So what's happening?

Well, OUM is on the final stretch. No really, I mean it this time... Tronyn, Fatty and myself all agreed to aim for a release by the end of February, which it looks like we're going to miss, but it did cause us to stir things up quite a bit. There's only a few little bits that need finishing now. The first three maps as well as the penultimate map and the finale are all done, barring a couple of tweaks here and there. Speedy is supposed to be sending a beta of the forth map any second now, and that will complete the set. Five full maps, plus a smaller start and finish map. Not too bad.

As to other matters, they haven't really progressed since all my mapping time is focused on OUM right now (and so it should be!). I haven't invesigated any further the skip bugs which I mentioned in my December update. DM map nuber six is still sitting on my harddrive awaiting some lighting and other bits of polish. It should see the light of day pretty soon after we get OUM done.

And if you haven't seen it already, check out the footage of Carmack's next engine running on the GeForce3. If you just saw the screenshots, then you haven't seen anything. The real impressive stuff is when you see it all moving. It's got some bloody amazing dynamic lighting - just check it out. Mappers will be impressed! Click here for the zipped ASF file (~13MB) or click here* for a higher quality MPG version (~25MB).

* Hmm, that second link seems unresponsive as I type this, but I'll leave it there in the hope that it'll start working again.