Sunday, June 5, 2005

^_^"

Wow, what a week it's been! After just getting over a cold, I got an inner-ear infection...ugh. For the last two days I've been really dizzy and I've had lots of pressure in my ears and behind my eyes. Yuck. Today I feel a lot better though, thank god. I don't mind getting sick now and then, it's no big deal...but really, getting one thing after the other kind of sucks. It really knocked me on my ass for the last couple of days especially. It's a relief to actually feel relatively healthy today, lol. Anyway, I'm glad that most of you seem to have liked the little myO sample I posted recently. That certainly gives me some confidence about it, which is good. Last night I was watching my brother play GTA (he's finished all the GTA games about three times each...and is near finishing San Andreas a third time) and I actually found it pretty entertaining. It convinced me to get back into that game, after months of not playing at all. It's certainly the best of the 3D GTA games and it's a pretty remarkable game in and of itself. Although I don't think that the entire game industry should go the GTA way...I do think that Rockstar North has always been a clever studio, even back in their DMA days. It's cool to see how far they've come since Body Harvest; clearly they've had this whole "giant sandbox" idea for many years now. They keep getting closer and closer to achieving a real living world with each game. I think it's a good thing for them to pursue, I just don't want every company to try and mimmick that. I still want my crazy Jet Set Radios, afterall. Anyway, that ramble is about it for me at the moment. I'll just answer your comments. ~_^ Mimmi-chan: No worries. Your post was great and I look forward to seeing how the RPG unfolds. ^_^ Shinny: Mmm yeah, I often wonder that myself. Actually, I think the thing that offends me most is probably the whole angle of the religious right. But then again, I find any extremism kind of offensive anyway I think. Annie-kun: Even though you have your own blog, myO 3.0 will impress you. It'll give people even more reason to stick with the site. hEvN: Nothin' like a good tease, no? ~_^ Torisuki: Ooo! You still know how to slip that in even with unrelated conversations, don't you? Never fear, it will get finished. I just want to avoid throwing something out there for convenience I guess. It's an important RPG to me and I'm always worried that I'll mess it up if I put something out there just to "get it done". That's why I like to have some major time to sit down and have a good think about it. Sennethy: I already responded to you in comments, but I thought I'd just mention that the green will make more sense when you see the whole site. Also, I wanted to work with a colour that I never use. Green fits the bill in that sense. Evil Jedi: Thank you! I'm sure that you will like it even more when you see the full thing. I haven't responded to all of the compliments about the myO design, because otherwise I'll just be repeating myself...so thanks to everyone who responded positively about it. ^_^ Bio: Thanks for your post, it was great. I appreciate your promptness! Baroness: You know you like it. ~_^

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Tuesday, May 31, 2005

If you die when there's no one watching...

Annieness: Aw, thank you. I'm feeling a lot better today, thankfully! Back up to full strength. ~_^ Shinmaru: You know, I almost take offense at people being offended. I mean, unless someone is really personally attacking me, I don't feel I have much reason to be offended by other stuff. Don't worry though, Shin-san, you can be safe in knowing that I offend people as much as you do. ^_^; Crucifix: Well, you know what they say..."it's funny 'cause it's true!" Or something. But yes, I hope Wonka Inc. turns out okay. Bio-chan hasn't yet posted, which is a bummer. I'll have to go and threaten him with my trout. Seductress: Since you are writing as Charlie, perhaps your desires will manifest in that character. If your posts are even close to your sign-up, it's no doubt going to be an incredibly fun RPG to read! And yes, I'm sure you may like Guild Wars...it seems to be hooking people in all over the place. ~_^ On another note, work on myOtaku 3.0 continues at a furious pace! I hope that you will be pleased with it once it comes together. I can tell you that visually, it looks like nothing we've ever done before. New logo, totally new colours, totally new design. It looks a lot more grown-up than what we have now. Hopefully in the coming weeks I can share a little teaser with you. ~_^ Edit: Well, here you go. I've taken the page and chopped a few bits off it and put them into an image. It won't mean much, but hey, it will give you some vague idea of what you'll see at the end of the month.

