<schtoofa> i'm going to bed, don't leak shit - if you want to just put it in a dev journal and i can approve it

Alright, it's time to "leak" random screenshots.

Not off to a great start...


This could be familiar to a lot of you...


Bak bak baaaaaaaak...


We were obviously reaching the limits of the Source engine...


It then where, yeah?


Go get Lil Jimmy and let's play Monster Rain...in the rain...


Seriously, obey the filename...


We will never replace this background map, because it's just way too amazing...


She's a huge man beast of a woman...


Playing around with animated prop_dynamics in hunted...


I think you can count on us "leaking" something in every dev journal from now on. Everyone else on the team better go along with this, or we take your food.

*Edit by schtoofa: I have no clue what drugs you do, jon. Please keep them far away from me.

In lieu of a media update(coming soon though!), I hope this helps our fans understand what has been going on lately.

Productivity is accelerating and there is a general directive to work on getting more in game, doing fewer 3dsm renders and static map shots, etc. That's not to say we won't ever release those again, but we want to show you guys our progress towards release as much as you want to see it. That means live game shots and stuff.

I'll give a few examples that hopefully explain the lack of fancy pictures from our crew lately.

Our art crew have been creating many props and textures and these are being added into our maps. In this case we don't want to re-release shots of the same maps you've already seen with just texture changes and brushwork converted to props, or other small details added. Much effort has also been put into creating our own versions of placeholder content you've already seen in shots of Push and other maps. So while considerable work is being done here, little of it is appreciable until the game is released.

Similarly, showing static props by themselves and out of context of the maps they are in isn't very interesting. If you want to see the gutter/downspout system we created for Hunted's buildings or Avanti's telephone poles and chimneys before playing, well that's just a bit odd. =)

As another example, we have been creating and animating w_models for all the weapons in the game. These are the models you see other players holding in the game world. Showing updates in this area, for us, would require finalized character animations and character skins working ingame, as showing w_models out of the context of the game is silly. This isn't flashy work but it nonetheless must be done and moves us one step closer to our first public release.

Work on the player models and texturing has also been progressing, though there was a short lull due to our character skinner Spewok's accident. He is back and working now, thankfully. There are two primary reasons we haven't shown much of our progress in this area thus far:

First we're working to get all the models in game and with a preliminary skin before going back and putting in the time for finishing touches as you saw with the Sniper. As you can guess this "80/20" process isn't always conducive to a media release(80 Percent completion in 20 percent of the time). We have high standards and share what we feel will best represent our game in it's final stage.

Second, in order to show off the player models in-game, we want other elements like animation, w_models, the HUD, etc to be in good enough shape to show all together and at once. We're trying to bring all the elements of the game together to show things in the natural game setting.

These are a few examples of many that there is more going on than just turning out renders to show everyone. This will mean more interesting media for you guys while helping focus our production effort and efficiency. Oh and it also means our first public release is coming into sight.

Stay tuned!

"Alright, ok, so what's done with FF? Tell me something, or I'ma kill you, and your whole family."

That's how you get answers, ok. You gotta threaten to Keyser Soze someone's family, and then you can do anything you want.

Lots of shit is in-game. Like, a lot, but it's not finalized yet. It's in there so we can all use it, and see if it's working right, report bugs, and make suggestions for how to improve it. All the buildables are in, and have been for awhile. I think Mulch and rebo took it to the octagon awhile back because there was some shit dealin' with something about needing a bone in each foot of the sentry or something, I dunno, haha, I dunno it's all good now.

The demoman's shit is all in, too. All of his pipes are in and work, and his detpack. Oh yeah, and when you shoot the pipes the shell casing falls off, which is cool. Like you see it fall into the world. Scouts can still eat detpacks, too.

Mirv and decs have been bustin' a nut all on the HUD lately, which is cool. It's not the regular HL2 HUD, but we haven't really talked about a new and improved HUD layout, but we've got some ideas -- we just gotta try'em out and see if they make you get a boner. See, that's the test. We have to see if we all get boners before we keep something, well, Defrag can't get boners anymore because he stuck his in the light socket last Tuesday.

