I'm still alive, but didn't produce anything last year. I started quite a few projects and also gave up on a few to, mostly from lack of time

I started to write a complete n tier system around PHP with loads of common code for producing new websites really easily and with loads of features. It took a bit long than I thought and so have put that on the back burner for now.

Started another game with Craig Marshall, a 2D scroller / shooter game but that didn't really get off the ground, we were both too busy.

I'm now learning about OpenGL and 3D games, I've create a window toolkit with windows, menus, buttons, checkboxes, dropdown lists etc, which is an upgraded version of that used in Bubble Train and uses OpenGL. I've also learnt how to build some very basic 3D models in Blender, which I'm working on loading into my next game.

So hopefully I will produce something this year, I'll keep you posted....

New website design, to add a bit of colour / style.

I've designed a new website for a local Exeuctive Car Hire firm www.avantgarde-executive.co.uk.

As part of the above website I'm in the process of redesigning my web components. To make them easier to use and to deploy, and as I finish them, I'll make them available for download under the GPL.

Bubble train has been ported to the RISC OS platform courtesy of Alan Buckley.

A linux source version is now available for connect 4.

Bubble train has been ported to the Amiga OS4 platform courtesy of Tony Aksnes. It has also been going great guns in the download stakes as well, reaching 32,000 downloads.

Dwarf Connect 4 has now been released

My website has now hit 100,000 hits over the last 4 months, Bubble train has also been downloaded over 16,000 times.

To help design the AI for dwarf crib, I'm doing a rewrite of connect 4. This will be a very basic interface with more of the detail being in the AI. At the moment I'm using simple heuristics, intending to add minimax trees to make a better opponent.

I've recently just finished the website for my wedding, more news later...

Bubble train has now been downloaded 12,000 times and it's still rising.

Bubble train tops 5000 downloads, and as a result I've had to upgrade my hosting package to cope. Nice....

A new comments section has been added to "The Wall" and "Bubble train" pages. So if you have any comments for these pages then please feel free.

Now I've finished the first release of bubble train, I'm now gunna start working on dwarf crib again. I've got another game in the memory banks which is a 3d karting game with multi-player etc. So as a stepping stone to that game I'm going to implement the interface using SDL and OpenGL. This will also make this a cross-platform game as well. So the next step is to learn how to use OpenGL. Give it a couple of weeks and you could be seeing the first demo.

Bubble train has now been released under the win32 platform. It's taken a while but at long last. The linux install is still being created.

It has been a while since the last post and after the dip over xmas and the overtime I'm doing at work, things have started to come along nicely. I've fixed all of the bugs found and working away tidying things up at the moment. I've still got to define all of the levels and a couple more themes, but the main coding is nearly finished except for the end animation when you complete the game.

I'm changing jobs next month and so I'm trying to get everything done before I leave. So if all things go to plan you should be able to download the first release by the beginning of Feb. Watch this space....

Craig has just changed job, and also taken down the main server so at the moment the source for bubble train isn't available on line any more. I'm looking at getting a copy of CVS on this server to take over the subversion server. I know that subversion is much nicer but can't install it on this server. I've also been a bit busy lately so development has started to slow again. But Hopefully it shouldn't take too long to get a bit of momentum up for the home straight.

The project is coming along nicely now, we have a full windowing system and basic controls like buttons, text boxes, list boxes etc. We also have included a couple more themes, sky, beach, space. Currently I'm working on the level editor so I can design the 50 levels I'd like to add. We've also added special bubbles like bombs, speed up-ers / down-ers

Finally we are starting to get somewhere, we are nearly at the same stage as the prototype was. But this time it looks very cool with all of the graphics. We still need to sort out which side of the carriage a bullet has hit so it gets inserted at the correct position. And sort out spiral tracks as well which is only working with a basic version and then we are at the same stage as the prototype.

There's still loads to do. Like getting all of the levels to load from files and all of the animations.

Progress with version 1 has been slow but steady. We've got a basic screen shot for the development theme. I'll upload it at some point. We got our development environment setup using the eclipse IDE and the c++ plug-in. So far we've got a nice font engine working. Which loads fonts up by parsing an image. So completely platform indepenent, including font alignment and everything. We are now starting to move onto more of the guts of the game, we're just having a few teething troubles with templates at the moment.

We've finished the prototype at long last. There's been a bit of a gap in getting it done though because I've been on a training course for the last week and been DIYing in the evenings so no spare time what so ever.

The features of the prototype:

• A moving train full of bubbles
• A working canon with a really big gun(because we are rubbish at it, can't aim for toffee)
• Removing of groups from the train
• Continuous paths including straight lines and arcs at the moment and a spiral part finished

I've designed two websites as listed above and this one of course so far and I'm currently looking for some more sites. I have another site to do for a charity which sponsors children out in Africa, but I haven't started that one yet still waiting for some more information.

The Bicester bowls club website I haven't touched in about a year so much of that is static content.

Hi everyone, I've been busy in the background trying to get a category based blog up and running. So I've been converting my website to use php instead of static html pages.

So there should be more frequent updates to the site. The main reason for the blog is to keep track of the process I'm making on all of the projects currently in progress.

The development of this project has slowed to a complete halt at the moment, bubble train is taking up all of my spare programming time. I've still got some ideas so all is not lost.

I'm currently at an in-between stage on the project. I've completed all of the basic game play. So you can play against a random computer player over a dos screen and it calculates all of the scores etc. I've also been looking at state engines to make the flow of the game dynamic and graphics designs to gain input from the screen.

This is the very first entry into my blog. Which is here just to keep a running dialog of the progress being make.

Bubble train is a twist on a very cool arcade game that I used to play about 5 years ago.

I'm developing it with Craig Marshall who sits just opposite me. We both wanted to get our teeth into a nice project so we thought we would team up and get going on bubble train.

A bit more about bubble train. The objective of the game is to stop the train of bubbles from reaching the end of the track. This is done by shooting bubble into the train and if three matching colours form a group then it is removed from the train. Very simple but very addictive.

We are working on a prototype in python at the moment and aim to develop the full version using c++ and SDL (Simple direct media layer). So hopefully the game should be fully portable.