There isn't a lot of "news" in this news post, but some very important reminders, i.e. areas I want to focus your attention on. (Are you paying attention? Don't make me whip out the boldface!)

First and foremost is our current task involving character abilities. If you were an old member and came back to the site to ask "What's the hold up?", this is the answer. I'm really enthusiastic about the innovative gameplay we're formulating for Fate of Io, but it's not going to go anywhere until we create the building blocks of the system. I encourage everyone to have a stab at that task (and as always, awards there count more than awards in other areas).

Secondly, we finally had some attendance in our weekly chats. You can count on either Temporal or myself (hopefully both) being there every Saturday, at 1 PM Pacific / 4 PM Eastern / 9 PM UK, so come if you can.

Finally (and... aftmost?), the friend referral task is still open, so if you know of anyone who'd have something to share with the project, send them an invitation! They don't have to be a talented artist, just someone with a degree of intelligence and interest in game design.

Fate of Io is hearby re-launched.

It has been a long time (over a year) since serious work has been done on Fate of Io. At least, by anyone other than Dev and Temporal. However, it is time to change that. With the new v5 web site up, tested, and running, we're ready to get back in business.

Check the current tasks forum for things to work on. More tasks will be posted soon, but a few are already there and ready to go. Remember to check back daily for updates.

Weekly meetings will take place in the chat room on Saturdays at 1 PM Pacific time (4 PM Eastern, 9 PM UK), and will continue as long as we feel necessary. This time is open to change if important contributors can't make it.

We need more people! If you know anyone who would make a good contributor to Fate of Io, please let them know about us. If you know any good sites to post links to Fate of Io please consult with Dev or Temporal before posting. We want to advertise on such sites, but we want to make sure to do it tactfully. We will want to review exactly what you intend to post before you post it. Thanks.

That's right. This is now a release candidate. That means I have no further features to implement and I know of no bugs which I care to fix. If you can think of any features you'd like to see or find any bugs that need fixing, please post them below.

In the meantime, I am working on porting Evlan to FreeBSD, after which I will be able to set up the site at a professional FreeBSD hosting service.

I think we only lost, like, two posts this time, as I had saved pretty recently... In any case, this time I found and fixed the cause of the crash right away; it was pretty straight-forward.

Activity tracker and user list implemented (see navigation box, left). Neat image-based decorations provided by Dev.