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friday, june 16 2000

		12:36:01   my apologies for the recent lack of communication. there's a lot happening right now at work, and if that wasn't enough I am also hip-deep in building our core gameplay experience. the enemy AI that controls its hand-to-hand fighting is going to be one of the most crucial components of the player's experience when playing oni, which is why (of course) it was left until so late in the project. sigh.   we don't have as convoluted a fighting system as many dedicated fighting games, because it's just not feasible to have four different attack keys when you're trying to control your character's motion in a fully three-dimensional space. all of the moves are produced by different timing of keypresses. and there are fewer total keys. the same key sequence will do very different things based on what your character is currently doing.   also, most conventional fighting games tend to have a very simple environment; a flat fighting arena with two characters that always face each other (or have a very small set of possible orientations). oni, on the other hand, is all about fast-paced freeform action across wildly varying terrain. so the melee system has to be able to adapt to a wide variety of situations.   the end result is that the AI melee code has to be aware of exactly what their character is doing at the current moment and how this affects their available set of moves. it also has to understand what the environment is like around it, and finally must deal with fully 3d motion of its targets. a tricky problem in the best of situations, and even harder given our current time pressure.   over the last two weeks I think I've managed to hammer out a solution to all the problems. the pieces are starting to fall together, and things are looking up finally. now if all the rest of the project goes as well, we might be looking at a game in here somewhere. who knows.

monday, june 12 2000

		10:19:06   back in california after a whirlwind trip, which went well on the whole. however, supposedly we're in for a period of hot weather - I'm really not looking forward to that. here's hoping that the cool summer days that we've been having lately continue.   so many issues to juggle at the moment. but things should begin to settle down in the next few weeks, after a very busy period in the short term. however I have the nagging suspicion that the light at the end of the tunnel is in fact an oncoming train.

monday, june 05 2000

		19:12:26   busy day today, interrupted briefly by a very interesting visit from some nvidia engineers to tell us about their plans and do a bit of preaching to the choir. pieces are falling into place rapidly with my current section of the ai, thank goodness, as I'm certainly not going to get any work done during the latter half of this week (heading away on a business trip).   in other news, people just don't seem to like daikatana, which isn't really very surprising. what is surprising is just how good deus ex is, apparently. a friend who has a pre-release copy has told me that it's an amazinly good game and well worth a look when it hits shelves later this month.   still trying to find the right light bulb to fit my ikea lamp. while I've got the floor lamp set up, the smaller bedside light seems to want some kind of wacky halogen bulb. and I don't want to drive all the way north to emeryville just for a $2.50 light bulb. suck.

thursday, june 01 2000

		22:56:16   it will be very interesting, once oni is finished, to make a dispassionate estimate of what systems we want to take from the codebase and move across to our next game. we have some real gems that could be improved significantly with just a little bit of rethinking their underlying assumptions. it'll be tough to avoid second-system syndrome though!   sorry for the paucity of updates recently, but right now I'm blocking several other people on the project from completing their particular tasks... and so it's time for me to really knuckle down. ugh.

tuesday, may 30 2000

		15:48:19   you may or may not know that I ran quite a few tournaments for bungie's epic online game myth, back in its heyday. well, my myth world cup '98 and myth world cup '99 were very well received indeed. so much so that even when I took up my job here at bungie, people still petitioned me for months afterwards to run another tournament. as if I didn't have enough to do... heh.   well, a small cadre of people have decided to take up the challenge. with my blessing, they have taken and adapted the content, rules and ideas behind my tournaments. their goal is to raise the bar once more and run the largest myth world cup ever - myth world cup 2000.   with a larger team and more grandiose plans, it will be very interesting indeed to see how well they do. there have already been a number of signs of early stress within the group - bickering and petty abuse of power aren't a good sign before the tournament even starts. I suppose we'll see just how well the triumverate [sic] does under the stress of real mediation.