I had a chance to draw three more Backgammon boards over the weekend. I drew a marble-looking one, a faux-leather one (not too great, but passable), and a classic board that looks quite good. The antialiased lines and brushes in PSP 5.0 were very nice for drawing the points in the classic board. Since it looks classy, the classic board is gonna be the default.
Installed Windows 98 on the main development box and the web-surfing machine. So far, the experience has been positive. Things seem to be stable, and the little extras are nice (except for the animated pull-down menus, which annoyed me). I also installed the Plus Pack, which includes a few little niceties, like the Disk Cleanup Wizard. The Organic Art Screen Saver is downright hypnotic. Haven't had any problems at all with VC++. Quite stable with it, in fact.
Haven't quite figured out what my next game will be, but I was thinking of another arcade game. Arcade games are always well-received, but they can be tough to write. My past efforts at resurrecting old console or coin-op titles was fairly well-received, so I might find an obscure title that I liked, and resurrect it.
No new leads on a publisher yet. We'll see if these beasts actually end up on the shelves. . .