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Monday, May 30, 2005

Well, I found it funny.

I haven't been feeling very well for the last few days, so things have been pretty quiet. I'm starting to feel a lot better now though, thankfully. Unfortunately the whole DS recording thing didn't work out. I still can't hear what I'm recording as I record, which is a problem. I un-muted stuff and nothing seemed to work. So...I'm not quite sure what to do about that. Hopefully I'll sort out something. On another subject, my Guild is finally up and running. The name sort of came randomly while I was talking to Drix and Tony. Quantum Kabuki Troupe won out. Yeah, it's crazy, but I think it's something that fans (or curious onlookers) of bizarre Japanese culture will appreciate. At the very least, having a name meant that the Guild could actually be made finally, which is good. Quite a few people are already involved and I'd love to have more. You can check out the Guild Wars thread if you want to learn a little more. Also, one other thing to quickly mention. The Wonka Inc. RPG has now begun in Adventure Square. I've fired off a few PMs to participants about that, so hopefully everyone is aware of it. I've included a post order in there as well, so hopefully it's all pretty self-explanatory. Now you can go and enjoy it, finally. ~_^

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Monday, May 23, 2005

It's a post-Reggie world, people.

I was watching some of GameSpot Live's E3 coverage today and most of it was pretty impressive. The only thing I really didn't like were the random booth tours. Somehow those things annoy me; I'm more interested in the clean and specific presentations of games. I'm really not interested to hear some random show-goer's opinion. One thing that stood out in my mind was the interview with Reggie Fils-Aime. Apparently it was supposed to be a roundtable discussion, with Sony and Microsoft PR people. But they chickened out at the last minute, leaving Reggie all by himself. I can understand why, too; Reggie does his job well. Although he's obviously a PR person, he doesn't have that annoying "PR gloss" that you see in a lot of company reps. He even randomly suggested that they get questions from passers-by. For a highly-organized PR person, you can imagine that this would be a little intimidating; you never know what people will throw at you. Certainly, he's likely to face tougher questions from random show-goers than GameSpot itself (and he did). But he handled them all extremely well. By comparison, some of the PR people from Microsoft and EA are nauseating. The woman who was talking about The Sims 2 for handhelds had this highly-annoying pleasantness about her. You could have flung a brick and her and she'd say "You know what, that's a really fun game and I think it was a totally great idea, but it'd be really sweet if we could focus on talking about The Sims 2 for handhelds! Yeah, right on!" Ew. These people don't even seem to try to pretend not to be fake, lol. I also felt that Aonuma was impressive. He seems like a satisfying person to interview, because he gives the interviewer what they want without going into too much detail. It comes across as though he's saying quite a lot and he provides a lot of interesting reflection on the question, yet he is still extremely careful about providing too much detail. Perhaps I might normally find that annoying, but I actually find it refreshing. Sure, we may not get all the information we want, but at least we get some really interesting developer insight. I mean, it's better than a "I really can't talk about that right now, sorry" type comment. Anyway, I took a photo of my DS and Electroplankton earlier for you to look at. It's a pretty awful picture, but hey, it's what you do with a borrowed camera that is low on batteries. It seems increasingly likely that Electroplankton will hit western shores. If so, here's hoping that they don't change the name, or add different and "more hip" instruments. This game has so much charm. The fact that it's so typically Japanese (in the quirky and weird sense) makes it very endearing. And the instrument samples are really suitable for all ages. Definitely something all of you should purchase, if it comes to your shores. Speaking of E3, you can look forward to very in-depth coverage from the folks over at N-Sider. Those of you who follow our site know that we always provide the most detailed coverage on Nintendo's demos. This year will be no different. You may remember that with The Wind Waker, we even provided extensive diagrams and information about the controller mapping and stuff. You can expect similar stuff for Twilight Princess this year and more, to boot. I believe we have a few juicy developer interviews to publish as well, so you can look forward to that. I've been assigned to Electroplankton and since I actually own the title, I'm assuming that my piece will probably go up first. The other E3-related stuff will follow. Usually we get our in-depth game-specific stuff out in June. It definitely comes out later than all the other sites, but as you know, the quality is unrivalled. I'm thinking I should post more gaming-related things here in future. I have a lot of great discussions about games with some of you and there never seems to be a shortage of topics to cover. Oh, before I go...I have a bit of a technical question. If I have a microphone plugged into the mic socket on my PC and I have headphones in the speaker socket, is it possible to listen to the recording I'm making? I have discovered that I can record sound samples directly from the Nintendo DS (which will be really useful for Electroplankton). However, while I record I can't listen to the samples I'm making. This makes it very random and difficult to know what's going on. So if anyone knows how I can record and listen at the same time, that'd be very helpful.

