weeks. Liz has spent ages
doing this and was disapointed to see that speed was even slower
in AGA! We are all feeling a bit depressed and no one really has
hope for Amiga after all the troubles. Hard to motivate myself
and others at the moment. Deadline's come and gone, new deadlines
set.
Hired new
Blitz coder! Paul West has offered to write for us a c2p library.
In 2 weeks we had a working core engine using his specially made
Blitz library Mildred.
3 weeks later
and engine now fully working in c2p mode! We're getting 27fps
on 030/50 AGA in 256 colours! We've had to slow the engine down
to get a realistic speed for Dafel to walk in!
New bandwidth
in speed has opened up a whole new array of visual ideas. We've
added real-time snow flakes to the snow level. It looks really
impressive. Over cool effects we have added are real-time shadows
cast by characters. Actual shadows are cast over map graphics
and blend to a dark or light shade of grey. We're adding rain
to the Swamp level, a variation on the snow. Snow can also fall
in different ways and can change at any time to suddenly swirl
one way or another. It looks really realistic and with the added
sound effects really adds atmosphere.
Recoded AI
engine. Now faster and more intelligent. Added super and sub class
AI for characters. Some good attributes like sight, sound, smell
and intelligence added. Also created 3 super classes of rogues;
very fight alone, clans; they fight as groups or against other
groups, and, ambush's; very lay in wait and attack when you get
too close.
Music from
Ruben is really good! Will add lots of atmosphere to some levels!
Thinking about using spooled CD sound effects as well as the FSG
sound effects.
Forth Quarter
1998
Bad news. Lots of developers and publishers leaving Amiga market
and just giving up, Sadeness amongst them. We no longer have a
publisher and everyone is feeling low.
3D modeller
has left the group, will need to find another soon if possible.
Only the hard core developers are left now in the Amiga arena
and they are hard to convince to work on a commercial project.
Moral very
low, work slow coming in. Decided to cut down design to help increase
development speed. Bloodline is a huge game its unrealistic to
get it completed with all the ideas I want so back to the shareware
idea we originally had.
1999 Diary
Third Quarter
1999
WoA99. Contacted Andrew Korn, got ourselves a stand in the "basement"
:) Last change to sell Bloodline and our other projects (MagicK
and Scavengers). Created a press pack to hand out to publishers.
WoA went well.
Epic to the rescue! We were quite pessimistic about being at WoA,
not sure what would happen but Epic has given us our confidence
back and we signed a 3 year deal with them to publish everything
we make or convert. At least there is some commercial life left.
Deadline is
tight for Bloodline completion and will need to hire more graphical
people.
Fourth
Quarter 1999
Trying to find graphical people who best match the style of our
main map designer. It's a hard process and find people is hard
these days in the dwindling Amiga development scene. Quality is
varied, but there are still enthusiastic people out here like
us which is great to see!
Amiga future
looks bright again under Gateway. This QNX row is a pain, talked
to their coders at WoA who seemed interested in our views.
It's hard
to develop for a phantom machine so how can we support future
Amiga's and their markets? Epic have some great ideas and we are
more then happy to follow them. Gateway seem vague and after recent
events we're not saying anything for sure until we see *something*.
All bark not bite from Gateway at the moment.
Found new
map graphics guy. Working with current map designer, new levels
started finally! A lot of things have fallen into place at the
same time that has picked up development for the graphics team!
Gateway failing
to convince anyone. Everyone unhappy. Liz has decided enough is
enough and we've lost our main coder. Future for Bloodline looks
bleak until new coder is found. Good point is that code is 70%
complete so a conversion should be easy enough.
2000 Diary
First Quarter
2000
Hired C++ coder! Liz in contact with new coder in conversion process.
Liz is sad that she is leaving the Amiga market but most now concentrate
on her full time job that actually earns her money! It's easy
to forget for a development group like our own, development becomes
harder when you have other commitments. Most of the reasons why
people leave groups like our own is because we are only a part-time
job in a way. There is no money in the Amiga to hire an office
and people to work in it. Its hard, and its depressing at times,
but why do we carry on? Probably because it's a challenge and
that's what we all like!
Second
Quarter 2000
Epic deadline hard to meet with new coder and C++ engine. Reason
for switching from Blitz to C was because we could not find any
good Blitz coders.
C++ coder
has left. Too much work for little time remaining, now left with
30% complete C engine and 70% complete Blitz engine. Stuck for
what to do next!
By luck, received
an e-mail from Blitz coder asking if he could do some work. To
his probably surprise I offered him to complete the work on Blitz
engine. I know of the coder and have seen some of his work previously
so I know he is capable of doing it.
New Blitz
coder (Peter Thor), has rebuilt the engine in a matter of weeks
and recoded some of the graphical routines. We're now getting
60fps on RTG/AGA. Original RTG code is broken. New one in development.
Huge increase
in map development! Our main map designer was looking for a workplacement
in the UK. I managed to secure him a place where I work. Every
evening and weekend for the next 5 weeks, he was chained to my
desk doing map graphics. All 5 levels now complete graphics wise.
Some little bits need adding and finishing but those tasks are
small.
Using the
3D modellers from MagicK and Scavengers to work on Bloodline :)
Hired a new
3D modeller!
Third Quarter
2000
Finally 3D models are coming in! 50% of models rendered for complete
game in about 60 days. Another 60 or more days needed at most
to complete the rest of them. There are 5 people working in 3D
modelling and rendering! Production is excellent and along with
the map graphics, a release date is looking realistic again! In
the last 3 months we've done more work on gfx than in the last
2 years! The right people are working on the project now and everyone
has gelled together all with the same purpose of completing the
game. 12 people are now actively working on Bloodline. Each day
brings us closer to a release date.
RTG code working
again! Soon I will be able to scrap my TV output and return to
my BVision output!
Working on
data structures for game which drives the various engine modules
such as AI, level loading, player attributes, level enemy attributes
and puzzles. Bloodline is a non-linear game so the data structures
need to be strict and yet generic to work for all levels. Its
hard to do but is liberating as its finalising the 5th rewrite
of the design!
A lot has
been cut out of the design but it has made the game much leaner
and compact than before. Release is more realistic with minimal
amount of quality removed. There is a method in the group now
that can adapt straight away to the need of the every changing
design process to match deadlines.
Release estimated
sometime in the fourth quarter 2000.
- Jace
Hayman 24th July 2000.
