Week ending Friday 13th February 1998

A busy week for all. At this stage in development, when we don't want anyone to see what we're doing, if anyone comes into the office, it involves everyone switching off their monitors and giggling insanely or grinning maniacally when people get near to scare them away.

Monday: Journalists and Competition winners from Austria visit. The Drive-By team have their area taken over as we show them F1 tracks. The old F1 track editor gets an airing, and the new mesh editor crashes on demonstration, taking the machine with it.

Tuesday: The Drive-By team get all lonely, as the Crimson people are in meetings all day. They wish they had a producer to look after them, hold their hands and give them sweets. Discovered that the BB pellet shotgun was ideal for firing cotton buds across the office. Many minor injuries are sustained!

Wednesday: The editor has hiccups, and starts spewing out strange file formats. Current files are .GOD, .LSD and the ever popular .POO formats.

Thursday: Mark has a lovely snotty illness. A huge drawing board arrives and the artists all drool over it. Susan spends the day with drawing board envy. We try and tell him that it's not how big it is, but what you do with it. He cheers up when we say we'll get him some more marker pens.

Friday: Mark brings yesterday's handkerchiefs in for us all to look at. The Drive-By team get to spend a relatively undisturbed day - I say relatively! The team get 2 loverly new P333's, which immediately get tested by playing Quake 2. Stu grins inanely for the rest of the day.

Week ending Friday 6th March 1998

And most of the Drive-By team go away on a spring-break holiday, to try and get some relaxation in, and to come up with a suitable name for the project.

Monday: Office: Steve offers to make everyone in the team a cup of tea. Boils kettle for 1. Holiday: Everyone goes swimming. The blokes show how manly they are by jumping into the outdoor cold plunge pools to impress the girls. However, the obvious effect of the cold means not much impressing is done!

Tuesday: Office: Steve relishes the peace and quiet. Holiday: Some of the team try their hand at archery. Mark manages plenty of bulls-eyes, and Sarah manages to hit the target once or twice. They decide not to try the advanced 'field archery', which involves running around the woods with a bow shooting anything that moves!!

Wednesday: Office: Steve puts the radio on - LOUD! No-one complains! Holiday: Still wanting to show off their bravery, the lads take to the sauna area. What was a nice relaxing continental spa area turns into a frenzy of screams, splashes and attempted drownings in the spa pool.

Thursday: Office: Steve finds he can read his collection of 'Women Clad in Leather' special editions without everyone coming over and saying 'gissa look, eh?' Holiday: People start to miss Steve's 'Women Clad in Leather' special editions......

Friday: Office: Steve starts speaking to the wall. Holiday: Everyone travels home in the rain, realising they still haven't thought of a suitable name for 'Drive-By'.

And so, now we're back, there's going to be some serious work done.....!!

Week ending Friday 3rd April 1998

As was written in earlier diaries, Drive-By has now reached a major re-think point. We'd been planning to release on PlayStation and PC CD, but have been encountering problems with our PlayStation development.

It's a strange time in terms of hardware - usually the consoles have the upper hand, but at this point, the PC technology has leapt ahead, leaving us struggling to cut down our PC developed game to work on the PlayStation. We use our own self-written modelling tools, and even these are finding it difficult to produce models that can work harmoniously on PlayStation and Voodoo 2, for example.

The game is ambitious. The worlds are complex with many lighting effects, and the characters and inhabitants really need high polygon counts. It just wasn't working on PlayStation, even with our highly refined 3D engine. So we had to come to the painful decision to drop the PlayStation format for this title. It was extremely difficult to make this decision, and we know we're taking a risk. But all-in-all, we believe in the game, and therefore this is really the only way to go. The high-end accelerated PC's, and who knows, even future consoles, are going to allow this game to shine.

And hence the re-think. It's hardest on the technology coder, who has had to metaphorically chuck the lot in the bin! The PC version would have led from the PlayStation - and now we're looking at taking the lead to PC, which means a complete re-write. But looking at what he's achieved in such a short time on the PC is really making us think we've made the right decision.

So wish us luck!

Week ending Friday 22nd May 1998

Drive-By's design is coming along nicely, with some really solid ideas. Can't give you more than that at the moment, becuase there's quite a bit to be done before we're fully happy with it.

I think we'll leave the pressure off the Drive-By team announcing the game properly for the moment, and let the Metropolis title on Dreamcast take the stage for now!

Week ending Friday 5th June 1998

Well, it's getting there! Drive-By is really looking rather nice, and the guys are all happy with the progress.

