Probably by the end of the week you'll see a screenshot of a character animating. It won't be very impressive, but it will show the complete functional camera, animation and asset system, which is a huge part of the Game API underlying the game functionality.I've also started planning out a few of the UI features and figuring out how the game will control by fiddling with my experimental branch of Glow. I'll probably have to drop gamepad support, since it will just make the UI too convoluted to deal with.
Right now, player control is roughly equivalent to Glow, but with a longer acceleration curve for the assault character and a shorter one for the saboteur character. I'm tempted to do away with the characters entirely and have the player do a CRPG "build out," but that would require menu screens before the game starts, and people hate doing that before they know what's going on. So we'll stick with the two main characters, and eventually I'll give them names to go along with their respective backgrounds.
I'm also juggling some ideas I had about puzzle-style minigames, like the ones in the original System Shock. I think it would slow down the gameplay, but I'll definitely try some prototypes to make sure. I've also decided I'm going to add a "Plot-Free" option which disables the storyline completely, as Afterglow has significantly more cheesy 90s-comic-book-panache plot than the original game.
In the interim, I highly suggest you guys amuse yourself by taking a spin through You Have to Burn the Rope.