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Sunday, May 22, 2005

Leave those city streets.

Total volume of music on my computer: Something in the region of 3.8GB. The last CD I bought: Holy Wood (and it took a month for the local Sanity to order it in, yuck). Song playing right now: Almost Unreal, by Roxette. Five songs I listen to a lot, or mean a lot to me: 1. "Disposable Teens" Marilyn Manson: Apart from the fact that I love the sound, this song is great to listen to when I really feel like sticking it to organized religion in particular. "I never hated one true God, but the God of the peopole I hated." That line suits me down to the ground. 2. "Before You Leave" Pepe Deluxe: This is just a cool track. And the video clip is pretty funky too. Considering that Levi's (I think it was Levi's) used it on one of their TV ads, it now forever reminds me of jeans. 3. "Dissolved Girl" Massive Attack: This is still one of my favourite songs, after a good year and a half of frequent listening. It's made a few converts too, so it must be pretty cool. ~_^ 4. "Lamb of God" Marilyn Manson: This is probably my second-favourite track on Holy Wood. It's an incredibly sad song, about the death of JFK and how dying on television makes you a god in the eyes of Americans. Very meaningful track, with great music and lyrics to boot. 5. "Ride" BT: My siblings and I affectionately call this "The Fat Man Song". Somehow the heavy beats remind us of an obese man walking down a street. Go figure. In any case, it's a pretty funky track and it's been getting some more play time lately. I'm not going to pass the baton, if only because all the people I'd want to pass it to have already had it passed to 'em. ~_^ Before I say anything else, I have a couple of items to tick off the agenda. First, you should all go and pay a visit to Baron, as he has recently launched the new version of his LSN web site. Very much worth visiting. On the same note, you should also check out Tony's updated site, with its vivid and summery new design. Nice stuff, wouldn't you agree? I do have a couple of other things to talk about, while I'm here. First of all, my RPGs. Kill Adam hasn't seen an update from me and I haven't even begun Wonka Inc., despite the fact that sign-ups are complete (and so very good, too). I'm sorry about that. I've just been so busy with other things lately. We're all really cramming to get myOtaku.com finished by the deadline, so that really has to take priority. I will try to revisit those things as soon as I get a chance, though. When I do, you'll read about it here. Secondly, does anyone have a suggestion for a good Guild name in Guild Wars? I'm having a great deal of trouble thinking of something. Some assistance on that would be most welcome. ~_^

