Here's the last email I received from him around the 14th of March. It should answer some questions about what has been going on, hopefully he doesn't get mad I pasted this.
Quote: "Introduction :
Welcome to the First Quikly Chronicle. I am writing this on the 14th of March, one whole month after the official launch of Quikly 3d Game Studio Pro. What a month it has been! Those who have been following it on the forums and k2dn will know that I have had manufacturing problems at all stages along the way, website problems, computer problems, illness in myself, my wife and my kids, general incompetence from local postal services and essentially everything that could go wrong, did. It has been stressful, nerve wracking and exceedingly expensive! But I’m not here to be negative, I’m here to say what doesn’t beat Quikly can only make it stronger, and no matter how tough stuff gets, I’m in it for the long haul. Quikly has the potential to be the biggest and best software in its class, and I’m glad you’ve all decided to see it through and help it develop. I really appreciate all the support I’ve been getting from emails and through the Quikly community Forums. Thanks all, this one’s dedicated to you!
About the Website:
This website will be re-launched on the 20th of March 2006, it is being re-written in a way that will allow me to update and manage it far easier. No more orders will be taken until the site re-opens. Many apologies to anyone who has emailled me and not got a response, I'll be answering all your queries this coming weekend.
About Deliveries:
I can confirm that all deliveries for people who bought the EA or Full versions up till today have been shipped. Those in the UK whose batches were shipped and didn’t arrive, can rest assured that second lots have been sent out to you also, so within the next few days everyone should have their copies with them. For Non-UK orders, all copies have been sent Airmail, and shouldn’t take long to arrive.
As you know I have been having a lot of trouble with online downloadable versions, but I have spent the last few days with it and have hopefully come up with a solution. Over the next few days I’ll be personally emailing files out for each of you to try in the meantime while waiting for your boxed order to arrive.
People who have been sent free versions for review evaluation, thank you for helping etc will find that your old log-ins can’t download the latest versions of the software. That is simply because I have been flat out getting the paid orders sorted. Yours will get sorted as soon as I get a moment to breathe!
Thanks to everyone for their patience and understanding. The orders process is now pretty much sorted and I have learnt from my mistakes and shall be using the main sorting office and sending out a new batch every week, meaning orders in the future should be delivered a lot more reliably.
Article: The Origins, and Future of Quikly
Quikly has been in development since late 2001, but I’ve been making Games making languages and systems since 1989, starting with a basic
level editor for breakout, pacman and space invaders style games on the family’s old CBM/PET, then porting them to Commodore 64 when my parents saw I was developing stuff that was good and programming wasn’t just a fad for me. The first real drag and drop style games creation software I made was “Kangaroo” for the Amiga 500, so called because it let you just “jump” into games creation, and also because collision between the floors and your characters was caused by pixel “bouncing”.
Quikly was initially started as a Dark Basic program for creating 3d
city racing games along the lines of Crazy Taxi and Mid Town Madness,
but allowing you to make your own city. It soon became apparent that the level editor could be used for other styles of games and it became “Kangaroo 2”, and remained under that name for nearly 2 years, and lead to me being known on the Dark Basic forums as “Kangaroo2”. Unfortunately I ran into many speed problems with Dark Basic especially with collisions when levels became complex. I heard about Dark Basic Professional and upgraded, but found virtually none of my code ported over to it as it should and I started again from scratch. After a while a 75% complete version was around, and I started to enquire with publishers and got quite a lot of interest. However, with deadlines and the feeling of less control over the future of the projects made that fall through. Then there came a dispute with using the name “Kangaroo 2” and some of the source code, the project was put on hiatus, and I’d almost given up.
I decided to start again, but with a new name, new methods of coding and editing, with the idea of creating an all encompassing product that would include its own model editor, level editor and everything else someone would need to make games, without having to pay for extra software. With the introductions of new gaming technology such as Direct X 9 shaders, real-time lighting and physics on the horizon with the as yet unreleased but much hyped Half-life 2 and Doom 3, I started to write design documents for a product that would allow you to create games of similar quality, easily, and quickly. I bought quikly.com, the rest is history, and on the 14th of February 2006, my game maker finally officially went on sale. There’s still a lot of things I want to do with Quikly, and you’ll be here to see it – here’s to the future!
