It's finally October and the year has gone by so quickly. Winter is technically over, but today's blustery conditions tells me otherwise (Thanks Wellington). Even typing this now, I can hear the wind howling outside, bringing a chilly southerly to sweep the streets of the city.

Anyway, Hot Wheels™ Battle Force 5™ has supposedly been sent out the door, which means we're just sitting tight and waiting for feedback. We're still playtesting this - it's really good and I like the story mode, but it's easily clockable in a few hours. The theme music is cool though! Rugby League 3 on the other hand is still there, just waiting for publisher dramas to resolve. Meanwhile, most of the programmers have been pulled onto research and development projects.

On the Pokemon front, HGSS was released a few weeks ago and I've been busy hacking away. Apart from the standard Pokemon stats, attack information, level-up attacks, breeding moves, trainer information, etc, I've also managed to learn from Eevee at veekun how to parse sprite data, which is something completely new for me, and provided a good challenge over the weekend. There's still things I don't know but I'm learning!

For the Nintendo Wii, due out sometime within the next few months! Look at my beautiful Team Options menu. *tear*

In anticipation of Starcraft II's release at the end of the year, I decided I should take up Starcraft again, so I began from the very first mission on the original Starcraft and have begun working my way through each chapter in the Terran campaign. I'm currently up to the one where you have to destroy the Ion Cannon, if those Starcrafters can remember how far along in the story that is.

I've also become increasingly addicted to iSketch, an online Pictionary game where you're given a word from a themed word bank, and your friends guess what you draw. I've been playing with my friends at Psypoke, so we've gone for the Pokemon theme, naturally, where we have proceeded to draw the most horrifying and mangled 4-bit coloured Pokemon you could ever see. Observe my Koffing doing a Smog attack:



Yeah.

On Friday, while waiting for our Beta build to finish, I played my game for the first time. And even though it's not really my kind of game, I had fun (gasp). I have to say, I prefer the GameCube button combinations more than the Wiimote movement, simply because the tactile feedback is immediate and you know exactly when you've executed a particular move. Because we support GameCube controllers, up to eight people can play at once, so I do recommend it..but yeah, I still can't tell you what it is.

We had some people over on Friday night just to hang about and play some games. Sunni brought her PS2 over so I got to play a RETAIL COPY of Rugby League 2, World Cup Edition for the first time. I watched the credits (yay) and did the magic unlock all cheat to view the photos we took during production. Overall the game wasn't too bad, of course there were lots of improvements that could have been made (especially that customisation bug, Peter) but Dave and Chris seemed to enjoy it anyway.

Andrew and Mel had their combined farewell dinner at Mac's Brewery on Saturday night, but for some reason I was feeling rather antisocial and didn't really want to talk to anyone. I mean, the atmosphere was good and the food was pretty good too, but I just didn't feel like opening my mouth to converse. I was lucky Chris gave me a ride home, otherwise I would have had to bus through the dark, wet, cold Wellington night to go home early and sleep.

And finally today, Andrew and Sunni got baptised in our apartment pool. I'm really glad for them, but it just seemed weird for Jono and Matt to officiate it and have it in our pool. I guess I'm used to seeing it done in a church pool..haha. Nevertheless, a baptism is a baptism and I support them in their decision to declare Jesus as their Saviour, so congratulations to you both, if you ever get off Facebook and read this.

Buy your copy now, and I'll autograph it for free!

Time to clear out some photos from my phone. As I said on Monday, we celebrated the announcement of Rugby League 2: World Cup Edition, my first game at Sidhe Interactive. The company took us out for some nibbles and drinks. Meet the team!





Those Wellingtonians seemed pretty happy that they beat Auckland for that Ranfurly Shield, so they held a parade for the players.



I was owned by the bus strikes on Wednesday and arrived at work 30mins late, so that night, I planned to stay at the Hub and walked to work the next morning. Good weather for it as well! On Friday night, I met with Jono and Dave at this Malaysian restaurant where we had the awesomest grilled prawns. A bit pricey, and not very big portions, but delicious.



Today, music at church - daylight savings meant I had to get up at what was really 7am. Then I met Laura for yum char at Majestic. I need to stay awake and not nap to keep this sleep schedule intact.

We got the announcement that the game we've been working on for the PS2 finally got the green light from our publishers.

So that means that at the end of October or the beginning of November, you can go out into New Zealand stores and buy a copy of my first game.

That's right, you can play the game, flick to the credits and point and shout when my name appears on screen.

While personally, it's not my kind of genre, I wholeheartedly endorse and promote this game to give you a fantastic gaming experience.

And without further delay, Sidhe Interactive presents...