Some people (mostly relatives) have mentioned that they don't get my new site, don't know what a Darwinian is, and wonder why I don't just talk about my family, complain about the weather and my job, or post pictures of my cat.

The thing is, I got bored with my old site - it became a chore to update, rather than the fun thing it was when I first set it up, and frankly, I'm really too much of a boring introvert to even have a web site anyways. So I don't talk about personal stuff much here. I set up this new URL basically as just a place to dump stuff so other people can download it, but I can't see how it wouldn't hurt to add some news for the non-gamers that stumble upon the site (all 3 of them).

Me and the missus are expecting a second bambino some time in the spring. Hormones are high, and mood swings are frequent - much more so than the first time around - which leads us to believe that we'll be graced with the presence of a little X-only chromosome carrier this time around. Cupboards are stocked with both sugar and spice, and the 'Everything Nice(TM)' catalogue should be on its way to us in the mail as we speak.

I'm currently working a highly boring, yet paycheque-providing job with a total commute time of twenty seconds (both there, there and back) - night watch for my apartment complex. My allowance just wasn't cutting it, and both a wee bairn and a Wii bairn are expected in the coming months ahead (there I go with 'teh gamer talk of DOOM' again!).

Um... The boy's hair is blue (his idea), and he really digs 'Cars'. Disney can chalk up another child in their evil clutches...

The missus now works for a very large US-owned company (not Wal-Mart, but one of the other top 5 I believe), as her Canadian-owned company recently sold out... er, I mean, was sold, and her chances of going to Cuba on a work trip have been severely curtailed because of it. But she might get to go Arkansas soon. Soo-ey!

*head scratch*

...Not sure if I can think of anything else of interest to mention. Not sure if I need to, both readers that haven't clicked off to a new site have probably developed instant narcolepsy reading my bland pap. Anyways, in the interest of having relatives not call my house so often (they're already totally great about only visiting every few years or so, just need to work on getting them not to show up when they need money), I'll endeavour to put up more stuff of interest.

Man, you guys have no idea how much better I feel now that this is finally out there, and not hanging over my head anymore. This mod had moved right up near the top of my 'Things to do before I die' list, right above 'Get my skydiving licence', and just under 'Buy a winter home in the Turks and Caicos'.

It's version 0.99, which basically means I'm sure I've worked out all the major kinks, but I may have overlooked one or two minor ones. If you see anything, let me know.

FYI, I just finished the last level about twenty minutes ago. All I really have left to do is some kind of ending cutscene, and v1.0 should be ready to go. I should have that and a few beta runthroughs done, hopefully, by July 1st (Canada Day!).

There's a few shapes I'm not happy with (I am by no means a professional 3D modeller, not even an amateur modeller!), and if I get the ending done fast enough, I may try to replace them. If not, they might get replaced if the mod ever needs an update (LOL - 'If', he says).

...So it turns out that xyzyxx of the Darwinia boards still had that old loader program I had written kicking around, and still used it. Of course, it was horribly out of date, and pretty ugly to boot, so I dug up a dusty old backup of the source files, and updated it for v1.42. You'll find the link for it over in the mod menu on the right.

Sorry folks, still Windows only.

Edit: 1.02's up. Minor changes.

Edit: 1.03's up. Minor changes again, one inspired by the new north American Darwinia boxed release, and two things that annoyed me.

Edit: 1.04's up. I added 'redshirt2' decryption, to save me having to have a second program open just for that purpose.

Edit: 1.05's up. Some tweaking, and another profile creation button.

Edit: 1.06's up. Basically just some bug fixes for the recently added features. I imagine THIS version should be good, hopefully, until the next Darwinia patch that adds to/changes preferences.txt.

Updated Enemy Within Part 2 with a few mostly-cosmetic changes - nobody reported any game-breaking bugs, so I guess it plays fine otherwise.

I also removed the warning about Realtime FX - I played through it with them on, and the mod seems fine - I still don't trust Hardware3D though, it's plainly buggy.

I'm still hoping to get Part 3 out by the 9th (of this month, yeah), though if my job interview goes well tomorrow, that may yet be pushed back again.

Okay, so since the last level of Part 1 seemed to be crashing on some people's systems, I've put up a (hopefully) fixed version, including the changes I had planned to upload to 'celebrate' Part 3's release.

(Please let there be nothing wrong with the last version of Part 2!)

If anyone sees any problems with the latest versions of EnemyWithin Parts 1 and 2, now's your chance to let me know - I've got very small updates ready to go that will be uploaded to stellarmatter and mirrors once Part 3 is completed, and I'd really kinda like to finally sound off on them for good (other than updates to reflect game patch changes).

Edit: It seems some users are experiencing intermittent crashes with Memorycache in Part 1 - if that's the case, and it's crashing on you, can you change the Triffids (in the Mod Editor) so they don't produce Centipedes, and let me know if that fixes the problem? If so, then it's a bug with the game, and not my mod. Thanks! :D

With the help of xander and nihil from the Darwinia Forums, I've set up a wiki based on information about Darwinia. Currently, it's mostly information cannibalized from the Darwinia FAQ/Walkthrough from the old incarantion of this site. I set it up wiki-style so that people can contribute to it, and hopefully help grow it into a useful online reference.

It can be reached at http://darwikia.stellarmatter.net/, or from the link on the right.