Well I know the website has been down for a while now, I will post on that another day. Right now the site is on a new server and of course there is something wrong with the forums and they are not working at the moment. I have not done anything with the forum code for a long while now and I am not sure where to begin with all the extra code/modifications that the forums has. I can't even find the old zip file with the default vbulletin code. I am determined to keep our user list/forum posts but I might have to find a simple and free alternative. I just hope it isn't permanently broken and I can figure something out.

I recently started working on the AO Game again that was started about a year ago and only having worked on it for a couple months back then it needed a lot more work before it could be released (didn't even have any code done for the alien side), with a couple months recently to work on the alien and marine sides I think it is finely ready for launch.

There can always be more tweaking and I have some more ideas for features that could easily add months of work but it is at least playable now and if people like it I will continue to work on it.

Right now I am just finishing the help page for AO Game, which is taking a few days of its own.

So a week from today, Friday - October 17, 2008, will be the launch of AO Game. Hope to see you guys checking it out then.

Well, I haven't touched the news in a LONG time. The site is mostly just around for the forums anyway. So about them forums, they are not down for good. I am looking into what the problem is. Our hosting company has had some attacks lately (as we have had some spam lately) and have been cracking down on security so this might be one of those things.

So the forums will be back and the data is still there but we will have to wait and see what happened from CI Host.

Oh, and since I don't have the forums to check I looked through the site and realized it has been forever since any update on the AO Game. I kinda got discouraged on it and stopped working on it because in my head it sounded a lot cooler than it probably is but I still want to complete it and so I will have to touch up on the code again and it might take a while but I will start work on it again and will have some kind of finished product for everyone to play. Not saying soon but working on it will get it done sooner than not working on it hehe.

Who knows maybe people will enjoy it and be a reason for people to visit this old site, outside of catching up with old friends on the forum of course.

Things are going good for the AO Game. I have already started working on the missions, we currently have 2 mission ideas for the aliens (Snakes Head, Host) and 4 for the marines (Evac, Capture, Demo, Secure).

How a mission works is each day a new map and a mission for that map are started. Each map brings a little bit of variety to the missions, like different starting billets/lives, and chance of success. Chance of success you're wondering? Well with missions you have a grid with 9 choices to make. Lets take a demo mission where the marines must plant 6 charges. So 6 of the 9 choices will allow you to plant a charge. If you choose a spot that is correct you then have a chance to plant the charge. Some maps give you a 1 in 4 or 1 in 3 and so forth. So even if you chose a correct spot you have to roll good to still plant the charge. Now the challenge doesn't end there. Each mission has a set amount of time before a single objective is completed. In this objective the marine must "work" on the charge for 30 minutes. You don't have to sit at your computer or have the screen up for 30 minutes, that amount of time just needs to pass before you can complete the objective. When 30 minutes are up you will still need to press the complete objective button to finish your objective. During this time if an Alien happens to kill a Marine with an unfinished objective then the objective is restarted for someone to try again.

Things are going a lot slower than I had hoped. I have been busy lately and haven?t been able to focus on this like I have wanted to but it is shaping up nicely and the testers seem to be liking it. The game is very different though than what some have hoped it to be and I want to keep stressing that so no one gets their hopes up, it could be best be described as a pen and paper but using the web instead.