Time is ticking away...

God of War 2 is just below a month and a half from Alpha so the pace has picked up considerably around here. A little crazy...but a controlled crazy. A healthy crazy if there is such a thing. There is a whole lot more art going in and the game is really starting to take shape. This is the hardest of times, but also the most exciting for me because everything is finally coming together.

We have been plowing through our first level of the game the last few weeks and things are shaping up there nicely as well. I got to see a few more areas with art in them yesterday and they look great. There is definitely a lot of pressure, both self imposed and external, for us to top our first level from God of War 1 (the hydra level) and I can honestly say that after seeing the pieces together last week I am confident we are going to top it. It will be sweet! But what do I know...I am incredibly bias. We will have to wait and see what y'all think. Not 100% sure yet, but we might do this level as a demo level. So as I promised earlier all the hardcore peeps that have been following this blog from the beginning...the OG...will get a copy of the demo. How's that for freakin' sweet?

Kratos new abilities and weapons and nearing their alpha level of completion as well, pretty soon he should be complete and ready for us to tweak and tune. It really is fun to boot up the game and find a new move set or ability checked in the game. It's like Christmas...only several times a month.

And the animation...oye vey the animation. I am a tough critic on myself, and pretty tough on others as well when it comes to animation. My recent foray back into the world of animation did not yield the greatest results right out the gate...but that's how it goes when you step away from something for too long. But fortunately we have an incredible team of animators that are working their guts out putting together some of the best I have have ever seen. The animation in the last game was pretty decent, but the animation in this game is just amazing.

My lead level guy Michael just finished up the design/layout of our last level the other day, which I am sure is a major relief for him. This last one was a tough one for us as we wanted to do so much with it. But thankfully Michael wwhittlee to widdle down our ideas into a solid cohesive level. If everything goes according to plan this should be a really cool experience a really good finale' to the game. Well from a level perspective that is because right after this level you have the final boss encounter of the game which Derek, Nate and I have been working on. We got a solid base with it, now all we need to do is work out the final details and I think we will have a great epic ending to the game.

I did a write up the other day about our bonuses section detailing out the progression, menu screens, unlockables, enemy placements, etc. Not the funnest part of the job let me tell you, but the end result will be fun so it's all good I guess. I am also working out my global game tuning document which is a MASSIVE help to really tracking everything I am doing with the gameplay progression. I should have started this document sooner, but the structure of our level WAD breakdown was not complete so it would have been fairly rough. The WAD breakdown will still most likely change, but it is definitely fleshed out in greater detail now. I am going into work today to try and finish up the paper layout and start absorbing the games fight progression as a whole. Until now I have had my rough overall plan as I have been tuning individual levels. But now thanks to the miracle of this thing called 'planning' I will know it all!!! Strange how that works out.

I was going to post a screen shot, but I am writing this from home since I almost never have a free minute at work to do this. But when I get in if I can drum up something new I will post it.

'aight...lights out...time too work.