Well, I've decided that the next project won't have anything to do with DirectXTutorial.  For a while now, a group of us have been working on our own PC multiplayer game, and I've decided I'm going to finish it before I pick up another tutorial.

The game is called Etherwar (ether refering to space) and is a sort of combination between a multiplayer first-person shooter and a flight simulator.  It has all the properties of your typical flight simulator, with the additional feature of high-action combat.  So far playing it has been fun and addicting, even though the game is only half-constructed.  Unfortunately, the artwork is practically non-existant at this point, so I can't place any real screenshots.  They would only make you yawn.

Anyhow, I thought I would let you know about this and invite you to sign up for the beta test.  Before I can set up the servers for the game, I want to get an idea of how may people will play in the beta.  If you're interested, or merely curious, go ahead and sign up here.

I don't want to give an estimate of when the beta will be available, because I could be horribly wrong, so for now, it's definitely not coming this month.  It might come the next month.  It might take longer.  We'll see.  I promise if it takes too long I'll take a break from it and write more tutorials.

The Particle Engines Tutorial is now online!  This one is cool.  At the end you get to make 3D fire.  I'm going to throw on a few extra lessons which teach some of the effects you can make, such as explosions, waterfalls, smoke trails, etc.  It'll be cool.

I'm going to stop writing for a while and catch up on some of the emails I haven't read.  I can't possibly reply to all of them, but I promise you I will read all of them.

Next project to be announced soon.

So yes, I said the Particle Engine Tutorial would be online in May, and here it is, June 1st, with no promise kept.  But don't worry, I was only slightly delayed.  It should be online in the next couple of days.  I'm going for Tuesday.

Some people started asking me what tutorial was coming next, so I thought I would issue the answer broadly.  Particle engines won the vote, and multiplayer programming came in a close second.  I guess both are popular, so I'll have to get those out.

Recently I've been writing the Particle Engine tutorial, and I think it's coming along nicely.  I'm done with most of the lessons, and it should be ready sometime in May.

Okay, I'm up for another writing spree.  What do you want to read about?  Here's what I'm interested in writing about:

Pixel Shaders
Multiplayer Programming
Particle Engines
DirectX Audio

Email me your thoughts.

Let's just say that January is not my favorite month of the year.  It's sort of like Garfield and Mondays.  I don't know what it is exactly, but January just seems to go bad for me.  This one was particularly frustrating.  I had a few work and family emergecies happen all at once and my schedule quickly became overloaded.

But now it's February, which has been a sort of month of relief in the past few years.  Hopefully I won't have to worry about any of the above for a while.  My schedule is slightly more under control these days and I can focus back on the tutorial.  Call me superstitious, but I'll take what reassurance I can get. :P

I see I never replaced the message I put up over a month ago about how lesson 5 of the Advanced Effects Tutorial would be up "any day now".  Now it really should be up any day now.  I apologize for not getting it up as promised.

Also, while I didn't get a chance to answer very many of the emails you guys wrote me, I did read them all.  As soon as I get the over-delayed lesson online I'll start answering them.

Here's to a decent February!

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