Oh man, nine months since my last post, that is incredible. Not sure why I keep this thing up here.

What have I been up to? I said in my last post that I was hoping to get back into XNA, I fiddled with it for a while and wrote a prototype game that used the Guitar Hero controller; it was a hybrid sh'mup slash rhythm game, but I couldn't quite get it to be fun.

I've been working hard on Ready To Ship, the new application I've been developing at work, and that's kind of kept me from wanting to do anymore coding at home. I did have an idea for a collaborative web game thing, kind of inspired by Real Lives and Kudos, but with user created events and a paper doll avatar system. I still hope to get it going at some point because I think there's potential there for a lot of funny stuff.

Kurodust is gearing up to record and release their second album, so that's been my main creative outlet for the past 6 months or so. We're working on finding an artist to do some cheap work for us so we can redesign the website and figure out the album art. If we can't find anybody I guess I'll just pass myself of as an artist again and come up with something.

Things I was hoping to do but haven't got around to: redesigning this blog, taking piano lessons, actually finishing another game. I guess that's a short list, so that's not too bad.

Until June!

...and it's made it a lot harder to get out of bed in the mornings. I've still been managing to do a bit of work on all my projects though, despite all the games I have to play and comics I have to read and TV shows I have to watch. I'd be able to get so much more done if it weren't for work and sleep.

Trevor and I have started messing around with AGS and are working on a Kurodust adventure game (the beat 'em up is still coming, eventually), which has been fun. My spriting skills are improving so I'm hoping the graphics won't turn out too bad, and we've been able to come up with some funny ideas for puzzles and storylines.

Speaking of Kurodust, we finally had another band practise! After 2 years Jay, Rob and I, with the new addition of Trevor, are back together as a band, and with a gig booked at the end of August (Jay's brother's 25th) we'll be working hard to remember how to play our old songs and hopefully will even have time for something new!

I've had another couple of ideas for small games I may want to try in future, either in XNA or flash. No idea when I'll get onto those though.

And through all this I managed to 5 star all of Hard Mode in Guitar Hero 2! Bring on Expert and Guitar Hero 3! (which is looking cool)

Last week, Rob and I officially released the music project we've been working on for the past 8-9 months, a 4 track EP called In Continuum. Our side project is called Silverpath, and you can download the tracks at http://www.silverpath.net.

Making this EP was a great experience and I'm extremely happy with the way it turned out. Rob's skills in recording and production have increased by an amazing amount over the past 2 years (since our Kurodust EP), as have my singing skills, so all the tracks sound great.

We also decided to have a little fun and filmed a music video for the track Kaibutsu, which is also on the site. Unfortunately our video camera ran out of batteries before we got all the footage we wanted, so I had to make do with what we had. I think it turned out OK for a first try, next time we do something like that we'll plan it out a lot better and make sure we have spare batteries, hah.

Rob is getting married in 2 days, and then going on his honeymoon, which is extremely exciting for him. For the rest of us in the band, we're kind of anxious for him to get back so we can start playing again