Firstly, sorry for the lack of updates for so long. Life has been a little hectic lately, but things are returning to normal for me. I thought it would be better not to update if I don't have anything to say. I've always been one who would rather put my money where my mouth is. And with this in mind...

I've finally hammered out a visual concept for the RA271, which we wrote up quite a while ago. This whole thing took me about a day to design and paint, and a day adding some things and messing around with different configurations and technical ideas and colour schemes. I posted it to the Gallery, perhaps prematurely. Let me know if it's a little dark or whatever. I'm using quite a high contrast hdtv flatpanel for my desktop monitor these days. This was a future cost saving measure- but it's a little on the bright side, so I'm trying to harmonize my video settings to what people with normal monitors see.|

The write up for the RA271 is available on the wiki, here.

I've noticed that there hasn't been a lot of activity on the website in a while, and I've been feeling a little guilty about it. To tell the truth, though, this is because that this phase of planning is over, and for now we are simply working through our tasks until we get to a point at which we need to start planning again. Both Alan and I are learning as we go, so I expect the work flow to start accellerating, and there will be much more to talk about as we start to accumulate a volume of work. 2080 has changed quite a bit since it was first presented in Irrlicht. The game concept is much more complicated, but I wish you to know that throughout this entire time, we've been making steady progress. If you would like to speed up this process, there are many tasks available to you

Otherwise, sit tight. Progress is being made every day!

Hello all

We have a new team member joining the project. He will be working on the programming side of things, but as with the rest of the team, may well become involved in other areas as we work. Initially, this will be working on the alpha tech demo of the tactical section, which we will be working on over the summer. Welcome to the team Samur

I've mocked up a model for the Modular Aerial Vehicle and uploaded some renders of the WIP to the gallery. This is a concept that was thought up by Sockmonkey. The original thread is available to you if you click here, here, or here.

It is intended to be a companion unit to the Modular Mars Vehicle rover. The MAV and the MMV are intended to share some cargo modules to increase the versitility of the martian manufacturing industry. For instance, between the MMV and the MAV, the manufacturer would only have to tool up one factory to churn out troop carrier modules. The troop modules could then be conveyed to any destination by land or air, and any MMV or MAV would be able to accept any troop carrier module. The modules may also be transferred from one vehicle to another in the field. Given the increasingly modular nature of today's military hardware, I think that this concept is quite an astute extension of current trends.

In the game it will play an important part in strategic logistics and may make an appearance in the tactical game as a prop. Check it out and tell us what you think!

Wellity, wellity, wellity... where do I begin?

Well, my excruciatingly (decade) long fight with the local automobile insurance monopoly ended in a resounding victory last week-ish. It was a long, hard fight- and when it's all said and done, no, it was not worth it. However, I have a lot more personal resources now, and I have a huuuuge task-master off of my back. I'm much more free to devote my spare time to this project.

Also, I noticed that diluting my effort between a number of projects is kind of stupid, especially when you consider that I co-created (for lack of a better word) this project (helping Tyn to build on HIS *original* game / back-story / universe concept). The fact that the other project that I was working on has many artists *AND* an art director gently hints at the fact that they don't need me. Remakes of games can ride on the popularity of their progenitors in order to get fresh faces on the development roster anyways. All we have here is what we have actually made. Better get makin' stuff!

Accordingly, I quickly slapped together a 3d proof-of-concept for the Frontiersman Mars Modular Vehicle. I think that the results turned out sweet. Sweeter still, is that it took only a couple of hours. My skills are growing by the second. I'll put a pic in the galleries under 'renders'.

Work on the Spaceman continues...

The modelling is all but done. The UVW's are set. The texturing is coming along just ducky. I'm kind of an amatuer painter, so most of it looks a little bit cheesy, but I think the ensemble looks good. I'll vary the skin colour on the face a little bit more, but I think that that part is all but done. I think it's looks quite realistic, which is what I was going for. Of course, there will be other faces for the troops. This one will have to do on its own in the meantime, however. There is much content to finish after this Spaceman is finished! For now, there are a couple of renders available in the gallery, Render's Section.

http://www3.telus.net/web_project/2080/closeup.jpg

Along the same lines, Tyn and I have been working with a Max plugin for Ogre called oFusion. Trust me, this thing is the cat's ass. It's in its beta stage, and there are some issues to work out, but it works and it's amazing. You can find it here.

