Whaaaaat! Already 200 blog posts!?! Well it looks that way in the “post count”. Our goal in the beginning was to post once a week, but then it grow to 2-3 posts a week and when we got into production after new year we felt that one post a day wasn’t hard to do. So we decided to post daily : )

We really hope that you enjoy reading our blog because we do this for you : ) So if you want to know more about certain things just send a mail about it : )

Here’s a selection of some nice blog posts “down the memory lane”:
All the characters of Penalty of Heroes
Cramp in the jaw
Ernest W Adams visit Databox office and tried Exhaust
Starbreeze QA test Exhaust
Working is super nice
The evolvement of a character
Exhaust: the most popular community game on XBL!
Databox Games was ahead of Guitar Heroes!
First concept art
First blog post

The meeting started for the first time at the given time : ) Maybe because we had a lot to discuss today.We discussed one really big thing that just had come up and we decided that we would bring that up again after easter so everyone could have a good think about it. We also discussed what things that on schedule with and what things we’re behind in. Since we haven’t been able to get on schedule with the programming (the programmers have had other school assignments) we had some suggestions on how to get on track again. This was the two main discussions at todays meeting. Now it’s back to work all easter long : (

** Today in Sweden it’s kalled “skär torsdag” and the “folk tale” says that today is the day when the witches goes to the island of “Blåkulla” (here in Sweden) to have a gathering. So today many children in Sweden dress up like witches and go from door to dor to get candy (kind of Halloween)

Everyone has more than their hand full and on top of it Easter is coming this week. Which probably means that we’re losing some work days since some of us are going to visit our families. Also we might have to present last weeks canceled presentation. Well that’s life : )

This week sprint looks something like this:

Code:
Continue work on shaders
Implement other features

2d:
Concept art for bosses
Concept art for alternative enemies

3d:
Continue making enemies
Put textures on 3d models

Levels:
Continue making level

Narrative:
Explanations for all people and enemies in the game

Marketing:
Sleep and fishing : p

Today at 2pm we were suppose to have a presentation in front of the “game panel”, but some of the people in the “game panel” got sick so the presentation was canceled and moved to a new date.

So in this post I had in mind to tell you about how the presentation went, so I have to tell you something else : )

Yesterday night I got a peek of some “alfa” screenshots and the game starts to shape up. There were now “eye candy” effects such as normal maps or shaders, so it’s nothing we release right now. But in about 2 weeks we hope to show you how the game look like. So stay tune ; )

I know that we haven’t showed or told you so much about the four main characters of Penalty of Heroes, but starting next week we’ll change that. The first “Character of the week” that we’ll present/reveal is Llaknel, that we have showed a bit before. With every “character reveal” there will be a concept art of the character and some information about him or her.

On Tuesday it’s the end of (major) sprint 3. So this week will be testing all of the thing we’ve implemented and done the last weeks.

On Wednesday (major) sprint 4 begins. This major sprint (divided into 4 weekly sprints) will focus on coding, implementing of shaders & particles, level design, 3d enemies and play testing the games all new features that were added last major sprint.

The sprint last week was ok and we finished nearly all of our goals (two of our goals will be done in a few days). This was due to that our codes have had heavy lectures these past weeks. The good thing is that this course ended last week, so this week they will have 24h each day to code on PoH :p

This week sprint looks like this:

Code:
3D animations system
Physic and collision system
Implement basic character control

Level editor:
Continue to implement content
Write visual effects (shaders and so on)
Start to implement the trigger system for the scripting

2d graphics:
More enemies and models of them

3d graphics:
Fine tune the heroes
Skin 2 enemies and give them animations

Test:
3d characters with animation in the game engine (blending)

In the end of March we’ll be presenting a playable demo to our mentors for review, so it’s crunching time!

Today I installed a monstrous coffee machine at our office. By my calculation it will increase the work flow by 12% and make the team members afford to buy six more beer each week (because the coffee cost 1 euro at the machine outside our office). Thought it will also increase the time used for toilet visits by 5% :p

EDIT good news everyone our WC have finale bean completely restore and are ready to use.

The model to the right is from the game “Hellgate London”.

So it’s was time for the weekly big meeting. As usual we stared the meeting about 20-30 minutes late. Today it was due to the heavy discussion that went on for about 30 minutes. The discussion was which girl is the best looking, not gonna name any names but there were actresses , porn stars and artists in the discussion. Today we mostly discussed the contract for Databox Games and future of Databox Games for the next 2 years. We also discussed:

• Discussing the enemies
• Dangers/threats for PoH being released
• New things on the “wish list”

This meeting was extra long (nearly 4 hours), but it was mainly to solve everything with the company.

Because of lectures and misjudgments of our animations, we didn’t make last week sprint goals. We’ll make it up this week instead, which means working 10+ hours/day

This week sprint looks like this:

Code:
Physics and collision system
AI system

Graphic 3d
Animate all characters with textures
Model enemies for level 1-2Artists
Make list of all the enemies

Level
Sketch on level 5
Continue building levels
Make level shares list

Narrative
Continue as usual
Trailer
Suggestions for the next trailer

Level editor
Implement scripting according to schedule
2d menus

By the way, the spring seams to have arrived : )

At first we had “Scrum sprints” that lasted about 4 weeks, but after the first sprint we decided to divide each 4 weeks sprint into 4 smaller “weekly sprints”. This so that the goals were more easy “to overview” and reach. This is roughly what the sprint of this week contains:

Code:
- Physics & colliding system
- Implement character control (hit, jump, magic and so on)
- Sketch on AI system

3D graphics:
- All the main characters done and animated
- Model enemies

2D graphics :
- Textures for all the main characters
- Concept of gems & gem system
- Graphics to the teaser

Level editor:
- Implement scripting

Narrative:
- Continue as planed

Levels:
- Continue making levels

Start on teaser

Time runs fast when you’re having fun, people say. If someone would have said before we started this blog–“it must have at least 100 posts, before PoH was released”, I would have said –“we won’t be able to make that”. Well only four and a half month into development we’re posted over 100 posts in our blog. It’s about 5 posts a week and since the beginning of 2009 we try to post at least one post a day. Hope you enjoy our effort to keep this up : )

Thanks again for reading about us and our game!

Things move fast in here. We had as a small goal to keep this blog updated once a week, but at this pace we have been posting around 3-4 posts/week, which is a bit : ) We´ll hopefully keep this up so that you can follow what we’re doing.

So cheers to the 50 post old blog :p

-“foooor, he’s a jolly good fellow …. “