The biggest missing component right now is animations, v_ and w_ models. I mean, these are all big tasks though. We first have to get the actual v_ model done, and skinned, and then we can make the w_ models. So, right now we just have the old TFC weapons in there as place holders. We have the grenade launcher in, and the RPG, oh and the crowbar, haha. All the grenades are in, too. Except, just recently I was throwing MIRVs around and noticed they flew like a big ole static ding dong through the air. They didn't rotate or anything, the just... arched through the air, so I wanted to see about making it rotate or something, and I think mirv said he'd just make it rotate along the z-axis, and we could go from there. The other grenades rotate all around and shit, but the MIRV was just bein' boring.

The conc is gonna be pretty cool too, cause we got a guy that apparently knows how to work with shaders, and so get a DX9 card before you play FF, or you're gonna have to see the lame ass deprecated effects.

Oh yeah, so anyway... the animations. We only have 1 character animator right now. Actually, I guess we have 2 if you count rebo, but he's not really an animator, but he does know how to do all that shit I think. Anyway, our one char animator, I dunno where he's been, but he has been workin' on shit. It made a big difference way back when the first batch of animations were commited because it was getting pretty lame just watching a bunch of un-moving people glide around everywhere like your grandma after she took that big hit of E over at Luke's house.

Annnnnnnd, Mirv added this mapguide entity, which is like... think of how golf on TV does that fly-by shit of the course, and you're lookin' for all the hot bitches in the crowd, but you don't see any, because what hot bitches go to golf games? So, you can make fly-bys of your map and add commentary or explanations of whatever. Like, if you had a conc map, you could do a fly-by going through the entire map, explaining the jumps, giving hints, or play a clip from a 80s porno that starred me and Jon tag-teaming your mom. So, there's a good chance you might be one of my hundreds of bastards.

We still don't have the super-shotgun in, but I think we're gonna re-make it, along with the sniper rifle. I think it was decided that they weren't interesting enough from the v_ perspective, or something like that, I don't really remember.

Uhhhhh, detpacks can be dropped from anywhere, apparently. I was talking to Mulchman about it last night, and he mentioned how you can drop them off edges and whatever. So, you know how in well, in TFC, you could get on the enemy roof, and drop a detpack right in front of the front door? Well, you don't have to do that shit where you're trickin' TFC into think you're dropping it on the ground, you can just hold it over the edge and drop it like it's hot.

FooleyCooley has been makin' lots of cool shit latey, and decs has been skinnin' lots of shit lately, too. FC recently "finished" the tranq and rail gun, and those are gonna be cool to see once decs has skinned them. He's done something else, that I'm forgetting about, haha... it seems kinda important, or big.. or.. god damn what is it... oh yeah, Bile made a medkit which rebo just finished UVing, and that's more action headed for decs to skin.

Our character skinner, Spewok, is finally back after his eye getting KOed in the first round by a bungee cord, haha, god damn that's really funny and shitty all at the same time. He's already got some medic skin he showed us, and that shit is lookin' really kick ass.

Ok, I'ma stop typing now because I have laundry that's just sitting in the damn washer. I haven't done laundry since January 10th or something, and I've been wearing stank ass clothes for awhile.

My frantic University period has ended, and most importantly, HAMMER WORKS NOW. Yes, you heard correctly. When the beta release was merged with the main sdk updates, I had some more troubles, but the latest steam update has fixed a crash I was having.

I've been working on bases again and removing the CS:S content I was using while replacing it (where possible) with FF stuff. The texture artists have generated a fair amount of stuff, so texturing our bases is now a lot more interesting. I've redone the balcony corridors for the 100th time and I'm still not happy with them, but they're looking better than before. I've been inspired by eat's progress on well (I'm sure he'll update you chaps at some point, so I'll leave him to tell you about it) amongst other things.

