-+@ Air Horn @+-

Last day of the month... titles of the month have been from the Fast Break CCG, if you haven't already guessed it. And Air Horn is for Arderial, of which I finished the templates today, together with d'Resh and Universal.



So, that's all 50 cards templated. Hooray. The are all available on the custom card website. Next up, I'll probably look at the guardian images and get those posted, template Shadowsfall Promo to enable that they can be playtested with the images and incorporate the first of the updates to the TG cardlist.

It has been a busy day on CCG Workshop today. There's of course, the end of month report, which is posted just before this a few hours back. There's the statistics stuff which is used for the featured games which got posted about an hour back. And of course, that's in between helping players and PLs as they try to get certain things done. While I'm on the topic of that, I finally figured out that it was the Ad blocker in Norton Internet Security that was preventing the engine from functioning and posted that in the forums.

Three games were updated today, and I'll name them sequentially. A player mentioned to Tomi that Wildstorm was missing a few cards. Turn out to be more than 200 cards as they either had the wrong or missing tags. I had to batch rename and replace to get everything kosher and then upload everything to the server, all under 10 minutes. Well, I aim to please.

Go Fish had Tomi's Duel of Ages cardback added, and since I fudge things a bit, the new cardback will be the default one, which will also be the one in game and the one that will show up on his plate. I haven't had time to get a screenshot of that yet... and besides, I'm still waiting for Sideshow's cardback.

AvP(vT) got its second scenario today, and boy, adding a deck to a game isn't as easy as one would think. It's a good thing I've done it so often these days that I know what exactly has to be done. It's on the engine and it's public. Whether people will play the "no frills" "low tech" version remains to be seen. The good news is that the 30 days numbers are almost past the 100 games mark.

I played lots of gToons today, if only because I was bored. Discovered quite a few combos that might come in handy and I think I have a better idea for a deck, so I'm gonna build that for the new year. Hopefully, I can beat the sub 1000 ranking sometime next year as well.

Well, Happy New Year 2005 everyone, and may all your wishes come true in the new year.

~ Novelty's December and plans for the New Year ~

I better do this now, before I get swamped later tonight when I do all the end of month things. This hasn't been a good month where my plans were concerned. The release of the new look of the engine has really thrown a monkeywrench in the works.

Shepherds
VTES shepherds are king of the hill here, all 5 slots being filled up, although I have to wonder why. Still this will be the first and last month they'd be around on the engine, since VTES will be winking off early next year for a while.

We lost Chodak and Spirit as shepherds as well this month. Shepherding does take a toll after a while.

gNet BOT
The gNet Bot got hit with a whole lot of questions due to two reasons - ignorant VTES players and the new build. The former was easier to handle than the latter. Hopefully the answers are up to scratch on all those questions

Forums
This has been the quiet bit. I moved out some of the forums from my section to the proper sections, they are hidden still though. Added game icon to Sideshow and changed the DoA icon on the forums, but otherwise things are going on quietly there.

Games
A number of games got updated this month, mainly for the new features of the new release. As usual, only games with changes are reported.

AVPVT Aliens vs Predator vs Terminator
The game needed a 4 player mode so this was done... at least for the contact scenario. Other scenarios are not available yet. This game is suppose to be "low tech" or light, but the contact scenario has 2 bits of automation now - autorotate and auto play locations.

B5 Babylon 5
This was one of the things that was scheduled this month and it was completed. The Vorlon cards have been updated and the looks are updated. The game has also been updated for the new engine.

BOWL Bowling
Each time I opened the file to work on this, I ended up doing MND work. Consequently nothing much has been done on this.

CHKRS Checkers
There was a slight defect in the game which made all black pieces belong to the wrong player. This was fixed.

GOFSH Go Fish
The Tournament's cardback was added to this game, and the plates were updated. Some minor logic upgrades were also carried out.

MND Magi-Nation Duel
The background change to Weave will be the last change for this year, it's a bit more cheery though. It's gonna stay as the background for at least 3 months next year. One more card was added - the version final version of Twisted Dreams. I moved the old version of Twisted Dreams to the Promo section.

GOFSH Go Fish
The Tournament's cardback was added to this game, and the plates were updated. Some minor logic upgrades were also carried out.

FB Fastbreak
There was a basic update to this to enable the card types to be shown correctly in the new build. Not much changed.

Portable Adventures
The major thing that was done this month on Portable Adventures was the fix for the next/pass system so that things handle even more smoothly. It's still a bit rough around the edges and there are still a million things to code for, but the basics are all there now.

WS Wildstorms
There was a basic update to this to enable the card types to be shown correctly in the new build. Not much changed.

January 2005 Plans
Well, I didn't get to finish one thing from last month which will be carried forward.

Bowling really should get finished this month. I have too many unfinished games on my plate as it is. I shall have to push myself to get this done. I don't want to carry this over to February. But I just can't work on it because each time I sit down and look at it, I end up working on MND, so that would have to be first.

MND needs an update for the final card text on EL as well as some image updates - Savannah Hyren and Wall of Dark Fire and Fiergo.

HumAliens needs its expansion added this month. The scans are all done, it's just a matter of adding cards.

Hyborean Gates should really go off optional to firm this month. The scans aren't done yet so that's a first.

The regular optionals - Go Fish cardback updates and scanning Triple Triad will still be retained for the month.

So, prioritised games for this month:

1. MND update - EL stuff by 7th January, custom cards ongoing.
2. Bowling - get playable 15th January, public by 31st January.
3. HumAliens - Second Order updates by 21st January.
4. Hyborean Gates - scan by 15th January, alpha by 31st January.

O. Add Go Fish cardbacks when available.
O. Complete Triple Triad scans.


Rest of the Year Plans

Aliens vs Predators (AVPVT) - Finish off next scenario - Countdown. Add Atmosphere cards and create the Planetfall scenario. Get Terminator scans from BugLaden, add it to the engine and create the 2 additional scenarios, as well as the Terminator scenario(s). Quite a bit of work here, but between Ravage and Ryan(Rekkon), I hope to get everything up and ready by the end of the year.

Babylon 5 (B5) - Bold text takes the next priority now that the images/icons are fixed. Still on the list of things to do is the automation for replacement and the automated influence tracking and automated initiative determination. Those would take quite a lot of time that I'll have to schedule to be set aside.

Borders (BORD) - Nothing more to be done in Borders. Ed has asked for icons on the special cards, so maybe those will get an update, when I get the time.

Bowling (BOWL) - There shouldnt' be much work on this once it goes public, but I won't know until then what has to be done on it.

Checkers (CHECK) - This is another "no frills", "low-tech" game at the moment. It would probably get upgraded once I have the time, motivation and ideas, but for now it's playable and that would have to do.

Elemental (ELEM) - The tidal wave automation has long been outstanding. I think it's possible to do this now, but the script is going to be rather complicated. No schedule for this. Not a high priority since the game works well without the automation and I don't want to introduce something that would introduce errors. It will be done when I can find the time and the motivation.

