February 16, 1989
A lot of heavy work, most of it invisible, but which will make it much easier for me to implement the enemy guards in their flowing robes and turbans.
February 21, 1989
Worked all day long finding and fixing bugs in the collision detection. It was like swatting flies.
Came up with a bunch of really slick ideas for the shadow man and how to use him.
February 22, 1989
Another productive day. Got rid of a couple of nasty collision detection bugs that had the characters occasionally falling through solid blocks (plenty more where those came from), and simplified the controls so that you no longer need to hold the button down to climb up onto a ledge. It’s a big improvement – it makes the controls much less daunting at first.
February 28, 1989
Tomi may move to Paris to run Broderbund France. Her maybe-future colleagues, Dominique and Veronique (whom she calls “the puppies”) stopped by this morning and I gave them a demo of POP. They flipped. They love it. They want to sell it in France. I told them how valuable Tomi’s input has been on the game design (can’t hurt, if she’s going to be their boss).
In the afternoon, I demoed the game for Gary and Dianne Drosnes, who is in charge of acquisitions and licensing.
March 3, 1989
Doug told Tomi that POP is the only product Broderbund has in the works that he thinks will be a hit. “It’s been four years since we had a hit,” he said.
Joe from Tech Support cornered me and talked for ten minutes about how my game is “setting a new standard.”
All I have to do is finish it.
March 20, 1989
I called up Avril Harrison, highly recommended graphic artist, to ask if she could do a title screen for POP. She’ll come by tomorrow morning to see the game and show me her samples. She charges $30 an hour.
Last night I went to Tower Records and bought a bunch of the stuff George’s friend Erik recommended – Lloyd Cole, Grace Jones, Tom Waits. Blew $100 in thirty minutes.
Avril Harrison is a bargain.
Started working on the title and demo sequence for POP… double hi-res unpack routines… according to schedule. I’m a little nervous to be forging ahead like this, considering the millions of bugs I’m leaving behind (for now), but if I don’t plunge into it, it’ll never get done.
