Time: 10pm 8 October 2001 GMT
Subject: ISP Rants
Heh, I'm planning to make these posts more regular and personal - after all this site
is about me now :) I've resigned all the members and am looking for a new team
a team that does not grind to a halt. A team that works - has experience and skills!
A few quotes from AOL tech support i got today after asking to unblock the SMTP port:
"Hello... hello?"
"AOL does not support 3rd party software like Outlook Express"
"AOL is not an internet service provider, it is an Internet content provider"
"We cannot change our software" (annoyed)
"Our software is not compatible with Microsoft products" (very frustrated)
[phone is hung up on aol side]
Time: 6pm 4 October 2001 GMT
Subject: New Site
Time flies quickly - sorry I haven't updated for a while.
I was not in NY or NJ on September 11 after our trip to the USA was cut short.
Now I'm residing in Norwich, UK.
Life is ok, but very little time.
The new site is up and parts are under construction, please tell me if something breaks.
This site is actually a development of an older
prototype, but it looks nicer so should last a couple of years, maybe more.
Time: 6pm 3 October 2001 GMT
Subject: NexTTriS
Back to school.. waaah :( ! But I got some nice GCSE results.
Now taking 5 A-levels and hoping to do well - but they're a pain.
Time: 6pm 29 June 2001 GMT
Subject: NexTTriS
This is a multiplayer tetris clone with nice graphics, cool special effects
(particle system and wave system) and great powerups. I've been working on it
with Mad Hatter Entertainment but they have withdrawn from the development
process. I've taken over ;-) now it's our own project.
I'm not sure how to release this title - it would breach Tetris copyright. I am investigating several options, including Open Source or modifying the game for a different purpose.
Exams are Over! Wohoo!
Time: 6am 12 June 2001 GMT
Subject: Exams
Argh! All this valuable time spent in stupid revision for
even more stupid exams. When will this stop? I have a Welsh
exam this week *bg*.
iTank 0.07 should be completed very soon, I might even post
a screenshot.
Time: 11am 6 May 2001 GMT
Subject: PakViewer Complete
At last - i've sorted all known bugs and it works! Now more
of my attention turns towards Game24 and iTank. I've recovered
from the clean wipe I did last week now, everything's ok.
As promised, people are starting to appear and disappear now.
Time: 10am 28 April 2001 GMT
Subject: Eater Holidays Over
There's a new icon for iTank:
The half term went very quickly. Most bugs in the previous iTank
beta have been sorted and it runs on everyone's PC's now, installer
works well too. I've given thought to restructuring our members list
- "ditch the ditherer" etc. and getting some more active people involved.
People should start appearing and disappearing next month >:) heh, so evil.
Unfortunately, eTank's popularity (download rate) is 'fading out' so
we seriously need to get new projects released. All my school coursework
is complete so there's no reason not to expect some progress.
Time: 8pm 8 April 2001 GMT
Subject: Easter Holidays
Aah, spring is in the air and I have a break from school at last!
Of course, there are tons of coursework and homework still to do.
We have 2 new members. I hope that our new web developer will create
an individual site for each of our projects. Thanks a lot to Dustin Hubbard
for his effort with new graphics for iTank - they look stunning.
I hope to release PakViewer ASAP and then concentrate on the other projects
(iTank, Game24 & I'll put up info about the recent NexTTriS co-operative
project) and the website.
Time: 5pm 25 March 2001 GMT
Subject: Time
Well, there is just too little time to do anything at the moment
I've got too much schoolwork and am involved in too many projects.
Sorry.
Currently working on Nextris, a tetris clone for Mad Hatter Entertainment
and hope to finish soon. PakViewer is close to completion but needs to be
tested on several platforms first.
Time: 8pm 1 March 2001 GMT
Subject: Tiny PakViewer Project
Bumped into a file I could not open today. But I'll open it you'll see!
Quake1,2&3 use the ".pak" file format. I'm creating a small utility
that will dissect these files like WinZip does with ".zip" files.
