UPDATE 11
VP4 fans, still here still working hard, here is what is going on:
We are planning on releasing VP4 offline this summer. The original plan was to do online first but that massive project is going to slow so we have focused on doing offline. This also helps online as there is a lot of common code for the VP4 client. I'll separate this update into offline and online but read the offline even if you are only interested in online as that is where the common bits are.
VP4 Offline and Common:
Art:
GUI:
The user interface is pretty much done for the implemented bits. Still need to put in the pro-tour career mode interface, waiting for that to be finished.
Also need the interface for the teaching videos 
Rooms:
All room art is done except for logo placement and finish lighting which is going on now.
Tables:
We have the bar table for Garage and Hawgpen and a Champ Table for Hard Times done. Doing the other pool tables now, those will go fast now that we have an initial of each type. Starting work on the billiards table, easy, and then the Snooker table, hard.
Cues:
Have quite a few cues done, they look really good, and have removable shafts!
Balls:
All ball art is done, may add some more but currently have 8 types of pool balls, including TV balls.
Program:
Physics:
This has been quite a task. We are redoing the physics model pretty much from the ground up. Been working on this for a year and a half now and getting close to realization. The process took extensive experimentation and mathematical modeling. Even the ball collision physics have been redone. I don't want to get into the nitty gritty details here but I am excited about having the new physics.
Pro-Tour:
Waiting for latest update from Jon-Paul. He has been going through the necessary re-factoring and getting down in the dirt to get this finished.
Cues:
The cue implementation is complete which means we now have Break, Play, and Jump cues. Play cues also have removable shafts so after market shafts can be added if desired. The cue holds one of each of these cues and one after market shaft. Billiard Shop now sells all these by category.
Movie Player:
Put in out own Movie Player after getting tired of working with the Microsoft POS 
But better that way in the long run even though integrating our player was a lot of work the quality is good an we have complete control of it making mixing UI components much easier.
Hustler Career:
Pretty much complete and ready for testing. Follows the same path as the VP3 but has better play and more features. Added tournaments where when you enter a room you may get an option to play in a tournament. Now can buy break and jump cues. Play cues have more effect on the action you get. And a face lift overall.
Graphics Pipeline:
Add all the necessary support for the table and cue rendering. Things are looking nice. Still need to do a iridescence shader for the abalone shell in some cues.
Bits and Pieces:
Lots of little things done like...
Getting the drag and drop and double click on saved games working
Added graphics performance test for auto setup of graphics settings
Proper storage via W7 method of storing user, app, and common data
Bugs Fixing:
Lots of bug fixing going on.
Our lead tester zwylle has been instrumental in getting this process going and is doing a great job!
There have been plenty of bugs and plenty more coming, stomping them out pretty fast and I think this is going well.
VP4 Online
Not a lot of work done on the Game Server just some cleanup.
The Web Portal is coming along, still lots to do, lately:
The ranking and stats page are up and working, or at least the basics, still need testing. Rankings are by points, we have a points system for VP4, points are awarded for placement in events. Stats are really cool, lots of info, filters, and search for them.
Player Account page has new design done, very clean.
Working on new design for Event Page.
Store is at alpha stage, all basic functionality is there and ready for testing.
Coupons for discounts, vp4 offline credit, etc. have been done
Transaction history and reports done
New registration server working
Event reminders, alerts for friends logging in, reminders, etc.
Hoping to do some testing soonTop
UPDATE 10
Art:
Been doing clean-up and pre-lighting on all rooms. This has taken quite a bit longer than planned, getting good lighting is a little tricky. Also did a lot of optimization, not really necessary for fast GPUs but some notebooks and IGPs will welcome this. We are about half way through the rooms but that is more like 75% as the rooms with a lot of issues were done first.
Working on new cue models now. Higher resolution, better looking, more flexibility in how they look. Shafts are now separate and player will be able to choose which shaft they are using. We have Tiger on board so will be doing models of their shafts.
Did some work on the ball colors. Have pretty good matches for standard balls and tv balls. Will be redoing all ball textures for high resolution.
