For a while (several months) it’s been unclear what was going to happen to this site since I had to move it to a new hosting company and it wasn’t clear if I would be able to find one. Because I didn’t know what would happen and wanted to keep a banner up to communicate the situation I’ve abstained from blogging until the situation had been resolved.

That banner is still available as the previous blog post (to this one) dating back to March. I refer you to it for details. First the old company decided to wait on its deadline to move, so I had more time to work with, but my account ran out of funds, and under the circumstances it didn’t make sense to buy a new long term plan. But lucky for us, by this time I finally found news that the staff of the old company (and maybe some clients too) endeavored to make a new company out of its ashes, and so my decision about where to go next was made crystal clear. That’s the greatest relief and the best possible happy ending I could have dreamed of. The new host is called Opalstack, and there’s a link at the bottom of the page layout here.

I hope to make up for the absence of blog posts in the coming months. Below pictured are two blog subjects that might have been, that received only update lines in the aforementioned banner posting. The first image is of a new effect that blends the seams in map geometry together. This is something that I suppose Sword of Moonlight should have had all along. It was omitted like many things because the software’s tendency to neglect anything not required by the pack-in remake of King’s Field. The second image is a new extension that makes it possible to have transparent elements to base their opacity on their volume along an imaginary line between the viewer and pixels. It’s per-pixel in other words. Combined with the new layers feature it enables many special effects.

Lately I’ve been working on a precursor to the Daedalus 3-D project so that I can make progress transferring King’s Field II’s animations over to Sword of Moonlight. And most lately I’ve been dividing my time trying to transfer this website over to this new host, that has not been a simple job, owing to some technical challenges that I may go into in the forum-discussion accompanying this blog post. It’s possible not everything works.

Heads up, my web-hosting service provider (WebFaction) is in the process of being bought-out/taken-over by GoDaddy. I don’t understand the nature of this kind of transaction myself, since it’s basically just disappearing, by summer. It’s not like GoDaddy is continuing the service, and so it’s hard to gauge what is the value of such a buyout to an entity like GoDaddy. The customers are all going to leave, or are having to leave. I don’t know if GoDaddy is “buying” the infrastructure (old, aging computer stuff, buildings) or what?! Or if it helps the WebFaction owners get out from under a crushing rock of some kind. There’s scant details and no transparency.

My host (since this website, and others, has existed) seems like it was pretty unique, in serving niche for software developers, on a tight budget. I’m not seeing a lot of alternatives to change over to. I may even have to consider giving up on having website(s) for a little while. But I want everyone reading this site to know that everything (except for the vagaries of hosting website(s)) is going very well for Sword of Moonlight. And even though, I should probably keep this a secret for a little longer, I want to share that there are plans underway to resurrect King’s Field, for which the coast seems clear. And also very good things are happening/developing on the VR integration front.

Continued: Some website turbulence is imminent…

Damn! it’s been 3 months without an update. I guess I should put something… here.

Continued: Not dead! King's Field II