Cool - I just had a very fun game session with some of the guys from the Unity forums. We were up to 8 players, and it was quite a lot of fun. Especially when there's 4 or more players. At the end, we even had some very cool "head to head" action sequences.

Thanks to ChromeFly, Moldorma, Soapy, Troff (who was that?), DannyL, JonCzeck, Drilly, Flynn (who was that?) for joining in!!!

One thing I've learned is that I can't keep the game server on the same machine as the Web and database server. Whenever someone access the Website, the game server pretty much goes down, and the game becomes unusable for a few moments. It took a little while to find out what the problem was - originally, we all just noticed "weird lag" happening, but when I monitored the processes on the server, I saw that the SQL server was going up when that happened. Well: It happened, when the SQL server started working...

So that means, I'll have to rent another server, which is not that cool, because that adds at least EUR 60,00 per month. I think I'll do that after the beta, i.e. when I really go online and charge for the game. Or maybe in the last part of the beta-phase, when I now I'll be going "official" within a month or so...

Aside from that, I received some very valuable feedback and start becoming addicted to my own game which I think is a good sign (I can control my addictions, so don't worry... besides: developing games is more addictive to me than anything else). Also, I've had a few more ideas for "little improvements" that'll make handling the game more convenient and fun...

And of course: I've found a few more bugs to be fixed...

Btw, I've released two improved V0.8s. First of all, I did still add graphics for the power-up HUDs. The power-up feature simple wasn't finished until I had that in place. Also, I did quite a bit of tweaking on the networking handling. It's "okay" now, but not really ideal.

So, I decided to go for a V0.85. That will include one additional level (with all the ideas I have for levels - that will be distributed to many levels in the final game), and a complete refactoring and redesign of the networking logic. I'll try to make V0.85 a "solid release" when it comes to networking...

I'll start that tomorrow... so I guess I really need to go to bed now :-)

Greetings from "the Grid" ;-)

Jashan Chittesh