FastBreak (FB) - The game is beginning to feel a bit "low tech" now, eventhough it did have a few innovations (when it was first made). Could do with more playtesting and more inprovements, but until I find the time and the motivation, this isn't going to be done anytime soon.

Firestorm (FIRE) - New licensed game for me to do for 2005, for April public release, or at least that's the plan.

Go Fish (GOFSH) - What do you do when the game plays well and is bug free? Nothing I suppose. However, it'd be getting a minor facelift soon - a tiny crab will be added which will allow an 5 more players to play the game simultaneously. I doubt we'll ever get 13 players into a Go Fish game, but who knows? The schedule is undetermined at the moment, and it's not high priority. As usual, cardbacks will continually be added to this game.

Hamlet (HAMLT) - There really isn't much to do on this simple game except more playtesting... and perhaps a tournament or two. Hamlet is one of the few of my licensed games I'll consider ready for Now Playing status.

HumAliens (HALN) - The game is dead, but there's still work to be done. Hopefully, the New Order would be an Online only expansion to be added by January.

Hyborean Gates (GATES) - Hopefully this will go public in March. It's going to be another "no frills", "low-tech" game though so it might lie fallow until someone with more enthusiasm and ideas comes along to take it over.

Magi-Nation Duel (MND) - Custom cards are still ongoing and I think people are rather used to the gameplay. The only other thing that can be done is to track how energy is gained and used up. However that is a monumental task since every card does it differently and there are many modifiers... which means it's not going to get done. Tainted Glimpses will also be added sometime in the year. I think I might also add in something to shuffle all creatures back into the deck for Dream Rift. That's as much automation as I'd be doing...

Portable Adventures (PAD) - The other area to update would be the Encounter cards. I have a rough idea of how to automate these, but they seem rather inconsequential to the whole game, so they might not get done until I get the time and the motivation. In addition, there are two card sets that will be added near the end of the year so those will get priority when they are available.

Quartet (QUART) - More playtesting is needed on this game. Not much improvements will be made until further playtesting is carried out. The game seems stable though.

Reversi (RVRSI) - Since nipa added the left-click functionality and upgraded the images, it's done and has been upgraded to "Now Playing". No work required.

Triple Triad (TRIAD) - Scanning has started, but I have no idea when I'll have the time to do this. I only have 1 - 90, so if anyone wants to scan in the rest of the 18 cards, for me, they are most welcome. Please PM me for more details.

Urland (URLND) - It could use some scoring automation at some point in the future, time to be determined.

Wildstorms (WS) - Nothing much can be done to fully automate setup until after Bug has got the next build out the door. Also, there's the plan to add my custom StormWatch expansion sometime this year.

Wildstorms Legends (WSLS) - This game is going into the queue after Bowling, Firestorm, Hyborean Gates and Triple Triad. I guess that makes it a September public release game.

Wildstorm: Set 1 (WSS1) - The WSS2 update is still planned, although it hasn't gone ahead. The game also needs and auto-score if the defender wins. This will be done with the WSS2 update. Schedule: May - August.

You Need Drew's Truck (YNDT) - I'd like to automate moving the truck, and automate the initial placements of the donuts.

Yukk (YUKK) - This game feels rather low tech, but it works well. I think I'll leave it as it is.

I have way too many games on my plate. No new game announcements from me until at least 3 of them are cleared.

2005 Plans
February - FIRE, BORD, GATES, YNDT
March - B5, TRIAD, URLND, WS
April - MND, TRIAD
May - WSS1
June - WSLS, WSS1
July - WSLS

-+@ Snag Pass @+-

Oh, let's do the pretty pictures part first:



That's 3 of the Underneath cards I did... well, yesterday, since it's past midnight already. The other region I did yesterday was KT. So that covers the two rock regions after I completed the two "life" regions yesterday, and it brings the total up to 10 regions completed for EL. 2 more to go, let's hope that today I'll get to put Universal, Arderial and d'Resh to complete it. Thanks goes to Patrick (aka magimutt) who's been proofreading these as I have gone along and to White (thebigsquig) who's been very supportive of this so far.

Tainted Glimpses seems to be going on with a few comments already - Mark (Lord Pic), Daniel (dartax) and Patrick (magimutt) have all posted partial comments in the CCG Workshop forums. I guess that's their way of telling me to get my backside into gear and to get the cards up on the engine ASAP.

Played a game earlier with Paul (pedronic) and Chris (Rhapses). I was playing Human destiny which was a bad choice agains Paul's Minbari Home War. Chris was playing Shadow war with ZHD Awakened and Londo from The Vorlons. Long story short, I got up to 16 influence, then played the agenda that counts 2 destiny as 1 power for the win. Shadows was already up to 15 at that point and I had to sacrifice my only fleet to win, but it was worth it. It's always nice connecting with B5 players and building rapport with them. Hopefully they enjoyed the game and would stay for the long term.

Also had a long discussion with Andrew (croesus) about which group to pander to, to be economically viable. He was initially of the opinion that CCG W should pander to the big companies so that they'll let us do their games. I was of the opinion that we should instead make sure that paying customers feel satisfied instead. It is possible to do both of course, but sometimes, doing both creates a conflict and so one would have to take a decision. Ultimately, to make enough money, the customers should come first, I feel and I think I convinced Andrew to that same conclusion.

I played gToons and lost ranking points for a change. I don't think I'd be breaking the sub-1-thousand level anytime soon. Hero decks seems to be predominating and I think I shall have to reconfigure my deck to take them out. Played some LotR O as well, but I wasn't in the mood for it. OTOH, the Black Rider board has been up for a while now so hopefully we'll get spoilers soon.

-+@ Harass @+-

Well, I've all but given up on Bowling for this week. Instead I thought I might as well finish what I'm doing for MND, so...



These are some of the more verbose cards in the set and I'm glad they are done. So that's 8 regions out of 12 done and 2 universal cards done... hopefully, I'll be able to finish the remaining 18 cards by the end of the week.

-+@ The Men in Black @+-

I sat down to work on Bowling today and guess what happened? I'll show you.



Well, that was that. Oh well.

Played 2 games of LotR O today, won both, but only because people didn't expect me to be playing with the type of cards I was playing with. gToons is still down for me at home, so I guess I'll see my rankings slip away some.

-+@ Ice Patch @+-

Let's start with a few more images:



That's what I spent today doing, not not just 3 images but getting the MND Custom Card site up to scratch. 16 of the EL cards are available for download - 4 each from Cald, Nar, Orothe and Weave. The full beginning text for Tainted Glimpses is also up on the site. Hopefully that would encourage die hards to print them out and to play with them.

I also played AvP today, and it didn't result in an upgrade today. Got grilled on how the engine works by one of the AvP players and I think I gave him a very good picture without violating the NDA.

Saw Ben, a B5 player who I walked through how to download images and stuff yesterday. I wonder if he's been in a B5 game yet. There's another player - Angel of Death - who's currently checking out B5. He or she seems rather new at the game - played a Triluminary without sponsoring it. I didn't bother correcting since it was just a one player game.

