Today was a day I'll never forget in my life. No, it's not because of the convention itself (which was pretty good), but because of something I said to my Dad on the way down to Hemel Hempstead...
Hey Dad, I bet a car crashes into us and I never get to the convention.

And oh how true that was. I was admitted to hospital, my dad was drifting in and out of conciousness, we made it to the hospital about 20 minutes before the convention started. So I missed a lot of it.

When my Dad finally convinced me to go to the convention to take my mind off the car crash, I found myself in Borne End in a remarkable amount of time. My Aunt took me, and we found the Watermill pretty quickly. Inside, I had just interrupted a seminar on what was all about Multimedia Fusion 2.

But I'm not going to start my report based on that. After that particular session, I spoke to Sarah (a very decent person, who I seemed to click with well), and she asked a person taking notes via laptop if he could copy them for me, which he did. Sadly, I've forgotten his name, but you know who you are; thanks very much

The MegaFusion Project
Finally the mystery was unveiled. The MegaFusion project, essentially, is a graphical add-on pack, which also includes every extention known to man, including Marcellos Fastloop and the Text Blitter Object by Chris Lightfoot. It's also going to be the first of three disks, and will be on sale in America in a couple of months (November-December time), costing possibly around $50.

V-Cade
These notes were more vague, but I can make some sense out of them hopefully. Maybe you'll get what I mean.

half a million players.
Hope for mulitplayer moo games.
Whole world someday - move from room to room - like GameSpy, microsoft zone?
Scoring for multiplayer - someone needs to build serverside.
Some problems with different browsers and V-Cade

Multimedia Fusion 2 Details
Firstly, say goodbye to the dreaded and underused Step Through Editor! And also the TimeLine Editor. And say hello to the new Pinball Movement

There's a whole list of stuff here, some of which may not be possible, but here's a rundown of what Clickteam hopes to be in MMF 2. Note I've left some stuff out because it doesn't make sense to me, I'm just skimming ;D

· Way of downloading extensions - extension browser. All extensions in big folder. Load a file, needs an extension, connects to website, downloads it and installs it.

· Ability to load code without an extension, to view code, but not run

· Templates - Save app as template. Drop template into frame, along with all objects and events, but won't be able to edit them, but can add objects to it. Change template externally, click update and updates in MMF. So can do an app with a picture, save as template, load template and can just change the filename.

· Level Editor - get rid of old property system. Better system, more like Visual Basic. All properties in neat list (dialog box). No longer an edit option, will be all contained in Properties. Select multiple objects so can update all changes in one go.

· Use Library browser of Jamagic. Sounds, objects, etc. Double click on sound and hear it directly.

· Parallax scrolling - system of layers. Eg 3 layers, can have background and active objects. On top layer can have eg button, avi, etc. Define one layer as main one, this has speed index of 1, then others can have speed index of 0.5, and another at 2 to define relative speeds. Also wraparound ability. Also set relative positions, if don't want them related to each other. Not sure how to implement in frame editor, maybe tabs and option to mix them so can see all at once. Will be a limit, eg 8.

· Define own qualifiers (rename and change icons)

· Path movement - multiple choice nodes, ie branching. Default is first one. Nodes can be named. Events: When node branch is reached, take specific path. Also path movement editor with circles. Define distance in dialog box (Sarah). Also rotate should be OK (my suggestion). Also multiple movement type (Ball, Path, etc.). Not able to define new nodes at runtime.

· Redo ActiveX object. Only works with about 1/3 objects, uses MFC currently.

Animation Editor:

· Save all the pictures of a character as one file. Alter colour or whatever. One Object, multiple animation files · Change Animation Editor (lots of complaints!), so more like Jamagic (which is closer to TGF). · Also Jamagic picture editor. Change transparent colour, so not index 0. Also maybe an alpha channel on Active Object.

There'll also be a more advanced platform movement, which will offer the players the ability to jump on proper moving platforms. The Racecar movement will have a new feature: you can change the rotation speed at runtime. More Global Varibables and Global Strings, angle and distance between two objects

When I entered
This is where I came in, and I met Sarah, and everyone was eating lunch. I went down to the bar section to get some chips and beer, still reeling from what happened earlier. Then a guy with a ponytail came down (Dr Ian), and he told me that it was time for me to demonstrate Wibble Wacky World. And a group of about 12 odd klikkers were seemingly eager to watch the demo, which surprised me, as I was initially told to expect about 3 interested people.

