Rob Smith

For a game programming job that actually seems a bit short. I would figure ~6 hours including a break for lunch is about right, but it all depends on the company, position, and how well they have felt you out ahead of time ( phone interviews, informal lunches and such)

Can't the programmers that have nothing to do write you a tool to do that? Should take all of about a day to get 80% functional with the kinks worked out along the way. I think it's worth the 8-16 hours of programmer time versus the countless hours of art time and that's not even including having to re-export for fixes. Edit: yeah what Night said, except the part about all programmers making things needlessly difficult and being total slackers of course.

You probably don't want the player to be driven by physics at all. You'll need to have their collision representation in the physics world, but the object should actually be moved either manually, via animation or both. At least that's the way I've always done it. Otherwise you're fighting the system just to get basic functionality. Certain events like ragdoll on death and the like, but not generally.