Hello gamers, As many of you probably know for the past month USA Games has been doing some research into rewriting Mysteries Of The Aztecs and USA Raceway in Java rather than using Microsoft's C# .NET language. While our results were very positive initially, the conversion would have some benefits, there are also many technical issues we haven't solved yet. As a result i have personally decided that USA Games is going to temporarily drop plans to convert our games to Java, and will begin immediately to complete Mysteries Of the Aztecs and USA Raceway as planned using the .NET Framework, DirectX, etc. One reason for our decision is that in December we souled nearly 150 new copies of Mysteries Of The Aztecs for customers expecting a nearly completed product. If we were to put the time into converting the game to Java it would take several weeks, months, or possibly an entire year to get the entire game converted to Java. i honestly do not think those of you should be forced to wait that long on a game you paid for so I will attempt to complete the game using the language, tools, and sdks I started out with. Another reason is while I like Java for game programming during the course of my research many Java packages don't exactly have the same functionality as DirectX. For example, the javax.sound.sampled package is ok for processing game sounds in a Troopenum type game it doesn't have the realistic 3d audio I wanted for Raceway and my Genesis 3D engine. The java.media.j3d seams to fit the 3d audio requirements, but is quite complicated to get working in my game projects. As a result I am left frustrated, upset, and irritated with trying to get my game projects converted to Java. Finally, as a game developer I have worked with C# .NET since 2004 and have become quite familiar with the language, SDKs, etc that are used in our games. I have thousands of lines of ready to use code that will certainly help us finish the games much faster. While I am personally no longer a fan of the .NET platform I do think that it is the best and most practical solution for our games that are running behind schedule. As for Mysteries Of the Aztecs we are going to take some time, upgrade the Montezuma's Return engine, and modify it with the new changes and ideas for the new title. It will probably take two or three months to make the necessary revisions, but will be much much faster than writing the entire engine from scratch. As for USA Raceway I've simply decided that the racing engine needs to be a little open ended with the ability to create your own drivers, sponsors, select cars, etc. While it is possible in Java it is still a major pain. In C# with Sapi the task isn't all that bad. So I feel C# .NET might be right for Raceway.
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