As I mentioned before, I got ahead of my schedule last week. I thought about charging forward to the next task, but ended up choosing to convert my data files to XML from my cryptic raw-text format. It was a good choice because it was nice and easy to do and will make adding content a lot easier in the future. This will be a big deal. I've determined that my schedule will allow me to finish the functionality of the game, but I will not have time for any good effort at designing levels and enemies. So the plan is to get to "code complete" on schedule, and then take my time with the resulting framework to explore design issues. I've never really gotten far enough with anything to really have fun just playing around with design in a functional game, so it should be fun.

I'm afraid that my artist friend is flaking out on making art. I haven't seen anything new in some time. He said he's reworking the main character design, but I haven't seen anything. So I'll just keep churning out code and using solid blocks for game entities. I'll find another artist if it comes to that, even if this was originally my friend's game idea. I hate to leave him behind, but not so much if he wanders away on his own.