The 2BeeGames.com voting continues. Last week we got 17% of all votes which means we reached first place out of 120 games! Thank you everyone! This was only about 170 votes, so don’t think your vote doesn’t matter!
There are two votings left, so please vote for us this week and the next, and get all of your friends to help (we are following the instructions of the contest organizers, and advertising a bit ourselves 
)! You can vote at 2BeeGames.com.
In other news, I’ve been hard at work replacing our sound engine with a brand new custom made engine. We used to use Audiere, which turned out to crash at random due to threading bugs. So now I’m implementing a new sound engine from scratch. This is good old low level coding with threads and getting my hands greasy with bytes and char arrays.
My first choise was to use Microsoft’s new XAct interface, but turns out it has horrible bugs if you don’t use their own sound bank generation tools. Since I want to encourage open formats such as OGG, I’m going to use a lower level API called XAudio2. Unfortunately this means I have to write my own streaming routines and a lot of low level code. But it also means I have complete control over it, and it means our modders won’t have to use any proprietary tools to create their audio. It’s a bit more work for me, but hopefully rewarding in the end!
Having recently developed an interface from scratch after finding an existing library inadequate, I sympathize. I also agree; the drastically increased level of control can be totally worth it.
I’m not sure if you have already noticed these two bugs, but thought I should still say something in case you haven’t.
When berry bushes are growing new berrys, the bush sprite turns into a white box.
The crab with the black stone says “hunam”. I don’t know if it’s supposed to.
I hope changing the audio system stops the crashes for your sake
I believe it can be a bother for you.
About the berry bushes bug, did you use the level editor before going to the bushes?
I don’t think so, but I can’t be sure. It happened in the main game.
I don’t believe I have used the editor with this computer and the bushes turn into boxes still when growing new berries.
Do you happen to know how much graphics memory your graphics card has?
This is just an old laptop with 128M.
I have the same bug with berry bushes. I didn’t used editor.
I’ve had this exact problem too (berry trees turning into white boxes).
Did anything else turn into white boxes?
I did some testing and I think I figured what causes it. If you click once on a bush1 and click bush2 many times while picking berries, the bush2 turns to a white box when it grows new berries.
You’re right, there’s something fishy there. I bet it’s just a texture setting gone wrong by the scripts.
I agree with MageKing17, I am sure the new engine will pop up new possibilities.
Regarding the bug, I am going to download the game (as my connection is now as how it is supposed to be) and see if I can reproduce it.
About the poll, well, I voted again yesteday, but it looks like it will be harder now.
Kablooey! seems to be winning now, thought it seems like Driftmoons only true “opponent” – So far Driftmoon and that game have been the best 2… Let´s hope Driftmoon wins!
I do not want to put any pressure, but phearps, another preview version (if possible) could be helpful?. I mean, there is no problem is we have only one preview version, but a newer one, with more stuff to do in it (or to experiment with, maybe just some weapons, boxes, items…etc.) will attract more attention.
Anyway, good luck this week in the competition!
It would be a good idea to release more content to gain votes, though I haven’t had a chance to add more content yet. I do at least hope to fix the crashing problems with the sound engine change. But let’s see if we can get more into the game before next week.