Hi everyone. I had intended to try and get an update out before the end of November, but the Gods weren't with me. Or something.

I just wanted to share that I'm racing ahead with the Alpha, and hopefully should have something worth sharing in a few days. I really need to get the first draft of the rules out well before Christmas, so I've set myself a deadline of the 17th December AT THE VERY LATEST to get the Alpha rules out to the Alpha testers.

The attached photo of the current state of my workstation shown the progress made, including the second draft of the character sheet design and some of the notes on Armour on the tablet screen.

Fighting this darned depression thing continues to be a mountain to climb, but I think I'm doing OK. My concentration levels are still crap and I constantly catch myself getting distracted by something in the office or on the screen and have to drag myself back to the task at hand. I know I'm months behind now, and the pressure is on. The background stuff is developing well enough but I've put that on the back burner for now in order to get the important rules finalised.

I have character generation, the main rules system, combat, damage, healing and armour ready to go, and next I'm moving onto a rudimentary vehicle combat system which will include ship combat. This has to be compatible with the concept of a miniatures system as well, but thanks to a bit of design work just before LaveCon I think that should be the easy part.

You'll note the Elite Amiga game box in the background of the photo there. I pulled a few boxes out of my mum's cupboard to sort through to see what was worth keeping and there it was! I actually thought the game had gone to the great space station in the sky, but now it's taking pride of place in my line of sight as I work on the book. It's a little bit of inspiration.

In other news, EliteMeet at the start of November was a great event. It was good to finally meet DaddyHoggy and Gimi from the Oolite forums as well as some of the new faces and names from the LaveRadio spinoffs (Veegor I'm looking at you). I did a spot on Darren Gray's Tales From The Frontier podcast and I got to have a go on the demo Oculus Rift! I can see why the gaming community is talking about it all the time now. All in all a good time and thanks go out to Alien, Darren and the others for organising it all.

Anyway, that's all for now. A more detailed update will be winging its way to you soon, hopefully with news of the Alpha release.

Dave