Hope to finish very soon, perhaps over the weekend.
Time: 8pm 26 Feb 2001 GMT
Subject: iTank to use FSGS
A note to say that I've made up my mind about the
worldwide server network to be used by iTank to locate
games online. This will be the FSGS (Free Standard Game Server)
network, I've been in contact with the helpful and patient people at
Net-Games discussing some
possibilities.
I expect that unless there are some unexpected developments,
this is the network we'll be using. FSGS supports inter-game chat
so people can talk to each other from different games. There are
lots of gamers online on the FSGS network all of the time so
finding a chat partner is no problem even if there are no opponents
playing the same game! :) I hope that we'll be able to set up a
CGI tracking system on our website to display number of people
playing iTank and server status etc., as I've been getting visitors
to the website looking for servers to play eTank on.
Also a restructuring of Voxelsoft is long overdue and I think we
can make it work more efficiently, this'll happen before summer.
Time: 6pm 8 Feb 2001 GMT
Subject: Slow Progress
Well everything has settled down and slowed down for now. I've got
plenty of school coursework to do and everyone has their own things
to take care of.
There won't be much progress until summer as everyone is busy. So I'll
cut down on updates too for now. Project Game24 is also severely delayed
due to a lack of certain member contribution (Yes Jason!) so the deadlines
are all extended.
Basically everything we wanted to do with eTank we have done. iTank won't
be finished for a while to come so there is very little going on for now.
Time: 6pm 1 Feb 2001 GMT
Subject: Happy Birthday - Voxelsoft is aged One!
Hurrah! Happy Birthday to Voxelsoft.
This year has been a year
of firsts. Our first application, first screen-saver, first
game. I think we've done quite well with 4 releases this year
and I hope that the 'firsts' will continue through the second year.
I have little to say about our financial position: it's
been stable at zero for the entire year. I've paid a few website fees
out of my pocket but this year we're definetly going in a somewhat more
commercial direction. That'll start with a shareware release of iTank.
Happy Birthday to Voxelsoft :)
Time: 6pm 21 Jan 2001 GMT
Subject: eTank on another CD
I've given permission for eTank to be distributed on a free CD
with computers in Europe markets. This means 5,000 copies will
be distributed. Nice one!
Time: 9am 14 Jan 2001 GMT
Subject: iTank Supports 16/24/32 bit Graphics
It took 4 hours of non-stop work to get 16 bit support, so I
hope all those people with older graphics cards will appreciate
this :)
Also the supported resolutions will be
640x480, 800x600 and 1024x768
these can be set as fullscreen only.
Time: 6pm 12 Jan 2001 GMT
Subject: iTank's Joystick Support
I was overjoyed (hint, hint!) when at last those last few
pieces of the (not so joyful) joystick puzzle fell into
place. iTank now supports all known DirectX compatible
joystick devices! Although we are still not certain of
exactly how this will be applied I can guarantee that it
will be :) I hope many people will enjoy (ho, ho!) this new
feature!
Time: 6pm 8 Jan 2001 GMT
Subject: iTank Progress
We've been working hard over the past few days to clear up
all the problems with the current version of iTank. The target
is to get iTank working well on all known computer systems.
It now seems that most of these problems have been addressed,
there are only a few more remaining.
Time: 8pm 7 Jan 2001 GMT
Subject: New Member
Welcome to Voxelsoft and thanks for the art and testing!
Our artists are slowly gaining in numbers. But unfortunately
a programmer has just left.
Time: 7pm 4 Jan 2001 GMT
Subject: Game24 Deadline is Dead
Due to a lack of time and an arm injury Jason received recently,
Project Game24 has been severely delayed and is only about 1/4
finished despide the expired deadline. I've postponed the deadline
for a month. This was not entirely my fault, but sorry anyway :)
Time: 6pm 4 Jan 2001 GMT
Subject: New Member
Ok! We have another beta tester on the team. Mind you
they don't do any development work but they sure contribute
a lot towards increasing the quality and compatibility of our
software.
These posts are regularly updated...
