All hell is breaking loose in China.

Meanwhile, I rented a camcorder and spent the morning videotaping Michael J. Coffey at his apartment. I think I got everything I need. Can’t wait to digitize it.

It’s my birthday. I’m 25 years old.

Put in the potion-drinking animation. It looks really good but takes up more memory than I’d expected, which is a problem.

Sometimes I feel like I must be no fun at all. Bored and boring. Burnt out and empty inside. Not depressed – just tired.

Maybe I’m just working too hard.

The new animations I shot with Mike are going in very quickly. Already the “potion drinking,” “unsheathing your sword,” and “collapsing” are up and running.

The only big ones left are:

-climb stairs

-pick up sword and hold it up

-sheathe sword

-“alert turn” for guard

-“collapse” for guard

I think I can squeeze it all into the available memory, except for “climb stairs”; that one might need a disk access. I could live with that.

My major achievement today, though, was to completely redesign the first two levels to make them more fun to play. There’s more freedom now, more exploration, more rewards. The previous versions were rather humorless – you go from A to B to C and if you mess up, you die.

Level 3 is still pretty punishing and bleak. I don’t know quite what to do about it. I guess I’ll hand it in to QA like this and see what they think.

Level 4 is pretty good.

Level 5 is nonexistent.

Levels 6, 7, and 8 are pretty good, although they need work.

I guess tomorrow I’d better come up with a Level 5. Then my “beta version” will at least have the first two-thirds of the game.

There’s no getting around it. To achieve the reasonably complete, reasonably bug-free beta version I’d hoped to deliver tomorrow will take me another solid week’s work.

Should I ask QA to hold off for a couple of days (how humiliating!) or just turn in what I’ve got and then give them an updated version a week from now?

“B-Day”

An extremely productive twelve-hour day. I fixed lots of bugs, designed a brand-new level (5), and hard-wired the shadow man to steal your potions. Another couple of hours to make sure it all fits together smoothly, and I think I’ve got a beta version.

One day late.

Boy, will Brian be impressed.

In the middle of it all Doug Greene called to say he thinks he’ll probably pull out of the project at the end of the trial period.

I’ve pretty much had it with Doug and Jim. They’re good programmers, but enough is enough. I should have listened to Doug when he said no in the first place, instead of working so hard to change his mind.

I went and talked to Glenn for an hour about Alick D. Glenn says he’s a good programmer, but the bad blood between him and Broderbund could be a problem.

I need to teach the little animated character not to draw his sword when the other little animated character who’s trying to kill him is on the other side of a pair of snapping steel jaws.

Incredibly, I turned the game in to QA today. Now the real fun begins. Six weeks to finish the whole thing.

The Apple market is dying. It’s definitely affected the level of enthusiasm for Prince of Persia within the company. No matter how hard I try to convince people that there’s going to be an IBM version, they’re behaving as if there isn’t one. I found out today from Nancy and David that Latricia/Sophie balked at spending $5500 for the box art. After making the rounds and lobbying everyone, I think they’ll OK it, but the whole thing was a really disturbing vote of no-confidence in POP.

Kevin in QA gave me more of the same. When I told him I hoped to ship August 29, he shook his head gravely and said he’s been mandated to put two men full-time on Carmen Sandiego 4 and two on some other product, which leaves no one to test the beta version of POP I handed in today.

It pisses me off.

I shouldn’t be surprised. When has Broderbund ever thrown its weight behind a game? Choplifter, Lode Runner, Karateka all made it on their own, on the strength of good reviews and word-of-mouth.

There’s no one looking out for me, no one to go to bat for POP. Brian is out of town, Sophie is an idiot, and Latricia – despite Doug’s instructions to the contrary – is leaving everything up to Sophie.

I should probably be putting more energy into trying to cultivate these people and work up some enthusiasm for my project; but what with having to actually design and program it (not to mention documentation, box copy, IBM conversion, etc), I just can’t spare the time.

Meanwhile, the IBM conversion, which I need so desperately, has fallen victim to Doug Greene’s angst.

Oh well, it’s a cold cruel world out there. If I’m going to be a movie director someday I’d better learn to deal with it.