It's been a few weeks since my last Blog update. I've been working with a new commercial-grade world editor tool from Quad Software, called Grome..

One of the biggest hurdles we have with the Torque engine is the lack of commercial-grade tools. Sure, it is possible to create world objects in 3ds, Maya, or even Blender, but in most cases, the exporters are either buggy, don't export everything, or require you to tweak with the exported object afterward.

It was a long and difficult battle involving everything from illness unlike I can ever remember experiencing to a bout of pneumonia, but I seem to be back to my usual self again - finally. Unfortunately, April has been a bit if a "write-off" when it comes to development. However, the big move to the the new web site has been hugely successful. While the number of new registrations and posts hasn't exactly skyrocketed (the "Community Leader" position is still open by the way!), we're seeing a considerable amount of hits from Google, Yahoo!, and other search engines now.

I'm sad to admit it, but I've done absolutely nothing on Phoenix since last Wednesday. Long about Thursday afternoon, I started feeling horrible. I had already been down with a cold for a little over a week, but this was something else entirely. Fever, chills, body aches, dizziness, coughing my head off, congestion the likes of I had ever experienced before, and generally feeling like dirt. I went home after work Thursday and immediately went to bed. I didn't climb out of bed until Saturday, and even then it was only for a couple hours.

It's Monday night, and I'm singing the patching song; Patching, patching, patching, patching, patching all night long, patching, patching, patching, patching, singin' the patchin' song!

OK, I'm no singer/songwriter. I'll stick to code. ;) Garage Games released their final version of TGEA v1.7.0 on Saturday. There's lots of goodies to be had in the new version. Coming in at a whopping 160mb (compressed), I know what I'll be doing for the next few evenings.

The web site once again has a "private messaging" feature.

Yes, the title is sarcasm. :)

Garage Games (AKA the company we license the core game engine that makes Phoenix possible from) is preparing to release the latest version of TGEA, or what they're calling 1.7.0. This is a very exciting time for us Phoenix devs. Sure, it means porting yet another slew of updates back into our core, debugging, finding what broke that has been working for months, etc. In this case, it's worth the time, no matter how much of a pain it will be to integrate.

There's not a whole lot of new items to report for this weekend. I've been down with flu-like symptoms for most of the week. Generally achy, severe headaches, and dizziness. For the most part, I felt like crap, but I seem to be getting over it.

There's a new "Server Status" pane on the main web site (if you can't see it, you're not logged in!), placed there mainly to taunt and tease, but it's a start toward a more "public view" of what is going on behind the scenes. For the curious, here is a general overview of Phoenix's server architecture: