Work on the conversation engine is progressing well. We’ve got quite a lot of power available to us now, more so than AGS would allow, despite still having to code up all the cutscenes in XML. We hope this will bring a lot to the game.

We’ve also got alpha overlays working, with additive, subtractive and normal alpha transparency blend modes, along with a “work in progress” broken one that actually looks really cool, so we’ll probably call that the “spaff” blend mode. A white-paper on this achievement is pending. This overlay system (built into the conversation engine) allows us to do all manner of cool effects. We’re currently trying to get “Color Burn” and “Hard Light”/”Soft Light” effects working, and hoping they will be fast enough, as the effect would be really cool for post-render effects!

Work on the backgrounds, however, is not going quite so well. Little Timmy is refusing to work again. We’ve told him he won’t get a bite to eat until we see at least two forest locations and a left/right walk cycle for Clancy, but he won’t listen, damn fool! It’s always the same, but we’ll see the graphics when the little rascal starts getting hungry, I’ll warrant!

The dialogue scripting isn’t going too well either. I think Binky may have got his sums wrong, and three monkeys with a Psion series 5 is not, as he initially claimed, mathmatically tantamount to an infinite amount of monkeys with typewriters.

However, we have gained a rather intimate moment where the doctor informs Mia that “hmmmcrkkap swbax”, which we are hoping to develop further into quite a deep and moving sub-plot–but it needs some more work, I think.

Anyway, that’s all for now. We’ll make sure to keep you all posted with any other news on our progress!

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