Daikatana AI programmer Noel Stephens updated his .plan with an update on the Daikatana AI and the game's progress. Here's a big chunk

<snip>
So, anyway, the AI has shaped up to be fairly intelligent without being too much of a burden on the CPU as well as the player. There are a million little tiny details that I could get into regarding all of the time and energy that has gone into a good portion of the AI system, but I think I might leave most of that for a later date.

During the project, I have been documenting the progress of the AI and world entities. If given permission, I might even post that document somewhere for people to take a gander at so they can see the progress of at least one aspect of making a game. After reading the 55 pages of documentation people will start to understand how MASSIVE Daikatana really is and how much work has gone into this mammoth game! If it is 'ok' to post this somewhere, then I will probably hold off until people have had a chance to play it so they can then relate to the whole process.

As far as when the game will be done, well I am taking the weekend off and breaking the 7 day a week schedule, thus we must be VERY close to completion!!!!

Just a quick update, a reader in the comments dug up the 7th and final CTF screenshot by hax0ring his way around on the Daikatana page. You can take a look at the shot here, and the rest of the shots here.

As mentioned yesterday Ion Storm opened up their new website. I grabbed all the screenshots of Episode 1-4 and slapped them up here. (The Ion page has them in like 300k a piece size) but I goofed and forgot to grab the CTF and DeathTag maps! Here you guys go:

Capture The Flag: [shot1] [shot2] [shot3] [shot4] [shot5] [shot6] [shot8]
Death Tag: [shot1] [shot2] [shot3] [shot4]

Note, CTF shot7 is missing due to goofup on the Ion page. Yes they still have a few last minute bugs to work out, even on the website. A couple of comments on the releases from The Romero are on FiringSquad and Stevie Case on VE.

There was another one of those Daikatana developers chats tonight on the ionstorm IRC server. Towards the end of the chat it turned out that the release of Daikatana should actually be pretty imminent, like any day now. Here are some other points:

<2prong> <_ArA_> What is the weapon <2prong> switching delay time in multiplayer?

<Romero> You can have INSTANT SWITCH weapons if you like in muliplayer <Chalrez> It is either 'fast' or dependent on the weapon's animation. <Sleestak> You can set instant switch or not in the options

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<2prong> <em4> how much has the feel of the game <2prong> changed since the mplayer demo? (if at all)

<Sleestak> Quite alot I think. Much more polished <Noel_ION> It feels good to me... * Noel_ION *pinches the game* <Noel_ION> Yeop.. pretty nice <Sleestak> Lot's of neat details you don't miss until they're not there. <Chalrez> Yeah! rock! <KillCreek> oh wow .. the demo actually contained very little of the game. But the game overall looks tons better. The new skies are really amazing, lots of polish and detail. <Romero> The demo had almost NOTHING in it. <KillCreek> that "demo" wasnt even really a demo .. <KillCreek> there will be a real SP and MP demo out after the game release though. That will be the real deal and representative of the full game.

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<2prong> <Fubar> will DK support A3D or EAX?

<Ion_Shawn> Not initially. in a patch

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<2prong> <ImMortal> What kind of copying security <2prong> is there going to be? Is there going to be a <2prong> CD-Key like in quake3 or anything?

<Sleestak> Why, planning on copying it <Sleestak> ? <KillCreek> copy protection? Shawn do you know how its going to work? <Ion_Shawn> Actually, Eidos will be providing the copy protection during the mastering process <Sleestak> The cd won't be copyable.

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<2prong> <phungui> Whats the target PC that <2prong> Daikatana will run Really fast on? Video <2prong> card etc..

<Sleestak> PII-300+ <Ion_weasl> TNT2 is nice too ;) <Ion_Shawn> P2 450 with a GeForce and 128Mb of ram would be good <Sleestak> That would be all you need for speed

Here's a full chat log from DKHQ.

There's a short Q&A with John Romero on The FiringSquad asking about textures in Daikatana. I'm in that Daikatana chat in #ion on www.ionstorm.com right now, and I'll have some info from the chat once its done. Most fun event so far: *** TheCook is now known as bake_it . Yeah, just crazy ..

The Daikatana.com website has a huge update with all kinds of information etc on the game. You can check out a bunch of screenshots of the game that were released here. Also on the website are a few bits of design commentary by John Romero on each of the episodes featured in the game.

Episode1: [shot1] [shot2] [shot3] [shot4] [shot5] [shot6] [shot7] [shot8]
Episode2: [shot1] [shot2] [shot3] [shot4] [shot5] [shot6] [shot7] [shot8]
Episode3: [shot1] [shot2] [shot3] [shot4] [shot5] [shot6] [shot7] [shot8]
Episode4: [shot1] [shot2] [shot3] [shot4] [shot5] [shot6] [shot7] [shot8]

The reason I came up with the idea of having SanFrancisco 2030 C.E. be the fourth episode is because I envisioned a setting similar to Duke Nukem 3D's--something near-future where we could have more military weapons. I didn't choose Los Angeles for the setting because, well, that would have been a little too obvious! And putting the player in a location where a military base is located also helped with the enemy character design ideas.