Finally have a decent looking bar table. Been working on geometry and texturing for a while. Have a nice cloth texture for current low nap cloth being used in real life.
Physics:
Been working out all the problems with balls rolling on the pocket edges, poly intersections. VP3 really did not handle this well. We are trying to get this right so we can model any table geometry we want for VP4. The math for this is pretty tricky. Initial attempts were 8th degree polynomials, though a simpler way has been found.
Offline/VP4 general:
Update training, added player selected training lesson categories, improved look
Added specular maps for tables
Get new movie player working
Get Hustler Career mode working properly again, with new career map, tournaments, replay of Curly after beating him
Improved Cowboy status for new options like alternate carom/shot
WIP on tournament board, better bracket lines and layout. Still waiting for final art.
Pro Tour Career player signup is active: http://www.celeris.com/celeris_player_signup.html
Updated ball dirt generator to use random distribution over a sphere, at least a proper rendition. Also updated dirt to look better, maybe still a WIP.
Online:
Linux port to servers
Linux message logging
Linux stack trace and dump for debugging
Assets management and sync on Linux
Fix problems with room zombies and issues with disconnect
Added Friends list to VP4 client so friends can be shown in player list
Match recording for online games
Changed update method for DB to better preserve code coherency
Add match over processing for teams and players, updates player activity on web portal
Web Portal:
Fired Web Designer,
Have new designer, I think, hope to get first cut at new look today
Reworking list view on Event Calendar to be date independent
Internal testing on Event Calendar and Event Page done
Player Panel now has player information such as, new message indicator upcoming events
Alerts added to player panel, this shows things like when your friends log in, tournaments that need players, basically transitory info.
By the way Player Panel is always there, goes with you to every web page. On Home Page it only shows what was mentioned above on other pages it shows other goodies (which are on Home Page so not shown there), like Pictuer, Money, Points, Rating, Skill Level Icon, Your Personal Icon, Your Flag.
Still working on integrating $V with store and getting transaction history reports
Misc:
Redid error logging:
Now can have multiple logs, necessary for server
Logging has a level number so log output can be varied
Other:
Lots of BUG FIXINGUPDATE 9
Art:
All old rooms are done except for final lighting
Tables, finally have some new pockets that work with the physics, hoping to make some real progress on looks in the next month.
Physics:
Basic architecture and new system now running. Working on rail model.
Online:
Team play works for match play (normal rooms, now called match) and also for tournament play! That was a big one, very cool, lots of work
Added moderator functions and admin reporting and tracking
Improved asset download efficiency, download progress indicator
Automatic game exe updater
Match forfeit added
Paste for the chat window
Embedded colors in chat strings
Room list sorting
Put player list in game
Swap break for scotch doubles
UI:
Redo of keyboard and mouse input. Mouse sensitivity should be better allowing better cue ball speed control
Optional status bottom draw
DVD controls
In game cursor that can be used to select things like DVD controls, player list
Web Portal:
Event Calendar should beta soon!
Tournament Event Page is also going to beta soon!
And so is the Event Bracket page!
Player Homepage design done, HTML/CSS soon
Misc:
Lots of code cleanup and organization. Better now that later.UPDATE 8
Art:
Loch Lomond done
Monte Carlo in final review
Will be re-lighting all rooms for better quality
Tweaking pool tables for better physics performance
Also working on improved look for table parts, cloth, etc.
GUI:
Put in tournament brackets
Tweaking Cue Shop layout
Have prototype for Cue Case
Online:
Completed asset management. Now can download new rooms, cues, pictures, logos, etc., both on demand or at lobby login. Includes changes to use XML description files for all assets.
Added Private Messaging. Players can now PM either in the lobby or in game. Any PM in the lobby will still exist when entering game rooms. In game also has a lobby tab so players can chat from rooms to lobby. All PMs are on tabs.
Tweaked lobby to take advantage of full window size
Handle tournament deletions on game server.
Added handicapping for tournaments
Added player rating display and player rating computation working with game server
Added player stats reporting to game server
Offline:
Added team play for offline, not planning on having that but easiest way to test for online. Ready to try integrating with online server.
