It's out ! Couldn't release it yesterday because of a severe headache (seriously !). But a good night fixed it all...

It's been tested and re-tested... Kyodai Online is definitely ready for a preliminary release ! I'm putting the last touches on the code and I'll probably release Kyodai 14.00 either today or tomorrow, if I have some free time !

Now the 2-player game is at last playable in all game types and, well, I think it rocks. There are two types of offline gaming (including the current one), and three types of online gaming, the third one being the funniest one... I expect to have a private beta-version available before this week-end. If you're interested in beta-testing the online gaming mode, if you're frequently online and want to play a couple of games against me, or if you have two computers at home and consider yourself a power user (so as to avoid having to explain the basics of TCP/IP networking, thanks), you can drop me an e-mail. I can't guarantee I'll reply, though, but you can give it a try. By the way, when I say "beta", I really mean beta. It works, but there are some stability problems and I've only tested the feature on a LAN for now. Plus, there might be some engine problems left, but that's also why I'm not releasing this private beta right now...  Additionally, here's an off-topic request. I'm looking for the very last episodes of Mad About You (season 7), especially the last episode, The Final Frontier. I know they've be shown in France on TF1 a few months ago, but I've missed them, and anyway the English version is much better. So, if you can send me a tape with the last episodes, I'll gladly send you back a free registered version of Kyodai. Anyone interested ? Please e-mail me ! Thanks !

Good news : now the game is actually playable in online two-player mode I just need to implement the game code now. I think it can be done in a few hours at most.

Hi ! I'm back from a two-day trip to Paris with my girlfriend, mostly to replenish our stock of mangas and Chinese food ... I'm still tired though, but I'm planning to be back on Kyodai tomorrow. The latest improvements finally make Kyodai playable on two different computers. That is, both users can select and remove tiles on the board, and the results can be seen on both computers at the same time. However there are still a lot of minor problems, but I think I may be able to release a playable (public or private) alpha version next week. For now, I'm tired-tired-tired

Latest news... I've been concentrating my work on the network programming. Got a lot of problems but fixed most of them... Now, technically, I manage to connect two computers together, get the same board, and show the opponent's mouse movements... Well I know, it's not a lot, but it's hard to do when you're just a beginner. Now, I need to write a routine that will help "smooth" the opponent's mouse movements, also I need (of course !) to transmit data when the user clicks on a tile, and the rest will be graphic programming. After I've finished this, I'll still need to beta-test a lot. Oh, by the way... Debugging a network application is a real nightmare. But I'm so glad it nearly works now...

Well, I'm pleasantly surprised by the results of the latest Poll... A majority of you (95% !) seems to agree with my choice of implementing a TCP/IP-only connection in Kyodai. I've been working hard on this today, and tried 4 different implementations, all of them with their advantages and drawbacks. I finally found one which has all the advantages I needed. I tested it with my second machine, and was able to connect it to my main machine and start a chat session in a temporary chat window. So it seems to be fine. Now I'll have to complete the network code before I can start working on the online version of the 2-player game... Phew... I hope to have something playable before the end of the week. Also, I've completed the re-design of my Game selector, based on Marc's suggestion. I added a Manga girl on the left of the screen to fill the free space, and it looks really fine - of course if you don't like the Manga girls, you probably won't appreciate, but is that so important as to complain ?

Hello. Here's a quick summary of yesterday's situation. I made a small mistake : the game selector's window doesn't have a width of 640 pixels, but 505 pixels. That's a big difference. So actually I can enlarge it to 640 pixels (a bit less to make it look better) and fit 4 screenshots in a row, for a total of 8 screenshots. Hey Marc, you got me on this one ! (He even sent me a complex screenshot of what it would look like if I did this !)  As for releasing v12.52 earlier, no one asked for it, so I'll probably take my time and the next version might be v14.00 (with the online option). There won't be a 13.xx version because there are probably Kyodai fans who're even more superstitious than I am  Finally, I've modified the "what do you absolutely want" poll because I've somehow changed my mind on DirectPlay. I thought it was a good library, but it's probably not. When I attempt to connect to my second PC (local network) via DPlay TCP/IP, it takes up to 10 seconds to get a list of active sessions. With another set of native components I have under the hand, it takes a few milliseconds just to get connected. Additionally, I don't see any reason to have more than one "session" running, since the online feature won't accept more than 2 players. If you can find any reason that make you really need DirectPlay and/or sessions, feel free to send me an e-mail. I'm sorry that I can't reply to every mail I receive, though. These last two months have been absolutely horrible when it comes to e-mail. Aren't you supposed to be on vacation ??

Hi ! For those who were wondering what's up with the new mini-game I've been working on, well, I forgot to tell you. I stopped developing it rather early (although most of the code is done and works well), because I've been unable (as stupid as it may seem) to figure out a way to put seven games (with their screenshot) inside the small 640x480 window that serves as the game selector. I don't want to enlarge the window and I'd really like to have all the screenshots at the same time on the screen... Anyway. Of course I could reduce them but I'm not sure about this. Any ideas ? The good news is that I'm now working on the online gaming option ! It will be exclusively for the current Two Players game for now. I intend, however, to add more playing modes and so on. Also, I've implemented the particle engine on Rivers, Clicks and Slider, and I've added the good ol' Background Cube mode from v10.21. I'm thinking of releasing this version (without the online gaming support) as v12.52 in a few days. I'm not sure yet, though. I expect to have a beta (or final) version of the online gaming part available by the end of the month, but I'm not sure if you want to wait for the new features. Again : any ideas ?  PS : I've added two more polls about the Online gaming. I wanted to add a third one about the game types you'd like to play (quick turns, time-limited turns, etc), but I'll try to implement them all. If I don't, I'll post a poll later.

I finally managed to compile Kyodai under Windows 2000... I'll skip the long story and just notify you that I've added a new stability poll, similar to the one in v12.00, but it now applies to v12.42 which is much more stable. Thanks for your participation ! (And please answer it even if you have no problems with stability, because it helps me see if it's actually improved or not !)