I hope it is not required that I introduce myself
Well, if I must: I am the terribly lazy monkey-coder who let his project rest unupdated and unmaintained for far too long so that you guys had to fork it to make your additions.
What you need to know immediately:
1) I am happy and proud that Armagetron Advanced exists.
2) My intention here is in no way to take away anything from you. I am here to help.
Now the longer version. What has happened since my last update to Armagetron:
As much as I would like to have a better explanation, the fact is that I simply got bored with Armagetron and everything that was involved with it. The coding alone was not the biggest problem; answering user mail and posts, making releases and the depressing realization that I did no longer enjoy to play my own game as much as I should just bogged me down. Combine that with less time dedicated to development ( While I worked for CodeCult, I spent two hours a day sitting in a train with my laptop with nothing better to do. Now I can spend the time gained by my shorter way to work with my girlfriend. ) and the coding I already have to do for my PHD thesis, it was just too much to go on with Armagetron.
Sorry to everyone who tried to contact me during that time and never heard back.
I probably never read your message. I even was unaware of this project the whole time.Anyway, since then a lot of time passed, and at the beginning of this year, I concluded that I really missed game development. What to do? I could have started a new project ( a simple WWI style biplane action game! ), but first, I wanted to clean up my act in Armagetron and fix the most glaring problems. At least, fixes for AMD64 and GCC 3.4 compatibility were bitterly needed. That is when the existence of your little offspring came to my attention. I quickly realized a new opportunity. Obviously, there are people out there ( you ) who want to take my former project further. People who have set up their own project structure, who managed a coordinated release for more different platforms than I ever could cover alone. People who have set up a forum for their communication among each other and with the users and use it regularly. If you compare these observations with my reasons for playing dead for over a year, you will notice that you solved two of my problems. The last problem, the lack of fun I get from Armagetron, was naturally solved by the passing time; on the new PCs we got in our institute, I enjoy a round or two for quick relaxation from time to time ( All right, all right. Several times a day. Satisfied? )
The next step was quite obvious...
I had some mail contact with guru3 and the other administrators ( I guess this is why I am listed as a developer... Thanks! ), explaining the situation and my basic intentions. They seemed to have no objections against me joining you, so here I am.
I have not yet had a chance to thoroughly look at what you have done exactly ( downloaded your version and played it a bit, read some stuff in this forum ). I will try to read more during the next days and make my mind up about some things. I plan to post some thoughts here about what I think went wrong in the development of Armagetron, some of it coding-related, some project "management" related, some people-related.
After that, I would like to begin to correct some of the mistakes. Sometimes that will be done by restructuring a subsystem, sometimes just documenting stuff or helping you to work around the system's limitations.
I do not want to boss anyone of you around, it is your project now. I am mainly here to help you accomplish your goals and to clean up my own mess rather than to let you try to clean it up and make it worse
. One last thing: don't try to stop me when I am in a coding frenzy ( rare, but it happens ), it could hurt 
Greetings and apologies,
Z-Man
, its good to hear from you again 
. In short, I couldn't be happier if you join us. (In fact, I'd be very dissapointed if you didn't 
.)
).
. Our police just does not usualy bother with it and the possesion of small amounts is not punished. And amsterdam is only an hour away... Nah, you just give me unhealthy ideas! Stop it! 
