• Added Megaman PC page!
  
  

• Added back tons of pages, including DWPC, Dream Quest, etc.

• Bomberman PC 2k is downloadable!

• More Pages to come shortly!

• The message board has been finally fixed and wiped clean.

• No more frames! Slighty new design, any comments?

• Games/Projects page will be updated with all previous projects eventually. Dream Quest 2000, and Ancient China I downloads now work!

• Dream Saga Page updated. (Progress)

• Good things come to those who wait, and it has been quite a long wait, hasn't it?

• The Art section gets a big update with six more pieces by XC and one new set of sprites from smiloid!

• Sadly, there will most likely not be a Music section update until early this fall.  Cyberludwig will be offline until at  least the end of the summer.

• Engine progress continues, with basic combat finally taking shape as well as the inventory system.  Things learned on the Megaman side project are coming into play coding the combat engine.  No, not as in characters jumping around shooting bats and jaguars, but state systems and other good stuff.  Also, we have a current version, minus sound, running properly on a Mac!  A Linux port would also be quite possible.
  

• Time to sift through my backlog of art and music and get it posted!

• As always, the Message Board / Development section remains the best way to stay current on Smiloid's sprites, but I have added a few of the walking sheets for Alyssa and Dayla to the Art section.  He is recruiting people eager to sprite for the project who are dedicated enough to stick with it.  Inquire on the board fo rmore details.

• Also to be found in the Art section are four more pieces by XC!  Amazing work as always!

• Check the Music section for the current revision of Cyberludwig's mp3, Mysterious, and another I somehow managed to miss posting, Battle for the Skies.  He also has a series of six pieces he is working on for school that will likely end up here for your listening pleasure some time in the near furture.  Judging by the preview I got of the first part, it will be a truely epic collection.  He has added many new impressive tricks to his arsenal, and the new brass sounds he has must be heard to be believed.

• Check the Message Board under Development to see some of Smiloid's new sprites based off of XC's latest Art, looking very good! Plus I get the feeling there's more new art from XC in the near future coming our way!

• Hit the Music section for Cyberludwig's latest mp3, another excellent battle theme!

• Comments? Take them to the Message Board , thats what its there for.

• For anyone who hasn't noticed yet, the day to day development notes for the engine can be found in the Development section of the Message Board.

• Added the Art and Music sections again, even though they are not yet converted to the new style. Plenty of good stuff to go stare at, I assure you. :)

• Message Board is online! Finally, we now have a message board again =)  
  Ask or post anything you like.

• Totally redid the entire website! 

• Finished the first version of Dream Animation Studio! Added a screenshot of the final version to the  Dream Saga page. Many more updates to come in the next few days.

• Here we go! Just a small update to the Dream Saga page. Added a screen shot of the new Animation Editor, just to show you guys what's cooking =)

• Happy New Year! This is going to be a very productive year, I can tell =)
  
  -Neutopia

• No, there was no September update.  Yes, I'm sorry.  But we have not one but two new songs from Cyberludwig to make it up to you.  Hit the music page and give Unfulfilled Desires and A Coiled Spring a listen.  I guerantee you'll like what you hear.

• Writing, planning and designing continues slowly but surely.  Not sure how else to say it other than giving out spoliers, which I am not about to do.  

• The past month was a busy one, and there have been many new and exciting things done with the code, but we're not quite ready yet to tip our hand as to what all advances have been made.  We are breaking into new territory, let's just put it that way.

• We have recieved multiple applications for webmasters/site redisigners, but sadly thats probably the only position we're not looking to fill at this time.  Unless you're a Flash guru or are talented with graphics, I don't see us taking on a web designer just for the sake of having one.  We may need one in the future, but the bare bones site we have now still serves its purpose.  People still wishing to help the cause do something other than make a fancy web page can email me.

• How about that, two updates in the same month.  Will wonders never cease...

• On my end, I've been writing, planning, and sketching things out.  Yes, I have been working.  Really. 

• Neutopia continues his coding streak, adding more commands back into the scripting engine and adding more new and useful engine effects.  He's on a roll, stay out of his way, you might get run over if you're not careful.

• Finally, for the big treat for today, we have not one, but two new pieces of art from XCminds.  Amazing stuff!  Dayla the thief, and Reynald the... hmmm... multitalented.  Anyone who played the limited release of the old DQDemo3Preview may recognize him.  Then again, I can count the number of demo CDs I made and publicly released that had Demo3Preview on it on two hands, so that would be a small minority at best.  I would like to add that while Dayla and Tayh were done (and improved upon) with previous sketches by jasoncat in mind, XCminds designed Reynald from scratch and he looks great.  Nothing like fantastic art from a talented artist to keep everyone modivated.

• (Insert the usual request for recruiting talented help here.  Those who are interested can click here.)

• Anyone who knows us or has followed Firebell projects for any length of time knows that we're either working hard or hardly working.  Of late, it has definately been more of the former and not the latter.  Neutopia has been doing tons of work on both the game engine and the editor, making much progress.  Of special interest would be the new map editor features that will make assembling maps much easier, and hopefully less dependent on 'tiles' in the old sense of the word.  Engine-wise, NPCs are coming along nicely.

