-+@ Recollection @+-

or Remembrance?



Art Credits:
Fog Crij by Jeffry Ransom, with photoshop effects by myself. Background by Holmberg.
White Kowl by Beth Zyglowicz
Kiradan by Cody Shipman

All 3 for EF. Two of those images were templated a long long while ago. Not much work happening on the custom cards, although I did get quite a bit of EL made into RP cards. Rewriting them though is a huge pain.

The DJ contest for Bash Brothers finally ended and not many people seemed happy with the choice of the eventual winner. Ah well. More people should read the rules to make sure that their entry satisfies all the points in the rules. The winner might have been different then. Also posted up the next contest, eventhough it doesn't begin till next week. Still, it gives people time to think about it.

Also posted up the rules for the new tournament. I have no idea how many people will join that one, but it's formatted such that attendence doesn't really count and there's no sign-ups. The usual suspects are poking their heads around it, probably trying to look for loopholes and super decks. Ah well, I guess that's what tournaments do in the long run.

Another competition that will hopefully start up soon will be the Babylon 5 league that Alwyn wants to organise. 8 people have now signed up for the league, and hopefully most of them will avail themselves to play. We still haven't got the rules and stuff for that league so that's another thing I'll be looking forward to. It's also a 3 months league IIRC, so hopefully Alwyn will give the official dates for the beginning and end.

Thomas promised another Doomtrooper league, but it hasn't materialised. I guess he's probably busy with the start of another school year to even think about the tournament. I've seen the troopers moving on to other things though, including one who's now playing Star Wars.

I saw a couple of Kult players the other day and an X-file player today. I wonder if there's a resurgence in those games. I'll find out soon enough at the end of the month. Conversely, MBOR seems to be winding down... someone logged in today and asked for a game with no takers. The other game that on the surface seems to be winding down is Doomtown - the sole shepherd resigned a few days ago.

I've been spending my time getting Hyborian Gates ready for play. There's still slightly over 100 cards to clip and make into cards, but that should probably take a couple of hours. The cards are deliberately not done in the best image quality, since they are not clippable and I know a lot of people would probably take them for other things. I did a test with one of them in the kit and it doesn't look too shabby after the border is placed back in. While I was on the kit, I also spec'ed up the play mat and it looked good, so I took a screenshot and posted it up on the forums. I doubt it'll get as much interest as Monster Rancher seem to have gotten.

Mark is still busy on Monster Rancher, and he thinks it'll be ready before the anniversary. Well, that would be good. He's of course, 2 - 3 weeks ahead of me game development wise and I hope that he won't run into any speedbumps. Tomi is probably working on Heresy now and I was just saying it would be cool if Heresy and Hyborian Gates are released on the same day. Well, that would take some planning though.

I don't think anyone else is working on games at the moment. Well, besides Ed that is. He's working on RPS when he feels like it in between coding for the engine. The next build is probably still a few days, if not a couple of weeks, away. Hopefully it'll be sooner rather than later because the bug with resuming games is a tad annoying.

I also updated the rules for AvP to now link in the scenarios instead of loading everything on a huge page. It looks cleaner. Also discovered that I don't have the Terminator rules, so I had to search Google's cache for a copy. Finally got that in. I think Terminator would be next after Hyborian Gates on the development path. Back to the grind...

-+@ Mercenary @+-

which is one of the things the new B5 set is going to overhaul, but more on that later...



Art Credits:
Pygmy Korul by Werner/Gillette/Holmberg, background by Jon Ellenberger
Garen by Beth Zyglowicz
Kintor Guide by Holmberg/Werner

All three images for TW, for a change, and each one of those has a tale behind it - doesn't all cards really? Before I get there though, I did 2 TW cards today, so that cuts down the total to 5 more to go - 2 Nar, 2 d'Resh and one Universal. 95%... almost at the end of the road.

I have been trying for almost a month to get myself motivated to photoshop that Korul, but had no success. I just wasn't in the mood for it and the end result weren't very good. Fast forward to today, I visited RespondCreate, and saw this awesome picture of the aftereffects of a blizzard. Well, that person was online and we ended chatting and I got his permission to use the picture... which formed the background for the Pygmy Korul. With such an awesome background to work with though, the Koruls (almost) fell into place. One card down.

Garen was a card I did sometime ago, then realised I had no permission to actually use the image. So today I asked the artist if she'd mind if I used the image and she said yes. So here's the card and the image. I like that image, and eventhough it's not exactly 2i quality, it's a good Nar image.

The Kintor started life as Kintor Cub, but when I was finalising the list of cards, I realised that there would be no way that I could hope to have a Cub, so it got changed to Kintor Scout. I've already mentioned in a previous blog how I came across the image - it's on the front of the VotS packs and I don't think it's used on any of the cards, so that's fair game for it to be made into a card.

And since I'm on MND news... the DJ images on the engine were rather well received. Granted, the cards aren't usuable at the moment, but the artwork seems to blast people away. That's a good thing. The contest finishes tomorrow, although I wonder if I'll have the time to judge it.

The Malovis challenge still have about 2 weeks to go and Mitch seems to be getting better at handling the defeat... well, he won a game today, which is probably why. He also wrote an entry in the group blog about his experiences. That's cool since he hardly writes there. Well, hopefully we'll get enough players next month for a tournament.

And tournament wise, the forums are still flooded with the after effects of the Rage tournament - a good thing. I think the Rage players have enjoyed the tournament and are already talking about the next tournament. It seems they had a new player as well, so that's a good sign, if nothing else.

The B5 discussion is still centred around the Mercenaries and the streamlining proposed got summarised by Bruce today in a rather concise post. I like the direction he's heading there and I hope the mercenaries will get more play in future. There were also talks about a league system on the engine, and I gave my support for it as long as I don't have to organise anything. I have no idea if that will happen or not.

Game wise, I think Monster Rancher was the only thing that advanced over the past couple of days. I think Mark posted the game rules up on his site. I wonder if he's aiming for an anniversary release date too... he's definately gunning for the end of the month alpha test I think, at the rate he's working.

I haven't actually touched Hyborean Gates today and the though of clipping more cards just isn't too appealing today so I'm leaving it be for the time being. Still, the sooner that gets finished, the happier I'll be and I hope I can get back into the groove of clipping those images tomorrow.

I found someones original CCG today... it seems the templates were based on Magic cards and the rules were based on Yu-Gi-Oh. I'll say blegh there and move on. Some people are, apparently, way too unoriginal.

-+@ Surplus @+-

of work to do...



Art Credits:
Mud Mantle by Austin Gardner and myself
Sunstone and Tempest Amulet by Beth Zyglowicz

All 3 are for EF, and these were done quite some time ago. I did template 2 more creatures - a Paradwyn one and a Core one yesterday, but I haven't have had the time to load them up yet because I've been getting all the Firestorm images from the server so that I can begin work on those. Still, EF is coming along as the gaps are being slowly plugged.

I wish I could say the same about the other sets, but I can't. The good point is, people are playing with Shadowfall and discovering things and making suggestions so I spent a part of today updating MND for the engine. Nothing major there, just bugfixes, text changes to TG and I added the DJ cards that have already have had a Jeopardy contest.

The third contest ends in under 48 hours and it has got more responses than the Stuff Twins, so I guess that's a good sign. Perhaps this is the easier of the magi so far, being single region...? I've liked the entries I've seen submitted so far for this contest. It's going to be hard to pick a winner for this contest.

Mitch is probably totally depressed as he's getting whopped in the Malovis Challenge. Bobby played with a scary Arderial deck - I presume his Shimmer deck with the crazy energy gain-age deck. That's one reason why I like weird and wacky formats for tournaments... otherwise people just play their uber decks and win... especially in this environment where one has infinite amount of cards.

I'm still clipping Hyborean Gates cards... it's slow going and the image quality is poor, but I'm not going to rescan them since I doubt many people will play the game anyways... that and the fact that the cards are going to be full scan. I'm going to make them small and the text is going to be a bit more blurry than usual, but the game should still be playable with the hints and all.

