Che, first off, I want to say thank you for the donation!

It is a terrible shame, that even in such a small community you would have 
people looking to do damage, simply to amuse themselves.  Certainly it isn't 
condoned, but in a huge mainstream community of thousands, you can understand 
how people can act without considering the well being of the community.  They 
are lost in a crowd, and it is very impersonal.  Around here, almost everyone 
is tied to the group because you share an attribute that isolates you from the 
rest of the world, in certain ways.  I hope that didn't come across as 
offensive to anyone, that was certainly not my intention.  The audio games 
community, and the blind community in general, seem to me like they should be 
closer to a "family" than just about any other online community!  Every action 
anyone takes, should have the community's best interest at heart, and I 
honestly don't understand why some people don't see it that way.

I fully expect to have to step in and add more security soon, but so far people 
have been behaving themselves.  I don't know if anyone noticed, but I'm 
actually running a dedicated server, instead of the peer-to-peer system I was 
developing earlier.

Thursday night I was thinking over things at work, and I realized there were 
going to be many updates as I expanded multiplayer features in the future.  The 
peer to peer system is not nearly as simple to update as a master server, so 
that became one of 3 main reasons I made the change.

The second reason is actually security.  Being the first multiplayer game I've 
personally released here on audio games, I kind of had to plan for the worst.  
I knew that if things really got out of hand, with hacking attempts and such, a 
dedicated server is easier to defend, than linking everyone in a peer to peer 
chain.

The final reason is actually an experiment!  Way way back, I was working on a 
multiplayer combat game that I ended up setting aside.  The primary reason was 
that I didn't believe I could maintain the server costs myself, and I didn't 
feel safe relying solely on donations to keep things afloat.  I've put aside 
other ideas for the same reason, in fact this was also the reason I delayed 
work on the multiplayer Daytona game.

Castaways gives me a unique opportunity.  This style of game will work pretty 
well with a peer to peer multiplayer system, though the other projects will 
not.  I would hate to develop and entire game, only to have to shut it down due 
to finances, but if that happens here with Castaways, I can just switch over to 
the p2p design.  Over time, people have tried to assume me that donations would 
support the server, and I can finally test that out in safety.  If things go 
smoothly, and I can keep the server funded, I'll be able to finish up projects 
that will rely on it.  This includes the first person shooter I've been working 
on with Locutus as my sound guy!  I'm sure that since Locutus is handling the 
sounds for this game also, people probably thought this IS! that game.

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