• Well, my efforts referred to in last update's rumor mill pertaining to the prospective new artist have not yet panned out.  I'm not giving up on him just yet, though.

• However, the aforementioned artist was not the only one we had our eye on.  The team now has one more member.  Welcome XCminds to the group, and take a look at his excellent shot of Tayh the archer.  Man it's nice to have an artist again!

• As previously mentioned in the last update, we can still use more people.  More people to help with sprites, landscape art, location art, more composers, and other talented people who want to join up and help the project thrive.  Send an email to me and we'll see what we can do.

• We now have some sprites for Tayh the archer, which can be seen over at the Art page.  

• Progress on the code continues.  Scrolling is coming together, as is collision detection.  Neutopia is planning out NPC structures as well as some other goodies before we move forward with more code.  Practice makes perfect, and so does planning.

• As was mentioned in the last update, Cyberludwig is back, and has already pounded out some very nice new songs for us.  Head on over to the new Music page and give them a listen.  

• Fueling the rumor mill even further, don't look for us to have jasoncat's face put on the backs of milk cartons everywhere in our search for our lost artist.  We MAY have a new artist to replace him.  He's not the Flash guru that jasoncat is (was?), but he's very talented with a pencil.  No teasers just yet, but give it another week and I may have something I can show.

• Just because it's starting to look like we have one of everything again for all the basic positions does not mean we are full; one artist, one composer, and one sprite artist can't do everything all by themselves.  If you think you seriously have the talent, the time, and the interest in joining the project, then by all means send me an email .

• Today we have an (admittedly a little late) update to the temporary Art page .  We now have a full walk sheet for Kaelin.  Also, rumor has it that experimental battle sprites are underway, but don't tell anyone I told you.  Many Bothans died to bring us this information.

• And now for our big news item, which is the return of Cyberludwig!  Everyone rejoyce, for the man behind our music is back, and he's packing a SoundBlaster Audigy Platinum and a 200+ MB Soundfont nowadays.  What all that means to you is that more musical goodness is on the way.  If you're starving for new material from our resident composer, the very long (and very, very good) piece he composed for school last year, a synthesizer and violin solo, can be found here at the bottom of the page.  Yes, I know, mp3.com sucks, and if you need to register be sure to point the email at a junk hotmail account since they're spam fiends over there.  But the aforementioned piece is worth the hassle.  I would have known about the finished product a long time ago if it wasn't for the fact that all his other pages expired and died, and a google search apparently ignores mp3.com entirely.  Oh well, its there now, stop reading my ramblings and go listen to it.  

• Putting up a temporary Art page today.   Apparently our vg-network mirror no longer likes outside linking of images and puts up an incrediply stupid hosting ad instead.  This makes linking to images to be shown to give context to sprites being worked on a little more difficult, so I put this together.

• Neutopia's return to Japan has been delayed, though I expect he should be back soon.

• General update: just updating the page for the sake of updating and to show we're not dead, and are still working on DreamSaga.

• Still recruiting more sprite artists.  As you probably already know, our aquisition of smiloid was a real victory.  He's making some really sharp sprites for us so far, here's hoping he keeps up the good work!  

• Sprite Demo is available for download - SpriteDemo.zip    Featuring hi res layout with new window format and lots of smiloid's sprite of Dayla the thief running around on the screen at once.  Scrolling not yet implemented.  Just a little tech demo, don't go thinking it's the long withheld DQDemo3.  It's not.  

• I should probably look into getting us a new message board to go with the new site.  The old ezboard is very, very dead, and I dread the deluge of popups every time I bother checking it.  

• Currently Active Staff:  
  • bludragn - Alive and well, freshly graduated from Pitt, and looking for employment.  Lots of time for writing stuff up for DreamSaga until I find a job, though.
  • Neutopia - On a business trip, not online much lately, should be back in Japan and coding very soon.
  • smiloid - Our newest recruit continues to impress us with his spriting talents.
  • Setzer - You wouldn't be reading this if it weren't for him cause he's the one who got us the new url and the webspace!

• Currently Inactive Staff: 
  • Cyberludwig - Wherever you are, come back!  We miss you!  I'm crossing my fingers that you'll be back online after your semester is over.  
  • jasoncat - The man with the hardest to find email address ever.  Why don't YOU email ME so I can get whetever address it is you're using now and we can coordinate some new artsy goodness.  And maybe a new web page, too.  This one just has programmer art written all over it.  :P  

• And if I forgot anybody else, consider yourself inactive until I hear from you.  

• Questions, comments, complaints, critisism, submissions, etc. all go here:  bludragn@firebell.org .  Oh, and if it's about DreamCreate, don't bother, because your email will be promptly deleted.  DreamSaga, DreamQuest, valid questions and/or submissions for the project, marriage proposals, and so forth, all ok.  DreamCreate - Not ok.  Clear?  

• Thats all for now.  Signing off.               -   bludragn

• Firebell.org gets its act together and goes online to public?
• Updates to Projects pages, DreamSaga Screenies, etc.
• Put up DQ2k Old page. Downloads DO NOT work!

• Started working on the page!
• Put up screenshots and such, wrote some funky Japanese on the start page.

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No part of this web page may be copied without permission.