Some may have noticed that since the release of A7, Gamestudio support and distribution is not handled by Conitec but by another company, the oP group Germany GmbH.

Old timers may remember that Gamestudio was originally developed by oP group, and eventually sold to Conitec. In the 1990s, the oP group developed several small computer games, advertising games, TV games, and virtual exhibitions. Afterwards my job at Conitec became too time consuming, and the other oP group members had not much time either, so the oP group was put to sleep.

Now after ten years, oP group is starting with game development again. We are currently applying for a contract to develop a large scale MMOG for a certain organization. They have selected the A7 engine for this project. The main reason was the experience that they could set up a well working MMOG server for 350 users very quickly with A7 Pro, with only a few lines of script. However, the project will require some extensions to A7, like the PhysX plugin that’s currently developed by Chris3D, and a MySQL plugin.

Due to our knowledge of A7, we hope to have a good chance to win the development contract. We’ve already got the contract to prepare the project and hire the team of level designers.

Please cross your fingers that we’ll also get the final contract. Development would then start in September. The features implemented in A7 during the next year will become a little MMOG focused. But I guess this will also benefit the community.

Now, congratulations and all. But a MMO-Server in A7? Sounds ridiculous to me. Sure, a client for a MMO in A7/A6 is no problem… But a Server?

Well… let the professionals do their job. Anyway I’m crossing my fingers.

Maybe now I got some more time to write here, and make a new Code Snippet tutorial!

I have planned a new Podcast some day, that is likely to happen, thanks to my iPhone.

I would like to continue the NerdTV series if I ever get to it.

Oh, yes. The German Federal Cabinet passed and signed the law for internet censorship. Germany is turning into the next China, hooray!

Today, the German federal cabinet passed a new law to filter websites based on a secret list compiled by the Federal Criminal Police Office. The Federal Ministry of Family Affairs communicates the law as a remedy for the prevention of child pornography. While we strongly support any attempt to stop the abuse of humans and children in particular, we doubt that this is the real reason for the law.

For months, experts of all fields have impeached the facts and figures that were communicated by the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs as well as the technical implementation of the filtering process. We mistrust the planned non-transparent process, we regard it as ineffective and amateurish and we believe it is counterproductive and a possible threat to democracy.

Since illegal sites on a list must be known beforehand, we urge the government to shut those sites down and prosecute the operators of those sites.

In times of a nationwide election campaign, we regard political populism as highly inappropriate when it should be about the fight against the abuse of minors.

Who would have thought that all these Science-Fiction movies about a total-control-government would some day become true. It’s sad, very sad that Germany is turning more and more into a state of total control. It’s almost like China and Great Britain combined.

Shivers me, it really does.

There is a lot going on lately and unfortunately that thing is a lot of work. But some heads up: I’ll be done real soon. The deadline is for the end of this month and I will be finished by then so that I will have time again for lots and lots of 3DGS bussiness.

In the meantime a bit of updates on my current situation:
I haveba good income on this job, so I was finally able to upgrade my PC with some real good hardware (AMD Athlon64 X2, nVIDIA GeForce 9800GTX+) and as mentioned, also a new iPhone. A first gen iPhone that is, from eBay.

I have loyavof ideas for Portico which I have written down so I won’t forget them any time soon. Most of the important systems are finished, so I can now finally concentrate on the level design and the dialogs. Rest assured that portico WILL release. Even if I find myself unable to, I will release it as open source.

So, that’s it for now. (damn there’s a hot girl sitting right next to me(I am writing this on the bus on my iPhone)). I better stop now and concentrate on the task at hand.

EDIT: She went off at the next stop. Damn.

What the red button does all by his own in that new room and what it’s gonna do when you press it, you will find out the in the release of Portico.

See the Screens after the jump.

What I wanna say with that is, I tried to updgrade the blog from 2.6.2 to 2.7 and it kinda messed everything. I had to deactivate all the plugins and themes before I got to see anything but a blank page.

I hope Google picks this up in case someone else saw all those other Google results and still is wondering why his blog doesn’t work: DISABLE THE WP-STICKY PLUGIN, it causes a conflict, because the new WP version already has a built-in sticky function.

Now don’t take that as a “I don’t work on Portico anymore”. I do! Bust just not as my main occupation right now, too much going on in real life. But I will try to keep you posted!