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Saturday, May 21, 2005

New Model

Well, I finally received my Nintendo DS and Electroplankton yesterday. Although I've had an interest in Electroplankton, actually experiencing it in the flesh makes a whole lot of difference. The physical act of interacting with the little plankton and the kind of sound you can produce is pretty remarkable. I'm not sure if I have a favourite game yet (within Electroplankton), as they are all pretty fun. A couple are relatively boring for me (Lumiloop is probably my least favourite), but the others are all very good. The one I spent the most time with so far would have to be Beatnes. When you see it demonstrated at GDC, I think it seems somewhat boring. But when you play it yourself, it's highly addictive. Playing Electroplankton is almost like meditation. Some plankton put you in a complete trance, where the outside world disappears and where you only notice colour and sound. It's truly not like any game I've played; it's truly a "media art" experience. The extremely high quality of the sound samples, combined with the precision of the stylus really help to make that so. I will have to take some photos to show you at some point; even the book for Electroplankton is incredibly cool. It's said that Toshio Iwai (the creator) spent as much time on the book as on the game itself. I can definitely see why; the book is gorgeous, every single page is beautifully hand-drawn. None of the instructions even seem to be printed as such...the whole layout and everything has a very artistic, hand-made feel to it. In any case, now that I have a DS, I'll be ready to visit your Animal Crossing towns and play against you in Mario Kart later this year. I really look forward to that. ~_^ Today I also picked up Super Mario 64 DS. I'm enjoying it; the changes are pretty cool. In regard to control, I'm so far preferring the D-Pad over stylus control. The latter is nice, but it seems a bit too "slippery" for me. Having said that, D-Pad control's biggest drawback (apart from the fact that Mario now controls just a bit more like a truck) is that it hurts my thumb. I mean, it puts a great deal of strain on it. No good. Nevertheless, it's a fun game and I enjoy the fact that I can now play that game on a handheld system. The mini-games are also rather good, from what I've experienced so far. Anyway, this style change was kind of random. I decided to go for something very light and washed-out. It's based on the Mechanical Animals album, as many of you will probably already be able to see. Right now I'm deciding on which song from that album I should put up here. In terms of raw sound, I love The Dope Show. But the lyrics in I Don't Like the Drugs are amazing. There are a number of other songs on that album that I really like (User Friendly and New Model No. 15 are my other favourites), but eh, I don't know. In any case, I felt this'd be a good temporary change, until I feel like coming up with something totally different.

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Thursday, May 19, 2005

Fork in the tongue.

Now that all of the major E3 press conferences are over, everyone's had some time to digest them and reflect on 'em. I have to say that in general, I was pretty happy with Sony and Nintendo. Microsoft's conference was less interesting than I'd actually hoped for. "My Xbox 360 connects me to the experiences I care about". Is it just me, or has Microsoft perfected the art of lame PR speak? What experiences are they specifically talking about? Buying pizza while watching porn while playing Halo? *shrug* Not to say that Xbox 360 itself is necessarily a disappointment. I find myself defending it perhaps more than I should have to. I definitely think it has merit and there are some aspects of it that are pretty clever. I myself am not all that excited about it, but I think that's mostly because none of the games announced so far really grab me. Some show promise (and are games that I may have an interest in down the road), but right now nothing stands out for me. That's normal though; usually there is very little of huge value this early on. I was semi-disappointed with the Nintendo conference, due to the lack of Revolution details. But having said that, I was reasonably happy with everything else. Clearly, the focus was being placed on DS and its Wi-Fi capabilities. And that area kept me satisfied. Some of the newer games that were shown were also pretty exciting to see (I'm really looking forward to New Super Mario Bros.) On another note, I want to publicly apologize to Shinmaru. I made a comment (a sarcastic comment intended to be a joke) on his blog. AzureWolf (the subject of my comment) responded pretty nastily. But I take responsibility; even in fun, I probably shouldn't stir. To Azure, I think it's probably a question of knowing me. I mean...knowing that I'm a pretty lighthearted person. Try not to take things too seriously, it's really not good. I certainly try not to, anyway. Yeah, I get into discussions that are serious, but I basically keep a lighthearted view of things as best I can. It certainly isn't nice to be torn to shreds and labeled as essentially promiscuous by someone who doesn't know the first thing about you. Believe me, not fun. With that out of the way (hopefully for good, lest I need to take out an extremely big mallet - I kid!), the only other real item of note is the fact that the week has been so extraordinarily busy! Despite the major network-related stuff that's going on right now, I've had a whole heap of other work on my plate, which hasn't been particularly fun. I handle marketing for my dad's company and I've had to put together a whole batch of new materials; everything from a little brochure to other stuff. In between printing problems (it's amazing how often printers can lose your discs) and other issues, it's amazing that anything got done. But it did and we're all happy. Tonight I certainly feel relieved to have most of that weight lifted. It was sitting over me for the past couple of weeks. Oh well, other than being busy and incurring God's wrath, things have generally been pretty quiet, other than the whole E3 thing. I'm not too interested in much of the coverage for some reason; perhaps there just isn't all that much I want to read about. Still, it's always a fun time of the year. N-Sider is going to be very busy and I have am preparing a few things to do with our E3 coverage over there, so that'll be fun. Anyhoo, I'd better get going for now. But before I go, I just want to mention that now Annie has Guild Wars. So...that's just one more Otakuite with the game. Yum. A few more and we'll have a real little army on our hands. ~_^