Some more Daikatana info today from the Planet Daikatana forums. This time ION's Rocketman took the time to answer some questions about the game.

Salon.com has posted the 2nd part of their coverage on the Daikatana super-crunch time. The article talks with developers about what it's like to be working on the game and the hell they are going through trying to get the game finished.

There's a post by John Romero on the Planet Daikatana forums answering about various aspects of Daikatana and it's development. Here are a couple of items:

3) The Q2 network code is the same except the amount of packets sent is a bit lower now since we've moved a lot of the special effects code over to the client. This results in lower packet traffic.

6) We will be splitting the one team into two teams. The bigger team will be working on a Fifth Daikatana Episode, marketed as a mission pack. We will start working on our next big game after finishing the 5th episode.

8) There's a Fast Switch option in the multiplayer menus to switch weapons quickly and there's also a Footsteps option. Only allowing a certain amount of audio feedback definitely keeps the tension level up, ala DOOM. Too much information gives away everyone's position and removes much of the surprise.

Thanks Stomped.

As we all just can't get enough about Daikatana and it's delays, here's a new article about John Romero for you over at Salon. It talks about his life and how it went wrong with Daikatana. How he is trying to finish the game? "All-nighters, 18-hour days, sleeping at the office -- John Romero's posse keeps up a "death schedule" to get Daikatana out of beta." If they have a death schedule to get out of beta, I guess they have nine lives.

As everyone has figured out by now Daikatana has not yet been released. Being all ninja like I stopped by CompUSA and picked up the weekly paper they put out which features Daikatana right there on the cover page. Here is a scan for you guys on my cheap-ass new scanner. What was not mentioned yesterday is the surprisingly low price they are opening it up for ($39.99) as well as the mention that there will be demos included of DeusEx, Anachronox, and Thief2 (dunno if they are playable demos for sure) all bundled with the game. If you have some mild interest in the game (Who doesnt?) the demos are a pretty damn welcome addition. As much as we give Ion crap for the delays, I'm still giving Daikatana a pretty good chance at being a good game. Oh, I was in sunlight for approx 1min17seconds during that excursion. Applied suntan lotion though so it's cool.

Contrary to several reports coming in, Daikatana has not shipped just yet. There are newspaper advertisements showing up for CompUSA and BestBuy claiming Daikatana is on shelves now. This was simply the advertisers anticipating a release. Before you go rushing off to the store though, well, it's not there. Sorry guys. Believe me when it's actually released you'll see something about it here. :)

German site Krawall News has two new Diakatana screenshots, for those who haven't seen enough of the game after all these years.

Yep, Daikatana isn't out yet but it's strategy guide has started shipping to pre-orders according to Planet Daikatana. There's also a thread here. Pretty amusing stuff.

Primagames has posted the table of contents of the Daikatana strategy guide, which was written by Killcreek. Yep, no game yet but you know what's gonna be in the strategy guide, weeh. Saw that on VE.

Well, Daikatana keeps threatening to get released lately as we all know. Things seem to be falling into place at Ion Storm for the game completion. So much so that The Romero made this post the the PlanetDaikatana messageboards:

I'd first like to thank everyone for actually caring to write here about my game, for better or worse. I'm sorry the release date has kept slipping and slipping and slipping, but it's been pretty tough trying to get this game out: it's the biggest game i've ever worked on and vastly more complex as well. But when you finally get your hands on it i believe you'll really enjoy it -- it's pretty different having a very strong storyline, sidekicks, 50+ monsters, multiple time periods, CO-OP mode (tough to implement!), the only SP FPS to ship with CTF, the list goes on. A lot of work has been put into this game by a hell of a lot of people. <snip>

Feeling nostalgic about the whole soap opera / legacy that has been the development of Daikatana, I dug an incredibly old screenshot that was released way back in 1997 (oldest shot I could find) from the Daikatana screenshot archive. Quite a change from the shot that was released yesterday. (Thanks DukeW)

Planet Daikatana has another Daikatana screenshot, this time showing a miniboss from Episode 3 summoning a meteor.

Planet Daikatana has a new Daikatana screenshot, this time from episode 1. It shows the sword in powered-up mode.

PlanetDaikatana has another new Daikatana screenshot online as promised. Check it out here.

Planet Daikatana has a new Daikatana screenshot, strangely enough. Word on the page is that three more screenshots will appear.