The next set for B5 has suddenly concentrated on the mercenaries. It's not really surprising since there was a foreshadow of this, but the discussion and the design decisions are getting interesting there with people supporting most of the ideas that is thrown about. Still, there's only about half a dozen people involved with the design... which reminds me, I best send out an invitation to the Yahoo group to invite people to participate in the design. I did send a PM to Billy "Binky Jackalope", but I have no idea if he will even read the PM.

Elsewhere, JC got Rage and Guardians updated to Now Playing. This was right after the Rage tournament as well as the moot, so hopefully, this would increase the number of Rage games played this month by quite a number... hopefully. Shadowfist still leads in that category, I think and despite the Malovis Challenge, Doomtrooper still has a healthy lead on MND, which is good news there as well.

Someone logged in today asking for VTES. Told him it isn't available and to come back closer to the end of next month. I hope they aren't disappointed. The VTES engine looks a bit dead though, people log in and log out but they are like ships passing in the night... well, almost literally.

We were discussing how many games will go public before the anniversary and we counted a possible 9, although it's highly doubtful all 9 will be finished in the 6 weeks. We'll have to see. If nothing, I'm going to attempt to get Hyborean Gates public by the anniversary date to continue the trend of releasing a game on the anniversary date!

And for some weird reason, today is Talk like a Pirate day... so does that mean 7th Seas will get played more...? Who knows?

-+@ Improve Self @+-

Well, such is the goal of one in life...



Art Credits:
Blue Sarf by Jeffry Ransom, background by Holmberg
Lava Kilm by Beth Zyglowicz
Osnepg by Cody Shipman, colours by Raegan Walter, effects and background by myself

Three more EF cards, the Osnepg was one that I templated a few days ago. I liked how the image for that turned out with the shafts of light and the nice sea green background. The other two are good as well, and I thought the trio of sea creatures would make a good view for today's blog. Exodus Flight isn't going anywhere spectacular though, it's been placed on the backburner, since TW has a bit more precedence over it.

I've been cleaning up the RP stuff and getting ready to template Chimefall - it's looking good there. Soul Conflict has just started art solicits on Insiider, so that's another good thing going on. The RP cards are starting to get a little bit busy, which is good. The quality of the artwork has been improving there. Hopefully Soul Conflict will continue the trend.

Otherwise, I've been clipping Hyborean Gates cards... will be finishing up on the Vortex Tactics and will probably move on to Orisis ... or is that Osiris next. Hyborean Gates will be a no frills game, so the most time consuming part of developing it would probably be the images followed by the spoiler. Ah well, hopefully, I can get it for tinkering on the engine before the month is out and public by next month.

I've also been hitting ebay for a number of other cards. I doubt I'll get them though. Almost placed a bid on a luminous Star Wars card until I realised that the title of the card was Luminous. Sheesh, I'm stupid. Although, cards that glow in the dark would be rather cool in a CCG.

Didn't get too much time to tweak my non-Solo Gandalf... although I think Sam is working out better than Frodo as the ringbearer there. Still, the problem comes in region 3 when my opponents get to play at least 2 fierce minions and Sam is dead meat. Ah well, back to the drawing board.

Monster Rancher is getting some interest.... well, make that 2 people who seems interested. Will they play once it gets released? I somehow doubt that they would make a difference with the numbers played. Still, it's interesting that another CCG might be released soon-ish. The other CCG that I'm looking forward to being made public would be CWNB, now that Josh is working on it. I wonder how he's getting on though.

-+@ Shadow Infiltrator @+-

This CCG has really good card titles...



Art Credits:
Pride by Alison Strom/Whyrl
Exodus Flight by Alison Strom/Whyrl
Acid Rain by Holmberg with special effects by myself

For a change I haven't done anything MND today, so there's a collective sigh of relief from all my regular readers. The three cards above are for... you guess it, Exodus Flight, including the title card of the set. Note that Acid Rain is the first time that I've attempted the rain effect, and the smoke effect too. It looks OK, practice makes perfect, I suppose.

Some guy has been posting up his drawings - pencils - of MND art. He's offered it for the custom sets if it can get coloured. Hmm... if I wanted pencils, I would probably have picked off Holmberg's and Werner's stuff off Insiider, but I'm not that desperate... yet. Still, it's interesting to know that someone is interested in providing art... now if only I can encourage him to learn how to colour over his own drawings...

