Having added variousgames during the summer, and now that we have Halma and that Pente will soon be here, the Summer/Autumn of New Games will be winding up soon as we shift our focus to some internal work.
Why do we need to do some internal work? Well, there are a few reasons. One of the main reasons is that our DHTML games don't work very well. They're still "experimental" and they still have several problems. This makes things difficult for WebTV users or anyone else who can't or doesn't use Java.
Now, if that were the only thing, we'd just track down and fix those bugs individually. But Pocket-Monkey's been going for about four years now and while Jock's original structure for how the games work has been spectacularly successful (thank you Jock!), in the past four years we've run into some of its limits and quirks and such. As we move forward, we want to add word games, card games, games which are combinations of cards and a board (like cribbage), maybe even dominoes and such; and while we could probably fit them into the current structure, it would be a bit of a hassle.
But we also want to do games with something other than two players; for instance, Star Halma (aka Chinese Checkers) for four or six players would be nice.
We also want to find a way not to have all of these hassles with Java -- problems with it crashing, problems with it not seeing that things (like game graphics) have been updated, etc. We have a few ideas on that which we'll be pursuing.
So all of those things taken together, combined with changes in the web technology landscape, mean it's finally time for a "Pocket-Monkey Version 2.0". Take the lessons learned from Jock's excellent initial structure, throw in the lessons learned from the things which were difficult to do with it, add in some of our new aspirations, stir in a fair bit of sweat and coffee and perhaps the occasional drop of red wine, and hopefully we'll come out with something even better which makes it even easier for us to add games. We'll see.
While this internal work is going on, you'll see relatively few new features on the site. Note I said "few," not "none." We'll probably keep adding variations of existing games (for instance, a version of Halma with an 8x8 instead of 10x10 board; "angled" Mill and such); at some point we'll add a vacations feature; and there will be various small improvements.
Thanks in advance for your patience and support while we do this internal work.
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