The L4D modification that cares!

One of the exciting things to see from my seat is how our little enterprise is evolving. Instead of just straight news I want to share a bit of that excitement.

New ventures are kind of like the wild west; you have a vision but no established way of realizing it. You're also short on manpower. As people join, it takes them a bit of time to get comfortable. Members need to get to know one another, the structure of the project, and their place within it. Some ditch before they acclimate. For virtual teams like ours, it's even more challenging. Communication is weaker and the infrastructure is less easily intuited. General inexperience also makes it more difficult by retarding confidence and lending ambiguity to basic issues.

What I'm starting to see is the beginning of a real maturation. I'd say the design has been well managed since day one, but intelligent production principles have taken a bit of effort to establish. We've been fortunate to have a lot of talent and experience on the team to pull from, and several guys who pull all-nighters because they care intensely. For my part, I've tried to focus on the infrastructure as much as I can. It's decidedly a work in progress, but we now have the standards and coordination to move quite nimbly. Now is really the time to juice it up.

In that vein, we've added a second coder, Andy Watson. It was good fun to work with he, Oli and Eric this morning. Look for us to be popping in and out of Deadlock on Steam as we test. Gregory's initial rig is in the pipe, Alex is working on two character models, Stefan is working on one and more color concepts, Eric is building out an alpha map, and Andrew is beginning to play with AI nodes. Stay tuned for media.

I want to thank everyone who has submitted a voice acting audition and/or lines! We're loving the content. Keep it coming! We're not going to be making selections within the immediate future, so if you or someone you know is interested, tell them to audition or write on this page: http://deadlockmod.com/dialog.php. You're literally building this game with us.

Finally, I'm beginning a hunt for more 3d artists. If you want to be a part of this, swing through this thread for the details. http://www.deadlockmod.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=42