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August 23, 1999

We've added a new picture to the gallery of Kirsten Maloney.

August 10, 1999

We've added another new artist to the Portrait Gallery: Kirsten Maloney. Give her work a look!

July 17, 1999

I've just added a slew of link buttons and graphics to the Buttons & Banners page, making use of the new GCA logos. If you have a link to the GCA site on your page, take a look to see if any of my new graphics are cool enough to grace your pages.

July 15, 1999

I'm in the process of giving the site a bit of a face-lift. Most of it is finished, I think, but a few pages will probably still be updated in the next few days or so. If you find any broken links or missing graphics, please let me know.

July 1, 1999

Whew, after a long delay, I'm finally caught up. We've got some new data files in French and German, and I've updated and added some new portraits to the Gallery. Enjoy! Oops. The 2.2 Beta version previously available for your download had the Beta switch still turned on, which meant that it failed to work as of July 1, 1999--today. I have made a new installer for the 2.2b update that turns the switch off, and will allow your GCA 2.2 to continue working beyond today. You can get the new 2.2b from the download page.

Too cool to miss: Sparks. Sparks aren't GCA related at all, but they're really cool. Sparks are little paper miniatures, done as TrueType fonts. The beauty of this is that you can print them out yourself, in any quantity that you want, for nearly any scale that you want to use. If you ever use little paper miniatures, or think you might, you owe it to yourself to check these out. Visit the Sparks page now.

June 8, 1999

Wow, the portraits keep on coming in! Thanks so much to everyone who has contributed to the Portrait Gallery so far. We've added some new pictures to the Miscellaneous gallery from a couple of new artists, and we've added some new ones to the gallery pages of a few old friends as well. And, to go along with the continuing growth of the gallery, I've updated the Portrait Gallery entry page, because I wanted to include a few samples of what was available. I've put one picture for each artist along with the link to their pages. This does make the page load a bit slower, but it is a portrait gallery, so I think folks should probably expect that. Marzo Junior has once again updated GDF Editor, fixing some bugs and generally keeping this cool utility humming along. You can download it from his web site. I've also got several data files that need to get onto the site. I'm a bit backlogged here, so it may take a bit longer.

May 17, 1999

Did some additional updating of the Portrait Gallery, breaking a couple artist pages into two pages, to reduce load time and ease browsing a bit. I also added size info to the thumbnail tags, so your browsers will paint them in more efficiently.

May 15, 1999

Several new items to mention today: First, we've added another new artist to the Portrait Gallery: Araden "il Tode". His page is now available. Second, we've split Manchu's gallery page in two, since it was getting rather large, and added some new pictures while we were at it. Third, Marzo Junior has released a new version of GDF Editor, which you can download from his web site.

April 27, 1999

We've added a brand new artist to the Portrait Gallery: Benoit Lemay. Check out the work he's contributed so far.

April 26, 1999

We've once again added some new portraits to Manchu's gallery page, so check it out in the Portrait Gallery. I'm still looking to hear from anyone who ever purchased GCA from Digital Alchemy. If that's you or someone you know, please drop me an email at armin@misersoft.com. And I'm still looking to get a copy of the write-up RINGBOTE did on GCA, so please contact me if you can help.

April 9, 1999

Important: If you have ever purchased GCA from Digital Alchemy, I need to hear from you. This purchase may have been made any time starting with GENCON '97, up to the present, but is not limited to purchases that may have been made at GENCONs (purchases made direct from them, or via any catalog, update notices, etc. also apply). Please drop me an email at armin@misersoft.com if this is you. If you know someone who may have purchased GCA from Digital Alchemy, please ask them to drop me an email. Thank you.

April 2, 1999

I've added three more portraits to Manchu's page in the Portrait Gallery. I've recently learned that at some point in the past, the German RPG magazine RINGBOTE ran some kind of an article or write-up on GCA. That was news to me. If any of you German GCA users would be able to send me a copy of that item, or a link to it if it can be found online, I'd really appreciate it. (I don't speak or read German, unfortunately, but my mother is German, and would translate it for me.)

