Seems like lately (and especially since the arrival of the Nexus One,) everyone and their dog wants to jump on the Android platform.  From my own experience porting a chunk of jMonkeyEngine over to Android a couple of years ago, and a certain subsequent Android project after that, I have to believe this is a good thing.  The platform has matured a lot since those early release candidates and is now generally pleasant to work with.  Having new blood and attention in the mix should hopefully only accelerate that trend.

In other news, my brothers and I finished the first cut of that Lode Runner clone mentioned earlier.  No sound yet, and still a few bugs I'm sure.  If I can find time to webstart it though, I'll put it up here.

Work continues forward as usual at Ardor Labs, most recently with various interesting projects in Animation and other areas related to Ardor3D.  As a side project though, I've been spending some time with my three brothers knocking together a remake of the old Lode Runner game.  For my brothers (I'm the eldest) I hope it's an interesting experience in game design and programming.  For me, it's been a nice way to relax as well as a good exercise for seeing through a project using Ardor3D from conception to realization.  It's a 2D game, so it doesn't stress the tech much, but it has revealed a few rough edges I'd like to smooth out.

Together we've probably managed to put in about 4-5 solid days total over the past month between hashing out the design, tasks, and some programming and basic art.  We have a nice XML-based map format and loader, as well as pluggable visual themes, a solid game state system, map visualizer and player control.  When time permits, next tasks will include adding in digging (very important), treasures, and enemies.

I'll throw up a screen-shot for posterity sake. :)  None of us are artists, so if you'd like to contribute your art skills, drop me a line.