Fidel_ has been experimenting with normal maps and environmental concepts. Like his other work, they are pretty damn cool. Rather than just rendering off a bunch of wall segments, we'll let you discover his work closer to the release of the tactical demo.

The gods of the internet obviously hate me something chronic. My webprovider decided that my domain registration has expired. Quite an achievement since we renewed it just before Christmas. Oh dear lord.

Well, we got them to sort it sharpish and now we are back and can resume our spamfree reign on the world of amateur game development, with a healthy dose of world domination. If a JCB through my connection can't stop me then an incompetant webprovider certainly isn't going to

Well, I'll be damned if those spammers haven't been sending me and P1 crazy over the last month. P1 bravely navigated the high seas in a gallant effort to fight the tide but alas, they never stop. So, I've taken some action.

Sinbad, owner and lead dev of the Ogre graphics engine, wrote a small script a while back for their Wiki to get the usernames and passwords from the forums database. I've used this script on our wiki and it's all up and running. Just use your current username and password if you want to edit, if you haven't already got an account then mearly signing up for the website will instantly give you access to the wiki. You can also no longer edit unless logged in. I've used the script to try and make this less annoying for users, hopefully it should be a smooth process that allows everyone who wishes to edit the wiki without handing it over to dubious advertising companies.

Any user found vandalising the wiki can and will now be banned from the website and the wiki permanantly, unless they can give me a damn good reason why they did it. If it turns out we actually have some pathetic people signing up massive amounts of accounts to spam our wiki manually, then I'll switch the registration system to manual approval by me. I hope it won't come to that.

Meanwhile, enjoy the now spambot free wiki in all it's glory. Oh, and send your deciphering of this news message title on a postcard to the usual address.

Don't I have a lovely singing voice?

Fret ye not. We have not been hacked- at least not in any significant way. I suppose that it is always possible that my BRAIN has been hacked. It may even be likely that I am actually in a far away place, being fed fed sensory information in such a way that makes me think that I'm writing these messages. In the absense of evidence to the contrary, it would not be possible to refute such a postulation. To the contrary, in a stance slightly weaker than Dr. Samuel Johnson's on idealism, I refute it thus: *knocks on wood*

Is it sad that I take a certain pride in making jokes that noone will get?

We've upgraded some software, repaired some broken modules (and probably broke new ones), upgraded security, so on and so forth, on both the wiki and the php. The good news is, the galleries and such work. The bad news is, our site is now ugly and generic. So, bear with us while we get our respective and collective shit together.

Cheers to upgraded software, jeers to default freaking portal skins.

I have an unfortunate announcement to make.

Due to the increasing and senseless abuse of our mechanisms for user-generated media (forums/wiki), we are tightening up the permissions for most forums. We will now require you to register in order to contribute your thoughts. I am just getting annoyed with moderating online merchants of drugs and pornography.

As of now, there are no forums available for anonymous guests to post on. This may change in the near future, though, as I have sort of acted unilaterally. If Tyn talks me out of the clock tower, we'll update you as to which forums we'll grant guest access to. In the meantime, if you wish to make any comment at all, or have a question or concern, feel free to register to the site. It allows you to see all kinds of graphics that you can't see as a guest. It's well worth it, I think.

This is a small development forum for the development of some game that we're piecing together in our garage. Whoever programmed these bots was smart enough to make them post messages, but way too stupid to figure out where would be a good place to put these ridiculous ads.

Oh, and in this vain, I would like to welcome Zombie and mp3 as our first members to be streamlined- slotted, really- into our 'special' user group. Have fun in there, boys.

Oh, and the spaceman model geometry is done and its uvws are started. Expect some shots, etc, in the coming days.