Another year has passed by - on behalf of the team: Happy New Year! Further down this post, there's a little treat, an actual, recent ingame screenshot of the current version. First though, I've seen increasing activity on this website, more and more people are downloading the older versions of the map. This actually has me a bit worried, as I'm not sure how well those work - I wouldn't want to leave a bad impression! To all those people I say: Check back every once in a while and download the new map when it's out, it's going to be a world of difference compared to the previous ones. Another great way to keep track is to register at the forums. When the first beta is released, I'll be sending a mail through there, notifying all the members.

MaskedPoptart and I have been doing a tremendous amount of work on the map the past weeks. Bloody_T has even pitched in to improve on the models used. Holidays have made it hard to commit time, but we did get to a testable alpha version. This week I have tested this at a private LAN - and we had fun!

Theoretically, the map should have been about done. We were still tweaking and improving, but the basics are there. During the tests, a few issues came up that would be easily fixed - a wrong function of code here, a mistake in a tooltip there. Then, there was a bit of an anticlimax; some people disconnected from the game, others desynced (meaning they were still in the game, but the game had split up into two seperate games, where the players no longer actually played against eachother). There was that, as well as another major problem with the "armor system" I use to mimic the way armor worked in starcraft. Although this was very disappointing (as we hoped to release the first beta today) we did get right on it. MaskedPoptart has already fixed the disconnecting problem, and we haven't seen desyncs while testing later on. The downside is, we still have a few things to patch up before the map will be playable. That's the risk of this business, right?

Now, since I know people want to see screenshots (I've had several requests), I'm going to post one teaser screenshot, so everyone has something to look forward to. Without further ado: enjoy!