The flea invasion is back. Or was back. I'm not sure. My girlfriend and I struggled for three days to clean the house completely and use several foggers everywhere. Foggers are the only things that seem to work with fleas, from my experience (it's what allowed us to exterminate them last year), so we jumped immediately to these. Instead of 50 flea pimples I had only 4, and hopefully there won't be anymore... But I'm still quite scared because these things have a tendency to come back a couple of weeks later and then you have to do everything again from scratch. This year, I have no idea why and how the fleas came in -- we never let our cat go outside (poor cat !)...  Oh, and yes, before that, we spent the week-end in Paris and went to a Goran Bregovic concert. It was magical. Maybe you know him, he scored three of Emir Kusturica's movies, including his masterpiece, Underground (one of my all-time favorites).  And if you don't care about my personal life, I'm still working on Kyodai, yes. I spent a lot of time studying texture format manipulation techniques, and finally figured out a way to fix the "invisible scores" bug. I still have to fine-tune a few things, and I'll probably have a new version ready for download later this month. See ya !

I think pretty much everything is working now... I've changed the "How to register" page to reflect the changes made to the internal help file of Kyodai Mahjongg. Hopefully the transition will be completely smooth. Phew... I'd rather work on the game itself than on the registration process, don't you agree ?

Very funny... The day after I released the new version, bang, GetSoftware announces they're closing their doors. I was planning to take a break this week-end, but instead I spent it modifying all of the site's and the game's files to remove links to GetSoftware and add new links. Of course I also had to setup an account at another company. I chose Kagi.com after reviewing several other places. Now the Kyodai order link is http://order.kagi.com/?8XJ (a simpler URL indeed), and you can download Kyodai Mahjongg 17.24, which has updated help files. Hopefully no one will be too confused in the transition. Sorry again about this.

• [Language] Updated translations : Dutch (remade from scratch), Ukrainian.
• [Fix] GetSoftware closed their doors, so I updated Kyodai Mahjongg to replace the order links with a link to Kyodai.com's order page.

As promised yesterday, I mixed my newer code, my v17.00 code and some of my old v16.42 code. Now I'm sure the scores can be seen on all configurations. So here's the new version, Kyodai Mahjongg 17.21, which has an additional option in the "Video Card Compatibility" section, which you can enable if you don't see the scores -- and then you'll see them... This new versions does have, of course, a few new features, such as a beautiful new default background. And, and... An unexpected and long-awaited fix to the slowness problem under Windows 2000 when enabling music. I just couldn't believe it was not completely the SB Live drivers' fault. Well, at least I managed to find what they were doing wrong with my game. Now it works great. Have fun !

• [Language] Updated translations : Slovenian, Romanian, Hungarian.
• [Background] New default background : "Classic", by Christopher R. Bales and Marc Lesselberg.
• [Cool] Added a "Disable high-quality scores" option in the 3D > Video Card Compatibility menu. If you have any trouble with the scores not showing up in the Slider, Kumika and Hashira games, or if these games do not show up correctly, try to enable this option and restart Kyodai. This should fix your problem.
• [Fix] Fixed the infamous slowness problem that happened when Midi music was being played under Windows 2000 or XP.
• [Fix] Fixed conflicts with the Layout Name edit box by disabling numeric keypad-based board movements in the layout editor mode.
• [Fix] Fixed possible crashes when re-initializing 3D objects while in 2D mode.
• [Fix] Fixed the invisible scores for video cards that don't support 32-bit textures.

It's quite boring... Since last week, I've only been working on the problem with the scores not showing up on GeForce cards... Arghh... Worse than that : I actually installed back my GeForce2 MX on my machine, and it keeps crashing my sessions. Awful. I know I have a configuration that is not recommended for GeForce cards (Windows 2000 + Athlon Thunderbird + VIA chipset), but then again, why should my Radeon work perfectly on it... Bad NVidia, bad NVidia. And why is it that all texture creation combinations I tried work on the Radeon and not on the GeForce, including under Windows 98 ? I thought it was the Radeon that had bad drivers. But so far, I haven't been able to confirm that... So I'm waiting for a miracle called Radeon 8500. A card which is faster than the GeForce 3 and runs great on Windows 2000. In the meantime, I'm going back to my 17.02 code and I'll be adding an option to go back to the 16.42 code. Or something like that.

