Whoops! The 2D and 3D art link below was going to the Particle Fire forum... It should be fixed now, and here's the correct link.

Since it's much easier to post a message than to edit and upload HTML (as well as being much more interactive, with the ability for YOU to throw in your own two-cents as well), we've started posting a lot more info and updates to our Message Board Forums lately. Click the MsgBoard button on the left to stop by and say hi!

Have a look at our new 2D and 3D Art Discussion Forum, which is moderated by Philippe. He'll be posting cool images, digital art creation tips and techniques, and other stuff. Drop by if you're the artistic type, or if you just want to see what Philippe creates when he's not working on Tread Marks (and a bit of what he makes for Tread Marks, too).

We've just added a Particle Fire Discussion Forum to our Message Boards. Go there if you want to suggest new features, or share your favorite Settings (and read about other people's favorites).

A new web site called "PlayMachine.net" has just been launched, which gives game players a classic video arcade experience on-line. You can purchase tokens electronically, and use them to play any of the games on the site. Your high scores are automatically uploaded to their server, so you can compete for the top honors. We've created a special version of DX-Ball 2 for PlayMachine.net with 100 never before seen levels. Let us know what you think!

New message board! We thought we'd take this opportunity to upgrade our message board to something much more user friendly and powerful. Go check out our new Ultimate Bulletin Board, which is now organized into forums for much easier navigation. You can register a user profile complete with signature, and you can attach icons to your posts and replies, among other things.

Our WWWBoard message board seems to have disappeared... Whoops. We'll try and fix it and/or set up a better message board system soon.

Sorry about the lack of updates lately! We've been working like crazy on Tread Marks and haven't had much time for anything else. If you played the first Public Test Release of Tread Marks, then you ain't seen nothing yet. :) We're up to at least 13 weapons now, with more on the way. Since the Test we've added a Heavy Plasma Gun, Rocket Grenades, Plasma Mines, Cruise Missiles, a hull-mounted GAU Gattling Gun, Tactical Nuclear Missiles, Matter Bombs, and the oh-so-spiffy High Energy Pulse Laser. The Nukes and Matter Bombs really make the Deformable Terrain show its colors, as they each blow out and deposit 100 meter wide by 20 meter deep (that's a football field, folks) craters and mountains, respectively, with suitably blistering explosions to go with them. Networking is progressing smoothly, and the next Test should be fully Internet playable with a decent modem connection. We've also added support for sgi's fast Software OpenGL rendering library, so we will have a software rendering fallback (if a lot slower and less pretty than the 3D Hardware version). The next Test should also include much more robust audio, with a bare-bones 2D audio fallback so nobody should be without sound anymore. We've also been cooking up some really spiffy maps, including a low-gravity Moon map and a low-friction Solid Ice race course. It shouldn't be this much fun to make games, should it? :)

Check out the Tread Marks page for a couple of new news bits.

If you're a Windows Programmer (or looking to start), this one's for you! Check out the Programming Page for some free source code straight from the heart of DX-Ball 2 and Particle Fire for handling 2D bitmap display under Windows.Oh, and if you'd like to encourage Philippe McNally to put up an Art and 3D Modeling page, why not drop him a line? :)