 Well, its all hands to the pumps at Team17, what with Xmas looming (Xmas deadlines are always fun), so everyone is walking around with that look of a rabbit in a cars headlights. As for me, I am lucky to be on a project destined for next xmas, so I have the joy of the pressure of finishing another project to come in 12 months time. Ive been playing some more with my landscape system (myself and alex have been corresponding on the ups and downs of ROAM implementations). Ive really been trying to figure out how the whole production pipeline of a nice looking (and working) landscape is created, I'm sure that I need to use texture synthesis (for my game idea, it wouldnt work at all to do most of it by hand), however Ive really not been able to determine whats the best way of working in terms of production. I really really need to get working on my character animation system again as well, but the landscape is taking a long time (because I really need it to work and be easy for artists to play with). Its almost time for our christmas party (10 year anniversary as well, so it should be good), so i am sure I'll lose a few braincells to that. One thing I mentioned before was that I needed a quick way to prototype things without having to write the whole mess of support code just to get a window up and on screen. Well.. luckily two things came to the rescue! Firstly, I got hold of the latest version of GLUT, and a couple of demo apps, and I must admit, I am DAMN impressed with the speed you can knock up simple test apps. Its amazingly fast, and seeing as its using OpenGL, its also something I am comfortable with. (One quick note here, D3D version 8 is WAY beyond the functionality of the previous versions of D3D, and to be honest, commercially, I'll be using that from now on (to become familiar with it, and to get the Xbox crossover thing working). The second thing that came to my rescue was Josh Jensen's little app called workspace wiz! (hi josh!), a cool util that allows me to setup a devstudio appwizard that can create a bog standard glut app with all my usual support code in place from the word go in seconds! I really cant stress enough how cool it is to be able to just knock up quick test version of idea's with most of the core functionality required for a game in minutes! highly recommend getting glut and using it if your playing with OGL anytime soon. My current plans are to finish off the landscpare rendering tests, code up a proper editing application with "easy" artist type controls, work on the character code (possibly hacking at the discreet demo code if I can ever get off my ass and do the fax to get the password), get my bsp stuff working in the landscapes, get it all put together. After all that, I'll be concentrating on the java code for my server system (unless my friend ritchie gets off his ass and starts it in the meantime). Once thats all in the bag. I'll have a fully working MMORPG! yayy! now all I need is content :)) Anyway, enuff for now. Phil. 
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