I actually made a new LotR deck today - solo Gandalf with Frodo... it sucked, so I added in Smeagol with a follow... it still sucks. Gandalf cards just costs too much to choke. The flip side though has a weird uruk combo. Time to work on it more... if I can figure out how to prevent frodo from getting overwhelmed most of the time...

We had a new PL yesterday - Josh Coomber aka Vampus has been made co-Lead of CWNB. He's been lobbying after this for almost a year now, I'm sure he's glad he finally got the position. Well, it's up to him to deliver his game... I wonder if he'll end up like Aaron or Gray... taking ages to finish their games. Who knows?

Josh has also been checking for missing images, and today he reported the ones in Final Twilight, so I updated FTWIL today to include those images. It's a tough go since I'm currently in the middle of downloading all the Fastbreak images from the server. Yeesh... I've been downloading for almost 24 hours now and I'm barely a fifth of the way through. Dialup sucks.

The other game I updated today was Checkers, which Josh has reported earlier about the display defect. It worked when it was last updated, but since then, the engine has removed a few other things and display settings have changed oh so slightly. That though, caused some ... let's just say confusion for the Checkers code, which I had to ... unconfuse. That's an easy job, but again, uploading it took ages.

Since I have got the game development bug, I was actually clipping the Hyborean Gates images today... got Asgard and Atlantis done, which gave me a good feeling. Who knows, perhaps by the end of the month the game will be in beta? At which a voice inside my head just whispered "... and pigs will have wings."

What has everyone else been doing? Ed is finishing up his new pet project - promoting games to Playing. I've mentioned in my last blog the dozen or so games updated. It seems more is on the way. Tomi was working on Duel of Ages over the weekend, but he's also been busy with the minor maintenance stuff on his games. Martin, for a change, isn't working on VTES, but was last seen working on Abduction. I think that's going public soon as well. Mark is working slowly but surely on Monster Rancher. I'll say it'll probably go public near the end of the year, in December of January. We shall see.

Of the non-ghosts, Thomas updated 7th Seas with a whole lot more new images. He's still slowly progressing there. I was surprised to see Ultimate Combat going into Playing... it's still missing an expansion or so, and probably had as much tests as I think it should have, but it's not up to me. JC seems to be missing in action - I think he's on vacation, but MBOR got "promoted" just recently, so I'm a bit confused.

Tony has been slogging through two games which might not see the light of day, so I shalln't mention them here, but it's interesting to read through his coding tricks and pick out the simplest of mistakes - mostly newbie mistakes at that, but that's how we learn. I know I make a lot of those mistakes too... the difference is that with experience, both from coding way too many games and reading through other coders stuff, I have a rough idea what to be on the lookout for.

-+@ Honor Award @+-

Woot! I got some praise... see below...



First things first...
Art Credits:
All 3 images: Beth Zyglowicz
All 3 are for Exodus Flight as well. They are typical for Beth's stuff... not her recent Powerpuff craze, which I'm grateful for, because these don't exactly lend themselves to that sort of style. I like them... they look nice. Also templated a Bograth magi for EF, and added errata to some of the RP cards today. Also did a couple of cards that Reagan coloured for eXodus and EF. People are still interested with the whole custom card thing on Insiider... I guess you can't keep a good CCG down. Hopefully that will keep the interest alive.

I recently got this message from someone named "BograthKing":
"I appreciate everything you have done for MND. 2 years ago i wasnt sure where MND was going to end up. I think you have done a good job with organizing fan sets and keeping the game alive until it can be relaunched. Keep up the good work. Thanks."

Well, game is barely alive and the two hottest sites for it are on the engine itself and on Insiider. I'm sure the Yahoo groups and the official site probably gets a ton of hits, but I don't have the numbers for those. Insiider though, is more active than the Yahoo group, what with the current debate on Bush drawing in regular posters who have been going on to post about other things like what is their favourite awakening card, etc.

