Halfway Update

On Thursday we will be at roughly the halfway milestone for our Alpha, and we still have a lot to do.  When you look at the list it is quite daunting (Particle FX and AI among other things), but the list needs to be taken with a grain of salt.  Many of the features left are much smaller features than massive level editor we have been working on so far.  When you think of Artificial Intelligence, you think of complicated difficult code, but since we are only moving in two dimensions (think Mario  and have separate combat and platforming sections it will be a much simpler system than a full 3D AI.  We also talked with the designers last Thursday and came up with a solution to the music system that takes a lot of pressure off of us, but makes the level design a little more time consuming (not much though).  Furthermore, several of the other items only need to be basic for our alpha in December.  So while it does look grim if you look at the percentage of tasks done, what really needs to be looked at is the percentage of work done, and on that front we are in much better shape.