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Monday, May 16, 2005

Plague on a crucifix.

E3 begins tomorrow. It's always an exciting time of the year for gamers and this year is going to be especially exciting. It's not often that new game consoles are revealed. But beyond that, there are a ton of games to look forward to - there will be more than 650 games on the show floor. It seems that covering E3 becomes more and more difficult each year as a result. I'm glad that N-Sider is Nintendo-only. Covering more than one hardware manfacturer would be insane; I certainly don't envy the bigger multi-platform sites. Speaking of games, I've been playing Guild Wars when I can lately and it's been a great deal of fun. Where are all you Guild Wars players? I've spent the vast majority of my time with Alex. It's a lot of fun, of course, but it'd be awesome to have a party full of OBers. Although time differences can also be a bit annoying. Guild Wars also reminds me about online etiquette. In the game I just played, a girl insisted that I trade an object with her (mid-mission). We literally couldn't continue until that'd been done. And then, mid-mission, we had someone just leave on us. Dropping-out with no penality is a little annoying, mostly because we were left with an incomplete party. And so we were barely getting by as a result. Oh well. For the most part, Guild Wars players have been very courteous, which is great to see. I really value that, particularly with online games; it makes the experience that much more fun. Hopefully I'll get some time to play with more OBers soon (ignoring how utterly wrong that sounds when not in context >_>;;)

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Friday, May 13, 2005

A rebel from the waist down.

