Old updates: 2006

17 Dec 2006 - CW4 is now up to 303 kb (I topped 300!) and the end is in sight. It'll still have to go to beta testing, and with the Erins being judged and the Xmas/New Year season it probably won't come out until January, but I'll try to get it finished as soon as possible. I'm actually running the Erin Awards (the awards we hold to thank AIF authors for the games they write for us) this year, and though I haven't updated the webpage yet (because I don't have new graphics yet) I would encourage people to go to http://erins.aifcommunity.org and check it out if you're not familiar with them. It's a great annual tradition and gives us a chance to get together and really be a community for a while. We really have a lot of trouble getting more than a couple of dozen of the thousands of AIF fans to vote in the awards, however, so when the ballots come out at the start of the new year, make sure that you do your part and take a few minutes to fill one out and send it in!

5 Dec 2006 - I suppose you deserve another update on CW4. I'm up to 278 kb now, and I'll try to get the writing finished this month (can't guarantee I'll succeed).

20 Nov 2006 - Just an update on CW4, it's up to 251 kb, and while completion is not immanent, the end is on the horizon. I'm not sure but it might well make 300 kb by the time it's done.

12 Nov 2006 - CW4 is now around 225kb. That's bigger already than any of the previous Crossworlds games. See? I am working on it, it just takes some time to get it right. The release still isn't immanent, but it may be achievable without another really long break.

2 Nov 2006 - I may have a bit more free time soon, so I'm hoping to get some work done on my AIF projects. Actually, I did make some progress on CW4 over the last week, and the game file is up to 185kb! That's around double what it was less than a month ago. There's still plenty to do, and some of that progress came from finishing off and transferring into the game file some text I'd written in MS Word, but I still consider this pretty good progress for a project that's been a bit stuck for quite a while.

17 Oct 2006 - I've done a bit of work on Crossworlds Part 4. I redesigned some of the later parts of the game (which makes it a little longer, but better) and though I haven't done a hell of a lot of the writing lately, I actually did quite a bit of the programming. In a couple of weeks I should have some more time, so I might get back to working on it then, but not beforehand. It's jumped up to 143 kb (from around 93 kb), and so I think it will actually be achievable, maybe even before Pervert Action Crisis. You have to follow where inspiration leads, and recently it's been trying to get me to finish CW4 (as well as some other, non-AIF stuff). I'd be surprised if there weren't another 100 kbs or so still to do, and maybe more, so don't expect it finished really soon.

25 Sep 2006 - I've lost count of the amount of times I've said that this is the "final" update of The Sleep Over and Janey's Diary. I've done multiple versions, including a "gold" edition of each. Well, I am releasing a NEW version of both games, combined into one and with significant new content, called Crossworlds Part 0 - The Girl Next Door. It's available in the "games" section of this site.

By way of explanation, I got to thinking that Janey's Diary never stood up all that well by itself; it was intended as sort of an 'expansion' to The Sleep Over. Therefore, I thought it would be interesting to put the two games together. I also thought it would be fun to explore a bit of the back-story that had been hinted at before, but was never playable. Thirdly I realised that I was very lazy in design when I started out, and so the games lacked completeness, so I've given the whole thing a significant technical overhaul and also added some extra sex to the existing sex scenes. All this new content is much more significant than my previous "new content" re-releases, since there is actually an entirely new sex scene as well as a number of new options in the existing ones.

So, if you've played The Sleep Over and Janey's Diary before then hopefully you'll appreciate the new content, and if you haven't played them then this is a format in which I'm less ashamed to present them. Crossworlds Part 0 - The Girl Next Door doesn't really change anything plot-wise (I'm not getting revisionist like George Lucas with the old Star Wars movies) but simply offers a little bit more, which I hope should give the games better structure and detail. This is an introduction to the Crossworlds characters that I can now endorse as a proper chapter of the series.

By the way, I'm withdrawing the old versions of The Sleep Over and Janey's Diary as they are now redundant.

19 Sep 2006 - Please note that I have changed my email address to gmail (listed above). I will still check my old address but a lot of my mail was getting waylaid by the hyperactive hotmail filter. Also, I have another re-release project in the works, and it should be ready for release soon.

18 Aug 2006 - Another productive month for PAC. We have the first sex scene programmed in, and the game file is now at 240 kb (Crossworlds Part 3, my largest released game to date was only 213 kb). There's still actually quite a bit of work to do on it, so don't expect an immanent release, but I do feel pretty confident that it will come out eventually. By the way, I'm going to stop mentioning that there's a newsletter update - I'll just update the page without pointing it out - but I should mention it this month because I forgot to write my column. Sorry!

4 Jul 2006 - It's been a very good month for work on PAC. We've got most of the pictures done, the planning is more or less complete, probably around half the actual text is written and the bulk of the programming challenges have been addressed. Now all that's left is to finish off the text and put it in the game, and we'll just about be ready for beta testing. I'm not sure how long that will take, as it's a big game for me, but things are looking pretty good right now. As usual, there's a newsletter update as well.

6 Jun 2006 - There's a new newsletter out. The reason for the diminished regularity in updates has partly been because of a slower period in my AIF work, but also due to certain technical problems that aren't worth going into. Anyway, the group work on Pervert Action Crisis has been going fairly well lately, and we've managed to get more done, with almost all the details planned out and a fair bit actually written.

15 May 2006 - I know it's been a while, but there hasn't been much in the way of progress to report. Hey, I've been busy. The website has been updated with the latest newsletter, anyway.

16 Apr 2006 - The latest newsletter is now available in the "other stuff" section. This month we have a new mini-comp! Vote before the 20th! Get the games at the newsletter website.

9 Mar 2006 - The latest newsletter is listed in the "other stuff" section. Updates? Well, okay. As it happens I've actually had a relatively productive month. I've set aside that "top secret" project I was working on for a little while, and I've gotten back to work on Crossworlds Part 4 and Pervert Action Crisis. I've reworked the middle section of CW4 so that it's (much) more manageable and I think a bit more interesting too, so it should be much easier to complete. I've also done some actual writing and programming on the game. As for PAC, I've done a bit of writing as well as more development and programming, and you might be interested to hear that Grimm Sharlak, author of Breakout and Of Masters and Mistresses: Abduction has decided to join the project. I'm hoping that between Grimm, Mike Phillips and myself we'll be able to get some serious work done on PAC soon.

12 Feb 2006 - Sorry about this, I wrote an update at the start of the month but I just forgot to upload it. Anyway, the Erins have come and gone and I won an award! I received the "Best Humour in an AIF Game" award for Crossworlds Part III - The Final Far Far Away Frontier. Thanks very much to everyone who voted for me! I have put a link to the new edition of the newsletter (with Erin winners info) in the "Other Stuff" section. As for an update on game work - well, I'll just say that I have been working on some AIF stuff, and I'll leave it at that for now.

8 Jan 2006 - Blasted new year, I forgot to update. Anyway, I have moved 2005's news to an old updates page - happy new year, everyone. I have been doing a little work on a top secret project. The reason this project is top secret is to prevent building any expectations about it. All I will say is that it's a shortish game that may or may not get completed, and is not something I have ever discussed in my drawing board or elsewhere. I have updated the "Other Stuff" section with the new newsletter link, and I want to implore everyone to get voting in the yearly AIF awards, the Erins! Follow this link: to the Erin Awards website.