Sorry for the lack of updates! It has been a crazy couple of weeks.

I was sick with this nasty chest cold and had no desire to do anything but watch old movies on TV. Then we took off for Miami to meet John (Crydee from Adellion).  I have worked with John for almost 10 years but we never met. Of course, there is an ocean between Florida and his home in England.  John was embarking on a transatlantic cruise from Miami and asked us if we wanted to have lunch! Of course we did..so in spite of the 5 hour drive, we had a delightful Cuban lunch in hot and humid south Florida. It was wonderful to meet John and discover he is as nice offline and online. 🙂

Now that I am home and feeling better, I have been working on the level design for Caeril as well as creating some simple 3d artwork we can use as placeholders. We may be able to modify them for use in the game but we will worry about that later. I am discovering that I enjoy creating 3d art. I have learned so much about creating textures, adding bump maps, UV mapping, polygons, and lots of other useful tidbits of information!

I would like to share with you a drawing made by Ben Smart, one of our concept artists on the team.

Sketch of Caeril

This sketch illustrates how I envision Caeril..a city of simple plaster buildings and tall towers around plazas.

Here is a screenshot of a middle class block I built. This is taken in the game and in Caeril. You can see the walls in the distance. As you can see, I have replaced textures and added bump maps and specular maps. This gives even simple buildings interesting textures and designs.

A close up of the wall shows the beautiful textures. T3d allows us to show of those shaders! You can’t see it as well in the pictures, but the light glints off the stone on the top of the towers.

On the programming side, Dennis should finish with the final touches on the chat system this weekend. He would have been done already but I had him add a few things. 🙂

Please check the forums if you would like more detailed news. Our team members often share pictures of their work with the forum members so be sure to sign up. I know it sometimes seems like we are crawling along, but things are getting done!

Teila