First of all, I've finally been able to fix the problem with the scores not being shown in the Small Tileset games on some older video cards that don't support 32-bit textures. Expect an update to Kyodai Mahjongg in the next few days.  Secondly, a user just told me that the Detonator XP drivers are not so good because they don't work correctly on some machines. Which gives me the opportunity to remind you that if you ever have a problem with Kyodai Mahjongg, generally, the first thing to do is to check your driver version -- and try to install a newer or older version to see if the problem is still there. Don't forget this !  (On the other hand, I just received an e-mail stating about performance jumping from 54 FPS to 124 FPS after installing the Detonator XP drivers... So, in any case, give it a try, if it doesn't work you just need to reinstall the older drivers )

Hello ! I've received a lot of e-mails from all of you (at least more than I expected !), and virtually all of them were about how I should keep the 3D engine. Most of the e-mails were very detailed so it's much warmer to me than a simple poll. So, yes, I won't be switching to 2D. I must admit, though, that yesterday I tried to implement some 2D inside the 3D core, and it was much harder than what I first expected. I made so many changes, improvements, bug fixes and other modifications to the 3D core that I can't just mix the 2D and 3D engines like I used to do before. On the other hand, it was a much welcome change because it took me much less time programming Kumika than if I had kept the 2D engine in the game.  For those of you who still have difficulties with the 3D engine though, I'm working on a "2D Package" for 2D users that will be lighter than the Full Package (3.5mb) and will contain only the files needed by the 2D edition of Kyodai Mahjongg. It will be available on my website, and I'm looking for FTP or HTTP space to host the file, preferably with a download counter. I don't think it would be downloaded more than 1000 times a month.  Another note of interest : I've tried the latest "Detonator XP" drivers from NVidia on my secondary computer's GeForce2 MX, and I didn't expect any performance improvement on Kyodai Mahjongg, but I was wrong. The configuration was : 1024x768x16, low-resolution textures, Windows 2000, and a Traditional solitaire game would work at an average of 160 FPS with drivers 12.41. After installing drivers 21.81 (XP), the performance jumped to an average of 170 FPS, which is not bad, especially considering drivers 12.xx were already quite faster than the old Detonator series. So, I'm recommending everyone who owns a GeForce video card (any type) to upgrade to the Detonator XP drivers available here at NVidia.com ! Now I just hope ATI will do the same kind of thing to their Windows 2000 drivers... I'd love to have some performance boost for my own configuration...

I won't be talking about the WTC tragedy here. I don't believe this website's purpose is to remind you of the problems we have in real life. Plus, I don't like the idea that a manichean world war is likely to happen. Can't we remember the lessons of the previous century ?  Well, so I've been spending my whole week watching the TV news about the events, and now I'm trying to forget all of it. And, ironically, when I think of Kyodai, I can only see problems in front of my eyes. In this last week, I've still received quite a lot of e-mails about 3D problems in the game. Since most people who have the game running flawlessly don't have any reason to send me a mail, I end up believing everyone has problems... Which is not true, of course. But sometimes I wonder if I just shouldn't drop 3D and continue Kyodai with a completely 2D interface that would emulate as faithfully as possible the "2D" option of the current 3D interface and retain most, if not all of its options. I don't want to post a poll about this... But your opinions are welcome. I guess a 2D interface would take me a few weeks to fine-tune, and then I'd be able to completely concentrate on the game itself, the new mini-games, the options, etc. As opposed to the current 3D interface that sometimes leaves me wondering whether I should improve the animations, the video card compatibility or simply work on new options. The fact is, I love the current 3D interface. But I don't know what my users think. I believe most of you prefer the 3D version as well, but, for example, would you continue downloading the new (and still free) upgrades if I were to switch to a completely 2D interface...?  Is it me, or am I always asking myself the same questions...? Anyway, if you have a couple of minutes... Please send me your opinion on the subject !