The custom card site and forums (two different sites) are also probably getting a good slew of hits as well as I documented a few blogs ago. Are things looking up for the game? Well, the player pool is a bit restless probably, but the company is still moving slowly in the hopes of getting more money. Nothing wrong with that, but their vocal fanbase is probably gonna go elsewhere soonish.

Meanwhile, on the engine... the Malovis challenge is still progressing with Mal losing to dartax and freigabe and probably a whole host of oldies. The poor guy must be devastated at all his losses I guess. Well, he's still not drawing in enough new players though and I doubt we'll be able to have a tournament next month based on just the usual few.

Meanwhile Daniel dartax has been blogging away his games at the MND at CCGW blog and he's showcasing quite a few of his interesting decks as well. It seems that he's having a whale of a time playing the large number of games he's been getting in, so that's a good sign. The side note is that there have been too much spamming going on, so the anonymous comment feature has been removed from that blog.

Meanwhile the B5 expansion is progressing on with the design document for the "Dying Races" being produced. I made a lot of comments there on that document, and I hope Bruce doesn't mind those weird comments that were made. It will be interesting to see a few things, including rules updates for mercenaries and hopefully a better thought out Mu-Tai. There's also going to be a lurker keyword reminiscent of LotR... I wonder if Bruce is going down that road... it is still interesting to see some work happening there, even if it's just embryonic - hopefully more people will get themselves involved.

Meanwhile, on the engine, a slew of games have gone public as beta games have gone free. Ed even sent out an email to everyone on the engine announcing all the changes. Games such as Black Box, Milles Bornes, Summer Camp, Ultimate Combat and Endeavor has gone public. Tomi got AD, ToJH, TOMB and X-files all up to now playing level as well, while I wasn't far behind with B5, Borders, Hamlet and Quartet all following the trend.

Quartet was the game I worked on (mainly) yesterday, updating it. Everything is now automated so the game works a whole lot better, and in the vein that it was designed, I guess. Most of the Go Fish coding and ancillary stuff is gone from it, and the result is a whole lot more streamlined that what Go Fish is and what Quartet was. I guess the engine has just progressed so much further along than when I started working on Quartet. I was pondering if I should finish the last trilogy of the series and add Old Maid/Monkey anytime soon...

Talking about Go Fish, it also had an update with Redemption being the new card. Recent changes to Martin's and Mark's plates necessitated a change in the game as well to reflect everything as it is now. I haven't played a real game of Go Fish for a while now... I wonder if the game is showing its age or is it still going on fine. Perhaps one of these days, I'll have to import the Quartet automation to Go Fish... which would be ironic since Quartet started off as Go Fish's poor cousin.

Reversi also had a quick bugfix yesterday, but it wasn't an easy one. Rather, new code was added to ensure that the game works for both single player with AI and dual player - previously it was designed halfway for one and halfway for the other - it's a bit confusing coding Reversi because of the AI mode in the game, but I'm glad I have that sorted out.

The AvP site is still down and since all the scenario rules are there, they aren't available. I got google cache to cough up the scenarios and saved them. The Contact and Countdown scenarios are also attached to the rules on the engine to make things a whole lot easier for new players. I really should hive them off to a separate page though and link them to the rules document... one of these days...

I realised a few days back that the forum needs to be reorganised to get it in line with the fact that the CC cardback games - CC, Go Fish, Quartet and Borders are now all classed as Playing Card instead of Card. That got done although it looks a bit weird there, but still, it reflects what the engine currently has. No new forums though.

Have been cardflopping at LotRO on and off and someone actually complimented my non-Solo Smeagol deck. Also caught how Fred Coughlin has updated his infamous Solo Smeagol deck with Bloodlines and learned a few more tricks from the master. Caught the Italians playing a rather weird variant of a Gondor deck, and I still have no idea how that works. Actually saw a weird besieger deck that didn't depend on stealing sites. That was also weird, but it didn't work too well. Heh.

-+@ Play It Again @+-

A refrence to Hamlet perhaps?