Got tournaments in career working with new brackets
Added consecutive racks run and runouts from break for stats
Pro Tour Career:
Jon-Paul will update on this.
Physics:
Have basic model design, ready to start coding soon.
Web Portal:
Event Calendar has basic functionality. Month, Week, Day, List views. Can see events that are upcoming also can switch to your events (what you have signed up for). Non-Real time tournament match date/time negotiation is partially done.
Statistics page started.
Shopping cart is 80% done.
Celeris Site:
Final review, hopefully up next week.
UPDATE 7
Art:
Beach house is done.
Modeling done for Monte Carlo, still needs texturing and lighting.
Loch Lomond started.
Have Bar and Champ table, waiting for some possible manufacture deals before doing for all rooms.
GUI:
Just some minor touch-ups, need to get back to this.
Physics:
Work progressing slowly. Working on new ball collision physics and new rail model. After numerous experiments seems the ball collisions are more complicated than we had modeled. Trying to get the game to play more like real pool, including the variance seen in real life.
Online:
Dealt with a lot of nasty things that had been put off...
Disconnects - handled with message and option to save. Sort of like VP3 but right now match can't continue if you lose players. May put that back in for more than 2 players, makes sense in some games like ring game in 10 ball.
Quit Match - what a evil witch. You would think quitting would be simple but it is not. It has to be handled differently for each room type.
Normal Rooms - it is pretty much yes or no to the confirmation. With yes the player leaves the room, no cancels. Master gets setup screen, everyone else gets the Match Being Setup screen.
Challenge Rooms - at confirmation, you can quit leave the room, cancel, or quit and re-queue
Event Rooms (Tournament, Ladder, League) - at confirmation, you can save the game and quit, cancel, or quit and forfeit
And practice in these rooms is handled differently, the above is only for 2 players or more.
DQ player in a tournament by the Admin now works, all players in room are notified of the DQ, and a DQ message is sent to the lobby, brackets show DQ.
Forfeit by a player in a tournament also updates the brackets properly now.
Login Authentication is now secure using RSA encryption. This was critical as we don't want players accounts accessed by anyone but the players. The web portal uses SSL and the game uses RSA so hacking a player password will be nearly impossible given proper strength passwords are used.
Handicapping for tournaments is partially done, waiting for some DB updates to finish.
Still have not done non-real time tournaments, but getting closer to working on it.
Did some code re-factoring to clean up the design, nothing functional but is progress.
Pro Tour Career:
XML reader working, have season and player xml files.
Other Coding:
Did some code clean-up, things were out of hand with over 4000 macro definition and around 1000 art files for the UI. Actually ended up writing 2 programs to find unreferenced art files and unreferenced macros. Took all day to do that but better than trying to figure it out by hand.
Celeris Site:
Still not done but mainly delayed because web designer is so busy on VP4 site.
Web Portal:
Layouts have been update per our web designer.
meta tag editor added, for SEO.
Blog is in and working. Integrated Wordpress for that. Setup so articles can be commented on and discussed.
Alternate roles for users is in and working. This will be used so a user with some sort of administrative privilege can switch roles. For example if you are a TD and are going to setup a tournament or run a tournament, you would go to your account and turn on TD, now everyone sees you as a TD.
Editing tournaments is restricted depending on the current state and who is trying to edit the information.
Private messaging is in and working. We have an inbox, trash, and sent messages. Basic but nice.
Newsletter mailing list has been setup.
Event calendar has been started, this is the main way players find out about events and keep track of events they are signed up for.
UPDATE 6
Art:
Beach house close to done.
Work started on Monte Carlo.
Going to do a couple of new rooms.
GUI:
New Career map in place.
Physics:
Working on new rail model.
Online:
Lots of activity here, tournament systems has got the basics working. Can create and play single or double elimination matches. The game server automatically creates rooms for tournament players, only allowing assigned players to play in that room. Match scoring and reporting works and online brackets are updated in real time. Plenty of bugs and little problems to work out but the basic tournament system is working. Still need to add the non-real time tournaments, and many of the pool rule options.
