Things are getting more frenzied. I put in twelve hours today and got a fair amount done (added two new potions and a whole new level), but it definitely wasn’t one-fourteenth of the work that’s left before beta. I’ll just have to work twice as fast, or something.
Brian handed me the Larry McDermott draft of the box copy. It wasn’t very good. He asked if I could “rewrite it” (i.e., write it) – another little task to fill in the cracks.
I can’t even think about all the work I’ve postponed until after the beta version – princess and vizier animations, title screen music – and six weeks to do it all.
(How complete was Karateka two months before its QA signoff? I can’t remember.)
One thing’s for sure: This is no time to come up with new bright ideas. I’ll put in the little white mouse because I said I would, and because I’ll never hear the end of it from Tomi if I don’t (remember the leopard in Karateka?), but all other nifty additions go straight to the bottom of the list.
By June 6, I want things firmly under control. Levels 1 through 8 should be completely playable, with all features implemented, and as bug-free as I can manage. The things that are missing should be clearly defined, with a beginning and an end and no hidden ramifications in other areas. The palace and dungeon background graphics should be in their final form (although last-minute tweaking of the images themselves is, of course, allowed). Michael C. should have done his thing, and I should have it on videotape. (I’m hoping to shoot it Thursday.)
Robert’s game passed the Star Chamber. I met him in the parking lot at 9:30 this morning as I was arriving and he was leaving after spending the whole night getting the disk ready for the presentation. That’s a great piece of news, just great.
Going-away picnic for Cathy Carlston at the Marin Civic Center duck pond. Flipped disc with Brian and Rob. Said goodbye to Cathy.
Yesterday I showed Paul the skeleton. He was thrilled (it was his idea) and has been going around telling everyone about it. It’s paid off more than I could have imagined, in terms of boosting his enthusiasm about the whole project. Just goes to show you.
People in PD, art and marketing are starting to treat me differently. Brian is delighted and amused by the amount of work I take upon myself. (When I told Sophie today I’d like to take the box copy home and “play with it” over the weekend, Brian laughed out loud. “Sure, he said. “I’d like to have you ‘play’ with something I wrote.”)
Brian’s away all next week for CES and is leaving a lot of things in my hands – the final box copy, getting a beta version to QA, possibly the selection of the artist to do the box. I don’t know if it means anything, but I noticed that in the latest schedule Nancy made up, the blank for “Product Manager” now reads “Brian Eheler/Jordan Mechner.”
So I’m not just a programmer any more.
The bad part of all this, though, is that I only have about three hours a day to actually work on the damn thing.
Spent the morning rewriting the box copy. That’s a load off my mind, for the moment.
More problems with the IBM conversion. Jim just isn’t putting in the hours. He’s getting muscled by Atari to keep putting more last-minute fixes into his other, supposedly finished project, and Doug Greene is getting pissed at him.
I called Jim and told him he’d have to choose between Atari’s project and mine. A difficult conversation. I’m not used to being the one who lays down the law. I gave him a couple of days to think it over.
Tomi is back! I showed her the game. She was duly impressed, especially by the palace background graphics, the fighting skeleton, and the upside-down and weightless potions.
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