ModDB.com is hosting a Mod of the Year 2006 voting. If you have some spare minutes you can vote for Halfquake Amen. Thanks!

Also I now have a MySpace Profile. Whatever that's worth.

As for myself, the end of the year is coming closer again. The past few months were quite a rough ride and I don't expect the coming months to be any calmer. I'll be trying hard to focus on my projects. Especially Personal Halfquake. I will try to push myself to the limits until January 1st 2007 for PHQ. I will implement a new PvP system, creature images, a little christmas event and anything else I've still on my mind. What happens on January 1st 2007?

Well, let's put it this way. Personal Halfquake has been under development since late 2002, starting about one or two months after the HQA release. The gameplay of PHQ is open-ended, which means there's no real ending, which also means that developing never ends either. I've tried a few times to abort the project but I've always come back for more updates. According to my working history I have spent 288 hours working on PHQ since February 27th this year, that's roughly an hour per day. So, with about 4 years of developing time (since fall 2002) it comes down to about 1,500 hours of work in total, give or take.

Was it worth it? Definitely. Personal Halfquake is one of the most important projects in my life. I learned so many lessons, so many things about how to make games, how to produce convenient and user friendly applications and how players react to certain game mechanics. And of course, I got a lot of new friends.

I don't want to give up PHQ, that's never going to happen. This community will live as long as there's some kind of internet in the form as we know it today and as long as my heart beats. But come January 1st 2007 I will try to go new ways.

Try? Yes. I know myself. PHQ is an attention whore. It will try to draw me back in and embrace me again. Nevertheless I want to work on new projects and expand my horizon. I want to try to get away from PHQ development as far as possible. It won't be easy as it is quite a habit of mine to just check PHQ and fix small things here and there and - whoops - another three hours are gone.

So, again, I will squeeze every minute into PHQ until the end of 2006, which marks the end of PHQ development. However, this doesn't mean that I won't come back with totally new ideas and throw code all over the place some time again. But first I want to do the following things: In the beginning of 2007 I will try to finish Antaran and the HQA Comics. When that's done I will devote all my spare time to the other beast in the darkness - Halfquake Sunrise. With PHQ, Antaran and the HQA Comics out of the way there will be nothing (or at least not much) that is going to stop me. I will aim for a 1st Quartal 2008 release. It will be based on Half-Life 1 with the addition of Spirit of Half-Life version 1.4.

I'm not promising anything. What you have read now is just what I'm planning to do and usually plans have a risk of failure. Plus, what I plan today might interfere with my plans tomorrow. So don't take my word for the things above.

But if my plans are going to be executed properly, there's definitely a lot of excitement to look forward to.

Have a nice day.