Saw 2 people trying out ToJH today. Tomi was surprised at that, and so was I. I guess those people are samrt - playing it while they still can for a bronze, although with the new token system, they can always spend their 2 silvers on it when it gets there.

gToons is still down for me. I wonder what's happening. I haven't been playing LotR O for ages. Oh well.

-+@ Look, Up in the Sky @+-

Is it a bird or a plane? No, probably not.

After yesterday's long post, I don't think I'll do a repeat performance today.

Played my first AvP game with Ryan and his friend, which wasn't really fun because we were all like newbies trying to pick up the game. I did manage to get quite a number of kills though and I must say I think I'm getting relatively good with the predator precon, but having said that, it's easy to off my predator. Blegh.

Took the opportunity to upgrade the game a bit - mainly the removal of a few things which would make the game better. Hard to think that is the case, but less-is-more in this case. Of course, it takes more coding to do that. I've also revised the game to show that it's only meant for the contact scenario for the moment. We'll probably be supporting the other scenarios in the future, but not currently.

gToons seems to be down for me. I wonder why. Maybe it's because I have negative Orbit points there. Don't ask me how I managed to do that. Anyways, I've updated the links on the right for some gToons resources. They are the ones I use anyways. Also added an AvP link in there too.

I checked out redtaggames.com yesterday, which has been up for a while now. It features a new logo for Crystal Authority and a game called Sideshow. I wonder what Mark has got up his hat with that. I guess I'll have to wait to find out. It's probably something interesting.

Cleared the BOT today... but it's probably filled up again somewhat. Lots of confused people entering the engine trying to get games and missing the select a game button. I wish the select a game popup will automatically popup on entry to the engine. Oh well.

I got my excel files ready to take up the data for the end of the month things. The good news is that we are almost back to the number of games we had before WotC took out 8 games (and YGO got axed). If Le Tournoi gets out public later this month/year, we'd be back at 65 games which would be the number of game we had before the WotC implosion. Things can only go up from there.

Might start work on Bowling later tonight... who knows? That is if I don't get distracted by a B5 game that might start in about an hour. We'll have to see.

-+@ Product Endorsement @+-

Merry Christmas. I haven't posted pictures for a while so here's one of one of my favourite cards in Elder's Legacy:

Snowflake Crystals is one of the 4 Nar cards in Elder's Legacy and is the relic card of the set. It is one of the few counter relics, like Evu's Jellybeans and Chaos Sphere, but unlike either, it sits around after all the counters are used up. This is to enable cards that discard relics - and there is at least one in Nar to be able to make use of this card once its main usefulness is gone. Tainted Glimpses will add more functionality to this card. This is the first version of the card with text, done up for the upcoming Custom card website.

Since I'm on the topic of MND, the main forum for it - Insiider - has been hacked into and is showing some rather disturbing pictures of "terrorists". Urgh.

And sticking to the MND theme, I played 2 games of MND with Mikey Angel today with 2 different Paradwyn beatdown/dreamwarp decks. Won both games, but only because his deck needs a lot of tweaking. I guess it's my first MND game in ages.

While playing the game though, Brash, my LotR O friend from Canada asked me to play LotR with him. Had to turn him down, but I did tell him about gEngine. I think we've got one new happy player... and one who doesn't seem to want to play VTES! (On a side note, there were more MND players on the engine at one point than VTES players!) Here he is bubbling about it to me on AIM.

Locke Scythe: I actually am pretty happy about this
Locke Scythe: lol
Locke Scythe: like a excited child on christmas

Well, it is Christmas and all. He'll be playing Buffy I guess. It's always nice to tell someone about the engine and they get excited about it.

MND wasn't the only game I played on the engine today. I actually got someone (aka Ryan) to teach me how to play AvP. I'm rather surprised though at how interesting the game is, the only downer is that there are so many little details that one has to refer to outside of the cards. Besides that though, I can see where the Precedence influence shone through and I was very surprised to see the VS combat mechanics in there, although one should not be too surprised by that since the Precedence card designers were also the ones behind VS. Nevertheless, I just can't play a game and not tinker with it. Since this is a game I can tinker with... I added a few things, most of them trivial - setup now plays all the starting cards instead of drawing it to hand... and the counters and markers and dice are all available on setup now. There was a request to bump up the total number of players per game to 4, so I did that which probably earned me some goodwill from the AvP players. Some people are just so easy to please! The other major thing I did was to add a begin turn script that automated unrotating all cards and playing all locations. A few other minor tweaks made it into there, nothing major for this "light" game. I did think about doing automating phases similar to B5 (because face it, Precedence has this love for complicated phases as is apparent in the 3 games I've played so far - B5, WoT and AvP) - but since this game is "light" (think budget airlines and $1 stores), I'll leave it for sometime in future when it gets upgraded into the "normal" category of games.

Since we are talking about B5, I saw 2 players playing it today. They were using rather simple decks but were using the interface like pros, so I didn't intrude on their game. It's nice to see the game being played, even if it's only a 2-player game. I don't think they crashed, which was a good thing. There's so much more I want to do for that game, if only I have the time.

Ed and Kari have been portable adventuring the last few days. I'm glad that they enjoy the game. A complicated CCG gets tiresome sometimes with deckbuilding, card collecting and all that sort of jazz. Portable Adventures takes the shortcut on all that and provides an easy to digest pack, sort of like lunchables, but with all the favours and taste and it actually fills one up.

And we haven't had a licensed game announcement for a while. I think one of my games is going to be announced next but that might change. Meanwhile, with the launch of VTES I wonder if we'd be getting a 2nd White Wolf game to be licensed. I wonder if WW actually owns the rights to gToons. Probably not. The other WW game on the engine - Rage, which is unlicensed - has seen some play over the last week or so, which is welcomed.

And Rage brings me to JC and Le Tournoi. Apparently it's ready for beta, but I don't think Ed has opened it yet. Oh well. It's actually much better than Checkers was when that went beta, so kudos goes to JC for getting it to that stage. It'd be nice to see another boardgame on the engine, not to mention the first original boardgame there.

And as for Bowling... I was going to work on it today, but well, I ended up playing games instead. I think it's something that will only be done next year, unless I somehow find the time between now and the end of the year, which I doubt.

I was just thinking earlier that I'm gonna have to move Yukk, YNDT and Hamlet all to "Now Playing" status soon... probably next week sometime. YNDT still needs that move truck script, but otherwise all 3 of those games are as done as I'd like them to be. Elemental could still use the tidal wave lock and move script... which is a bit more complicated, and I don't think the engine is capable of handling it yet.

