In the past couple of weeks, a couple of colleagues said that I was the luckiest guy on the planet, because I was actually making a living writing computer games --I'm "there". Of course, when you're inside the fish-tank, you don't realize you're a fish, so I've gotta learn to appreciate my situation. I'm gonna spend a little more time in research of interesting technologies and a little less time worrying about how to ship my next product now that the existing product's done.
In short, I'm gonna start putting a little more "R" in my "R&D".
On the development side, the help files are done. Fixed a few bugs. I'm officially up to beta 3, but I haven't encountered anything really significant yet. Mostly just little tweaks and typos. I added default MIDI soundtracks to the arcade games, and they sound quite good. I tried adding MIDI to the board and puzzle games, but I found it to be distracting. You can add MIDI if you want, but it's off by default.
As a funny aside, I got an email from "The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences". They invited me to help them vote for the computing equivalent of the Oscars, presumably because I am a visionary at the top of the field. I told 'em to go ahead and send me their info. Turns out that to become a voting member, I've gotta pay them $95 per year for the privilege. Rather reminded me of my senior year of high school when I, a B student with no extracurricular activities, was invited to be printed in "Who's Who in American High Schools" for $50 :)
