Darn. I totally lost my update streak. Sorry! :)

Anyways, I haven't done much in terms of the game. I've been having some crazy stuff going on in my life, along with one massive snow storm which kept me at school, along with losing internet connection for a whole day. Other stuff too. I did, however, receive an email from Johan withs lots of new pretty tiles. I'm quite excited. They look great!

I made some enhancements to the level editor; on suggestion from Johan. Things were a little unintuitive, so I fixed that up. Little fixes here and there. Been doing a little more refactoring too, and adding comments. Etc. Same old stuff, no really huge advancements. It's been a slow week, unfortunately.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone. Hope you're having fun! :)

As for recent updates on ZD, mostly more code refactoring. I haven't made any new levels in a while, but I've been going through and fixing/optimising the code. It's a long tedious project. I remember writing the base engine for the game in about a day and a half. Now, at this point in time, the code has grown much larger. There's just so much stuff to go through.

In all actuality, to tell you the truth, I didn't ever think this game would get this far (or this big). I thought it would just be a little project with a few little levels and that would be all. But now, this is turning out to be a full scale development project. It's coming together as a really great quality game. I'm not trying to put down my other games, I'm just saying they are not of the same quality (I was learning with them, anyways.) I'm quite proud of myself and I'm glad so many people have taken an interest in the site, and the game.

I'd just like to thank all of the viewers to the page, and those who've taken the time to play the game. Without you, there'd be pretty much nothing.

Another level added to the completed levels list. Yay! That's not the only good news though. I finally got in touch with Johan. Apparantly he's been busy with some real-life situations, but he hasn't stopped working on the tiles for ZD, which is great! The forest/cave/ice style tiles are pretty much all complete. There are a few things that need to be added to those, and then a new tile space style "set" will be made.

I was quite excited upon hearing the news! Talk about a motivation booster.

I spent a large portion of the day going through the ZD source code and refactoring it. I found, not really to my surprise at all, that I had functions and code in places they really shouldn't be. All of this was from testing. I would plop routines directly in another function, and then never put them in the appropriate place once I got them working. Well, that's not much of a problem anymore. I haven't had the time to go through all of the code, but I got through a bunch of it. It's a lot neater, and a lot better. Before I refactored what I did, there were several functions that served one main higher purpose all over the place. Now everything is pretty much centralized, which is really good. I had some music processing routines inside my logical loop, when they should be contained within the specific music source files. I also added boatloads of comments to everything. The source is lacking comments still, but I'm working on fixing that. There's not much explaining I need to do in terms of what the code means, as most of the engine is pretty straight forward. Nontheless, I'm trying to comment everything. So far my code looks a lot better, and is a lot more functional when stuff is where it's supposed to be instead of all over the place.

I also started work on another new level to be plopped into the second "set" of levels (the cave set), just like the level I made yesterday. This one isn't complete, though. It's just the beginnings of a level that could be good, or uber-hard. It's very difficult to tell how a level is going to turn out when you're just winging it.

A new level has been added to the list. This one is pretty difficult, so it will most likely make it to the next demo, or final release of the game. A random surge of motivation came up and slapped me in the face this morning. I've been cracking at this level with whatever free time I had today, and I finally finished it. You may be thinking, a whole day just to make one level? Well, yeah. Making levels isn't that easy, especially when you're low on motivation. It's hard to make levels that are hard to beat. It really is. Anyways, a new level has been added. It's set to be in the second "set" of levels (the cave set) which means it only features regular block building/restrictions as well as teleports.

I'd like to thank everyone for an awesome first month of the year 2003. I've been getting a lot of hits, and I appreciate the fact that many of you are repeat visitors, checking back for news updates and whatever else you're looking for. Keep coming back, and I'll keep posting with what's new. I'd also like to thank all of you who are taking the time to send me emails. Whether it be for help with getting your games to work, to suggestions for ZD gameplay, or whatever else it is. Thanks for taking your own time to send me a message. It really means a lot to me, and I have replied to every single one of them. Keep sending, I enjoy reading them.

Also today, I was sifting through my games folder, looking at all of the old stuff I had programmed but never really finished. Every time I run one of those old games it brings back so many memories of the time spent cranking out an engine, or going nuts over a specific bug. It's a shame to see these unfinished games, and I hope to go back and complete them in one form or another. Even though they are in super engine-test only mode, I still enjoy playing them and seeing the coolness of the ideas I did, at one point, have for these games (even though they're not very evident in the demos). All the memories I get when playing old demos of my games sure feels good. Although nobody's ever played some of them, I still like I've accomplished much. Just some random thoughts.

I've compiled a quick little exclusive demo which features 10 normal levels, plus 3 random levels that don't quite fit in yet. But hold on, it's not for all of you! I'm sending it out to some people to test, and see what they think of the levels, and what needs fixing. Maybe in a few days, or weeks, I will have enough input in order to fix up all major problems with the levels, and compile an actual non-test-demo version of the game.

Stay tuned! :)