8/24/99

"And the mist will wrap around us And the crystal, if you touch it..." -Sisters of Mercy First off, an item of interest: Guido stepped down as producer on Friday so that he could spend more time with his family. He'll be missed. Okay, with that said, let me tell you what's happening here. Hmmm... pretty much the same as last week, only we're spending even MORE time at the office. Those of us with substantial commutes (me) have taken to spending some nights at the office. It's kind of fun, actually, like camping out without ghost stories, marshmallows, campfires, or... All right, it's not much like camping out except that I'm in a sleeping bag instead of a bed. The designers are routinely putting in 11- to 12-hour days, if not longer. We're inching steadily closer to the final battle, the Armageddon of testing. We're putting together final QA walkthrough documents, making sure the game can be completed SOMEHOW. We're also throwing more and more at the scriptors, bless their overworked little souls. The atmosphere here after the regular workday has ended changes somehow. It's not just that the recycled air from the vents has a chance to throw in some "fresh" air. It's that somehow the normal rules seem to apply less, and the vibe loosens up. It's not exactly a party, but it's much more fun. Less stressful, somehow, and more conducive to creativity. There are also fewer people around to make demands on our time, and so we get a chance to finish up things that we couldn't get done during the day. We call this "Magic Time", because it's also when we do the stuff that's not on our schedules - Stores, rechecking old dialogues and documents, updating other documents for other people, and general maintenance on characters. Speaking of general maintenance, I'm off to get some lunch. Then I'll come back here and sleep all day, and pretend to work at night. Woo, this job sure is hard! kidding! kidding! -Colin

Planescape: Torment & Design: © 1998 Interplay Productions. All Rights Reserved. © 1998 TSR, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Planescape, the Planescape logo, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Torment, the AD&D logo, and the TSR logo are trademarks of TSR, Inc. and are used by Interplay under license. TSR, Inc. is a subsidiary of Wizards of the Coast, Inc. Interplay, the Interplay logo, Black Isle Studios and the Black Isle Studios logo are trademarks of Interplay Productions. Exclusively licensed and distributed by Interplay Productions. All other trademarks and copyrights are property of their respective owners.