Talking about Elemental, vaporator - that's his handle, I have no idea what his real name is, although I do know he's from Italy - told me today he'd like to add AI to Elemental. That's great... or not. I don't want to go around and pick up the pieces after him if he wrecks Elemental. I did suggest to him that he should start with one of his own games... probably something like Chess or Backgammon. He seemed more happy with that idea. After that talk with hom though, I got the impression that all he wants to get out of this is some money, which means he needs to get his hands on a licensed game. Well, tough, he'd need to have done a game and maintained it for 6 months first before he can get his hand on a licensed game as per the rules that Ed laid down. Seriously though, I don't think anyone who codes games for CCG Workshop for money would be doing a favour to the game. Sure it might give them incentive to do things fast so that they get money, but after that, they can let their games rot and still get paid. I hope that doesn't come to pass.

And talking about money, I was surprised to see on the VTES forum someone suggesting that 15 free games is way too generous. I would have fallen off my chair when I saw that... if I was sitting on one. Well, maybe over the next few months it'd get reduced. Who knows? I did however give out Scrooge tips concerning tokens and how to save on them. Ghost of Christmas past, present and future, eat your heart out.

Well, time to get ready for the end of the month stuff. 2 games made public for starters, with the possibility of a third would mean I have quite a bit of work ahead of me.

And let me wish you and yours a very blessed Christmas, full of the joy of life, the love from friends and family and the peace in the assurance that hope is never far from the taking.

-+@ Alley Oop! @+-

Eeek! The new engine got set loose early. I don't think it's ready for it yet, but now that it's out, I think it's time for me to hide under a rock. I would hate all the negative comments and hate mail that would be coming my way over the next few weeks about the stuff people are not going to like. Oh well, such is life, I suppose.

No Bowling today, but I did manage to get FastBreak up to scratch for the new engine. That was an easy task since FastBreak is relatively new... well, relatively being the key word there. Compared to some of the games out there, FastBreak is old, and is almost at the level of AvP's "low tech".

The other game I updated today was WSS1. That was a bit more problematic because that is such an old game. You can't teach an old dog new tricks or so the saying goes, well, I just did that to WSS1 while getting it to work with the new build. I've cut down the cardlist by half - only the cardbacks will show in the deck editor. However, in play, the card fronts will be shown. Something rather easy to do these days, but it's a trick that wasn't readily available in the days when WSS1 was created. I'm getting excited about WSS1 though and the new WSS2 expansion. I should do that while I'm on full steam. Also, WSS1 could do with an AI... maybe...

The other 2 games which had updates for the new engine are WS and B5, both of which are really really old games. AvP(vT), despite being as low tech as it is, surprisingly didn't need an update for the new version of the engine. It only goes to show how the age of a game can affect compatibility with future versions of the engine, although having said that, MND, which is like one of the oldest games still available on the engine didn't really need an update for the new engine. That's because MND had a huge overhaul about a year ago in how things are handled and that has proved a rather effective update at modernising the game.

Tomi is still working on DoA, AFAIK and that's a good thing. I can't wait to play that game. I also tried my first game of ToJH today... it's really not my game, although the mechanics are good and is in the PAD ballpark. TWG actually does good games and I think Firestorm would be awesome to code for.

VTES players are "going to town" playing the game - the average number of games played per day has gone up a staggering amount. I haven't seen any red stars yet though, so I doubt anyone is actually paying to play it. The engine, being (sorta) as unstable as it is now, isn't really going to make playing it nice and smooth, so we shall see how many red stars actually turn up for those at the end of next month. It's free for all this week anyways, so people can play as much as they want this week... and take advantage of that they have with over half of the games played over the last 2 days being VTES.

Apparently JC's The Tournament is ready for beta testing. That is a good sign I think. He has been spending lots of time on his games, using stuff learnt in one game and applying it to all the others. It's interesting to watch his coding skills develop as time goes by. One thing he could do more is learn some of the other games out there... particularly the "flagship" games of the triumvirate + 1: nipa's DoomTrooper, Martin's DoomTown, RR's Shadowrum and Babylon 5. It also won't hurt if he took a look at Yahtzee, Tower Siege, Crypt, YNDT and Reversi to see all the cool stuff all those games contains.

The BOT needs a huge overhaul for the new engine. I'm already dreading the task of doing that. I have done some of the more obvious changes, but obviously, things like the FAQ needs to be updated for the BOT to point to, and that hasn't yet been done. Also, the game compensation system is now broken since we aren't on game allowances anymore but on tokens, so nobody will be able to get back their games until that is fixed.

And as for shepherds, well, let's just say that quite a number of them are on vacation, so that's a huge relief most of the time. I just wish some of them will sign up on the forums so that I could add them to the Shepherds' Pasture. Oh well.

And talking about the forums, it seems awash in traffic these days, not only from the VTES players but also from a number of other people. It's interesting though. TechHelp is probably one of the busier forums as everyone seems to be having problems it seems. Heh.

I signed up to Battle Trolls or something like that last week. Haven't played it yet, and it doesn't seem to be as exciting as gToons. Oh well. gToons wise, I've got a new deck with GL and Aquaman and have removed the chicken and Courage's parents. It actually works rather well, and actually beat two decks that has jawbreakers in them. Ay Caramba!

Haven't played LotR yet, although I should finish my 5 games for this week in League soon-ish. Hmm... I wonder if I can even remember how to play. Oh well.

-+@ Fast Break @+-

Rush Rush Rush... urgh, the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland can't be as busy as me.

Let's go do non-CCG workshop stuff first. My gtoons playing is getting better, but without those super duper slams, I'm afraid I'm not climbing up the ladder anywhere as fast as I could. Oh well, can't be helped. Still pushing it for under 1000 in a bit but I doubt I'll make it there for another 2 or more weeks. The good news is that I've introduced the game to a few other people who are playing... and they in turn have introduced to more people. It's fun though. Really.

LotR Online started leagues and I joined 2. They aren't too bad, it's almost a new format, but it costs $10 to join a league. Yikes, expensive. WA is probably laughing to the back since about 300 people have joined. That's $3,000 for just a week. It would probably die down, but it'll earn regular income for WA I'm sure. I won 3 games out of my first 5 for last week. Can't play any this week. It's fun I guess, but the $10 cost is way too expensive, since I doubt I'll ever win it.

And back to CCG Workshop news...

Work on MND is still going slowly... I'm still working on the webpages for Elder's Legacy. Got a few more artists to work on Tainted Glimpses and Shadowsfall Promo. Hopefully, TG will get on the engine by the end of January, and the first 10 cards of EL on the website by about the same time too. I really wish I have more time to work on this.

B5 had a quick update yesterday... or was that the day before... to make it compatible with future versions of the engine. I've also put the word out for which text to make bold on the cards and stuff so hopefully that would be a good thing that would be implemented next year. To distinguish from normal text though, I might have to make it purple or red or something. We shall have to see.

No work on Bowling yet. I really do wish I have a weekend all to myself so that I can just sit down and code it. It should be really easy to code, AI and all. Pity though that I'm so short of time.

ToJH went public a few days ago, and VTES will follow in the footsteps in a couple of days. I'm glad I'm away. ToJH picked up quite a few games played. VTES will probably pick up a lot more games played... MND had a decent run while people are waiting for VTES. That's a good sign I think.

