To tide you over, here's a preview of the new Fleet HQ. The model's only partly done, as there will also be an inner docking ring, and more detail on the modules:

So in celebration of this, have a look at a new spaceship, the Thellurm Ember. It's what happens to the salvaged parts from a destroyed Phoenix. They're small, slow, and weak, but better than nothing in a fight. But a single well-placed shot can easily down them:

That being said, rest assured that I have been reading all your feedback, even if I haven't replied to any of it, and will continue doing so.

Nor will I be idle in this next week: I'm taking all my notes with me into this computerless land, with the aim of plotting out the remaining encounters for the first episode / expansion pack.

Now, copy protection started with licence codes. You buy a code, you enter it into the program, and that allows you to use the full version. And the idea is that you are not allowed to share your code with other people. But there isn't really any way to prevent that from happening. So licence codes aren't really copy protection. So they're more a way to clearly indicate which parts of the program you need to pay for. If you're using the full version without having bought a code, you're doing it wrong.

But because it's so easy to share licence codes, companies have been trying to find ways to do "real" copy protection for decades - and created a bunch of invasive technologies now euphemistically called "Digital Rights Management". The newest fad is to require people to stay connected to the Internet whenever they play the game. As we've seen in the recent Assassin's Creed 2 debacle, this doesn't work particularly well!

Even very pervasive DRM can and will be broken. And the fancier your DRM system, the more enticing a target you are to people who like breaking DRM.

So the expansion pack for Space Exploration: Serpens Sector is not going to have any kind of copy protection, or "Digital Rights Management". I played around in my head with using licence keys, but you have to download the expansion pack when you buy it. Also giving you a license key to enter doesn't add anything but inconvenience. And the contract is still exactly the same: don't play the expansion pack without paying for it.

Of course some people will do exactly that, but there is frankly no way of stopping them. So why should I spend my time and effort trying? I'd rather spend it improving the game.

In summary: Please buy my game, so I can eat and make more games. I won't put in any copy protection, because copy protection doesn't work and just makes life worse for you, and because I've got better things to do with my life.

See also: No Horse Armour.

This download weighs in at rather more than the previous version, mostly due to the addition of music, and also because of the size of some of the new combat sprites. As previously stated, the game's music is being created by Rozovian.

So with dev 9, the two most frequently mentioned problems were that fuel was too scarce and that the game didn't give you enough feedback for your decisions. I hope to have fixed both of these in dev 10 - the former through difficulty levels that affect how much fuel you need, the latter through better writing.

If, for example, you send out a crack team to hunt monkeys, and one of them is killed, the game makes it clear that this was a freak accident, and not a bad decision on your part. If, on the other hand, you try to send out a lone, bookish crew member, your security officer will ask you to reconsider your choice. More or less politely, depending on whether they like you.

Let me know if it works. And let me know what you think of the new combat mode.

Finally, I would like to thank you for your feedback, support, and patience. Dev 11 will hopefully take rather less time than dev 10, as I mostly plan on doing cleanup and filling in some gaps.

For now I want to show you the new paint job of your spaceship in a bit more detail. When I made the 3D model for it months and months ago, I was fairly rusty at Bryce, which I hadn't used in a serious way for a couple of years. In particular I had forgotten how to make metallic textures. This resulted in a rather ugly and far too bright texture for the ship. I think you will agree that the new texture is much better.

Finally I would like to apologise for no longer replying to all feedback emails. I had originally made it my policy to reply to everyone who supplied an email address but the state of my wrists means that I need to focus on programming the game. I hope that I will eventually be well enough again to work through the backlog - and I will of course continue to reply to any questions you have.

In the first two videos I'm doing my best to fight the cruiser with all my skill and defeat it each time, sometimes narrowly. In the final video I intentionally use bad tactics for fighting against a ship of this type and lose as a result.

While recording, I took care to always use the mouse to issue all commands. Nearly everything in the combat mode can also be done by keyboard, by pressing the key underlined in the option you want, and I'd recommend playing the game that way - but using the mouse made it clearer what was going on. Please blame the sometimes erratic movements of the cursor on my still-damaged wrists.

Because I was showing off the combat mode's features, I did everything more slowly than necessary, and spent a lot of time talking to the crew. A normal fight would be faster-paced. Also, as before, the music in this video is by Rozovian. The track used is more or less what will end up in dev 10 as one of the two space combat background tracks.

Addendum: Actually I just realised that these tracks are older than I thought they were. The music-loading code picked up the wrong set. So the tracks are approximately like this, but better. Sorry!

(Remember that you can now follow the ongoing work on Twitter.)

(As an aside: The ship is named after the Cambridge astronomy department's late cat.)

In other news, I have created a twitter feed for the company where I hope to give a more detailed account of my work on SE:SS. I think a lot of people might find it quite interesting to see how I'm going about making the game. At some point, I will also put up some videos of how I create the spaceship graphics. I've already tried recording some, but I realised that I need a microphone - otherwise, my voice is drowned out by the computer's fan.

To tide you over until that happens, here's another glam shot of a new spaceship:

Anyway, to divert you while you wait, I've done you a render of some Neman spaceships. The Nemans are set to play a rather more prominent role in dev 10...

But rest assured that I am hard at work - other things just have a habit of eating into my time. For now, have a look at these screenshots of the new combat. Things are liable to still change around a bit, but if you have questions or comments, do visit the forum.

A little over a year ago, I founded my own company, Metal Beetle Ltd, as a way to organise my various for-profit projects.

Originally, the company was actually going to be called Grid Five, but I abandoned that when it turned out that gridfive.com was already taken. It took me weeks to find another name, but then I hit on this one. As a result, the company now has a charming robotic logo.

Did you know it's interactive? Click on the beetle logo at the top of the Metal Beetle front page, and it turns itself into a Java applet. Click on its wings, legs, and antennae to interact with it. The logo also contains a painfully hard puzzle, if you like that sort of thing.

So what have I been up to in this past year?

• Released Fractal Fripperies, a website for making T-shirts with beautiful fractals on them.
• Continued work on Space Exploration: Serpens Sector, introducing detailed crew and a combat mode, which I'm currently re-writing for dev 10.
• Contract work implementing custom therapy software for researchers at Imperial College, London.
• Contract work for Etianen.

The next year will bring the release of SE:SS and its first expansion pack, as well as (hopefully) more contracting work. I plan to add a new section to metalbeetle.com soon about what kind of contract work I can do - so if you need some custom software or website of any stripe, get in touch. Even if I can't do it, I will likely know someone who can, and will happily refer you on.

Finally, the beetle has a little present for you: If you enter the word "coleoptera" into the rebate box on Fractal Fripperies (choose a fractal and press "Make T-Shirt" to get there), you get 15% off. This rebate code will remain valid until the end of the month.

While preparing for this post, I noticed that on the shape/size/address page, the preview picture of the fractal on the T-shirt was being rendered off-centre for some reason. I have replaced it with an illustration for simplicity's sake. I assure you that any T-shirt bought from Fractal Fripperies will have exactly the fractal you selected on the main page. Equally, the pricing information was a bit confusing and outdated, so you should see that improved as well.

In short, if you have been thinking of getting a fractal T-shirt, now is the time to do it.