Have the draft navigation page up and running.
The friends system works.
Lots left to do on the user/social aspect.
Celeris Site:
Have prototypes done for a new Celeris web site. This will be intermediate until the VP4 site is up then we will move all the pool product material to the VP4 site.
Pro Tour Career:
Design is done, starting work on UI and XML reader.
UPDATE 5
Progress Report 5
Game:
Chat now supports multiple chat windows. They will be used for lobby, private messages, possibly ICQ (though not in the first rev), and game chat. The lobby will not support game chat. But the game does have a lobby chat so you can chat in the lobby while in the game. Also added color to chat text.
Normal mapping is working for the tables. The pool tables are dynamically lit using a custom lighting model that has a light bar for the table. The lighting is per pixel diffuse and specular with normal mapping for details. The tables now have diffuse maps, normal maps (with a specular component), and detail maps. Probably does not mean much for most of you but I'll translate to non-tech speak: The tables should look really good.
Have run a lot of physics experiments, hoping this will pay off with and improved model.
Web Portal:
The web portal is moving much faster now that our new designer Rob is on the team. My original design was oriented towards playing tournaments, ladders, and leagues. Rob said it needed to be user oriented and more social which I confirmed with an internet marketing guru. So the project has grown considerably but I think has much better chance for success because it provides a lot more value to the user. Key features include:
User home page showing your information, your event calendar, your money, your friends, your teams, your messages
User dashboard, present on all pages showing key information to you
Icon based navigation system
Integration with your facebook account
Your achievement page, has trophies, rankings, history
Community News page, has results and event promos
Pro blog, will be done by me and other guest bloggers
Tournament brackets are going to be pretty cool, modeling after this:
http://www.ctsondemand.com/
Will remove some of the busy text and things should look much clearer. Scoring placement will be different, handicapping will be shown too.
Art:
Now have 5 rooms "finished": Garage, Hawgpen, Pitstop, DeepPockets, Hardtimes, and Beach house is in progress.
We are making multiple lighting passes with different tables. I want to be able to put any table in any room or what fits. I don't think the Snooker table will fit in some rooms.
Am getting close to having a bar table for the Hawgpen. The new tables have been problematic from the art, rendering, and physics issues.
UI:
Added chat into lobby, need to work on the server more to get the player list in, room list works. I'm thinking the static 1024x768 size used in the menus is not so hot for the lobby and may make that screen dynamic to take advantage of the complete screen space.
UPDATE 4
Progress report 4:
Plenty going on, though my coding time has been cut down dealing with all the people working on this, but still production none the less, more from them, less from me.
Online:
Lag for break is in and working! Probably still some issues, sure it won't work with recording right now. But it is really cool looking. It was a tremendous amount of work to put in the lag, hope everyone likes it. I have deviated from the lag rules slightly. The rules say both players must lag before a ball hits the end rail. That is sort of hard to do online. I thought about having each player lag blind where they could not see the other players lag but that is not so cool and everything would be delayed for spectators. So the whole simultaneous lag was put it. The requirement to hit the lag is before the other players ball comes to a stop. I think that works ok, we will see if there are issues. The intent of the hit before the end cushion rule was so you could not read the other players lag but I don't think that is really much of an advantage at all and trying to delay your lag could get you in trouble because of network delays that could cause you lag to be illegal anyways. So the smart player will not try to wait on the lag.
Basic tournament room code is written, much to do there still, waiting for web portal to be done enough to work on that.
Secure login from VP4 has basic communication and logic, still need to work on some encryption issues.
Web Portal:
Web portal is coming along. Basic player sign-up and account manager is 70% done
Tournament setup is 80% done
Tournament brackets for single elimination are done double elimination brackets in progress
Still need web design and html/css for all of it
Still need to connect to VP4 server
Working on teams for tournaments, will be supporting scotch doubles play
Art:
Garage and Hardtimes are getting close, probably 95% at this point, so soon we will add those to the already completed DP and Pitstop. The harder rooms were done first so the others should go faster
New bar table is built, still working out issues, but basic geometry is in. This is difficult because of the tie in to the physics. Tables will be a huge upgrade over VP3. They have detail and normal maps, should be really cool.
