29 May 2000

The Latest News

As usual, the bulk of the work done this month involved designing new missions. However, a few additional improvements were also made to the game engine:

• A fully functional title screen has been added.
• The player can now load and save their game.
• The game can now record and save replays. The file format is extremely efficient, consuming less than 4K of memory per minute when recording at 30 frames per second.
• The game also went into the initial phases of beta-testing this month. Here's what one of the playtesters had to say:
  • "Oh man, this game is really cool. It doesn't seem to crash, either. :)"
  • "Great car controls...Nice weapons, excellent explosions, good looking pedestrians, a lot more '3D' than GTA 1 or 2."
  • "The most important bit is the car handling, and it's very good."
  • "Overall, it's brilliant. With some more speed and polish, this could easily beat GTA." (Note: I'm now in the process of adding 'more speed and polish' :)
  • "PS. I really didn't expect it to play so well. Well done, man. :)"
• An on-screen health gauge has been added.
• Lots of bugs have been fixed, and the gameplay has been extensively tweaked according to the beta-testers demands.
• The performance of the vehicles now decreases when they get damaged.

Well, that's it for this time. See you next month!

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