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. :)

Hi everyone! It has been a while since I've updated the progress of Ilxder. First off, I'm happy to say that the updates I've been working on are turning out pretty well. The recent updates I've been working on are as follows:

• Static shadows on buildings, architecture, objects, and mountains, allowing us to make the game feel more 3D.
  
• Character graphic updates - gradient colours on characters to make them feel more rounded and 3D. I've also added some shadows to them as well.
  
• Animated water (still trying to make its animation loop a bit smoother)
• Music tracks being imported to every map, giving the game a bit more of a feel of being alive. Note: most of the current tracks are public domain tracks as of now. Some may remain in the game, while other songs created by myself will be replacing some of them
• I'm about 15% finished with a debugged turn-based battle system
• I've added several more regions with different climates that I'm working on creating quests and characters for

Just for clarification, NO, we are not going to release another demo of Ilxder before the 1.0 release. I'm closer to the finish of the technical aspects of the game than I originally realized. Most of what remains in the game is the addition of the regions and quests, as well as dungeons. I'd like to possibly add an economics system at some point, but that isn't a priority, and I'll only add it if I decide that it's necessary. I suppose it depends on how I program the battle system. If you can use different items in battles, then I might end up making an economy system. Otherwise, I think it might wait until Ilxder 2. ;)

In other news, we're now on Google+, if you haven't seen the news article. Also, we've been working on an Ilxder Facebook page, located here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Ilxder-Series/155019711285064

Well, that's all for now. :)

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 !

Hey everyone! This being New Years Eve, I decided to write the New Years resolution for Joquan Games Studios for the year of 2012.

Well, reflecting back on our 2011 NY resolution, we haven't quite met all of our goals.

First off, we have decided to discontinue the use of Gamini Games and just use this site as our game portal. We're holding onto the rights and the name, but it's not being used for now.

Secondly, this goal we've definitely met with our project. ;)

The third goal was to get Dynamic Dimensions Software growing faster. Well, that really didn't work out well. Since our main focus was with our games, we weren't able to bring on any team members for DDS. But hey, at least we're offering FREE web customization and FREE .tk registration through us, which gains us points so we can improve our services. :)

And as for doubling our team size - that most CERTAINLY did not work out. ;) In fact, we've eliminated over half of our team due to a recently-enacted inactivity policy. It's down to 7 team members now. ;) But the nice thing is - those 7 team members are MUCH more active than ever before, and we're well-connected, allowing for our creativity to flourish. In that closely-knit community, it allows us to devise better plans for our games, and it doesn't leave all of the planning directly up to me, which is a good thing. ;) (With school, my job with SMFNew, and managing this project, it takes a lot of time ;) ) I would still like to bring on some other team members, but it's going to take a few games before people will realize that we're not so bad after all. ;)

---

Those aside, here's a few of our other goals for the New Year:

1. I'd like to have Ilxder 1 out this year, but I don't want to rush it. Zach is the new co-writer of the story, and he's possibly going to join on the development team, which will definitely speed things up.
2. We are working on a new project - possibly our largest project ever, and possibly the largest game of its type ever to be designed. As you know, we love to have the largest amount of player choice as possible within our games, and this game certainly would revolutionize that. And when I say "revolutionize", I mean it in the truest sense - it really would take things to a whole new level. The design document for this game is still being developed. (It's primarily going to be single-player, but for you multiplayer fans out there, we plan on putting a multiplayer duel mode into it that ties in with the game. ;) )
   
3. We'd like to put a few smaller games out there, specifically scrolling shooters or maybe even a FPS. We'd like to maybe even design a small first-person adventure game similar to the Myst games. However, because of the small size of our team, and the massive size of our one massive project, we might not be able to do this.
4. We'd like to change our support up, so we'll have a support ticket-type system that allows specialized support for our games. Although the support boards would remain for player-based support and aid, the ticket system would be used for major issues fixable only by us, or if you decide you'd prefer our support over other players' support.
   
5. The Voluntary QA team might be getting some special tools to help test our games. :)

Well, those are the primary ones, but we have other ones as well.

Have a good New Years, and thank you for another great year! :)

Well, I am being a hypocrite by posting this log entry (Read the previous log), but I couldn't hold back any longer! We are going to start the development of a new stealth-based game similar to the gameplay in the Thief series, but rather than being from the first-person perspective, it will be from third-person, similar to the Assassin's Creed franchise. I cannot reveal any story info, as of now, but I am going to say: I'm really exited about this game! Just keep your eyes out for any more clues hidden in our site or forums about this game!

Well, unfortunately, because of some issues I've had with my computers, I haven't had ANY time to work of Project Pheonix Demo Phase 3. :( I was originally hoping to have it out by Christmas. 25 days is not enough time to finish much of the work that I am doing on it.

This Christmas, I am going to run a competition. It will be a story competition. I can't release any more until I start it. Whoever wins, will have a permanent Gold Membership on our forums, and an honorary Christmas medal, called "Christmas Story...maker". (Clever, huh? :P )

If you have been on the forums recently, you probably have seen something about Tony's new project: Project Hawk. If you want to learn more about it, go to the news section on our forum.

Anyways, I will pretty busy during this month, as my birthday is only 4 days away, and I am always busy around December, so I wish you an early Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!