Just curious, what is the next step for the Arena? ------------------------------------------------------- A headache, ancillary; an hourglass auxiliary. "something witty, blah, blah, blah" --That One Witty Guy (remember? that one dude?) (author of DustBot)

That''s a good question, and one that I don''t have a definite answer for yet. What I do know for sure, though, is that we will have more contests like the beta contest.

I''ve gathered everyone''s feedback, and I plan on spending some time during the holidays this week figuring out what I want to do. Right now, I''m leaning toward cleaning up the code and fixing the most obvious issues that everyone seems to have had with the framework first, then moving forward with another contest.

The problem is that right now I''m co-authoring another book so my time is limited. The book is due to be complete by the end of January, though, so after that it''s possible that I will rewrite/redesign the arena and add new features to it (I''m also considering the open source route..). It all depends on what''s going on, though. Some GDNet software work might be coming up with the transition to the new server, so that would be a time distraction as well..

So, I hope that gives something of an answer for now. I''m not killing the idea, but it might be delayed a little bit. We will definitely have another contest, though.. this time with a public announcement and a real contest. Oh, and I''m still looking for ways to thank you guys for participating in the beta contest.. I haven''t forgotten about you.