Sunday, August 18, 2002

Okay, this silence has gone on too long. I’m just going to have to say something, before things get awkward between us. But, actually, one of the things I’ve always liked about our relationship is that we don’t HAVE to be talking all the time, you know? Sometimes we just hang out, and we’re quiet together, and its okay. It’s nice. It shows that we’re comfortable with each other. That we can just be together.

Like, when you’re asleep, or unconscious for some reason. Or when I have an deafening ear infection, or when I’m just choosing not to hear you because I don’t like what you’re saying. These are the special times that tell me that we’ll be together forever, or for a short amount of time that just seems like forever.

I appreciate this quality of ours the most at times like these: when I have nothing to say. No real Double Fine news. To tell you the truth, nothing really goes on here at Double Fine, except for the relentless creation of quality, the unyielding extrusion of excellence from our doors. The unstoppable “clang-clang” of creativity from the anvils of our… uh… radiating from the red-hot horseshoes of… Man, how many cups of coffee is this going to take? Let me try again.

I mean, is it news when the Moon orbits the Earth, when the Earth orbits the Sun? No, and yet these are momentous events without which our lives would end. Just like Psychonauts, they are a cosmic certainty. Was I going somewhere with this?

Oh, I hear the garbage guys out front! That’s news! That doesn’t happen every day. It only happens once a week. On Tuesday night. Wait a second, it’s not Tuesday. That can’t be the garbage men. Who’s messing with our garbage?

That reminds me of some news: I replaced the trash can in the upstairs bathroom. Oh, and also: We ate Chinese food tonight on the ping-pong table in the conference room. Milestone 11 is due tomorrow (or today, since it’s 1:30am). The team is working late. I think I’m going to go downstairs and find out what they are up to, and come back here and REPORT on them. Like a snitch. Okay, here I go.

* * *Intermission (Imagine Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass playing.)* * *

Okay, I’m back with a snapshot of activity at Double Fine Productions. Here’s what the graveyard shift is up to:

Paul Du Bois is trying to make characters in the game not stick to each other.
Steve Chen is making a demo room to show off the new collectibles.
Kjeld Pedersen is putting objects in Dr. Loboto’s laboratory.
Brian Christian is building the Lungfishopolis com tower.
Paul Zinnes is applying textures to the outside of the insane asylum.
Geoff Soulis is texture-mapping the battlefield under the lake.
Gaurav Mathur is hooking up the sublevels of the asylum.
Joe Ching is creating collision geometry for the—no, wait. He just booted up Battlefield 1942.
Chris McGee is wiring up the exploding train puzzle in Lungfishopolis.
Lance Burton is fixing the “spline motion sending people off into infinity” bug.

So there you have it. The wheels of productivity, guided by love and deadlines, powered by sweet-n-sour pork.

* * *

This week, in the free press: There was this whole International House of Mojo article on Double Fine, but I’ve been afraid to mention it because sometimes they post news items on their site about news items I post on our site. So if I post a news item about one of their news items, and they post an item about that news item, this cyclical-posting could start a feedback loop that grows and grows and creates a deadly harmonic capacitance which could blow up the entire Internet, and destroy all the goodness it contains. Hopefully, it will be okay, but just to be safe, right after you read this do what I’m about to do: turn off your computer and leave the country immediately.