Release Notes for EmberMUD v0.31
--------------------------------

Okay, all of the coding work on v0.31 has been done by Mr. Kyle Boyd.
All of this code has been running on his MUD (Mudweiser) for awhile now.
Kyle's e-mail address is boyd1@proaxis.com (this may change soon, as he
is heading off to Montana State University).  I'll try to get the new
address posted on the EmberMUD homepage (http://members.tripod.com/~Zak0)
as soon as I get it.

On the subject of Kyle...  I have been giving very strong consideration
to making Kyle a full-fledged member of the EmberMUD coding team.  As of
right now, I'm the only active member of the original team, and I have
nearly no time at all to work on the codebase.  I like what Kyle is doing
with the code (well, most of what he's doing. 8-), and think he'll be a
great addition to the team.  If you have an opinion on this matter, write
me at zak@supernova.org.  Most likely, this will be made official as of
EmberMUD v0.32.

As for the rest of the team, here are our e-mail addresses:

  Zak		zak@supernova.org
  Zane		ewilburn@siichi.com
  Thexder	jledbett@llion.org

Release Notes for EmberMUD v.030
--------------------------------

Wow, has it really been almost a year since my last EmberMUD release?  I'm
sure the EmberMUD faithful out there have been wondering whatever happened
to the EmberMUD coding team...  Did we just get fed up with bug-chasing and
decide to quit?  No way!  I live to hunt down bugs! (well, not really)
So, what DID happen?  Well, I can only speak for myself, but I believe the
main reason was real life happened.  Zane moved out of town and got a GOOD
job, Thexder moved out of town and got a girlfriend (YEAH Thex!), and me, I
got married and had a baby girl!  Next, of course, would come the
disinterest in EmberMUD.  Until very recently, I was under the impression
that no one cared about EmberMUD anymore.  I can't say as I would blame
people -- Ultima Online, Hexen 2, etc...  I knew the day of the graphical
MUD would come, and it would now seem that it is close at hand.  So, the
next logical question is why did I come BACK to EmberMUD?

One day, out of the blue, I got an e-mail from Rindar (Ron Cole).  He said
he was putting up an "Unofficial EmberMUD Homepage".  Well, naturally, I had
to check it out.  It was very well put together (although not super fancy),
and had something that immediately caught my eye...  An "Unofficial" new
EmberMUD release (this would be EmberMUD.029b, for those who don't know).
Also, several other bugfixes and snippits ready to plug into my code! Wow!
Aparently someone WAS still interested in EmberMUD.

I asked Rindar for some stats from his site, and in the short time it had
been online, several people had looked at the bugfixes and had downloaded the
"Unofficial" release.  After a little nudging from Rindar, and my own
careful consideration of the options (I was also thinking about working on
my own Unix based BBS system), I decided that I at LEAST owed the world a
new official version of EmberMUD that incorporated the bugfixes Rindar and
Raven had worked so hard to produce.

Well, here it is -- along with some of the new stuff I was working on when I
stopped making EmberMUD releases.  Will this be the last of EmberMUD?  Well,
I certainly hope not!  I still hope that one of these days I will be able to
release EmberMUD v1.0. 8-)  However, I don't forsee a lot of new releases
the way they were produced in the past.  Since the EmberMUD team has
basically dissolved, I will be working at this pretty much alone.  Also,
time permitting, I want to spend some time playing Hexen 2 and coding on
that BBS software I've always dreamed of writing.

The address of Rindar's EmberMUD page is:
  http://www.concentric.net/~Clogar/
  
I am working on putting an official page up at:
  http://www.iquest.net/~fcs/Ember
  
Most likely, Rindar's site will be the primary source of snippits and
bugfixes as he spends much more time working with those aspects of the code
than I do.  My focus will be on implementing some new features that I have
wanted to do for a LONG time.

If you have bothered to read this far, please send me an e-mail to let me
know you're interested in EmberMUD (for whatever reason).  Let me know what
you'd like to see me do with the codebase...  Let me know what's wrong with
the codebase...  Let me know if you'd like to have an EmberMUD admin mailing
list set up.

Lastly, I would like to note that most of the work that has gone into this
official release of EmberMUD was not done by me.  The credit goes to Rindar
and Raven -- without whom, I would still not be looking at EmberMUD code at
all.

Later everyone,
-Zak (zak@supernova.org)