News on SDE:

Parts of it work. I think I'll upload an early version of it so you guys can see what it's going to look like. If you see any bugs or anything (crashes, not missing features) please tell me. I've got some design issues to work out, but other than that it's going good. Except when I'm playing Seiken Densetsu 3. Man, that game is fuuuunnnn...

FLIC:

I wrote a FLIC player for Win32, which proves I could write it again for use in Sphere. That's a good thing. I've had many requests for .avi support. The problem is, .avi isn't just one format. It requires installed codecs to even show anything. FLIC is a good alternative. Animation Shop 2 (which you can get with the Paint Shop Pro 6 beta, available at www.jasc.com) converts .avi files to FLIC files. It also does all sorts of nifty effects.

If you want to compile the FLIC player, download the updated common sources.

In two weeks I'm going to college. My last day at Vermeer for the summer is next Monday. I'm going to spend the next day packing and Wednesday moving in. Then I'll have a week to "fit in" (yeah right, I'll just program). College may or may not take a lot of my time. I was hoping to have Sphere done before the end of summer, but all you software developers know how that goes. I just want to see at least one game created with Sphere.

Multitudes of people have asked for Sphere to be a Zelda/SoM style engine. At first, I didn't want to do that. Action-based engines are just too hard to design and implement. However, I'm going to look into it. Drop me a line and put in your vote.

I think that's all for now...