We've been trying to get together a playable section - nothing finished, more like a representative overview of the game to give an idea of how it's going to be. This means that there's quite a bit of underlying technology code that has had to be written, to enable the visual and gameplay effects to be put in place.

The plan for the next three weeks is to concentrating on special effects for this area, to seeing how 'rich' we can make the environment. We plan to have something looking solid, giving a fair representation of the game by the end of this month, which is a challenge, but what the heck, we thrive on stress!

My only concern is why Mark keeps playing sampled sheep sound effects?!?!?!

*** PS. To answer current rumours flying around, Drive-By is being developed as a high-end PC title - please refer to the Drive-By page for more details. ***

Week ending Friday 21st August 1998

It's been a long time since we had a Drive-By update, so it's time to put that right.

Something we've not admitted to as yet, is that the Drive-By team actually took a break a couple of months ago, just for a short time. They were drafted in to produce a demo - NOT of Drive-By - but of an unrelated 'game-style' concept for a technical presentation. The presentation was for a visit from Sega Japan, and was to be developed on Dreamcast.

This was an experiment on our side as well - we (and probably Sega too!) wanted to see how quickly the following things could be achieved:

• How long it would take for a novice team to get to know Dreamcast
• How long they would need to transfer their technology onto Dreamcast
• How long would be needed to get the PC editor writing out suitable formats
• How long it would take them to get a level together on our internally developed mesh editor
• The total time needed for our guys to put together a Dreamcast technical 'game-related' demo

And the answers to the questions were absolutely amazing!!! In the same order....

• Easily under a week, including getting the kits installed, compiling, reading the manuals, etc.
• AN ASTOUNDING ONE AND A HALF DAYS!!! That's all it took to get their (albeit quite flexible!) PC game code and engine up and running on Dreamcast! Amazing!
• The editor took no time at all, as the format we were already using was fine!
• About 2 weeks, including adding all the moving bits and splines
• TOTAL TIME: 4 weeks. This is from concept ('what sort of thing can we do in the time?'), 'character' design (very hastily done!), technical issues ('where do I stick this bit!!'), coding, textures, level building, modelling and presentation artwork to final 'game-style' demo.

We thought that was pretty amazing, and I think Sega were impressed. It really shows how easily a developer can pick up and use the Dreamcast system. Of course, there's much optimisation that could have been done and things we would have changed in hindsight, but all-in-all given the time they had, both us and the Sega guys were really impressed with what they'd achieved.

This early technical demo still exists, although the team have done nothing to it since that time. It was running on the very first, early development kits, and Dreamcast technology has progressed dramatically since then. It's going to be nice to look back on it (as we remember doing with our first F1 demos) and realise how much things have moved on!

The teams have now gone back to Drive-By (on the PC, remember?) but obviously have had a taste of Dreamcast and what it can do. The game is progressing well, although still at an early stage. As for now, there's still no plans in the Dreamcast direction......but you never know what the future might bring!

And now.....

THE CONFESSION!!!

The Rabbit did have a home. The Rabbit came from somewhere. The Rabbit actually was taken from a little wooded corner of the demo described above. He has now retired, as we said in the diary, but to keep him company he has actually found a lady bunny, and they're both very happy together.

And so, this is how the Rabbit family looks now.......

Just on a final note, these screenshots have NOT been taken from the Dreamcast development kits, they were actually quickly mocked up using the editor you've read about above, with a little help from SoftImage. Sorry to disappoint on that one!

Week ending Friday 16th September 1998

OK, there's not much we can put in the Drive-By Update, other than to say that there's going to be an announcement regarding the project next week. This will be made at the following time and date:

*** Thursday 1st October at 6.00pm UK time ***

Can we please remind people that Drive-By is STILL a completely irrelevant working title, as the game is an action shooter, and therefore the game has nothing to do with:

1. Driving
2. Buying

So check back then and see!

Thursday 1st October 1998

Bizarre brings Furballs to Dreamcast.

Bizarre Creations is proud to announce Furballs, a next-generation product for Sega's Dreamcast console, and high-end PC. Originally known as Drive-By, for reasons long since irrelevant, the game has been in secret development for about six months.

Furballs is a uniquely styled, cartoon action shooter. It combines a blend of frantic third person shooting action with challenging puzzle gameplay. The Furballs consist of six original characters, seemingly cute animals, each with unique weapons and skills.

Nerves of steel, shooting skills and a mind for solving puzzles are all essential to make it through the game intact. Further details, character information and screenshots will be available at a later date � check our site for details!

Furballs is not currently signed to a publisher, and hence release details and scheduling are yet to be confirmed.