Daniel offered to do Firestorm images. Hmm... that would be good. Work on it won't begin until after I've finished Bowling though. I better make that clear. DoA is going along nicely as well. I think that's a game I'll try to pick up once it's ready.

-+@ One-on-one @+-

gToons is behaving badly today... I haven't been able to complete a game for some weird reason. I wonder how much of that is the server being unable to cope with the number of players and how much of it is my ISP and/or computer being slow. Urgh. Martin told me he's been playing though, which is a good thing I guess. Hopefully he'd be inproving his game in a few days.

Talking about Martin, he's closed off alpha test for VTES and is gonna do a FAQ after all. There's a start I guess. Now to get the VTES players to actually read it... that's always been the problem I guess. People are more willing to play rather than to read. Oh well.

Tomi is busy getting ToJH up to tip top shape for its beta release later today or tomorrow. I hope everything will go without a hitch for him. It'd be good though to get it out and from what I've seen his adaptation of it is great. Still, not many people would be playing it I'd guess since it's not one of the more well known games. But it'll be good nevertheless.

So a plates update will be called for soon-ish then... and next week, hopefully, the VTES release.

-+@ Pick Fight @+-

Dueled with Bug today on Portable adventures, won the first game easily and threw the second to him just to keep him happy. The engine isn't very happy about the way it resumes games or starts a second game from the end game lobby though, it's choking up in setup for me and it's doing weird things. That's something that has to be looked at anyways.

I had a talk with Mike Nickoloff about a rule clarification and the retort he came back with was... rather uncharacteristic of him. I wonder what's up with that. Still he did give me the rulings I need and he suggested that I do more work on it, which I guess I'll have to do at some point. It would involve interaction with adventures and encounters. Hmm...

Almost had a fight with Martin about VTES, he seems touchy about it. Maybe I should just leave it be for the time being and watch it all go down the drain because of the way it's handled, because I probably make it worse with my meddling. Well, it's going public sometime over the next week or two. I have said I'll stay away from the chatroom and I'll try to stay away. It might be nice to have a dedicated server though. It might also be nice to have a pacman or two answering all the questions - preferably someone who won't strangle the people asking them.

Had a long chat with HC O'Neill about Rage and her experiences running it as a fan and how we might emulate that for MND. There aren't a lot of parallels, but she was definately helpful as to how we might go about doing it. Hopefully the webpage that is currently being setup would be a good nucleas for it. Also talked with dartax in length about playtesting them and co-opted BobbyDoc to play with them. Hopefully we can get them accepted on the engine the way B5 was.

In other news, I adapted a Desert Lord deck for play on LotR O and took out a very very very nasty dunlending deck. The advantage was that I was able to hold him back early preventing him from taking too many sites early. It was an interesting game. Had a long talk with my stalker after that (my stalker being someone who'd observe all my games) and found out that he had a huge offline collection. Of course, not many people wants to spend that much money online though. It's still nice to be bouncing off strategies and stuff, especially since he isn't a power player (we both agree Elves-Naz are horrible).

I've been losing at gToons recently. Can't do anything to get back on track I guess. I'm gonna probably slip for the first time since I join down the rankings list. Oh well. Maybe it is time for a new deck after all.

-+@ The Wave @+-

Just came off an impromptu 1 hour tour of PAD and nobody took up my offer. Oh well. The week is still young. Ravage actually posted a message saying that he'd be more than willing to learn how to play YNDT... I wonder if he realises he'd have to pay to learn. Of course, I'm giving back games so that's the plus, but *shrug*.

I finally got the TR page up on my site. You can check it out here. I wonder how many people will go visit it though. It'd be interesting to see. Next up, Elder's Legacy. I've got to put in the text for those cards and post them up soon... that's going to take time though, time I might not have this month, but we'll see.

I've been checking up on DoA to see how things are progressing. I like what I'm seeing so far. Then again, since I gravitate towareds nipa (6n), it shouldn't be that much of a surprise. Birds of a feather. Still, it'd needs lots of work before it can even be playable. I can't wait to learn it though.

I also think Martin is getting annoyed with the number of people asking to alpha-test VTES... (and I mistyped it as VETS before it got edited out. Oops.) Oh well. They get to play it in less than 2 weeks anyways, for free, so that should be a good thing. I was going to suggest a FAQ to cover things like when it'd be available, what it costs to play, which sets will be in it, but since the VTES players don't seem to be able to read, a FAQ would be pointless anyways.

Bug was talking to croesus about Zinser and AEG last night. I wish I was a fly on the wall in that conversation. I wasn't though, the only reason I read it was because my spy network flagged the conversation for me. Well, I don't think I'll bug Ed about it. It's probably nothing. Still it's nice to hear we have a supporter in croesus.

Oh and Bug actually finished up all the things he was suppose to do last night. Mostly linking in things like rules and ads and stuff. It's nice though. nipa finally got to update WoT because Ed finally gave him the permissions to. Yay. First WoT update in ages.

I just checked the # of games played over the past 48 hours and PAD has 8. That's 8 more than last month IIRC. It's good to know that Ed is playing it. I think at least 5 or 6 of those 8 were played by him... heh. He boosted up the numbers for Dark Age and Yahtzee last month, I think this month, or this week at least, he'll do the same to PAD.

No bowling update yet. I really haven't got the time to sit down and finish it. I really need a solid block of 3 hours to get the game to a course playable state, but I don't even have that. Urgh.

Played gToons for quite a bit and got creamed by some of the best non-jawbreaker, slam decks out there. PPG and Justice League decks with the appropriate slams are definately stronger than my decks. I doubt I'll see a ranking increase tomorrow, even if I had a 200+ jump today. It's a pity though, I'm at 1300+ and with just a few more hundred, I'd have broken the sub-1000 barrier.

Didn't play much LotR because it's getting rather boring in between new sets. The strategies are pretty well known and the new strategies are... well, let's just say limited. Every combo-chain would probably get locked down fast, which is a pity. I did play a game with GRU - Gandalf/Rohan/Uruks and I finally realised why Invincible Uruk is so good - they are anti-archery, and with 6 companions, all your uruks are. Wow.

-+@ Give and Go @+-

Yup I'm offering free games this week to celebrate the "release" of PAD. No, I'm not offering anything for PAD. Instead the free games are for YNDT where they can get up to 6 free games (in additional to the 5) when they play a learning game with me. Hopefully that will drive some traffic to the game.

There should be other news, but CCG Workshop wise from me, but I have been lazy... Well, updating 5 games over the weekend took more out from me than I think I had. Still, I updated the BOT and added a few more forums... I think the forums are actually getting a bit unwieldy and I've received comments to as such, but since not everyone reads all the forums, those specific 1-game gamers might be happy that there is a forum dedicated especially for them. Or not.

nipa is still working away on DOA. It's beginning to look good, and people have been commenting on it. He's a bit frustrated though that he's not able to link it up to the engine. I have no idea why he's not able to link it up. Oh well, at least he's still working on it.

