I have been working on some tiles for this project today to help me define a more solid overall look of the game. The task for today will be to update the engine to support custom maps and these nice tiles. The water rendering is also coming along so I am hoping I can have these things integrated by tomorrow.
Also, something that I have rarely seen in a platform game is genuine AI companions that can join the player on their journey. I guess this is in part due to the fact that it can be hard to create an AI that can navigate and jump between platforms properly, however I have devised what could be a great solution to this problem.
Bit-Hacks Pixel Dungeon 
Hi
Why choose DirectX ? Why not Opengl that is more portable ?
I want to check your game, and I can’t if you choose direct X!
Thanks to share your experiments, bty.
The decision to use DirectX would only be because I have experience with it, but no real working knowledge of OpenGL. Last time I tried OpenGL it wasn’t object oriented and also was horrible to set up due to all of the extension handling. There may be some advantages however since OpenGL however would be easier to use with SDL because all the setup is done already for me, and I like the idea of portability. I will have to think on that farther, however I would be interested to know what system you use.
Unfortunately, I don’t have real experience on that. But I have made some tests.
Did you know SFML ? It’s a full cross-platform 2D object oriented library, and you can use it to handle OpenGL context.
http://www.sfml-dev.org/
http://www.sfml-dev.org/tutorials/2.0/window-opengl.php
Again, thanks for sharing your thoughts on your blog. I like your design, too.