Stick Software News 

June 2003 edition.  Copyright © 2003 Stick Software. 

A service of Stick Software, http://www.sticksoftware.com/. 
Contact Stick Software at our support email address. 

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Hi! It has been ages since the last Stick Software newsletter (December of 2002, to be precise), and some of you may have been wondering what happened to us. Well, never fear, we're alive and well; we just got sidetracked and busy, as usual. :->

We've got a big announcement this time around: our first game! (Well, our first game in this incarnation of Stick Software; some of you may remember Solarian II from the late 80s, and then there was Lunatic Fringe, which Berkeley Systems published many years ago.) It's called Trisection, and we're very proud of it. That's Trisection's icon in the upper right, made by David Greenspan and generously provided to us for Trisection. You can read more on Trisection below, or you can download it now (6.3 MB).

Since our last newsletter, we've updated almost all of our other software, too; mostly small bug-fix or localization updates that didn't seem worth a big announcement. We won't go into detail about each of those updates; here's the latest version numbers of all our apps, with direct download links:


Eyeballs 2.4.1
Measles 2.1
BigFoot 2.2
Aquatint 1.0.1

Constrictor 2.3
Issa 1.1
Fracture 1.1.1
Ephemera 1.0

Ephemera is actually a completely new product introduced since our last newsletter, but a minor one; it's a freeware slideshow screensaver that displays some photos by Ben Haller. If you want a screensaver that displays beautiful photographs of nature, you should visit Ephemera's home page or download Ephemera now (14.7 MB). Ephemera's icon was very generously provided to us by ppdix.

The Fracture update was actually pretty major; we would strongly suggest that folks get that one. If you haven't tried it, you might want to check out Fracture's home page or download Fracture now (220K). It is a screensaver that makes truly beautiful images based on mathematical formulas. The current version has a perfect 5-star rating on VersionTracker as of the writing of this newsletter, and it's one of our most popular products.

Finally, we've got some new merchandise available. We are now (as of yesterday) offering t-shirts in sizes M and XXL, in addition to the L and XL that we offered before. So if you haven't ordered a shirt before because we didn't have a size that fit you, you should take advantage of this opportunity — we may discontinue M or XXL in the future. We also now offer tote bags with the Stick Software logo (silkscreened in eight colors!) on one side, and the Stick Software slogan ("Anti-productivity tools for the discerning user") on the other. They have a flat, gusseted bottom, and they're made of a durable canvas, so they would be perfect for carrying books, or trips to the grocery store, or anything else. You can order t-shirts and tote bags from our merchandise page using the PayPal links there, or you can order them directly off our Kagi order page.

So, on to the main topic of this newsletter:


Trisection 1.0:  A Tetris-style Mac game

Download Trisection (6.3 MB)   mirror1   mirror2
More Information on Trisection
VersionTracker's Page on Trisection
Price: $15 (Kagi) (PayPal)

Trisection is a fast-action puzzle game for Mac OS X that was inspired by Tetris. We like it better, though; we think it's got more meat to it. Here's a screenshot, of the bottom part of Trisection's board:




The object of Trisection is to place falling pieces (composed of colored triangles), positioning them so that areas end up as a single color. When you do that you get points, and the triangles in that area disappear. There's more to it than that, but we'll let you discover it yourself.

While it's still a fast-action game, it's more intellectually demanding than Tetris, and has more variety and complexity to it. It's also got a bunch of great sounds, not one but two soundtracks, a different background photo for every level, and lots of configuration options that will let you tailor the game to your specifications.

We think it's great fun. Give it a try!


And we're outta here

That's all for this newsletter; we suspect it's enough :->. If you've got ideas, comments, bug reports, or anything else you'd like me to see, send a note to our support email address.

Thanks for your support. Word of mouth is essential to our survival as a shareware developer. If you can help spread the word to your friends, your co-workers, or your favorite Mac OS X websites and newsletters, it would be greatly appreciated.
 
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