Well, a new chapter begins in the life of TBL. Time to actually show you what the mod is about...no...not the story behind the mod, but what the mod is. Ideas that have long been under wraps will be revealed over the next long period of time. Basically, my goal here is to put you on the edge of your seets waiting for the eventual long awaited first release.

I'll start off this week with a quick overview of what at this point is expected to be ready for the first release that will hopefully be in june or july...yes it does take a long time to get things done, when people are only home a few hours a day.

For first release, the plan is to have the following ready:

• The tech tree - not all of the descriptions will be there in release one because they make everything take a long time.
• Planetary Improvements
• The major races - not necessarily all of the "major" races, but definitely the essential ones.
• The TBL Hull System- Once again, I'll write about it later, but for now let's just say it's similar to Kryo's.
• Ships - using the new TBL hull system the ships will be bigger and badder (much cooler) looking than the originals.
• Weapons - We plan to implement some new animations and other FX for the weapons. No telling how many or few new weapon models there will be in release one.
• New main menu
• New Research Screen - The new research screen is specialized for HUGE tech trees like TBL's. The viewing area takes up most of the screen without you hittintg the "more" button and the tech list goes almost the full height of the screen.
• many feature implementations - they will be talked about in future articles.
• some other stuff that I'm sure i'm forgetting to mention. 

Thanks for reading. Come back next week for some more!