SHADOW WARRIOR DEVELOPMENT - JULY 1997 [ Main Shadow Warrior Page ] Update: 07/29/97 We now have the final boss in the game, and other than a day of tweaking he's done. Our goal is to be content complete by next Monday, and here's a list of all we have left to do:

Populate 1-2 levels. Playtest the 4 new ones
Create two end boss cinematics
Add the new character voices that are being recorded today.
Add sound effects for 2 final bosses

That's about it. Other than playtesting for bugs and minor level tweaks, we're done with the game. We are looking very good for being done by mid-August.

Beta #2 will hit the testers Thursday, and all they are finding are minor things and tweaks (which is good for us).

3Dfx - Still seems to be going slowly. I really hope they can have it ready when we're done with the game, because we'd like to ship 3Dfx out of the box, but I don't know how long we can hold the game for it.

Update: 07/24/97

Michael is animating Zilla (final boss), and he should be rendering by Monday. We got Eric's maps (4 of them) and Keith and Stephen will spend the better part of the month bringing them to a polished state. We continue to DeathMatch nightly and refine levels, but they are complete for the most part. We have been focusing on co-op the past couple of days and have fixed the few bugs we found.

Frank finally found and killed forever the teleport on conveyor bug. This would cause instant OOS bugs in net play, and in single play you could not pass a certain point. Gone forever.

We just burned a cd with Beta #1 for our testers, so we can start getting their feedback on things we missed. Basically other than the last remaining character and the 4 levels, we are done, and simply using our time to tweak and polish the game as the other work continues.

I hear that we "should" get 3Dfx support for Shadow Warrior in 2.5 weeks. That's within our time line for mastering the CD, so keep your fingers crossed. Also hear that "maybe" we'll have some sort of MMX support. It would only be a speed increase, as I think we're only using MMX to speed up texture mapping.

Update: 07/14/97

It's been a pretty productive week. Michael has the end boss, Zilla, just about modelled and will start on the textures and animation by Monday. Keith finished his last level for the most part and has one of the coolest boss endings I've seen in a 3D game so far. Stephen is just tweaking his levels for framerates, and for DeathMatch suitability. We are net testing the levels nightly and the screaming is starting again. We'll get Eric's levels on the 15th (4 levels) and finish them up, placing us under the Aug 1st deadline for content addition.

Frank and Jim have less to do every day, and are pretty much in "react mode" to the few bugs we find. A couple of things popped up due to >5 players, but it was just "entropy" from not playing >5 player games lately. Lee has 1-2 more songs to do, and a minor amount of sound effects, so that's not an issue anymore. We'll probably go into the studio once more to recored the last of the Lo Wang voices, late in the month.

We think our estimation still stands: Finish the game and freeze by Aug 1. Then we simply test for hopefully a week or so, and then send a master CD to GT for duplication. I can see the game ready to ship late in Aug / early Sept.

3Dfx support is looking good, and we're "supposed" to get a final date for the support soon. That means to us that they can do it, and now it's just a race to get it ready, so we can have 3Dfx support right when you buy SW. Rumor has it that there "might" be some sort of MMX support as well. However, none of this is set in stone yet.

DLL's were dropped. Some people seem to have not gotten the news. They were simply going to blow our deadlines, and there were one or two technical issues still to be resolved. All in all, we thought shipping the game a month earlier was more important.

Update: 07/07/97

Game Development Update: The game is progressing at light speed. Michael just finished the Sumo boss and he ROCKS! Jim also progammed a mini-boss version of the character with different attacks, so we have yet another character. The Chick Warrior is also in and done. This leaves only the main boss, Zilla to be done with characters. Michael is working on sketches now. At this point art is no longer an issue that will hold us up. It will easily be finished by our end of July deadline.

The maps are about done as well, and we are starting to net play them every night. Stephen has been working on a couple of cool deathmatch only levels and they rock. We see maps as being done by the 15th or so. Eric Reuter (outside mapper) will send us his 4 maps by the 15th, and we will touch them up and hopefully maps are not an issue for the end of month deadline either.

The code is also going well, and the programmer's are frankly bored at the moment. Jim keeps playing Diablo ;) We added some cool things like boss health meters. No longer do you have to just guess how weak a boss is, as you slam on him for 20 minutes. You can now see how weak he's getting and put that little bit of extra effort into it. Yes, this is a little "Nintendo-ish", but gameplay is gameplay and it's a definate plus. We expect to see it become standard in the future.

TEN: We hear that SW shareware is now live on TEN, so check it out at http://www.ten.net.

Lo Wang Visits 3D Realms!: Well, it was John Galt, the man who voiced Lo Wang. He visited 3D Realms HQ last week, and of course, Joe Siegler and his digital camera squad followed him around everywhere. On your right is a picture of John Galt and the Shadow Warrior development team. In the shot (from left to right) is Frank Maddin, Lee Jackson, John Galt (green T-Shirt & suspenders), Keith Schuler, Jim Norwood, and Stephen Cole. Click on it to see a larger version.

There are some more pictures for you to look at from the John Galt visit. They are:

Scott Miller & John Galt
John Galt signs a poster in the Shadow Warrior offices
Lee Jackson & John Galt at an impromptu recording session in our lunchroom
John Galt & his son (I told his son I'd make him famous) :)

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August/September 1997
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