Thanks for your comments on my last post, everyone. I hope you look forward to what we're going to be unveiling this year. In the last couple of posts I've been talking about Guild Wars a bit and finally, I received my copy yesterday. I'm glad that I only participated in three beta events; the game is a little less spoiled for me that way, although the early stages seem to be stuff that I've largely played before. Still, it's fun. And it'll be great to get into new territory. I also mentioned that I'll be making a Guild. That'll still happen and when it does, I'll announce it on here for those who are interested. In the meantime, I've been playing the first few missions with Alex, which has been great. It's really preferable to play with people you know, rather than strangers, I think. Guild Wars is full of great people, but it's extra great to play with people from the network here. On that note, if anyone here owns Guild Wars and wants to add me to their in-game buddy list, PM me with the name of your character and I'll add 'em. I will also PM you with the name of mine, so you can add me too. I think I'd rather go the PM route right now, just so that I can filter things and work out who I want to add. Once we've gotten a few people together from here, I'll probably start the Guild at that stage. That is a little head-shot of my character, by the way. I decided to go Elementalist/Monk for the time being, although my PvP character (who I haven't used yet) is entirely different. Anyway, it's been an interesting day. As gamers here might know, Microsoft revealed its Xbox 360 on MTV. The show was pretty awful; clearly not designed for hardcore gamers. But I think it's probably a good way to reach the lay consumer who don't know a great deal about games. What annoyed me as that they spent less time showing Perfect Dark Zero and more time showing the player's faces. No thanks, I'd rather see the game itself, especially one that's been in development since Jesus hit puberty. Mostly, nothing terribly new was revealed, save for a few little details here and there. I think the very best thing I saw about it was on GameSpot; their feature on Xbox 360 is comprehensive and their editor remarks at the end are quite balanced. Nice. I like the fact that they aren't as caught up in the hype machine as they could be. My opinion on the console thusfar is pretty unchanged; if it supports backward compatibility, I'll no doubt buy it at launch. If not, I will probably buy an original Xbox when the price hits rock bottom. The new details were somewhat interesting. I like the wireless controllers and the way they avoid interference. I also like the fact that they can be "trickle-charged" via USB. And I like the whole idea of the circular ring alerting you to incoming messages via Xbox Live, even if you're playing a game or watching a film (it's known as "Ring of Light" by Microsoft). And, maybe it's just me, but the 360 still looks quite big. When it was standing on a table by J. Allard, it looked pretty darn large. It seems to me that it only looks marginally smaller than the first machine, although the concave surfaces probably help to hide some of the bulk. It will seem extra large when compared to Revolution. Today, Perrin Kaplan confirmed that Revolution would be a tiny little thing. It'll sit horizontally and vertically (like PS2/Xbox 360), but it will be as tall as three DVD cases stacked on top of each other and only a little longer (when sitting horizontally). Go and test that out for yourself. Pretty small, no? Especially for something that should match Xbox 360 in hardware specifications. In addition, Revolution will use dual-layer DVDs, which should provide approximately 9GB of data (give or take). That's good news, considering that GameCube discs provided something like 1.5GB of data. Revolution will also sport a very robust online network that will be available immediately on launch and, of course, it'll be free and wireless. Not bad. Oh, and Yoichi Wada (president of a little company called Square-Enix) is apparently very impressed with the online system that Nintendo is engineering for DS and Revolution. Apparently he looks forward to the challenge of creating games for those systems. That's pretty cool, especially considering Square-Enix's interest in revitalizing the Japanese marketplace. It will also have wireless controllers as standard. Nintendo also mentions "quick start-up time" and "quiet, low-power operation". Low power operation, eh? I wonder if Revolution will be portable. *taps nose* So there you go, a few little tidbits for those who have been sitting under a rock. I'm really looking forward to E3...I have a very good feeling about a few things, especially Nintendo.

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Wednesday, May 11, 2005

7.5 or 8?

