Brian Heiland left an entertaining comment at the GPaL web site. Here's what
Brian had to say:
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A hit counter to your page? I think I have been here a thousand times! And
that's a good thing
Anticipation !
Brian Heiland
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Well, Brian's comment piqued my curiosity...so I checked. As of 10:20pm EST,
the GPaL site has had 43,656 hits since 4/28/99 when GPaL was announced.
Wow! Thanks to you, Brian, (for your thousand) and all you other
enthusiastic GPLers! Your enthusiasm is gratifying and, to me, indicates
that the market's affection for the ultimate racing sim may not be as dismal
as is sometimes suggested! :)
Anyway. Anticipation? Shouldn't be long now.
I've decided to go ahead and get GPaL out with the essentials, with new
features to be added on an ongoing basis. The initial download will be the
biggie. Most subsequent updates will be primarily just the EXE file and
should be a snap to download...200-300k...just twice the size of the
screenshot! So stay tuned...
I have one dilemma that I bet any number of you could help me resolve. If
you've been to the GPaL site, you know that I promised to let those that
joined the RaceLive/GPaL mailing list be the first to know about GPaL's
release. So I now have a *large* Access database of anxious mail
recipients. Could some of you "bulk e-mail enlightened" folks point me in
the right direction so that I can translate database entries to mail
recipients. Dear little Outlook Express doesn't seem to offer a solution
short of pasting thousands of names in the "To:" text box. Your help will
mean I get this show on the road just that much faster. Thanks!
Incidentally, while I was reviewing the site stats, I thought I'd cut some
out that some of you might find interesting.
Curious about where there's GPL enthusiasm (albeit among English-reading
residents) ? Here are the top 15 countries that have hit the GPaL web site:
--- Country of Origin ---
1 US 51.48%
2 UK 10.69%
3 Australia 6.10%
4 Germany 4.97%
5 Netherlands 2.48%
6 Finland 2.42%
7 Canada 2.20%
8 Sweden 1.74%
9 France 1.56%
10 Italy 1.55%
11 Japan 1.30%
12 Austria 0.68%
13 New Zealand 0.61%
14 Norway 0.43%
15 Belgium 0.41%
Total 88.62%
This table doesn't total 100% because the stats package I use only shows the
top 15 countries. Sorry Monaco.
And here's a couple of tables of interest to developer types and proponents
of multi-platform support.
--- Browsers ---
1 Microsoft Internet Explorer 67.15%
2 Netscape 27.49%
3 Other 5.36%
Total 100.00%
Interesting. I wonder if VROC has seen a big increase in users with the
arrival of Spy Boy, since prior to it's arrival, VROC lacked IE support?
--- Platforms ---
1 Windows 98 53.00%
2 Windows 95 26.23%
3 Windows NT 10.77%
4 Others 7.71%
5 SunOS 0.58%
6 Linux 0.58%
7 Macintosh PowerPC 0.55%
8 HP Unix 0.15%
9 OS/2 0.12%
10 Windows 3.x 0.11%
Total 99.81%
Not much incentive for Papy, or us baby-Papys, to port to Linux, huh?
As I've said many times before, your enthusiasm, support, and patience are
appreciated!
Jack Rambo
www.RaceLive.com/GPaL