So we had another playtest on Saturday (8 Jul 2006). This one went quite a bit better (no server crashes! GJ FF programmers).

I think we had a total of 12-14 devs in the server for this playtest. Since 2fort and dustbowl are currently the most playable maps, those are the ones we played again. We also got out our DM suits and shared some hot, group, mulch DM action. Since the server didn't crash at all this time, we tried out just about all of the class features. Not surprisingly, we also observed and documented a few more bugs. No, we don't want to see bugs, but we're glad to find'm and fix'm sooner as opposed to later.

When things go so smoothly, it makes the deficiencies stand out even more (no matter how minor they might be). For example, there are a few missing sounds and player class animations; some classes have improper/unrefined skin colors; there are only generic death icons; and there are no crosshairs. We have our work cut out, but that we've done two fairly large scale playtests in the last two weeks is an accomplishment.

On another note, we've been organizing a few things for a media update (but no guarantees on a date for that, yet -- sorry, folks). The team really has been quite busy lately, but we're hoping to toss something out there soon.

Oh, and here's a little Red Meat-ized comic put together from some FF dev IRC channel comments. Clicky!