We have a winner...

The winner of The Anvil's first wallpaper contest is eek. There were a lot of great entries which made it a difficult decision. I'm going to be adding a poll to this weeks contest so that forum members can vote on their favourite wallpaper.

Two new interviews

There are two new Pariah-related interviews posted in the "Interviews" page of my site, The Anvil. The interview by Music4Games is with Tim Larkin and the interview by GameTactics is with James Schmalz. The Anvil is having some database issues but I've managed to squash the big bug that wouldn't allow users to register. Also, Morgan Page, of the Pariah Online Team is also reporting that a new trailer is due out in a few weeks. I have an inkling what the theme will be and I'm looking forward to it.

And just for fun, here's a cool Pariah wallpaper made by a fan. Click it to enlarge it.

Pariah Web Ring added

I've added a new menu to the, uh, menu. It's called "Web Ring" and you can find it near the top of the right menu. So far both "Previous" and "Next" point to my blog so if you know of a Pariah site you think should be added to the Web Ring, contact me.

And just for fun, here's an image of a cool explosion. Click it to enlarge it.

Upcoming series and Forum changes

Digital Extremes is planning a 'Day in the Life of a Game Developer' series starting Feb 7, 2005. It should be interesting to hear about Developer experiences and opinions. First up is level designer Jim Russell.

To improve my website, The Anvil, I plan to add an advanced forum, a web ring, some sound (IE only) and, hopefully, some more languages, like German, Dutch and French.

Just for fun, here's a screenshot of a Bogie in the midst of a jump. Click to enlarge it.

New look. Same blog.

As you can see, I've overhauled the entire blog to give it more of a Pariah focus. I'm also hoping to go to Digital Extremes again, sometime in March. I'm planning on getting the Pariah community involved by enabling them to fund my trip there. It would be great to playtest the PC demo and preview the PC tools. Also, a number of questions arose as a result of the last interview, so I'd like to see if I could get those answered as well. And just for fun, here's an image of a mounted dual-machine gun that you'll find in Pariah.

Blog wins 2nd place, Website wins 1st

Well, it's a banner day for me. My site, The Anvil won first prize in the Pariah Online Teams website contest. My blog won 2nd place.

Here's a summary of the winners. Check 'em out:

Website contest:
1. The Anvil
2. pariahgame.de
3. pariahzone.de

Blog contest:
1. Netwin
2. Me
3. supervixengirl

After looking at the 1st place blog and reading the suggestions for better websites, I feel quite motivated to improve both. Look for some changes to the blog template coming soon.

The Anvil gets mentioned in several online mags

I googled ["The Anvil" pariah] (without the brackets) and got a number of hits to magazines mentioning my recent visit to Digital Extremes. Pretty cool!

I also had a bit of a frustrating time on the Gravity Gun last night. I've been able to change the colour of the beam from green to red in the client but bots still shoot green beams. I don't know if it's bot code or server code that needs to be changed, but I should find out tonight when I playtest the gun with my brother-in-law. If you're playing UT2004, look for DieparBaby's Fatpipe.