Poo-Poo Platter

The entire Pirates team is crunching towards beta, and we’re having the typical pre-beta symptoms. Builds don’t work. Bugs are popping up left and right no matter how many get squashed. Applications seem to crash more (probably not, but we’re just noticing and complaining more). People are either incredibly on edge and grumpy or wacky beyond all imagination. And lots of last minute additions/changes/fixes are rolling onto our task lists.

As bad as that sounds, things are actually moving along pretty well. Any problems we have are not un-fixable. Everyone on the team is doing their thing and getting things done on time. Sure, most of us are working long hours to do it, but that’s only because we all want this project to succeed. Ultimately we know that our hard work will result in a great product.

My own list of beta tasks has been fluctuating quite a bit for the past couple of weeks. Originally, I was only supposed to do the final cleanup pass on all of the enemy animations and add some simple facial animations for them. That was always in the schedule, so I was prepared to deal with that. However, a few items were added at the proverbial 11th hour. These past few days have been pretty busy as I’ve hammered out animations for some ambient birds, adjusted animations for a set of characters that had to be modeled and textured again from scratch (gotta love how clients change their minds), and finishing off some short cutscene animations that were blocked out by another animator. Sounds like a lot of work, but it’s nothing that a few 10+ hour work days can’t handle.

Despite the last-minute rush of work, I’m still having a blast working on Pirates. I mean, I get to spend all day working on character animations! It’s what I’ve always wanted to do, and I’ve been doing this non-stop for the past year. I would not trade this for anything. Well, I might trade it for $20,000,000 untaxed, but that’s not likely to happen… :)