Some may have noticed that since the release of A7, Gamestudio support and distribution is not handled by Conitec but by another company, the oP group Germany GmbH.

Old timers may remember that Gamestudio was originally developed by oP group, and eventually sold to Conitec. In the 1990s, the oP group developed several small computer games, advertising games, TV games, and virtual exhibitions. Afterwards my job at Conitec became too time consuming, and the other oP group members had not much time either, so the oP group was put to sleep.

Now after ten years, oP group is starting with game development again. We are currently applying for a contract to develop a large scale MMOG for a certain organization. They have selected the A7 engine for this project. The main reason was probably the experience of setting up a well working MMOG server for 350 users very quickly with A7 Pro, with only a few lines of script. However, the project will require some extensions to A7, like the PhysX plugin that's currently developed by Chris3D, and a MySQL plugin.

Due to our knowledge of A7, we hope to have a good chance to win the development contract. We've already got the contract to prepare the project and hire the team of level designers.

Please cross your fingers that we'll also get the final contract. Development would then start in September. The features implemented in A7 during the next year will become a little MMOG focused. But I guess this will also benefit the community.