While Quikly 3d Game Studio Pro is still in its infancy, there’s a long way to go from here. There will be little updates often, and big updates in time too, hopefully helping to keep Quikly up to date with new trends and technologies. There will be new software packages, as well as improvements and updates to the existing ones, and all will be free. Be sure to keep checking Quikly.com for the latest new and updates, you can visit k2dn and the forums to read the developer diaries and suggest improvements and new features. And if one day something happens and I can’t release any more updates, I will do my best to get the source code freely available to the community so you guys can keep developing even after I’m gone. But I’m not planning on going anywhere. Quikly has been my own personal project for over 4 years, and a vision of mine for even longer. I’m so glad you chose to be part of it, welcome!
EA Bonus:
As an early adopter (in this case meaning someone who purchased Quikly before the date this Chronicle was published) you are entitled to some benefits, as a thank you for bearing with me over the last few months!
Firstly, everybody is entitled to Half Price Quikly Books. Once a year every December, a professionally produced paperback and hardback book will be produced, as an annual and containing hard copies of all the documentation and tutorials updated on Quikly.com over that year. These won’t contain any content you won’t be able to get for free via the website, but will be an invaluable reference for those of us who like having professionally printed manuals on the shelf, and will also be a nice collectable for the future. As an early adopting user you are automatically eligible for half price copies of these books
Secondly, everybody is entitled to a free email subscription to
Kangaroo2 monthly newsletter, which will usually be only available via educational packages. The newsletter will start at the end of the year and will cover games design, theory and history, along with tutorials for non Quikly apps and engines, including game mods.
Thirdly, everybody is entitled to a half price “experience” day in the 9thlife Recording Studio in Somerset, UK. 8 hours recording studio time with a professional producer, you get to take home a mixed cd of your days work and a detailed guide to the music industry – standard price £100, offer price to Quikly users (or their relatives/partners etc) just £50! One voucher per user, contact Sam via PM for details.
There are some more cool bonuses including some cool free stuff on the horizon, I’ll let you all know more about that in next month’s chronicle!
Last Month’s Competition:
Each month there will be a new competition set in this newsletter for
Quikly Users. What you also don’t know is there was a secret competition last month which no-body was told about! I asked a friend of mine to surf through the forums and also my Quikly relative emails folder to find possible Quotes to put on the back of the box design whilst I was in a panic to get it done on time! Essentially they went through finding nice, varied or simply amusing quotes from you guys, chose the best and we put them on the back of the first batch of boxes to look nice and stay there until we get feedback & reviews for a more complete version. Those of you whose quotes were selected, thank you very much, sorry that I couldn’t email you to ask permission first, the time restraints for the printers didn’t leave us such luxury. However you will be emailed personally to let you know of what prize bundles you all are entitled to, including a book, pc game, movie and first edition comic!
This Month’s competition:
The competition this month is simple: design and model a vehicle. All
vehicles modelled and submitted will be added to the media bank and will be royalty free for Quikly users to download and use in their games, so if you aren’t happy with that, don’t enter – remember that the point in media based competitions is to increase our media bank to help other people make games, and a competition is a fun way to do that and keep the forums busy.
Rules:
1. The competition is open to anybody, whether a Quikly user or not.
2. Entries must be in my email inbox by midnight GMT on 10th of April
2006. I am not responsible for emails getting lost/not reaching me.
3. There is no limit to the amount of entries per user.
4. The entries will judged by the Quikly forum community, based on a
post which I shall make with screenshots of all the models taken by
myself. There will be no names attached to the pictures so entries will remain anonymous. That way it stays fair, and avoids alliances etc.
5. Because of the above, discussing or showing your competition entry
models on the forums or via forum pm is not allowed
Model Guidelines:
1. Models can be made in any modelling package, but must be standard .x format, with a single UV mapped texture.
2. Wheels must be exported as separate single models to the car body,
each with their own uv mapped texture, or sharing the texture with the body.
3. The body and wheels must have the correct centre of rotation when
exported.
4. Polycount limit is 3000 including all wheels. Low to mid poly is
preferred.
Other:
Extra credit will be given for alternative texture jobs, for example
different colour skins, different racing stickers, different dirt maps etc.
Prizes:
The entry with the most votes wins a racing game of their choice for pc, ps2, xbox or gamecube subject to stock, “Dumbo & Cool” game for PC, A signed picture of our un-official sponsor Tiffani Thiessen. If the winner owns a copy of Quikly, they will also receive a copy of the first Quikly book when it is published in December. If the winner is not a Quikly owner, the book will be replaced with a full version of Quikly 3d Game Studio Pro!
Outro:
That’s about it for this month’s Chronicle, I hope it was an interesting read, it’ll be back roughly this time next month with more news, articles and another competition."
