First of all, I want to do a shout-out to the reddit AMA that we did yesterday.  We're still answering questions in there some, even though the AMA is technically over. I am going to be traveling this afternoon and over the weekend, so will be responding less (if at all) during that time.  However, I will try to get to any and all questions by sometime next week if more come in (at the time of this writing all of the questions have been answered, which I'm very pleased about).
Another Delay Okay, yep, another delay.   This time less than a week, though, and there's solid reasoning to believe this will be the last one.  So what's up this time, right?  Here's the scoop, copy-pastad from the email I sent to staff (we're all virtual, so no office): Progress has been good, but not quite what it needs to be (mostly on my end).  Ultimately it comes down to me being too much a bottleneck for everyone else.

• I had to take out a bunch of time to set up stuff for Cinth (setting up props), which has saved time but cost me some upfront.
• I had to take out time for the same thing for Keith (helping out with programming procgen).
• Blue (artist and level design) needed various things and I had to take time out to get those ready for her.
• I spent pretty much all yesterday either writing dialogue or recording it with Ben McAuley (voiceover actor), partly so Craig (major help on audio editing and work) would have time to split it.

• Blue has been greatly expanding the variety of environments that we have, which should be a really good thing for us both in terms of screenshots, videos, and early replayability.  A lot of the cool environments you can see in screenshots in this post.
• Cinth has been actively feeding in more components for her to use, which has been a huge help and feeds that ability to really have a variety of atmospheres in such a positive way.
• Craig has had extra time to work on things like ambient sound effects, which add so much to the immersiveness. I've seen Jim commentate on such things in The Jimquisition, so that stuff does matter.
• Keith has not only taken a bunch of load off me on the programming with the mapgen stuff, but he's reworkng a lot of areas there so they are legitimately better under the hood and will help us give better and more correct results in terms of the levels created. But of course that takes time, too, so it works out kinda well I guess.
• Misery has been coming up with a crazy amount of enemy ideas (and Craig added some too), and the number of ideas there has really let me put things together into some enemies that have graphics assignments figured out as well as voicework designed, etc, so that we can have a variety of grouped variants with each visual and audio consistent enemy. That's been absolutely killer of a help. Ben even remarked at one point "How do you guys come up with this stuff!?" and "You sure aren't making this easy on the player, are you?" at another. ;) Those two things ought to be the motto for Arcen in general, I feel like, haha.

• Be a velociraptor.
  
• Feel like a velociraptor -- this is our central design goal.
  
• Procedural levels: a pleasing blend of hand-crafted locales and randomization.
  
• Fight robots! Tear giant ones limb from limb, pounce on small ones, and try not to die.

Sell Me The Idea In One Sentence

What’s The Point?

• 1. For the pure fun of the thing. In 1993, a certain game let you be a raptor. The controls were iffy. The levels were short and static. It's very dated. Yet many of us still dust it off periodically -- just to be a raptor. Release Raptor gives you a far more satisfying, modern, dynamic experience.
  
  
• 2. For the challenge. Brutal Mode approximates what a real theropod might experience when attacked by robots. Aka, if you get shot by a rocket that's the end. You'll need to use all your raptor skills to tear your foes to shreds.
  
  
• 3. To play with kids. I want to be able to play this with my 5 year old son, but still have dismemberment (because that's cool). How to do that without blood or gore? Robots! Little robots = pouncing targets; giant mechs = dismemberment targets.
  
  
• 4. For a power trip. Brutal Mode is only fun for some. So we have Power Trip Mode, where you're on an invincible rampage. It's not about IF you can do it, but how WELL you do it. Speedrunning is encouraged. Your performance is scored and rated (avoiding hits, etc), so mistakes still have consequences.
  
  
• 5. For daily runs — maybe. My hope is to build out some daily leaderboards for both play modes, but no promises on that yet.
  
  
• 6. For the strategy of it — probably. The idea is to make these branching mazes kind of like AI War: Fleet Command maps in terms of how they provide you with opportunities. Each opportunity may increase the heat you take while moving forward, but at the same time net you some good things (thematic secondary goals like blowing up part of the facility, etc). I think I have figured out how to avoid excessive backtracking or frustration with this, but I don't want to state that as a definite feature until I have it prototyped in.

• OS: Ubuntu 10.10 or later. although other unsupported distros may work
• Processor: Dual Core 64bit CPU (2.2+ GHz Dual Core CPU or better)Memory: 4 GB RAM
• Memory: 4 GB RAM
• Graphics: GeForce 8xxx+. Radeon X2400+. or Intel G45+
• Storage: 5 GB available spaceAdditional Notes: Important: final specs may substantially differ. but this is our best guess for now.

• Processor: Any Quad Core or 3.0+ GHz Dual Core CPUMemory: 5 GB RAM
• Memory: 5 GB RAM
• Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 660 2GB / AMD HD 7870 2GBAdditional Notes: Important: final specs may substantially differ. but this is our best guess for now.