Art Credit:
Jade Yajo - Image by Raegan Walters, foreground by Nov, background by Lou Holsten
Black Wudge - Image by Jen Reed, background by Werner/Holmberg
Flist - Image by Beth Zyglowicz

Three more cards for Exodus Flight... some of these images are just amazing. I have got permission for them to use the images on gEngine and Exodus is clearly being marked as that, a gEngine set. The Insiider people are still supplying images for this although it has slowed down a bit as school has started. Ah well.

I haven't done much MND since the last post - mainly just prettying up a few things and getting things up to date, but that's the mundane stuff that adminstrators and the like do from time to time, not really important to mention, yet too important to not do. Or something like that.

I actually got into a game with Bobby Doktoraw today - he played Orwin Naroom swarm, I was playing Cald Control. Obviously his deck works a lot much better than mine. Cald only has a few control cards - Crushing Heat and Heat Lens comes to mind... not too bad for a burn region. The deck needs a Rayje's belt though... time for an edit.

I'm a bit concerned about the fact taht I'm losing interest in the game... but when I took a step back to analyze what was the issue, I realised that I'm actally tired of CCGs as a whole. I stopped playing gToons a while back... and I haven't really played much of any other games except for LotR, which I have already declared that I'm bored with already. The thing is, I need to stay sharp on MND since I'm actually designing cards for it. I haven't figured out if that's the cause of my lack of interest, or one of the causes, but nevertheless it's slightly on the alarming angle from my point of view...

Mitch is still losing his challenge games ... or mostly losing anyways. He's probably having a blast playing all his other decks, but is also a bit ... urm... affected... by the game losses. Oh well. Quite a bit of games is being played and Dan has posted summaries on the group blog almost on a daily basis of 4 games he's played over the weekend.

Meanwhile the custom cards site is getting hit rather constantly as well... over 100 hits last week alone, much to my surprise. Is it the TR cards? Or is it because of the RP cards? Or are my custom cards a draw? So far, some of the hits are from

NSW, Australia

Eugene, OR

Slough, England

Las Vegas, NV

Glasgow, Scotland

Miami, FL

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

QLD, Australia.

Copenhagen, Denmark

That's a rather large bag of hits, and not all of them from English speaking countries as well - Brazil and Denmark appear on that list. I'm still rather shellshock.

Away from MND though, I did spend the week polishing up Hamlet, since it's now in "Playing" status. Ed told me I didn't code in the script to update the hints, and when I checked I realised that he was right (as usual), so I had to do them chop chop chop... found a few other things that were missing as well and did them there and then... the good news is that I used new coding stuff I have barely used before (no Martin, not arrays) and I haven't lost the coding skills after 3 months of little to no coding. Also what was good is that the engine is so advanced now that it was relatively straight forward to code what I wanted. The bad thing (besides missing them out in the first place) is that the coding had to be done fast... well, thanks to the structure I gave it when I started coding it, I managed to do it rather quickly. Yippee.

Two novelty points for noticing that this blog entry is text justified. Yes, I have been lazy with it for a while now, but decided why not. Also, those who actually visit the blog on a browser will probably notice that I've removed a few links from the right. Yeah, things needs a change... I need a change... and I hope it's a change for a better.

-+@ Not So Fast! @+-

Still from the same CCG...



Art Credits:
Nahara's Staff: Holmberg/Gillette/Werner
Mystic Rain: Holmberg/Nov
Dune Wudge: Holmberg/Vega/Nov

That's 3 for Twilight War, and I must say, I'm a bit surprised at the quality of the images there, even if they are "just" manips. The Mystic rain was an experiment with the rain effect, and it seems a bit weird there, but it works... barely. The dune wudge was the bigger surprise. I never realised I could get dust storms that easily by manipulating a number of things. All in all a pretty good set of cards.

So that means I'm down to 7 cards to go for TW, 1 for Universal, 2 for d'Resh and 4 for Nar. It shouldn't be really long now before all the 100 images for the set is finished and people can start scripting the text of the cards. That would be good to go.

Exodus Flight has also been getting a few more cards from both eXodus and Dreamstorm. I have been playing around with the images for those cards there too. Cald and Naroom joins Core in getting all 12 cards completed - the set is rather far along, with more than half of the 150 cards getting an image (actual count = 109 out of 150). The text though, would have to be rewritten for the CCG, but that's something that would be done after TW.