Bio: The Guild will primarily be for OBers and other Otakuites, but I don't think it'll be an "OB Guild". It'll be my own Guild and it will have its own theme and name. I don't know what the cape designs will be like, though. Too early to say. But there is the possibility of having a site to accompany the Guild at some point. So, definitely look out for that. Arcadia: Oh good. The more people who get in on it, the better! The weather is gorgeous, but it's cooling down somewhat as winter approaches. What great weather for Guild Wars, huh? Nothing like jumping into a dreamy fantasy world while you're sitting in your room all rugged up... Tonykins: Oh yes, I'm definitely into the band to that degree. I suppose that I'd always been more of a casual fan, but that's definitely changed in recent months. Yum. There are non-official DVDs though, right? I feel certain that a local Sanity rep had listed at least three that they had in stock. I'll have to see what that's all about. And now, to the subject of this post's title. As many of you know, I often use myOtaku to discuss network-related happenings and my own thoughts on such things. Recently, I have been talking about OtakuBoards in pretty vague terms. Most of you are aware that a Version 7.5 is in the works and most of you probably know that my attitude toward it has been "it's finished when it's finished". Normally, this would not be the case. But there are several things occurring right now that have a direct impact on OB. Freelance web work and myOtaku 3.0 are the principle things that mean less time for OtakuBoards. The former is always hanging around, but the latter is unusual in the sense that it's an extraordinarily large project. And, unlike previous iterations of myOtaku.com, I will be more hands-on with the development of the new version. Previously, I had played a role in various capacities, but generally speaking my role has been more limited with this particular site. But because myOtaku 3.0 is such a large jump forward, I'm going to be more involved in the development and design, including more specific things (such as the comments system, private messaging and style modification). myOtaku 3.0 is arguably the most important site we've ever made in this network. And since OtakuBoards is operating well enough for now (and since it is tiny compared to the rest of the network), it obviously isn't a top priority. However, you do know that the site is on my mind all the time. I've made some comments about it here, in terms of what I'd like to do with it and where it might go in the future. The current Version 7 iteration of OB is the one that had the most development work involved. Justin and I were working with a totally new Virtual Bulletin platform (OB was one of the very first sites in the world to utilize vB3; it was also one of the first sites to fundamentally modify the layout). With V7, there were many firsts. New software, a seperate "OB mule" for testing and development purposes and even a limited beta testing program. Such things had never really been done with the site before. The reason for all of this was simple: I didn't want V7 to be a flash in the pan. I wanted it to be able to last for quite a while; more than six months. Today, V7 is almost one and a half years old. That is definitely a record when it comes to OB versions. ~_^ Toward the end of last year, I knew that we'd be developing some of our most important new sites during the course of 2005. And I also knew that V7 had plenty of life left in it. So, rather than thinking about a V8, I felt that it would be better to take V7 and add a series of small-but-noteable updates to further extend its lifespan. That included some styling changes, an arcade, a multiplayer/challenge system and various other key upgrades. I intended to launch 7.5 in March, but unfortunately I just didn't have the time to do it then. And now that myO 3.0 is entering development, I simply won't have any ability to complete 7.5 in the near future. In addition to this, I recently discovered (thanks to Justin) that Virtual Bulletin 3.5 will be entering a public beta phase next month. When we developed Version 7, we had a seperate mule that we were able to work on. A mule is basically a clone of OtakuBoards, stored at a secret location, purely for development purposes. By developing on a mule, we can create what we want and test it and see how it all works...and then very rapidly transfer the changes over to the actual site. This means that it isn't necessary to have a month of down-time (if we'd had no mule, OB would have had to be offline for a month while we developed V7 - that's something I wanted to avoid at all costs). Our V7 mule was running on vB3 Beta. When the final version was ready, we were able to launch Version 7 almost simultaneously (meaning that we were able to introduce a full, final version of vB3 very rapidly). So, how is this all relevant to the current situation? Well, I have been looking over the additions to vB3.5 and many of them are quite impressive. It certainly isn't the quantum shift from vB2 to vB3...but it's significant. When the updated vB platform is combined with the planned V7.5 changes, you essentially have quite a large package of updates. Since I will be pretty unable to finalize V7.5 in the near term, I was considering an alternative idea. It goes something like this: a new default skin for OtakuBoards V7 would be developed and added within a pretty short time frame (within the next month or two). Existing skins would be given slight updates and a couple of minor OB issues would be fixed (ie: no more receipt confirmation pop-up when you send Private Messages). This would coincide with staff changes and some other small revisions. But it wouldn't be a V7.5 - just a very slight freshening-up. Then, at the end of the year (after you've had a few months to play around with your shiny new myOtaku), we could launch a full Version 8 of OtakuBoards...complete with not only the 7.5 changes, but also a number of other very significant enhancements (further improved design, vB3.5 engine, much much stronger myO integration and so on). That is one alternative that I'm considering presently. The other alternative is to simply wait for a few more months and release V7.5 at the end of this year, perhaps with a few more updates than I'd planned (to make up for the lateness), in addition to making it vB3.5-equipped. Then, when vB4 is released (perhaps next year), we'd start thinking about a full-blown Version 8. I think both ideas are viable and both are certainly doable. At the moment I haven't made a decision about that, though. What do you guys think?

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