Big thanks to Bryan for the memory benchmark. I had the same experience here. So I put up what I consider to be the unlikliest candidate for memory-leaks. The Voracity button just keeps recycling the same eight or so squares over and over, so there's not any dynamic allocation going on.

Not that it matters all that much. I added shiny aqua-style buttons to the ends of the daily puzzles, and I'm thinking of just using those for the headers rather than the animated buttons.



BaffleBees is basically done. I still want to have a shared saved volume control that encompasses all of the games (for you folks in cubicle-world). Only problem is that two of the games don't have any sound in 'em (ChessCards and ConFusebox). Having a volume control for a silent game is a mite confusing, so I'll probably add a couple of sounds to the quiet games first.

I started on Daily Puzzle Six. I had things narrowed down to three choices.

• A Ricochet Robot style random challenge based on the Duck Tiles bits.
• Sudoku
• A SameGame/Poppit style game

Since the Ricochet Robot Challenge is basically already a Duck Tiles Daily Puzzle and it'll be confusing given that I'm already getting ready to sell a Duck Tiles game with non-random puzzles. Sudoku would be easy but has already been done about a billion times.

So SameGame/Poppit it is. It's been done, but I'll make it a cute daily puzzle. Hopefully it'll get a following. I decided to go with exploding pies, because pies are the closest thing I have to religion. My original name was "Splodey Pie" because the Splodey Pie is an important piece of lore in the Hattan Household. Shelly, though, said that she prefers "Pop Pies". And I must admit that I'm leaning towards that because it's just so alliterative. But the pies themselves will be referred to as Splodey Pies in the game.

All hail the mighty Splodey Pie!



Talked a bit with my buddy Meyahoo about doing some music for the new UberBulldozer game. I'm completely out of my element because he's a genuine C-list semiprofessional musician. I've only done little one-day jobs with music guys before, and I worry that the music is just gonna be too goldurned professional for my little casual puzzle games.

Ron definitely fits in the "tantilizingly close to fame" category. He was the drummer for Ottoman Bigwigs, a TMBG-style band that was *almost* the opening act for The Presidents of the United States of America (remember them) for their big American tour. But the lead singer headed off for acting fame and is now on the cast of somesuch soap-opera, leaving 'em to abandon the knock of opportunity.

Last I heard, he was with a band that did all steel-drum covers of pop songs. And there's nothing better than a steel-drum cover of a pop song. That's just friggin' MADE for video game music.

I need to get him some guidelines today. Hopefully there'll be something to show off this week.

I'm excited yet nervous. You'd think that with this many games under my belt, I'd have the breadth of experience of the entire industry. I don't.