Well, in response to having to push Ilxder back even further, I've decided to develop a minigame to help make the wait a little bit more bearable. This game is called Sci-Fi Mar-Bles (Pronounced "Sy-Fy Mar-Blayce").

It is going to be a crazy minigame, where the player can control their marble through a low-gravity environment. It's harder than it seems, as the player can only give side-to-side boosts, there's places where you have to rely on the bounce of the marble, there's going to be enemy marbles that force you to restart the mission, and for an added challenge - there's bonus points available by collecting the Energy Nexuses, but the player isn't forced to collect them.

I've had two goals with this game - create something different than most games, and to fix the mistakes that were made in Ancient Palace, such as the frustrating hand-eye coordination requirement, lack of sound, and unoriginal graphics. This game will include its own original graphics, music, and hopefully players will find that it's a tad less frustrating than Ancient Palace was with its hand-eye coordination requirement.

No, this game is not a futuristic copy of Ancient Palace - I assure you, it's a relatively different game. Though it's still kind of a puzzle game, it's not entirely a maze game, and your hand-eye coordination isn't extremely relative to winning this game. Timing still is key, however. It may be a low-gravity environment, but it still has gravity nonetheless, so you will need to rely on the marble's natural bounce qualities in some areas.

I've set up a new section on the community forum for early discussion of the game.

Note: any screenshots you see on our site of this game are just early phase photos, so anything could change.

Hello everyone,

I've decided that in order to provide a better, non-rushed game, that we're going to have to work longer on Ilxder 1. I've been having a bit of trouble with some of the technical aspects of the game, plus, I've decided that I want to add WAY more detail to the game world than ever before. Here's a list of things I want to add to the game:

• A relatively basic AI system so people will walk around a bit at random times
• A better menu system so the player will have options to choose from several different options when commencing in dialogue, and the response they receive will differ depending on what the player chooses
• More quests, ranging from random "acquire and gather"-styled quests to larger quests where people will ask you to complete a larger set of objectives, with a similar gameplay style to the main questline.
• Better lighting that will vary depending on the environment
• Fog in certain environments, and possibly even a simple static snowing animation for snowy environments
• More detailed dialogue with non-quest NPCs

All of this being said, I may end up releasing another demo, but I haven't decided this for sure yet.

In other news...

Spherical user Rhuan has offered to act as a "consulting" developer. He said he would be willing to help in certain programming aspects of Ilxder - hopefully this means I can speed up Ilxder's battle system's progress.

Also, I may be getting the brilliant composers, Brett Smith and Jacob Schmeltzer to write music for Ilxder. :) As much as I like some of the tracks by Deceased Superior Technician (the music group who wrote the public domain tracks I was using in the game as placeholder tracks), I think that having a soundtrack written by them would be awesome. :)

Hello everyone!

This is a different post from my usual posts. Though we really wish to remain neutral politically, this bill (Stop Online Piracy Act/Protect IP Act) would hurt EVERYONE who uses the internet. What it would do is make every website on the internet be censored, so if any content, or bits of content that are copyrighted that are posted on a website, the poster of the content would go to jail, then and there, without warning. In addition to this, it would ruin global freedom throughout the internet. Actually, scratch that, it would ruin the internet in general.

We are officially taking a stance against SOPA/PIPA. We are not going to stand idly while the United States government turns the internet into another one of their pawns. We join with our brothers and sisters across the internet to protest the ludicrous atrocities that the government of the United States is trying to pass. We only wish we had taken part in a protest against the NDAA 2012, which allows the US government to imprison US citizens suspected of "terrorist acts" indefinitely without a trial, regardless of whether or not they were on US soil - that bill has already been passed, and that's why we will be attempting to take our operation outside of the US in the near future.

Unlike many of our brethren across the internet, we are not blacking out our website completely. Instead, we're trying to make it as annoying as possible to use this site, by placing hyperlinked banners across the entire site; we believe this would be more effective, as, instead of people just leaving the site, they might accidentally click on one of the banners instead.

Please, join with us, and our brothers-in-arms to defeat SOPA! Sign the petition at http://americancensorship.org !

It's official. Ancient Palace 1.0 Beta has been released. We really hope you enjoy it, there was immense time and devotion put into it. :)

So far, the story is far from completed, and you can expect more to come in the next year or two. The only traps in the game are the bombs, which just send your character back to the beginning of the level. (Don't worry, it's more of an annoyance than a true trap, because you don't lose any point if you're hit.) In a near release, you will be able to use the Tome of Time Control to aid you in your journey. More traps such as spikes, flames, etc will eventually be included, as well as some enemies which will send you back to the beginning of the level if you are hit by them.

The reason it's open beta is because we realize that sometimes we won't be able to pick up every single error there is in our games.

Also, something else I forgot to mention in the last log: in demo 4, I hope to introduce a new graphic improvement called "Layers". It will allow the graphics to generally look better. It will also allow us to use transparent/partially transparent 2D tiles instead of creating new sprites for something that we need transparency on. :)

Now how about that? What game developer team releases two big releases only 5 days apart? ;)

"That's right! The long-awaited demo 3 of our main project has been released for download! It includes a cumulative bug fix, a new, completely reworked quest system, a whole new region, the workings of a new quest that will be vital in the main storyline (Quest story courtesy of Spencer, AKA "Game Pro"), some new graphics, a portal system that will allow you fast travel between cities with a portal room, and more!

Unfortunately, due to some large bugs, we have been forced to omit the battle system once again. We hope to be able to release it with Demo 4, along with an economics system, a menu system (in which you can actually select your own answer instead of using the forced one. It will also allow you to access your inventory, your quest log, etc), and possibly even player-owned houses, where you'll be able to store your equipment! We also hope to release a few new areas, and loads of more quests. Demo 4 will take a long time to complete, but it will be as close to a fully-working game we've ever had! Demo 4 may be the second to last demo we have. Once we design all of the targeted technology, we will only have to add more storyline, a few bug fixes, etc.

And yes, in case you're wondering, we have plans for a sequel to Pheonix. The sequel will take on a more dark edge to the whole game. You'll find out why at the end of the first game.

Anyways, go ahead, give it a try! Download it from our website! (http://www.joquanpro.info/downloads.html) Be sure to let us know what you think!"

------

That was taken from the official forum announcement. As you can see, we have big plans for the next few demos, and a sequel ALREADY?? Doesn't seem possible, but we're getting that close to being able to finish the game up. The thing that will take the longest will be actually designing all of the maps and things like that. It took me several months to finish the new area in demo 3, and it's not that much, other than a city. :P Anyways, I hope to be bringing on a few more members of our team to help out. Our Silverlight development has been postponed, unfortunately, due to lack of funds and team members. :( Ancient Palace is nearing its 1.0 beta release, I plan on working on a few more levels, working with the menu system a little, and then releasing it.

If you want to help the team out with our projects, feel free to do so. :) We have fun, even though we're all voluntary.

Anyways, thank you for all the support, and please enjoy demo 3, I put some serious hard work and time into it. :)