If you're seeing this page, your links are out of date. The TraderMissions site is now hosted at http://llynmir.net/tm/.

As you can see from the TODO above, I've finished most of the additional ships - all but one have been rendered, that one being the really cool ship you can get in the endgame. I have not yet decided what it will look like, but I plan to leave the art alone for a bit while I work on other parts of the scenario.

'But Roger!' you cry, 'Why did it take you over a frickin' month to do just a few ship models? There weren't that many of them!'

This is true, this is true. I put off working on the ship models because of my terrible secret, which is so terrible I hesitate to reveal it here. However, to keep my fanbase (both of you), I must:

I am not a very good artist.

I know! You disagree, of course. The screenshots alone are enough to daze the unwary admirer of art into a catatonic stupor of wonder, you say. I thought this was the truth for most my life, in fact, until the doctors who were treating visitors to my site began to speak of 'hysterical blindness' and associated lawsuits.

It was nice of you to try to keep my spirits up, though!

At any rate, I put off the models because I didn't feel up to working on them when they'd just turn out so-so. But work on them I have! And they'are actually not that bad. Turns out the pirates have the best-looking ships but hey, when is that ever not the case? The biggest commercial ship (the Long Haul) also turned out well. I have no screenshots yet because I've just now finished the rendering and it's 12:30 in the morning. I just thought I'd update the TODO and post some news. It's a good feeling, knowing that all but one of the art assets for my game is finished....

Well, except for the weapons....

Ah crap, there goes another month.

Look, I'm not dead!

• Once again, I've moved to Maryland. Now that I'm full-time I should stop moving around so much, and now that I have DSL I should be able to do more frequent updates.
• In addition to bringing myself and my internet connection back from the dead, I've also resurrected the TODO list on the news page. It doesn't say "0.9 TODO" because the only thing needed for the 0.9 release is for the scenario that ships with it to be complete. I'll update the TODO far more often than the news here, so keep an eye out for it.
• To celebrate the completion of the map I've posted screenshots of the universe. Four of them, to be exact, since the entire thing wouldn't fit in one shot. There are 45 sectors and 35 planets among them, so there's no shortage of places to visit!

Since I missed the November 15th deadline (big surprise, I know :), I decided to post when I had more screenshots to show off. And it so happens that today I have more screenshots to show off. So while the scenario isn't finished, you can at least see that I'm working on it.

A quick update to keep everyone out there... um... updated. I'm still working on TM0.9, mainly fleshing out the scenario (the ever-so-cheesy-scifilike-entitled "The Search for Old Earth") and it's coming along nicely. Just so you can see what's going on, I've added two screenshots showing off the new scenario:

• The New Sol Sector: Is where you'll start your adventures. Just for fun, there are two planets there to land on.
• Planetary Backgrounds: Is a feature that the engine will support, but whether or not my scenario will take advantage of it depends largely on how much time I end up having. This is a new feature of the 0.9 engine, but backwards compatability was not broken: ordinary planets work just fine.

I'll keep updating this page and the screenshot page every time I've got something noteworthy to show off. The current projected release date is November 15th, so work should be pretty steady up until then. Let's see if I'll meet this deadline :)

After much strife and turmoil, TraderMissions 0.2 has been released! TM 0.2 demonstrates many state-of-the-art features, such as Actually Compiling and Having a New Title Screen: Download it today!

In case you're curious, some actual major changes include

• GCC3.2 Compatability: About half the people who tried the 0.1 series couldn't compile it, it turns out what I thought was standard C++ isn't, and newer versions of GCC are picky. So I downloaded and compiled my own gcc3.2 and fixed all the problems. If there are still problems compiling, please, let me know.
• Key re-mappings: Now the 'self-destruct' button, which the player would probably not want to use a whole lot, is no longer next to the 'jump' button, which the player uses all the time. Additionally, the 'down' arrow key now acts only as a brake.
• Meets the Specs: Essentially, this is not a "wow, look at all the cool new features" update, it's a "Wow, I sure said in the documentation that my engine could do a lot of things, I should probably make it so that it can" update. The engine's capabilities are now in-line with the developer documentation.

There's more in the Changelog if you're curious, but the above is the important stuff. 0.2 is now considered the 'stable' release of TraderMissions, meaning that unless some really bad bug comes along, I'll keep savegame and scenario compatability with this version. So feel free to develop for this version, everything you do will be forwards-compatible with 1.0.

The development version of TM is 0.9. Why the version change? Because 0.1 was the initial release, 0.2 is the stable release after it, and 0.9 is the development release right before 1.0. I'm skipping directly to 1.0 because 0.9 will have all the features I want to make a good scenario in a completed game, and I'm of the mind that once it's to that point I should dispense with the 0.x naming and simply call it 1.0.

TraderMissions 0.1.2 is upon you! Actually, it was there yesterday but I was too tired to put up the links. Fixes include:

• Missiles are now correctly removed from the game when launched
• You can now buy a new ship mid-mission and it won't screw things up. Keep in mind that there's still no such thing as a tradein in the 0.1 branch, so you'll lose any cargo you had.

• I finished up the developer documentation earlier today - you may notice the new category on the left: "Documentation". You can browse the developer docs online or download them at your leisure. Note that they're labeled 0.2.0: They're for the next version of the engine, due out as soon as I do all the items in the TODO list above. For the most part, they will work with 0.1.1 - it definitely won't cause anything to crash - but some features the docs speak of are simply not implemented yet.
• As you may have noticed, I added a TODO to the main news bar above. It will, at least until 0.9 is released, show the next version to be released and the items necessary for that to be done. Note that the next version is 0.2: this is so an engine that's in accordance with the TPG is out there for people to tinker with. 0.9 is still a way off.

The first bugfix release, just a bit over a week since the launch. This should fix the bug where the game would start up with nothing but a black screen. This was a very annoying bug because it seemed to happen on everyone's system but mine :)

Well, I did it. Though I didn't go so far as to write my own application to handle adding news and screenshots in, I did redesign the site. It looks a great deal more like the game it's based on now. I've tested it in a few browsers and it seems to be working, but if there are any problems don't hesitate to send me e-mail. Why the overhaul? Well, it's to celebrate the next item down:

It took me long enough, but all types of missions are now in the engine, which means it's complete. This does not, however, mean that the game is done - I've still got at least two scenarios to create and documentation to finish up before we get to that point. But I've released files that show the engine as it is, with a tech demo scenario to boot. Enjoy :)

I've put together tarballs of both binary and source. This preliminary version I'm calling 0.1. The next version to be released will be 0.9, which is the one that I'll announce in places other than this site and the mailing list. The 0.9 TODO is as follows:

• "Touchup" - these are minor tweaks and bugfixes, but they're the only coding I have left to do.
• The Tutorial - I'm writing the "how to play" tutorial at the same time as the "how to write scenarios" tutorial, so it might take longer than it ordinarily would.
• One other scenario - I've got a few ideas in mind, but beyond some basic storyboarding I haven't even started on this item. It'll probably take up the bulk of the time.
• .TMD docs - file format information and reference for how to make your own scenarios.
• New splash screen - for the new version number

And though I'm terrible at figuring out when things will be finished, I'm hoping to have 0.9 out by the end of the month.