Gameware Studio Diary

Time flies�

Half the English Summer has passed now, without that much by way of sunshine I might add, and with it a whole load of the kind of development work which might best be described as �behind the scenes�. I guess this is partly reflected in the lack of entries in this diary of late � so I figured it might be as well to clue you in on a couple of items which we hope will be of interest to old and new customers alike.

First of these is the release of our LivingPicture applications for PC. There are two versions - one standard and one which lets you use the tool to create animated images for web-sites. They�re both for personal use only, but we'll be releasing a version licensed for commercial usage too quite soon. We�ve received a good amount of positive feedback from many different quarters about this product and are looking forward to seeing how it does in the market once users get to realise how quick and easy it is to produce their own talking characters and send them around to friends.

The second piece of news relates to BAMZOOKi. Whilst the first series is presently being repeated and work is well underway on the second, we�ve also reached an agreement with the BBC which will allow Gameware Development to produce and distribute new and improved versions of the ZOOK creation kit from this very web-site. I can exclusively reveal that our version will be called BAMZOOKi eXtra and will be completely free to anyone downloading it. We plan to follow this up with an add-on pack which will sell for about 14.99 euros and which will contain most of the contests from the TV show itself as well as the �House ZOOKs�, Nosey and Bernard to play against. We�ll be supporting all this with a new, dedicated BAMZOOKi section on the web-site and have plenty more plans afoot to take things forward with. This is all so hot off the press we haven�t even done a news release yet, so remember, you heard it here first!

Our first Creatures compilation pack, The Albian Years, is out now in Europe - I re-arranged a few copies on the shelves of Cambridge�s branch of GAME this lunch-time ;-). Stocks should be available from purchase from our shop any day now � watch this space. Creatures Exodus and Village will follow in the next two months. Meantime, in a development which may be surprising, but is certainly true, Gameware has signed an agreement with Infinium Labs, for distribution of all the Creatures titles on their PC-based broadband-delivery gaming platform, Phantom. The Phantom launches in the US in November this year.

So there you go, Gameware�s summer so far, strangely quiet on the surface but paddling away like a turbo-charged swan underneath. Now what we need is for the sun to stay out for a while...