Friday Again - Almost Time To Chill

Another high octane day of fixes and a few builds too. We had a mind to release an internal versions to some select alpha testers, but when we tested out our finished build we all agreed that the result was not good enough for a debut. It's close, but there are enough little niggles that we really wanted to solve before we made too much noise about this version.  It's looking good though, and our new sample level is coming along very nicely.

A sneak look at the new sample level

Another reason the build was halted was due to a VERY difficult to find LUA crash which seems to happen because the command which re-allocates memory was bombing and corrupting the local size value something awful. These are the worst bugs to fix as the reason seems to be buried in someone else's code, but we know from experience it is probably stack corruption due to overwriting memory naughtily. We need to find which code is overwriting the good data with less good data.

Another reason is our new and improved installer is not 100% ready for use and has caused some craziness causing one internal tester to rebuild his registry entries manually.  I am about to create and test a build now before calling it a week, in the hopes a closer eye on the process might make the problem go away, or at least reveal itself.

Also had occasion to check out the new Zombie, coming to a store near you, and it's looking pretty good. Going to keep it secret, at least on this blog, until I have actual in-game shots so you get an honest impression.

Had planned to clock off at 6PM, and still need to walk myself (and the dog), and do some other bits but it looks like this installer will keep me busy a while longer.

The plan next week is to meet up and discuss the release plans for V1.007 and also to assess where we are and where we need to be.  Dave and Simon will be having a whale of a time on Monday as they massage more clever AI and game logic into the new sample level we are working on, and this process should give us a great idea where we are in the grand scheme of things.

Next week should take us from good to great, let's just hope everything goes super silky smooth.  Until then, have a great weekend everyone!!