In addition to getting back on the mapping trail, I've been making some props in Max. The bases RR has some nice structural supports and fancy door decorations, but using BSP brushes just doesn't do the idea justice, so I'm making them into props. Once I've done another full detail pass on bases, I'll probably turn my attention to finishing up push. I've always said that the last 10% of mapping takes 50% of the time, and it's proving to be the case for a lot of FF maps. Hopefully we won't be too much longer as the coders (mirv specifically) have really been working up a storm lately.

Recently, I've been doing more documentation and overseeing stuff, but I'm just glad I now possess the tools that enable me to get back into the thick of it. Hammer has been kaput for a few months too long and its reparation comes not a second too soon. Curse you, Hammer editor. Bless you, Hammer editor. I could've told you that I had an even number of petals.

I'll update this journal in a week or so when I've done some more work.

Oh yeah, and the most important development of the last few weeks: I got my filthy hands on some Morrissey tickets. Oh how I love the very simple things of life.

Woah, what's this?

So, I figured I'd spend some time letting you all know what's been going on lately with the FF team.

Many of our team members had been super busy during the holidays, enjoying family and friends and all that good non-FF stuff; others were moving; and another nearly went blind after being hit in the eye with a bungee cord (I swear I'm not making this up!). Within the last several weeks, though, we've been pushing full steam ahead.

I'll touch on a few areas of FF development, starting with programming.

Bravo to mirv and his FF programmers over the last month. Although their efforts don't show up in media updates, they have been busy coding and bugfixing like crazy. For example, some little things have been worked on like making it cost 130 cells for an Engineer to build his sentry gun, adjusting concussion grenade strength, and limiting the Demoman to have a trap of 8 pipes, etc. Internally we utilize a super-convenient bug reporting and tracking tool that helps us communicate and track fixes. In summary, I can tell you that approximately 100 bugs have been resolved over the last month. Seriously, the FF coders kick ass.

Bug reporting efforts within the team have increased dramatically over the last month, also. Dospac and MrBeefy have been reporting the largest percentage of bugs lately, and the FF coders have been fixing those bugs promptly. We're all doing our best to play the internal alpha frequently, whether it be on our own by ourselves, with eachother in a server, or against bots... which leads me to DrEvil's efforts!

I know some of you are afraid of "bots & FF," but they really will be a good thing. DrEvil has started integrating his bots into FF and the results have been great so far. Whether they're used for testing purposes or just plain to have fun DMing, these bots are looking to be very promising. I can't wait to see what DrEvil will pull off.

rebo and his art team have been busy, too, although obviously you haven't seen their efforts on the site. More weapon & prop models have been created & skinned, animations have been flowing in, and more and more skinned models have [hardly] magically appeared in game. Although it's frustrating to those who follow closely and anxiously await the next media update, we've been placing emphasis on integrating everything together (as opposed to making flashy renders & selecting glamorous screenshots for our web site). We'll give away some tasty morsels when we have time, but I assure you that the art team has been super busy and their efforts are coming together nicely.

On the sound front, Ghroth continues to add more and refine more. Soulescape has been rather busy lately, unfortunately, but hopefully he'll contribute more soon.

FriedBunny has been silently taking requests from folks to make site updates and the like. Some of those updates you might see; many you won't! Either way, we're glad we have our fuzzy bunny.

Map design work has been progressing forward, too, but Hammer problems were really slowing us down. Now that things seem to be functioning as normal once again, we are "back in business."

In addition to his map work, Defrag has spent a lot of time working on FF documentation. Although not the funnest job, these efforts have helped us (and will help you all later!) immeasurably.

As for me, I've been just trying to keep things moving forward. I've been working on outlining and diagramming processes (like detailed bug reporting, bug assigning & handling, etc.) to streamline our work.

All in all, (especially since none of us are being paid!) the FF dev team members work extremely well together. It's been a good (but slower than hoped) experience so far, but things are looking solid right now. Although I haven't mentioned each individual team member, they've all been spending time contributing when they can. Hopefully FF will come together even faster in the near future.