Now, Pillage is still pretty early in development, but things are starting to come together. The underlying engine is mostly complete, which is quite a thrill. I'm an animator first and foremost, and for me, flash has always been an inherently static environment. I draw something, it's there. If I don't draw it, it's not there. It always amazes me when Pillage pulls the next piece of background out of library and attaches it onto the appropriate place. Sure, it took a while to program, but I still feel that I've somehow enslaved flash to do my work for me.

What's even cooler is the ground/gravity engine. For the noobish programmer that I am, getting Flash to attach the appropriate ground segments in the appropriate places was quite a challenge. It was even harder to make all the sprites know how to react with all these pieces of ground. Harder still was working out the myriad of glitches involving hit detection and camera movement. Things on this front have, at last, been smoothed over, and it's pretty fun to watch the game handle itself. Sometimes an AI chraracter will run down a flight of stairs to greet you (kill you), and it never ceases to blow me away that these little guys can navigate stairs. Cooler still is that when I want to change how the sprites react with the ground, all I have to do is draw, no more codng required. I want them to climb over a hill, all I have to do is draw a hill, and they'll do it. All these things that gamers take for granted I now see in a new light.

I've been working on a side project for the past week; a game called Old Man Timerberwoller. You just want to make it to Canada to buy your prescription drugs, but unfortuntely, you're ambushed by crack babies and nazi seals. In the ensuing game, you get to club seals and kill nekkid crack babies. I honestly don't know what more you'd want in a game (I kid, I kid). It should be done soon, and will be good for some laughs.

Sunday morning I'm going to Seattle for a week, which should hinder my already sparse updates quite a bit. However, I'm bringing my laptop, so if I manage to find some wifi, I'll post any updates I've made on my game. Speaking of which, I figure I may as well give you another little glimpse of Pillage. Here's the first enemy you meet in the game, in all of his farmer goodness. He may look wimpy, but he can dish out the hurt with his trusty pitchfork.

Oh, and has anybody picked up the World in Conflict beta? Oh wait, that's right, nobody reads this ;p

I'm out.