VTES has been confirmed to be released on the 17th. I wonder if I should keep away from the engine that day because the VTES players have been insufferable so far. Some days I wonder if some of them can even read - case in point, I pointed one of them to the forums for more info that was there and he said he's read it, where in fact he hasn't. I thought VTES players were more mature but they seem to be about as mature as the MND players I deal with on a daily basis... maybe less mature even. Well, another reason NOT to pick up the game. Sorry Martin.

Talking about Martin, I found a site with fan-made cards, not just text but pictures as well. They looked nice. I sent him a PM to tell him about the site, and it seems he already knows about it. Still, I get to grill him about a few things, and whether he likes it or not, he's been gradually putting in the things I want. Now if I can only get auto-upkeep...

Mark posted the link for the new MSN search engine. It found a few more pages that's different from Google. I found a proto-Pokemon gEngine page dating back almost a years ago. Seems nothing has been done since then, but what do I know? Then again the C&D from WotC probably killed this game... either that or they have discovered the other ways (aka Apprentice or any of the competitors out there - it's funny how I don't even want to mention them in a public post) to play the game that's out there.

Played a lot of gToon today, if only to get enough points to get the 3 cards I want to make a rather unique deck. It sucks though, 23 points for 3 slots, which is much less than I can get for an animal, but when my animals are being slaughtered, 23 points for 3 slots look heavenly. It's still not as good as 30 points for 3 slots which is where the Dexter Mom/Dad/Droid combo takes up. I'll have to playtest it to see how the deck goes. I saw a very interesting Heroes deck earlier today that didn't use all the super duper Justice League comboes, but instead used some of the lesser known one. OK, it doesn't score as high, but it's more colour coordinated than the usual Justice League combo and thus has a better chance or scoring that all important 15 points for having the most colour (which was I think purple in this deck, a colour that only purple decks and PPG decks use).

I spoke with one of Decipher's employees while playing on LotR today. Seems that I got a spoiler out of his mouth that there'll be an alternate Ring Bearer in Black Rider. Yes they have already started playtesting. I hope the alternate Ring Bearer will make it through playtesting. Played around with my Hobbit Hospital, aka Merry Christmas deck and my GRU - Gaydalf, Rohan and Uruk decks today. Merry Christmas powers through unprepared newbies. GRU fails most of the time and isn't really fun to play. Running Dwarves needs more help I think. I'll have to see how I can improve the Orc side of things and then maybe play it more.

I have a few more additions to the nipa-Martin scale. Here they are:

BugLaden: I once said that he's like 2 levels below the scale. In fact, he'll need a completely new scale. One can't compare him though. He can just create things from scratch to do whatever he wants to do. However a recent defect with my games and nipa's games has shown that Bug leans towards nipa at least. How far along I have no idea. I guess we just have to wait for Rock Scissors and Paper to see how far.

stormcloak: One would have thought he leans towards Martin, the same way that JC leans there since they are both under Martin's tutorlage. Well he doesn't and it has been a mystery to me for some time why he doesn't until he made a comment to me the other day in the chatroom. Then it clicked. First and foremost, hes a Trooper and thus he would strongly advocate what nipa is doing... well, most of it anyways. He's not partial to nipa's attachment method. That and the fact that he leans Martin in other areas brings me to the conclusing that he's a centrist like me.

kapa: What? kapa can code? Yes he can. And he leans towards nipa, even more so than Ricochet, who I've been trying to get back to the centre (I seem to have this mission to bring people back to the centre).

So, instead of plotting people on a line, let's have a new method of classifying people on the nipa - Martin scale. nipa takes one extrema and Martin takes the other, which is how the scale is defined, so nipa has an absolute majority of one quantity at one end and none of the quantity at the other end, which Martin has the exact opposite. So let's say nipa has 10n and 0M or 10n0M for short. That would make Martin a 0n10M. With this system, let's see how we can classify other people... and I'll arrange the list in ascending order with respect to someone's Martin-ness. Note that the sum of n + M doesn't necessary add up to 10. Some new people who haven't been discussed before are on the list as well. Note the nipa-Martin scale doesn't define how well someone codes. It just describes their coding scale and how similar it is to either nipa's or Martin's.

nipa 10n0M
kapa 9n0M
jaycurl 8n0M
Rainbow 5n0M
mechaman 8n1M
kdevine 7n1M
hiro_antagonist 6n1M
j235 5n1M
jackalope 8n2M
BOT 7n2M
Ricochet 7n4M
Novelty 6n4M
stormcloak 4n6M
JammeR JuN 1n8M
Bruce 0n8M
Martin 0n10M

Of course, I reserve the right to change these as I see fit :)

-+@ Three Seconds @+-

Three seconds is about the time I have to do this, but I know it'd take more than that to do. Urgh, Life is harsh.

I've been gaming this weekend... lemme run down briefly:

gToons: Got a rank increase of a couple of hundred and played maybe 3 or 4 games today. Won most of them but faced some of the more interesting decks. Still, nothing radical in those decks though.

LotRO: I accidentally played my Tales / Bes deck which is definately underpowered against the new shadows stuff. Won on site 7 I think because my opponent had no Frodo pump and I got a "Besieger swarm" of 5 out. Not how I'd like to win, but a win is a win I guess. Still, it was nice trying to remember the strategies of my defanged (no Shire Countryside) Tales deck.

PAD: Yes, I played 2 games yesterday with Bug, he won the LotRK one, I won the 8th Grade one. It was fun though. We found a couple of minor bugs, some of which got fixed last night, others I'll have to walkthrough and fix sometime in the future. Also took a screenshot of the game for the website.

While doing screenshots, I made a screenshot of Checkers as well. While doing that I saw that it was faulty as well, so I made a quick fix and uploaded it. It should be OK to play now. I don't know why but the game wasn't available yesterday... I had to switch everything to get it available. I guess that's one thing I must have forgotten somewhere along the way.

I've also been "helping out" nipa with DoA. Well, brainstorming anyways and working as his "fetcher" online. We sort of do those for each other I guess, which is why his games end up closer to mine most of the time. Take the platters for instance. nipa wanted to make them tiles, I objected strongly and suggested polymorphic dice instead. The solution - use polymorphic dice with pngs, and a few other savings that the engine will provide. End result - a much cleaner look, better handling of the pieces and hopefully a smaller download.

Oh, there are about 3 dozen things I want to write about, but my 3 seconds were up ages ago. Some other day perhaps.

-+@ Dish Out @+-

Just came off the Plates update, which I suppose makes the title relevant for a change. I didn't realise I haven't updated the plates post for ages on the engine, and there was so many little things to correct. It's all done up now... at least until Bug decides to do stuff over the next few days (which is a good thing). I'll just have to update it then again.

Updated Go Fish as well to get the pictures for the plates post, and while I was there, updated a few other things that was out and has been out for ages. Really though, I like working on Go Fish. The game works great and it's easy to update, although it needs constant updates. However, since things are going slow CCG Workshop wise, it means things go slow on Go Fish.

