Poing! PC version 1.0.1c features a few small aesthetic fixes but, far more importantly than that, also comes with 2 new levelsets (that’s a whole 16 new levels) contributed by Poing fans around the world.

You can get the goodies from the Poing! PC homepage. My most sincere apologies for the delay – happy Poinging!

We’re talking about the Poing! PC community level pack, of course. I won’t harp on about the why of it, but you’ve probably noticed that it wasn’t released last weekend as I said it would be. This is, of course, entirely unacceptable. As some minor compensation, here’s a third and final peek at a couple of the new levels that you’ll be able to play through (thanks to Mauft for both of them):

When will it finally become available? Erm… “imminently”. To say more than that would be foolish, I think…

First of all, if you didn’t get sucked up in the miniature hype tornado that appeared around Mythos before it sadly disappeared off the face of the internet, let me explain a bit. It was a point-and-click action RPG in the vein of Diablo and Dungeon Siege, and it had a ton of potential. Unfortunately, Flagship Studios – its ill-fated developer – went bust early last summer, taking Mythos with it. But in a twist to the story, it turns out that virtually all of Flagship’s development team has been signed up into a new software house called Runic Games. What are they working on? Well, it’s this little ol’ thing called Torchlight…

Now, with Diablo III well and truly in development, only a serious betting man would suggest that Torchlight will be king of the “click ‘n’ kill” hill, but one thing that’s definitely in its favour is that the initial release will be made later this year – that’s way before we’ll get to bash on some demons in Sanctuary. Also, you’ll see that I said “initial release” – at first, Runic intend to debut the game in single player mode, with an MMO multiplayer aspect coming around a year later. They also claim to be shipping the first version with extensive modding tools that will let you create your own dungeons, skills and spells.

At a first glance the game looks to have a Dungeon Runners-esque cutesyness about it, but I don’t find that a huge barrier to get past. All I care about is variety. Content that doesn’t look like it’s all the same just with a different texture. Dungeons that are random enough that you can’t predict where the dead ends will be, or where the really nasty monsters are lurking. A game that is challenging yet doesn’t make you feel that you’re grinding toward an anticlimatic ending. So… yeah, the holy grail of ARPGs, I suppose

You can see for yourself some of the other screenshots over at Gamespot, then check a short teaser video at Perfect World. Finally, get involved with suggesting things or just asking questions over on the Runic Games forum.

Whatever the level of hype Torchlight ends up getting, I’ll be keeping my ear pressed tight to the ground on this one. You can never have too much shiny loot!

As you possibly noticed by the lack of the announcement, submissions for the Poing! PC community level pack are now closed. I’m moving the estimated release date back a week to somewhere around the first weekend in June. When it does arrive, though, you can look forward to at least two new levelsets with new graphics and a new “pastel” brickset to use in your own levels if you wish. I’m resisting the temptation to do a full visual makeover of the game because, honestly, with no access to the code in order to fix its long-standing bugs, that would be wasteful. It’s an old game and I think from this point it needs to grow old gracefully

Yeah. Any more work I do on a Poing-style game would be better spent on making a sequel… and sorry Poing fans, but no – that’s not a hint at a future project. Not for this year, at any rate!

I’d like to thank whoever was responsible for removing all of my uploaded Wordpress images; it was a nice test of my backup system. Fortunately, it did its job quite well Anyhow, as you can see, everything is back to normal. Happy days!

On to more important matters: I am aiming to release the Poing! PC community level pack by the end of the month, but regular readers will be painfully aware of my awful track record in accurately predicting release dates I honestly can’t remember what date I extended the submission deadline to, but I’ll be closing it for good next weekend (the 23rd or 24th, depending on how eager I feel). Are you ready for some serious slippage? I know I am…

So, anyhows, I have no idea why the in-post images (EDIT: make that any post or page image except the three above) aren’t loading up at the moment. I’m going to hope that the problem goes away by itself, and will cross my fingers that these wonderful teasers are visible to you all… if not, I will investigate using my trusty sledgehammer at some point tomorrow. Bah.

Presenting the first (and possibly the last) screenshot of: EightyForty, an oldschool DOS-ish screen prototyper! Boring, nerdy and geeky, yes? Hell no! This is the cutting edge, I tell ya…

This came as a direct result of finding out how to do single-buffered graphics in BlitzMax, which isn’t as clearly documented as it should be. As it happens, such a graphics system isn’t really utilised fully in this particular app – but for a future Blitz Roguelike engine it certainly would be I must shout a big “thank you!” to Mauft for suggesting the breakthrough that got it up and running.

In other news, work is edging forward on a super-secret collaborative project that I can’t say anything about. Yet. If and when there’s anything juicy to tell you (that my good coding partner is happy for me to let slip!), you’ll almost surely be among the first to know

I said I’d post some more teasers of the new Poing! PC community levels over the weekend. I failed. Miserably.

Sorry folks. You deserve better! I have slapped myself on the wrist and will remedy this by posting some teasers later in the week.

Pleasantly, as I’ve been able to get a huge amount done over the past few days, I’m happy to announce that Dalyn’s Quill is now available for you to download! This means absolutely nothing to most of you, of course, but then I do seem to specialise in… erm… “niche” software

Since the last Quill update I’ve obviously added and tidied a fair bit of stuff, but perhaps the most interesting addition is that of teleporter target visualisation. In other words, selecting a field with a teleporter in it will show you on the map where the target field is. If it’s not on the current level, you can click the “Show Target” button and it’ll automatically switch levels and flash a highlight around the target field. Handy, eh? No more counting grid squares to double-check coordinates!

Anyway, head on over to the shiny new Dalyn’s Quill project page for the full blurb, or if you’re impatient, get the Windows download right now. As always, any feedback or bug reports that you send in are very welcome. For now though I’ll tie this up by wishing you happy dungeoneering!

Hmm… and I guess that makes it time to decide on my next “big” project…

Specifically I wanted to ramble on about the gadgets I’ve stuffed into Dalyn’s Quill, and about some of the progress I’ve made in bending them to my inexorable will. Cue the obligatory work-in-progress screenshot:

As you can see I redesigned the toolbar (mostly because I had to create one last item on it – namely, the area toggling tool) and spruced it up with a gradient background. It still looks a bit too disconnected from the overall look and feel, but I’m not going to spend any more time on that until more important stuff is finished first. I also figured out how I can deal with mouse events a bit less hackishly, and happily I’ve managed to replicate the old mousewheel behaviour again. Yay! I knew there was a way

Fields can be selected in order to fiddle with any “objects” (teleporters or chutes) that might be in them – my next job is to get the three wise monkeys… errhm, sorry, the three command buttons to do their jobs properly. Should be relatively straightforward, yet for some reason, few things ever are. Ach, well. I’ll just keep pressing on!