A public beta of Kyodai 11.55 should be ready for tomorrow. It will, hopefully, provide the first "real" version of Kyodai that works with Voodoo cards. These last days, I spent a lot of time fixing bugs on this support. I had to make a lot of modifications for this to work, but now it seems to work okay. If you have a Voodoo 2 card, get ready for tomorrow...

Another good news ! The latest build of Kyodai now works on Voodoo and Voodoo 2 cards !! I just played (and won ) a game of Solitaire on my Diamond Monster 3D II (a Voodoo 2) at 60 fps. I'm still having some problems with the interface, but hopefully this will be a thing from the past when the new version will be introduced. I've got a lot more to say about Kyodai, but I don't have time for this now... Bye !

Hi ! Another good day today, as I received my favorite movie (from Martin Scorsese) on DVD. It was a pleasure to finally discover it in widescreen ! I also finally watched my girlfriend's own favorite movie, "Les Enfants du Paradis", which is one of the most impressive movies ever in terms of writing. Magnificent, but truly dark.  In the Kyodai world, well, I've replaced the Games poll with another poll about which version of Kyodai you prefer. Just to see. Sorry for insisting !

Good news overall (the only bad news being about my best friend who doesn't seem to understand me anymore these days, *sob* !!). The first good news is that I took my first REAL day off since last year. Today I went to Paris and had dinner at an Asian restaurant with my girlfriend's family. It was the first time I met members of her family and I think they liked me. Then we came out of the restaurant and I took my girlfriend on a walk through Paris. We started from the Arc de Triomphe, passed through the whole Champs Elysees avenue, crossed the Seine and walked till we saw the Place de la Concorde (and its famous Obelisque de Louxor), then we crossed the Seine again and visited the Jardin des Tuileries till the Louvres museum. Then we took the subway back to the train station and got back home. I'm completely exhausted (plus, I'd slept for only 4 hours before we left this morning), but I'm now back and running.  The other good news is about Kyodai. I got some *cool* ideas about optimization, and managed to accelerate the main games by about twenty percent ! You hear it. I had about 102 fps in the Mahjongg Solitaire (with all options enabled except music), and now I have about 124 fps ! And if I disable all options, I get about 160 fps. Now, even the software mode can be considered as an option to play ! Isn't that great ? I don't know, though, when I'll release that new version. This month, for sure. But I don't know when. Surprise, surprise !

Argh ! Three updates in a row. This time I was warned about some crash problems in fullscreen mode. As always : I don't play in fullscreen mode. So I couldn't know. It took me about ten hours of work to figure out that the problem was not caused by my own programming but by external problems I had to find a fix for. Well, I really hope it'll be the last update before a couple of weeks, because I'm completely exhausted now (plus, I hate spending hours just to upload files with my 56kbps modem). This version is called 11.42x, and the only changes concern the fullscreen problems. So, if you don't play in fullscreen, you can freely use a prior version. Also, if you find a bug in it, please make sure you read the docs carefully before you send me a report. And make the report detailed, because out of the 5 e-mails reporting the fullscreen mode, no one even mentioned that it was about the fullscreen mode...  Apart from that, I've changed the mirrors. I've put back Download.net (which seems to be back from lethargia ?) and removed 3Dfiles.com, whose "webmasters" insulted me because, out of the 3 links I had to their site, I dared remove the automatic advertisement from one of them. They told me they'd never post a Kyodai update again on their site. I said what about your readers ? They told me they didn't care, they just do that job for the big money. Now that's a site I'll be sure not to visit again in my life...  PS : if you don't want to download the whole package again, here's a patch (677kb) that will upgrade your Kyodai 11.42 or 11.42a version to 11.42x...

Hi ! I've just uploaded an update to Kyodai. This is version 11.42a, which fixes two minor problems found in v11.42, and adds the ability to remove the Kyo.ini file without having to use the Explorer (useful if you're having trouble with Kyodai). That's it, bye !

Hello. As you may have seen on the main page, version 11.42 is out. I hope you'll like it. It fixes a lot of the small problems introduced while switching to the DirectX engines. It also brings back the 2D and 3D animations in Rivers, Clicks and Slider. Plus, it has the help files translated to French, and a new tileset as well as a new background ... What are you waiting for ?  If you're waiting for the Original Soundtrack, well, it's not going to be on sale before next month at least. Sorry about that (if you want to complain, do it to Miguel, not to me ! )... Oh, yes, the polls. I've removed two of them. The result was that 93-94% of you seem to appreciate the new design. I'm glad to hear that ! Also, the 2D engine poll seems to indicate that you prefer the new DirectX engine. That's why I'm trying to make sure it's more and more stable. I'm sorry for the lack of stability in 32-bit color mode, but it doesn't seem to be my fault. And finally, the "bonus" poll shows that you all prefer the Mahjongg Solitaire game (which seems obvious, since Kyodai is advertised as a Mahjongg Solitaire game), followed by Clicks and Rivers, then Hashira, Slider and Memory. Funny fact : it's exactly my preference order !  Well, I think that's all for tonight. I hope you'll enjoy the new version !

I've changed the site design even more... This time I've decided to remove the frames (I hate that anyway). I replaced them with a double column on each page. I just love that new style ! Unfortunately, after several tests, I realized it doesn't work correctly on Netscape browsers at a resolution of 640x480. If you're using this combination, my advice would be to switch to 800x600 or use Internet Explorer. Anyway, Kyodai itself doesn't look very good at 640x480, so I guess most of my users are at least in 800x600. Aren't you ?  Also, I forgot to tell you something yesterday. Miguel Samiez, my composer and friend, came to see me last thursday, and he brought me the long-awaited Soundtrack CD of Kyodai Mahjongg ! The cover is beautiful and the music, well, you know the music and what I think about it... Miguel is moving to Switzerland to get married to his girlfriend Marielle, but hopefully it won't slow down the process of putting the CDs for sale online. Oh, and I got my name three times on the CD Twice as "co-produced by Rene-Gilles Deberdt", and once as "Thanks to Naoki Haga". Eheh. I like that !  PS : I've added two new polls on the main page, and updated the OST page with the quasi-final version of the CD cover (I don't have a scanner so I can't send you the final version, and Miguel is busy moving to Switzerland)

For those of you who are eager to see the next version of Kyodai, here's a first Beta version available. You'll need to install Kyodai 11.25 before unzipping the Kyo1133.exe file into the Kyodai directory. This is only for experienced users, as always. Your opinion about this beta is welcome, but don't forget it's a beta. As for the patch previously posted, the main changes and fixes are listed in the readme.txt file. That's all folks !

Hi there ! What do you think of the new website's design ? I felt it needed to be changed a bit, and I'm quite satisfied with the results. This is, by the way, the first time ever in my life I adopt a "dark text on bright background" layout instead of the opposite. Oh, by the way, I made sure the site looks correct on both Internet Explorer and Netscape, but it looks definitely better with Internet Explorer, which has a more complete implementation of CSS.  Sorry for the lack of updates. I've been working hard on Kyodai these last 10 days, fixing bugs and adding new features (as always ?)... I received a Voodoo2 card and had to admit Kyodai didn't work on Voodoo1 and Voodoo2 cards. The only version that ever worked on these machines is Kyodai 11.00 Beta 1. This is because the library I'm using (DelphiX) is incompatible with video cards that don't support windowed rendering. I don't really have time to fix the problem in the DelphiX library myself, so Voodoo1 and Voodoo2 owners will have to do with the 2D version -- or the software version of the 3D engine.  I think that's all for now. As for the rest, well, wait for the next version to discover it... Bye !