Updated the BOT as well which had a few extra questions today. Atticus suggested that Magic would be on the engine which I had to shoot down. Really though, people should think before saying things like that. Of course the BOT got asked about Magic which there was no answers then.

Finally updated MND with the background image... and I must say, I like this new background quite a lot. It's Weave this month, and it's the last of the 12 in rotation. I have no idea what I'm doing next year. Maybe I should just leave it at a Universal image for the whole year. Also updated a few other smaller things and added an alt image to the game. I just recently realised that the image I had for Twisted Dreams was an old one that Holmberg did and he's since replaced it with a more serious one. Well, both of them are available on the engine.

Helped JC debug The Tournament as well, and there seems to be either language problems or something because he isn't understanding what I'm saying. He doesn't seem to bother about the defects that I've been reporting (mainly checksum and image errors) which is bad in and of itself. Oh well, at least I got him to fix them today.

Played some gToon today. It's getting boring now... the card set is a bit limited though, which is what is limiting it at the moment. I've gone up in ranks to about 2515 from 2900+ which I suppose is good. Not the thousand and thousand that I did when I first started as predicted. It's gonna be hard to crack the sub 1000 level.

Someone on Insiider is trying to create a whole new game based on MND... with huge rules changes that he thinks people won't like. Well, I wonder how well accepted it'll be. Rage across Las Vegas is an example of how to break a game... and nipa showed me what someone called "Cloud" tried to do with DoomTrooper by changing it to "Dark Symmetry". Neither games caught on.

-+@ Good Rhythm @+-

Today has been a rather busy day CCG Workshop wise. It's almost good to be back into the thick of things.

I updated the BOT with a number of new answers. There are still lots of weird questions being asked, like how to bake a cake, but otherwise everything's good. Nobody is using the BOT much, but when they do, it's more likely about VTES these days and I just wish it'd be out and over with ASAP really.

I uploaded the B5 foolball/influence image to the wrong directory yesterday, which resulted in a diaplay defect, although I'm glad the engine is stable enough these days to handle that without batting an eyelid (if it had eyes and eyelid). Had to upload it today to make sure things go better and I'm gonna PM Bruce to tell him that I've updated the Vorlon cards on the engine as well.

I also fixed and uploaded a new version of WS to fix a compatibility issue with the new build of the engine. I wonder why that isn't in there in the first place, but since the engine never required it, I guess it didn't matter until now. Anyways, it's in so hopefully things will be OK. I need to check the new version of the engine with other compatibility issues as well.

For the eagle eyed out there, I've updated sidebar links to include gToon on Cartoon Network. I didn't play today, but my rank has gone to under 3000, out of 800,000. The total number of players was 140,000 last weekend, and before anyone thinks there's been a huge influx of players, it probably isn't that. Signup is free and you get free stuff including your chance to win an ultra rare slam, so any clever person would be doing multiple signups until they get a slam. It's abusing the system I believe, yet I would fault Orbit for making it that way. Urgh. I wish I had the time to do that but I don't, so I'll have to suffer.

Was suppose to update MND with the new background and the Elder's Legacy Promo today, but real life is gonna intervene. I might do it later tonight if I have the time. I'm going to revert to a nice lighted green background for Weave and it'll probably include the weave portrait that I've been using to make all my custom Weave cards. I'll see how much time I have.

LotR Online is gearing up for league play. They've got special incentive for leagues including league only "expandable" cards. I don't really understand how those will work, but if you get enough points and the right cards, you can have a super duper card for league. Sounds interesting I guess. I'll have to see what's happening.

Development wise things seem quiet around CCG Workshop. It figures that when I finally start coding games, other people will be doing other things. nipa is waiting for Duel of Ages to be sent to him and Martin is busy on getting VTES ready for beta/public though. Bruce seems to be busy with tweaking Rage, but otherwise things are quiet. There hasn't been anything to be excited about for a long time now, I guess.

-+@ Windmilling @+-

If you haven't figured out yet, last month's titles were all from Lord of the Rings. That should have been an easy one. It's a new month and I've got to pick a new CCG for my card titles, and since I feel like Don Quiote fighting the windmills (and that there are currently a number of Dutch players in the chatroom on gEngine), that title got chosen. As usual, it's got nothing to do with the blog...

First off, I don't think I mentioned getting a Duel Master pack of boosters for 30 cents. No, not even from ebay which will probably cost me $5 shipping. I'm talking about 30 cents total. I went to a "reject shop" to kill some time and saw a huge opened box of boosters for that price, so I got one. I thought they were pirated, but they weren't, they are the real deal. And I dunno if every booster has a foil, but I got a foil in this booster so I'm content. It's going into my cardback collection.

LotR Online wise, funny things are happening, I guess with lots more mud-slinging going on behind the scenes. Me? I'm just playing my stupid Hobbit Hospital deck which can be so easily destroyed with one card, but since nobody plays with that card, I'm surviving big time. Well, that's the name of the game - to play with the right meta.

My green/red animal deck is woefully inadequate against top players, I'm being massacred! Jawbreakers seems to be key in top level decks, if only for denial. I played against a rather cool Power Puff Girls deck with a cool ultra rare. Didn't win that game, but at least I know PPG decks are viable. Played against a lot more Justice League decks, which I must admit are at least as good as a properly built animal deck (mine isn't, I have Dexter's Dad in it).

If you haven't already noticed it yet, I did the planning for this month and the report for last month. It's the first time in ages that I've been woefully short of my goals for the month, and I feel a twinge of guilt. But since everyone seems to be in a laid back mode, and since I've probably released more games this year than any other PL on the engine, I think I'm justified. Sure they might say it's not the quantity that counts, but the quality... in which case my answer would be that longer planning (and procrastination) might produce quality... then again it might not. I dunno.

I've just closed out a score of defects... trying to keep those defects down to a managable level is difficult. There's probably more that I should be closing out, but I'm tired. Maybe when I get more time. I also need to update the BOT when I get the time this week too.

Finish updating Babylon 5 with the Vorlon cards, version 8 and increased the size of the pips and updated the football/influence icon to a better quality picture. The looks of the card is getting there... all I have to do next are the bold text. Of course, there's always lots of automation stuff to do in B5. That's one thing that's off the list. Tomorrow: MND update.

~ Novelty's November... and plans for December ~

This is a day late, but I have been busy with too many other things recently. Urgh, I wish I could have more hours in the day to fill...

Shepherds
A couple more shepherds signed up this month and 2 more dropped out so the numbers are staying rather even. The existing shepherds are all very enthusiastic and they are doing their job.

gNet BOT
It's getting less used, although there are still new questions being posted that demands answers. These have been gradually filled as and when time is available. It seems that I'm the only person playing with the BOT so maybe I'll start doing things with it.

Forums
Added The Tournament forum this month and updated a few more to include games which had new PLs. Ed has been fixing all the residual stuff related to the server move so all is "fine and dandy" as the saying goes. Traffic seems to be low - Rage and VTES are taking the brunt of the traffic though, which is good I guess as both games are in their development phases.

