So right now the game's load times are pretty barbaric. It takes about 90-120 seconds to load the game up, which isn't THAT bad....but about 65% of the time is spent loading/combining player animations + player models. I could easily just cache a 'game ready' version on the hard drive....by saving the final frame hierarchy, and animation controller.

I'm trying to use the D3DXSaveMeshHierarchyToFile function to write out the .x file. It doesn't work. It only writes out 2KB and returns D3DERR_INVALIDCALL.

If anybody wants to know more about the issue...and maybe help me out [grin] I've created a thread here, discussing the issue:
https://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=377823

I had a test session with some people from my publisher the other day, everything is still coming together...I've got a lot of work to do this week for our next test session. I'm going to focus on adding gameplay modes into the game. For my last test session the only gameplay mode I had in there was a Capture the Flag mode.

I've added a few new features into the game in the last few days...including the ability to run the game windowed, and I added a way to select a gang symbol, that will represent your gang, as well as color coded chat:


I've actually changed things to look a little better since that screenshot.

Well I've got a lot fo stuff to do, so back to work. Probably going to try to figure this damn D3DXSaveMeshHierarchyToFile issue out.

- Dan