Greetings Hero Fans!

Yes, we have been away for some time rebuilding DexCard, but I'm happy to say the company is back on track again. We have some exciting news for Herosphere and it's future -- but first, a little history...

When we began Herosphere at the beginning of last year, the software for character creation in HERO was outdated and didn't conform to the newly released 5th edition rules. Thus, we had to spend over half of our development time on the Character Module within HS just to get characters to play with. There's a lot of organization and special considerations with the Graphic User Interface and layout requirements for the characters and their stats, abilities, martial maneuvers and powers.

It wasn't until after our first release that Hero Designer neared its very first alpha phase. Sure enough, we tacked an HD importer on our priority list so we could share characters between us. Near the end of last year was when we had to began rebuilding our corporate contracts, so we never had the opportunity to tap into the awesome power of HD.

Now all of that is changing. Well over 90 percent of our current owners (according to our last poll in December) either owned Hero Designer or were about to purchase it. With that, we made an executive decision to move forward with all the new character creation elements in the game engine to utilize Hero Designer characters. Ultimately, the Character Module in Herosphere will become obsolete by version 2.0 -- but with the enormous time and energy it will free up for development on the game engine, we will be able to pick up a lot more progress on our limited budget of time and money, and take Herosphere to new levels much, much faster.

But wait, there's more! I, Dave Feldman, have been busy programming for the new Lord of the Rings collectable card game online and have had very little time to spare. And while I'm very protective of the Herosphere project and its architecture, I have considered bringing in someone new to manage its further updates and progress. I happy to say that day has arrived.

Of course, the perfect candidate would have prior experience in Director, know Herosphere intimately, and even have a close relationship with Hero Games. Needless to say, we are thrilled such a candidate exists and look forward to working with him.

So with that, we introduce our new Lieutenant Programmer, Ben Seeman:

Thanks Dave!

For me, Herosphere is the perfect combination of two of my favorite things: Hero System combat and 3D programming. I’ve spent many nights dreaming of creating programs exactly like Herosphere, so to have the opportunity to actually work on Herosphere is basically a dream come true. Suffice it to say I am very, very excited about this project.

Like other members of the Hero community, I was upset when Herosphere development was put on hold. For the longest time I wondered if there was anything that I could do to help move the development along since I had done QA for version 1, I was intimately familiar with the Hero System and Herosphere is coded in Director 8.5, my coding language of choice. I finally asked Dave about helping, and after a few discussions, here I am.

The development that I do for Herosphere will be independent from my employment with Hero Games. I will not be working on Herosphere during regular business hours. That means that I will not be able to put in 40-hour weeks working on code (although that could be fun, right Dave?). I’ll be working on it in my spare time.

So, for the next few weeks I’ll be getting my hands dirty with Herosphere code and I hope to be able to make a decent contribution to the project.


And on a final note, please understand that Ben is just now taking on the Herosphere architecture and will have much to learn before he can produce significant results. We are hopeful that we can accomplish a lot with his help, but we remain cautious about our expectations and hope our fans will as well.
Thus begins a new chapter in Herosphere, wish us luck!

Sincerely,

Dave Feldman
Chief Programmer

Ben Seeman
Lieutenant Programmer

Happy Holidays!
12/25/02