Success with animation

• I have had major success in getting an animated mesh that I made working in DEMII ! This is huge as it is the last major milestone/hurdle for the game engine to overcome. It opens up a world of possibilities for enemies, etc, etc. All it took was fixing the Milkshape exporter in DeleD and implementing the XNAnimation library.
  
• I am also finally happy with the camera control. After playing  researching other games (GTA4, RF:G, JC2) and trying to work out what they are doing different (GTA4's camera works well indoors for a third person game)...and copying. Now the camera orbits the player in 2 dimensions and sticks to walls. So much better than pushing it up the wall (sea sickness, anyone)?
  
• I have added a few new levels. The most interesting of which is a massive pyramid that DEMII must climb, only the steps are broken in places. So, she has to walk around the edges and find a path up. It kind of reduces the game to a platformer, which is a great bit of variety, me thinks. Think the old C64 classic Nebulus. There will be alternate paths, traps and hidden things, also....and a push puzzle on top!
  
• My recent GTA4 "research" has also given me a lot of insight into how to do missions without an inventory. Basically, when you have to "get item X", you are really telling the player "go to location X, where I will display item X". Location X can therefore be a trigger tile.
  The other major type of mission, in GTA4, is the good old bloodlock ie kill a particular enemy or all enemies in a location.
  Using combinations of these, with dialog triggers throughout, can be quite entertaining story telling. A real eye opener!