Games
Due to other commitments, not much got done this month in the way of games. I didn't even meet the self-imposed deadlines this month. As usual, only games with updates reported below.

BOWL Bowling
I added in some code for this game, but it's far from finished. I have yet to build the interface which would be key in defining the rest of the game.

MND Magi-Nation Duel
The background change to underneath wasn't well received - it was too dark apparently. I guess the cheerfulness of Naroom, Orothe and Paradwyn has something to do with it. Some Shadowsfall Promo cards were also added.

RVRSI Reversi
Well, nipa did the update really, with left clicking of the board to place pieces and some other display changes to make it look better. I did have some input there though. It's nice doing a co-Lead, particularly when someone else is doing the work.

TOURN The Tournament
This is JC's original game which I started and did the latest update. It's basically a boardgame, and although he's leading this, the majority of the coding seems to be mine. I'm not complaining though. Anything to get a good game up, particularly a good original game. I doubt it'd get played much though.

December 2004 Plans
December is always busy and since I'm moving all the unfinished stuff from last month over, I'll have to push back some of the more ambitious stuff.

Babylon 5 will get an update this month - for the Vorlon card errata if nothing else. The card colours is to be changed from olive to blue.
The card tweaking - repositioning pips, upgrading the influence cost icon, creating bold text will probably be move to next year when I have more time.

Bowling really should get finished this month. I have too many unfinished games on my plate as it is. I shall have to push myself to get this done.

MND needs its usual monthly update, the last one for this year. Next year, I'll probably revert it to the Paradwyn background, since that was the most well received of the lot.

The regular optionals - Go Fish cardback updates and scanning Hyborean Gates and Triple Triad will still be retained for the month.

So, prioritised games for this month:

1. Bowling - get playable 15th December, public by 31st December
2. Babylon 5 - Vorlons text updates by 7th December.
3. MND update - Background and defect fixes by 4th December, custom cards ongoing.

O. Add Go Fish cardbacks when available.
O. Complete Triple Triad scans.
O. Complete Hyborean Gates scans.


2005 Plans

Aliens vs Predators (AVPVT) - It's "low tech" and "no frills" and it's out there. There are no plans to develop it any further unless the player pool can demonstrate that it can have about 100 games played a month consistantly for 3 months (which is getting there - Ravage and Anarch Cassius have been playing like there's no tomorrow). It's also the first of my "no frills" games up for offer to any AvP fan who'd like to become a Project Lead (or a Co-Lead).

Babylon 5 (B5) - Two things needs to be done - display corrections and figuring out automations for Babylon 5. Still on the list of things to do is the automation for replacement and the automated influence tracking and automated initiative determination. Those would take quite a lot of time that I'll have to schedule to be set aside.

Borders (BORD) - Nothing more to be done in Borders. Ed has asked for icons on the special cards, so maybe those will get an update, when I get the time.

Bowling (BOWL) - There shouldnt' be much work on this once it goes public, but I won't know until then what has to be done on it.

Checkers (CHECK) - This is another "no frills" "low-tech" game at the moment. It would probably get upgraded once I have the time, motivation and ideas, but for now it's playable and that would have to do.

Elemental (ELEM) - The tidal wave automation has long been outstanding. I think it's possible to do this now, but the script is going to be rather complicated. No schedule for this. Not a high priority since the game works well without the automation and I don't want to introduce something that would introduce errors. It will be done when I can find the time and the motivation.

FastBreak (FB) - The game is beginning to feel a bit "low tech" now, eventhough it did have a few innovations (when it was first made). Could do with more playtesting and more inprovements, but until I find the time and the motivation, this isn't going to be done anytime soon.

Firestorm (FIRE) - New licensed game for me to do for 2005, for February public release, or at least that's the plan.

Go Fish (GOFSH) - What do you do when the game plays well and is bug free? Nothing I suppose. However, it'd be getting a minor facelift soon - a tiny crab will be added which will allow an 5 more players to play the game simultaneously. I doubt we'll ever get 13 players into a Go Fish game, but who knows? The schedule is undetermined at the moment, and it's not high priority. As usual, cardbacks will continually be added to this game.

Hamlet (HAMLT) - There really isn't much to do on this simple game except more playtesting... and perhaps a tournament or two. Hamlet is one of the few of my licensed games I'll consider ready for Now Playing status.

HumAliens (HALN) - The game is dead, but there's still work to be done. Hopefully, the New Order would be an Online only expansion to be added by January.

Hyborean Gates (GATES) - Hopefully this will go public in March. It's going to be another "no frills" "low-tech" game though so it might lie fallow until someone with more enthusiasm and ideas comes along to take it over.

Magi-Nation Duel (MND) - Custom cards are still ongoing and I think people are rather used to the gameplay. The only other thing that can be done is to track how energy is gained and used up. However that is a monumental task since every card does it differently and there are many modifiers... which means it's not going to get done. Tainted Glimpses will also be added sometime in the year. I think I might also add in something to shuffle all creatures back into the deck for Dream Rift. That's as much automation as I'd be doing...

Portable Adventures (PAD) - The other area to update would be the Encounter cards. I have a rough idea of how to automate these, but they seem rather inconsequential to the whole game, so they might not get done until I get the time and the motivation. In addition, there are two card sets that will be added near the end of the year so those will get priority when they are available.

Quartet (QUART) - More playtesting is needed on this game. Not much improvements will be made until further playtesting is carried out. The game seems stable though.

Reversi (RVRSI) - Since nipa added the left-click functionality and upgraded the images, it's done and has been upgraded to "Now Playing". No work required.

Triple Triad (TRIAD) - Scanning has started, but I have no idea when I'll have the time to do this. I only have 1 - 90, so if anyone wants to scan in the rest of the 18 cards, for me, they are most welcome. Please PM me for more details.

Urland (URLND) - It could use some scoring automation at some point in the future, time to be determined.

Wildstorms (WS) - Nothing much can be done to fully automate setup until after Bug has got the next build out the door. Also, there's the plan to add my custom StormWatch expansion sometime this year.

Wildstorms Legends (WSLS) - This game is going into the queue after Bowling, Firestorm, Hyborean Gates and Triple Triad. I guess that makes it a July public release game.

Wildstorm: Set 1 (WSS1) - The WSS2 update is still planned, although it hasn't gone ahead. The game also needs and auto-score if the defender wins. This will be done with the WSS2 update. Schedule: May - August.

You Need Drew's Truck (YNDT) - I'd like to automate moving the truck, and automate the initial placements of the donuts.

Yukk (YUKK) - This game feels rather low tech. After working on Portable Adventures, I think it's possible to put everything in one view... but it'll need a major update and a major rewrite from scratch. Probably I should just scrap this idea and leave it as it is.

I have way too many games on my plate. No new game announcements from me until at least 3 of them are cleared.

2005 Plans
January - FIRE, GATES, HALN, PAD
February - BORD, GATES, YNDT
March - B5, TRIAD, URLND, WS
April - MND, TRIAD
May - WSS1
June - WSLS, WSS1
July - WSLS