UI art for key mapper done, have career map background, prototypes for lobby remote play normal room setup. Hope to post some SS soon, need to get the backgrounds rendered.
New Games:
Straight Rail, done and working per BCA rules
4 Ball Carom, done and working per BCA rules, looking at implementing Japanese, Korean, and Czech variations
UPDATE 3
Snooker:
Have added a push shot rule, not that happy with it, may do the physics modification
Auto-nominate is working. When the Shoot key is pressed, and your supposed to be nominating a colour, it will auto-nominate what is being aimed at. Normal Nominate key for the overhead selection still works as does pressing a numeric key. If either the overhead or numeric is pressed auto nominate is disabled for that shot.
English Billiards:
Is in and working. That took a while, there are some strange things in the rules. You guys in the UK can't make anything simple.
UI:
Still working on the UI, getting there but it is a ton of work, probably 65% done.
Record and Playback:
Added play events like ChangeTurn
Added some additional information for ChangeTurn that says why if the change was from a Play Choice like shoot over, this will show up for online play too
Put in some delays to give time to see status messages, like foul and slow down the shot pace a little
CO:
Made some improvements to Straight Pool game strategy for break balls
Fixed a problem with combination shots, CO should take advantage of that more now
Art:
DP and Hawgpen are done
UPDATE 2
Things are coming along nicely, lots of work to do.
The new menus now have the custom rules and handicapping in with custom rules for 8 ball, 9 ball, bank pool, and snooker.
Working on the in game display, plenty has changed here, will post some sort of screen shots after a little more clean up.
Have icons for the information window close to done. FYI the information window tells about the menu item you are interacting with and the icon is a little extra info and flash.
The custom rules for 8ball are done completely (except online) including the CO. The CO turned out to be a pain, lots of modifications to get it to understand the rules.
Still have to put in the custom rules for the CO for other games.
Looking into a major physics upgrade. Don't know if this is happening or not, depends on cost and schedule
.
UPDATE 1
Just wanted to let everyone know things are moving along, though never as quickly as I would like
We have the first room upgrade complete. Changed to using Maya and there were art export/import problems
The user interface is coming along, that has been a lot of work to redo everything, plus add new features. Quick Play is done, load/save game, the career room (where you pick players), career management.
Still to be done is career map, tournament brackets, in game interface, in game menu, online lobby, in game play choice and call pocket menus.
Rules customization is working. The current generic customization for most games is:
Break - default, winner, loser, alternate, trailing player
Call Shot - default, off, on
3 Foul - default, off, on
First Break - default, coin flip, lag balls, lowest rating
There is a some of the game specific done, more to be added
Money Ball Call Shot - off, on
Bank Pool Rack - long rack, short rack
Snooker - 15 reds, 10 reds, 6 reds, 3 reds
I was thinking of adding;
One Pocket - front pocket (normal), back pocket
8-ball, pocket 8 in - last pocket (last pocket your last ball went into, opposite pocket, bank, side pocket
Cowboy - normal (can either shoot ball or a carom), alternate (must alternate ball and carom)
Bowlliards - normal, rotation
Handicapping is in with the following:
Handicap type - games, points, multiple money balls, ball goals
Except for Straight Pool and Billiards all games can handicap by games
Point handicapping is applicable to Straight Pool, Billiards, Bowlliards, Snooker, and Cowboy
Multiple Money Balls is applicable to 9ball, 10ball, and 6ball
Ball Goals is applicable to Banks, One Pocket, Basic Pocket, and Honolulu
I'm thinking of adding:
Odds on the money, for wagers on any game
No count for straight pool (must run X balls to count on the score)
8ball handicapping on 8 ball - last pocket, side pocket, opposite pocket, bank
8ball handicapping on all balls - rotation, bank
Still plenty of other things being worked on too dull and boring to be worth speaking of but necessary
