July 14, 1989
Shot Tina LaDeau this morning. Man, she is a fox. Brian couldn’t stop blushing when I had her embrace him (through six or seven takes). I took them out to lunch afterwards.
Went out for burgers and milkshakes with Ed and Rob and their programmers, Brian “Playmaker Football” Brinkman from New Orleans, and Carlo “Jeanne D’Arc” from France.
Prince of Persia animation reference 1989 from jordan mechner on Vimeo.
July 16, 1989
Eleven hours at the office on a Sunday, making this my first recorded 72-hour week.
Dinner with Ed, Robert, and Brian Brinkman.
July 17, 1989
Got that disk into QA.
Doug’s back from Japan and France. He said everyone there is really pumped up about my game.
The box illustration is finished. The good news is, it’s beautiful. Brian and I were thrilled. The bad news is, they’ve sent it back to the illustrator to “make some changes.” It seems Sophie was offended by the lady’s breasts.
I’ve never seen Brian so mad. Robert said he’d never seen me so mad.
It’s water under the bridge now – I don’t want to raise my blood pressure by thinking about it. I just hope Florczak hardly touches the illustration. It was perfect the way it was.
Met with Bill, worked out the last details of the deal. IBM POP is a go.
July 19, 1989
Working 12- and 13-hour days: fixing bugs, preparing stuff for Lance, restaging the climactic battle with the Vizier to make it feel more climactic; and, as of today, digitizing Tina. The princess now turns, with her dark hair flipping as she spins around. Tomorrow I’ll make her take a step backwards, and maybe lounge about a bit. It’s a drag, having to spend hours reviewing video footage of this girl in slo-mo and frame-advance, but these are the sacrifices I have to make to get this game done.
Denis Friedman came into Brian’s office and expressed a desire (on behalf of Broderbund France) to do one of the POP conversions: Atari, Amstrad or Amiga.
Brian Brinkman leaves for New Orleans tomorrow morning. In this past week of working late I’ve come to feel a certain bond with him. (When I left at 11 pm, he and Rob and Carlo were still at it.)
Seven days left.
I broke the news to Brian that I wasn’t going to be able to finish the game by Wednesday. “That’s OK,” he said. “You’re still pretty much on schedule, right?” Bill didn’t take it so well.
I promised to get the princess animations in, and fix at least a couple of the major bugs, before I leave. I’d also like to jazz up some of the levels with more potions, shortcuts, cul-de-sacs, secret compartments, etc., and digitize at least rough versions of the opening prologue and epilogue, so that it’ll really be a complete game. Then I won’t have to put in any major features after I get back. (Except the little white mouse.)
I keep waking up at 7 am, no matter how late I go to sleep.
July 20, 1989
Michelle delivered the cleaned-up double hi-res title screen to Brian today. I plugged it in and redid the opening credits to match. It looks pretty darn good. I’d like to make the stars twinkle, but that’ll have to wait.
Met with Lance early this morning and got him started on the background graphics. By five o’clock he was already pretty far along. He’s jazzed. I’m jazzed. This is going to be a great conversion.
Alan Weiss dropped by to talk about Nintendo Game Boy Karateka.
Strange incident with Lee McDougall. He showed up with his assistant around five and started emptying out Loring’s and Eric’s desks. What the ?!? Robert and Brian and I were in the back room and didn’t know what to do. Finally I called Tom Marcus, since he’s Lee’s boss. Of course Tom didn’t know anything about it. I put him on the phone with Lee. So the homestead was saved from the cattle barons yet again… for the moment.
I’m feeling quite optimistic. All I have to do is work like a demon for the next six days and not get sick, and by the time I leave for Idaho, the game should be pretty close to finished.
Sleep. Got to get some sleep.
July 21, 1989
The Broderbund Picnic. Everyone knows I’m going on this trip next week and was eager to contribute horror stories of river rafting mishap and misery.
Doug told me that if I don’t finish the game by Wednesday, he’s going to be in trouble with Bill. “Hurry up,” he urged me. “My reputation’s on the line.”
It took me all day, but I think I finally came up with an acceptable princess model in single hi-res. Not as cute as Tina, but cute enough.
