And we've been keeping very very busy ^_^;

Unfortunately we're not at a point where he have a lot to share because we're still engaging in a process of discovery on many new game design elements.

I will tell you a little about how the team has grown. We now have 2 additional mappers working part time on our title. We're investing a lot of time making "checker board" maps or rather maps that are game play only.

In our 90 day run for glory, we spent a lot of time building foundation and simply getting things up and running to conventional standards. From there and since then we've begun to tune. That goes for player and weapon behaviors, maps (one of our mapping techniques is to start with a real place and then begin to customize and combine, whatever best suits the game) and scoring.

Since then we've prototyped several new game types. I'm bursting to talk about it but we've gotta hold off a little while longer. Sorry ^_^;

We've also radically advanced how weapons and armor are customized. They are quite a bit different than when we started and they are moving in what seems to be a very interesting direction. We started with how real weapon platforms are configured and have worked backwards from there.

The armor system is far less developed but also headed down a similar path.

Another thing we've begun to explore are "smart bombs". Items that players can use that can reshape combat on the ground. We've been brain storming and prototyping a bunch of new ideas. Hopefully you'll see the fruits of our labors soon but probably not as soon as you folks would like. Because we are focused on urban and sprawl type enviros with dismounted forces, we're trying to create things that will have that same effect as when Quaid deploys a clone hologram in the middle of the gun fight at the end of Total Recall. Basically stuff that won't slow down the game but is high tech ^_^

On the art side, Phil and Byungu are working out art maps, creating materials and figuring out how to push the Unreal engine to it's true potential. We're also working with the animation/design company Production IG to provide our concept art. It's been educational and very exciting. Our stuff is moving in a more science fiction direction now, but it still feels "real". That's been very important for us.

We're starting to look like a hybrid of Blade Runner and Iraq. We think that's a good thing

Finally, the social/commercial network stuff (which we intentionally glossed over in the Gamespot series) is also coming together. We're (surprise, surprise) prototyping. We do a lot of that and man do we really miss Max ^o^ He was a force of nature when it came to getting stuff into the game. Then again since he's left I haven't lost a game so every mushroom cloud has a tritium lining ;-)

We'll talk more soon folks