March 25, 1999

I recently discovered that GCAPRN, the GCA Character Printer program, seemed to have problems with Windows 98. That was not good, and something needed to be done about it. The bad news was that I don't use the development language GCAPRN was written in any more, so modifying it to fix the problem was going to be a pain. Well, I took a little bit here, and a little bit there, and mixed in some new stuff that's going into GCA v3, and came up with the first beta release of GCAPRN 2, a 32-bit GCA Character Printer. It's based on a much more powerful print/preview engine, and uses VBScript as the scripting language, providing far more power than my language in GCAPRN 1 had. The first beta release is now available on the Add-ons & Extras page.

March 12, 1999

Once again, Manchu has submitted a couple of portraits, and they've been added to his page in the Portrait Gallery. The Spanish language data files have also been updated.

March 5, 1999

I've been asked to provide a link button for GCA, so I've made a couple quick ones from the current GCA logo. I've also provided the GCA banner ad for those of you looking for something larger to put on your sites. Details are on the Buttons & Banners page.

March 4, 1999

I've added another pair of portraits to artist Manchu's Portrait Gallery.

March 1, 1999

My Pyramid Chat last Thursday went pretty well. We didn't set any records for attendance, but there was a solid showing, and the chat lasted about two hours. It was fun, but it's definitely harder to host a chat than it is to just participate in one: I kept typing in replies, then having to look back up the window to see what questions I might have missed while I was busy with my reply. I think I did pretty well, and when reading back over the log, only noticed one or two questions that I totally missed. Right now, these chats are all pretty much informal freeform chats, and people stay on topic (or not) based on the crowd. This is part of what makes it a little harder to host these things. While the GCA chat had a little drift, I think we stayed remarkably on topic for most of the session. In the future, the auditorium part of the Pyramid MOO (which is what we use for the chats) may get finished, which I suspect will allow question queuing and such. That should make it easier for the host to keep up. On the other hand, I noticed during my chat that sometimes a little drift banter would prompt a question, so I wonder if that might hinder some chats. Of course, I suppose allowing for both a formal Q&A session and an informal general chat would handle both cases pretty well. And, if you missed the chat, the log is now available in the chat archives.

February 25, 1999

My Pyramid Chat is today at 7 PM Central Time (that's 5 PM Pacific and 8 PM Eastern). Drop bye and say hi! I've also added additional portraits to the Portrait Gallery again, thanks to artist Manchu.

February 15, 1999

I've added a few additional portraits to the Portrait Gallery, thanks to artist Sébastien Allard.

February 3, 1999

For those who may be interested, I will be hosting a Pyramid Chat near the end of this month: Thursday, February 25th, at 7 PM Central Time (that's 5 PM Pacific and 8 PM Eastern). These chats are generally pretty informal, and I expect mine to be the same. The topic is basically GCA, so questions about it and our plans for the future will be welcome. This is one of the few chances that you'll have to chat with me directly, since I generally don't IRC, and I don't use ICQ or AIM. Drop in and say hello. The chats are restricted to Pyramid subscribers. If you aren't a subscriber yet, you're missing out on a good thing, including the regular chats. This month, they have upcoming chats with several SJGames folks (including Steve Jackson later today), Doc Cross of Toon fame, me :-), and maybe more. Some recent chats have been very interesting as well, including yesterday's chat with Dan Palter of West End Games, who filled us in on how WEG is doing these days. Logs of the chats are available (to subscribers) if you have to miss the chat for some reason, but it's more fun to be there in person. You can subscribe to Pyramid by clicking here. You can look around at the preview info and articles they have available if you'd like. If you do decide to subscribe, I'd appreciate it if you put down 'armin' (without the quotes) in the box for the Pyramid username of the person who referred you to Pyramid. They give you a free month added on to your subscription when someone you refer signs up, and it makes me feel good to contribute :-).