But anyway, I demoed the game, telling the story of where my sprite style originated from - Plasticow (Eric Vaughn) and absolutely NOBODY in the room had heard of him, which was a surprise, especially when I was wearing a Disco Dan T-shirt to help... advertise. But there was another surprise for me. Absolutely nobody who played the demo was able to get past a single level. One guy did manage to beat the first boss (after a few tries). Maybe I under-estimated WWWs difficulty...

Events Afterwards
In no particular order, because I forgot my notebook (d'oh!) and my camera (d'oh!); I left those at the hospital where my Dad was recovering.

Multimedia Fusion 3D was announced. Well, kind of. The Clickteam guys (Yves and Francois) told the 40-odd seated that they were tinkering around with MMF3D, which will be a distant project, maybe released in about 4-5 years from now. They demonstrated the level editor, which was exactly the same as the one in MMF, except that you had to position the objects using the arrow keys. They also revealed that they will be hiring a special 3D graphic artist to draw all of the graphic tiles and characters needed. And in addition to this, Clickteam announced that MMF3D would have a customised camera, much like the ones found in great 3D platformers such as Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie. They said that the playing area would be the size as it is on the frame editor, not totally sure what they meant by that. And thats pretty much all they said on the matter.

DT presented ways in which MMF was able to be used for business. In America, he has created a massively complex program for an oil firm, which extracted data from people logging into the network, and various other events. The program was able to compile graphs, and was able to use a time-limited event (such as those programs on the net where you only have 30 days to try them before they expire) - DT demonstrated that effect with MMF. He also revealed that it uses a never before seen extention (I forget its name) which is solely used for business.

Jamagic Games:: Paul Boland(I think) demonstrated his attempt at turning a board game, Atmosphere (Nightmare in the USA) into a Jamagic game. He told how he got his sister to draw all the graphics needed, and then showed the games title page, which looked extremely promising. He then proceeded to hold a raffle, where 5 winners would get a CD data disk of this new game.

Dr Ian(the same one as earlier) then demonstrated a 3D flying game. The levels were built using a Quake engine, and it had you controlling an invisible insect which was done in Quake-mode (1st person perspective), and you had to shoot all of the bad guys and not touch the walls. It was extremely nippy and extremely difficult. The graphics were reasonable, not great, not terrible, and the title screen was hilarious. It had this piano orchestrated tune, and when you selected a level, it toned down, in the way that when an ambulance runs out of engine power, the sirens gurgle and splutter. Every time that happened, the whole room couldn't help but giggle at it uncontrollably. That guarenteed a lot of r00fles.

Andrew Mathers then proceeded to demonstrate two o3 games. The first was Po3oL, a brilliantly done pool sim. The graphics were from the Jamagic library, and it looked stunning. The camera could rotate, and there were 4 different views of the table. The ball physics were good, but not perfect, and there were graphical glitches too. Still, Andrew stated it was 60% done and should be out for Christmas.

The second game was done in MMF, and utilized the MOO extention. Basically, it was a very toned down version of Worms, where one guy stool on a pole, and another guy stood on a lower pole. They each took it in turns to throw an object at the other, using angles. Andrew loaded up the game twice to demonstrate the effect of a networked game, which wasn't possible because of hotel prices.

That was pretty much what I saw. A great day had been dampened (for me), but I got some freebies: the Klik Disc, by Kisugiri and a Website browser thingy. They also had Clickteam polo shirts there, but I forgot to take one

Key Moments
Meeting Tigerworks. I thought he was about 22. He barely looked 11. A seemlingly intelligent individual.

Meeting Mark Pay. A genuinely nice guy, and he seemed rather shy. He came over and we spoke to each other, he offered to drive me to the hospital afterwards, which I declined

Realising that I was not as small as I appeared, and that I was taller than the majority of the people in the room

My Dad and I are now both out of hospital, I had to stay overnight near Leighton Buzzard, at my Aunts. Thanks to everyone who made the day enjoyable. I now have a very sore neck, and my Dad has a rather large black eye, but we're, on the whole, ok.