If you have been reading, you know this already, but since I skipped a month in news posts, I'll make sure you're all up to speed.

Etherium: Dark Storm is on hold for a while. Scorch Marks, our current project has been coming along nicely, and hopefully we can have it to the point where we can show some stuff soon.

For more information, feel free to drop by the IRC channel for our projects, #Etherium on irc.anynet.org.

Hey there. I'm back. Have been for a while, actually. Long time no see, though, eh?

Progress on that other game has been very good. We've even given it a name: Scorch Marks. On that note, my usual computer is down. "How is that related?" You may ask; be quiet and I'll tell you. It's been helpful and annoying at the same time, because while I can't do my coding very well, I've been able to stay in contact with quin and others. This has allowed us to get a lot of ideas, even figure out how I'll code them... now I have a lot of easy coding to do when I get my computer back online (which will be in the next few days).

UPDATE: I have gotten my Scorch Marks materials onto this computer (Linux), which is all the better so that I can work on Scorch Marks in a Linux environment and make tests and such. I've already made a lot of progress in a few areas.

This isn't to say that Etherium has been forgotten, we've made progress there too, and I have more plans, but you can expect to see more cool stuff from Scorch Marks, sooner.

August will be a quiet month, here at least. Which is to say, it will be a very very busy month for Entar and I. Entar'll be off on vacation, and I'll be looking for a new job and moving.

Good news: we've been making a lot of progress fleshing out the look and feel of Etherium.

Bad news: we figure it might get us the attention we need (read: crave) to get Etherium off the ground if we started out with a quick shootemup platformer. More on that from Entar later. This is bad news cause it means a delay in Etherium, sort of. We'll still be working on the design, but at least half the team will be coding on something else. Sad Panda.

If you could see my hands, you could see me holding up my fingers really close together, and the next sentence would make sense: We are -this- close to a playable alpha version of Etherium: Dark Storm. A bunch more behind-the-scenes work has taken place, and we're closing in. Then SOMEBODY (namely painQuin) decided to go on vacation so things have been left up to me. But then I guess I am the lead programmer.

A little in-front-of-the-scenes work has taken place too, though. We have some new textures and I have personally upgraded my terrain blending system so that the overlay textures blend too. Fun stuff. Feel free to check out the screenshots section to see the newest terrain blending and textures.

Yes, as the title suggests, we don't have anything new to show you, as the work done since the last update has been very "behind-the-scenes" again. However... have we got a lot to tell!

To begin, DrLabman has joined the Etherium team as a coder, and has already made some contributions. Everyone say hi.

We are very close to a semi-playable alpha version of Etherium. What does this mean? In an immediate sense, we developers will be able to hop online, walk around the map and see each other. From a more long-term standpoint, the more exciting development will begin soon. Now that the framework has been laid out, we can begin work on game code, media, etc. Things are looking good.

As always, you're all welcome to come leave comments on our forums and mod profile. Thanks for your support.