PROXYCONN WILL AMAZE YOU!

Wow, they were not lying about this one. There's a company called Proxyconn that promises DSL speed over a 56k dialup line. AND IT WORKS!! I downloaded and installed the software expecting the usual lackluster performance and a quick uninstall immediately following my test....but wow am I impressed!

In the status bar area is a Proxyconn icon that will tell you the effective speed you're getting - right this second, mine is saying "broadband". Heh. Usually it says 150k or more. You simply must see this to believe it - in fact, if you already have DSL, try Proxyconn for Broadband so you can surf the net at T1 speeds!

Another great feature of Proxyconn is that it totally kills all bannerads and popups before they ever get to your computer. The way Proxyconn works is that your computer is constantly logged into their servers and when you send any HTTP requests, it will send it your way extremely compressed and faster than just going over the net normally. Their site explains all the technical details of how they achieve this amazing speed so I won't go into it here suffice to say that the speed is REAL.

Oh, and Proxyconn also speeds up your EMAIL! You just have to try this to believe it.

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2004!

Another year is gone and in its place - A MUCH BETTER YEAR! NEW AND IMPROVED! The year 2003 was both good and bad for me as I expect it was for all of you. I'm an optimistic person to a fault and I really believe that 2004 is going to be a really great year!

I'm looking forward to seeing my darling Raluca very soon and work on getting her to the United States so we can finally be together for good. We're very addicted to each other and even though it's tough to be so far apart, we're managing it really well. We're in constant communication all the time - even when we're sleeping! Heheheh.

I wish you all an amazing year full of kickass shit.

Christmas in Rocklin
aka "Uh, These Boys Are Too Big"

I spent Christmas with my parents and my boys Michael and Steven, up in Rocklin, CA (northeast of Sacramento off I-80). So, uh, yeah - as you can see....they're big. They're both football players and serious gamers. I didn't want to anger them.

We spent many hours at an awesome LAN gaming place in Rocklin called Arena 1337. They had about 40 computers in the totally dark, long retail space - it was sooo great. Lots of hot games installed and we could scream and pound the tables as much as we wanted! Heh. My friend Robert and his girlfriend Debbie joined us and we deathmatched one day for 10 hours straight!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY...

Dec 10: DOOM - 10 yrs
Dec 14: KEEN 1-3 - 13 yrs
Dec 15: KEEN 4-6 - 12 yrs
Dec 23: HERETIC - 9 yrs
Dec 23: HDB - 2 yrs

Man, December is the golden month of game birthdays!  It's been quite a while since I updated - I did a full reinstall on my computer and I'm still not finished yet.  For instance, I'm writing this update in FrontPage instead of Dreamweaver MX (I'll get up to speed soon).

That's 9 games in December alone...wow. We worked pretty hard to get Heretic and Hyperspace Delivery Boy out before January, as you can tell by the crazy date.  Most publishers wouldn't release a game that late in the month when they're targeting retail... but we weren't.

So Happy Birthday, my little game babies!  Well, maybe games should be measured in something like "game years" or something...like, maybe it should be 3 game years for every human year.  That would make DOOM 30 years old....hmm.  Thanks to numerous source ports it looks better than when it was a baby!

Bucuresti!

I flew 18 hours to get to see my baby, Raluca, and it was just awesome. She is just amazing.  We couldn't believe it was real when we met each other for the first time in the airport...it was like magic - I'll never forget those moments.

I got to spend 9 days in Bucuresti (or Bucharest) and Raluca and I spent every second together that entire time.  We were just made for each other.  Meeting someone over the internet is one thing, seeing them in person and spending time with them is quite another - so many times the expectations fall short.  In our case, is was so the opposite of that.  We were beyond happy with each other and spending the time together just strengthened those feelings.

The town itself really reminded me of London a bit, although just a bit poorer, but not as much as I was expecting.  There's lots of stores to shop at, lots of cars, and lots of people walking everywhere.  Great architecture abounds and just being in a totally different country and atmosphere in itself is an adventure.  Raluca made it really easy for me.

 

Raluca

We've known each other for two years now and recently decided to be a couple. My new girlfriend Raluca Alexandra Plesca lives in Bucharesti, Romania and I'm hoping to bring her to the US to live with me next month.

We have so much in common and we're really excited to finally be together. I love you Raluca!

Red Faction for N-Gage

FINISHED!

And yes, Monkeystone has finished Red Faction for the new Nokia N-Gage gamedeck. We spent a total of 7 months on the game from start to finish. There were 2 months at the beginning of the project that were spent learning the X-Forge technology and basically throwing everything away after we got an important engine update.

The main people working on the game at Monkeystone were:

Mexicoders
John Romero, Jess Dominguez

Pixel Grinders
Eric Seiler, Billy Browning

Creative Commandos
Lucas Davis, Tom Hall and Stevie Case

We put a lot of work in this one, on a new technology we'd never seen before, going through multiple hardware revisions as well as engine technology revisions.

We recreated the entire game from scratch except for the textures and most of the sounds. Everything was based on the original PC Red Faction game. We created a few brand-new levels where necessary, but the storyline, enemies, locations, weapons, etc. are the same.

This game also has 1-on-1 bluetooth Deathmatch mode; the first FPS with this feature on a cellphone! Compared with any other cellphone on the market, the N-Gage simply blows them away in graphics and speed.

This version of Red Faction will not be available for any other platform - it's an N-Gage exclusive.

Check out the recently published review
of Congo Cube in GameNow

Congo Cube for PC, BREW and J2ME
ALL SHIPPED!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

chiQ!

Our very own chiQ had a birthday this month - let's wish her an amazing belated birthday wish!! Uuughh. I'm sorry. I will never again miss this darling woman's birthday ever again.

I should be punished for this somehow. Well, maybe I could make it up with a birthday gift or something. chiQ really helped me through my recent breakup - in a really big way.

Thank you so much for being awesome, chiQ.