I'm already pushing images and unused cards to the next two sets, Ancient Enemy (AE) and Fallen Hour (FH) - the former would focus on the Invaders, hence the name, and the latter is the spillover from the RP cards from eXodus and Dreamstorm, together with the cards from Chimefall. Both these are slated for 2007 for playtesting though. It's a bit weird to be almost 15 months in advance.

Meanwhile the 3rd DJ contest has just kicked off and there are already 3 entries by 2 persons for it. Those entries look rather good I must say, although I hope there'll be more entries before the deadline in over two weeks time. This one is a departure though, in the sense that these 2 magi are dual, but of the same region. It should be easier to design for me thinks.

The other contest that is still going on is the Malovis challenge. I think 5 or 6 games have been played so far and Mitch has only won 2 of them. Hmmm... that's an interesting statistic. Nothing new is happening in terms of deck building - Mitch is trying out his experimental decks, but he's getting creamed by the people using really good decks against him. Poor Mitch.

Help Hurricane Katrina Victims

Donate to the American Red Cross
(or call 1 800 HELP NOW in the US)
That's the first public service announcement on my blog. You can donate online by clicking on the link. LotRO is organising a tournament where all the proceeds will go to help the victims too - I just got a newsletter regarding that yesterday. I'm sure they aren't the only one.

I was talking to Michael Anthony yesterday regarding MODO. Apparently with the new release, they are doing crazy things there. 256 player lightning leagues for 52 online packs as the top prize. Not even any cash there (unlike LotRO), and there are people playing there. Wha! Man, those MODO players are sure crazy.



Art Credits:
Rainbow Lens by Beth Zyglowicz
Cloud Seed by Scott Montgomery
Flame Shield by Jeffry Ransom with edits and backgrounds by myself.

Oh why not? I have like oodles of custom MND cards that's yet to be posted. Those 3 relics are from EF. I actually edited the Flame Shield, along with three other relics to get them looking better for EF. The EF page is up to date with all the EF cards. Actually, that's the thing. The custom cards page has been getting a lot more hits these days. I wonder why.

I have been trying to get Bruce back into the game of making a B5 expansion. There isn't much interest in it though, or so it seems. Dying Races is the name of the expansion and the Centauri and Narns are what it's supposedly all about. There's now talk of more NA, Mu-Tai and Nightwatch, not to mention mercs as well. I wonder how it'll go. I suggested that the remaining First Ones also get cards, although perhaps not as Characters, for that might make them too powerful, but otherwise, who knows?

B5 also got updated yesterday to Now Playing, along with a few bugfixes. It still needs major automation upgrades, but since it's playable and stuff, I guess it's no big deal. Borders and Hamlet were the two other games that got upgraded to Now Playing on gEngine yesterday along with B5, so that's 3 games that's gone into the big time, if it can be called the big time.

Everyone else seems to be scrambling around to get their games to Now Playing. Martin was working on Abduction earlier, with claims of robustness. Somehow that just sounds wrong when talking about an abduction. Tomi and Logan are also busy getting their games up to Now Playing as well, although it's a bit more complex than just renaming the status. Doomtrooper also had a new update with deck legality checking before the start of the game. That's something that every game will now (probably) take on.

The new engine is also up now, so it's time to see what new changes has been wrought. I think beta games are now free, something that I support and I think it's a bit long overdue. Beta games are those with bugs and errors and should be free so that people will play them and help test out the game. That will also probably be the time people play those games. After the game goes Now Playing and it actually costs money to play, people stop playing them. But the change will probably be welcomed by players who now have to pay for their games (over 5 a month) suddenly discovering that the game is free since it's still in beta.

I wonder if there are any bugs in it. The last version of the engine had a rather nasty bug and a rather minor one. There were changes to the hints which was one that I suggested, and now I find that it's biting me. Sad but true. Hamlet depends very much on the hints on the cards and since it doesn't report the true status, I wonder if it's still playable. Oh well. No big deal there though as nobody plays it anyways. Hopefully it'll get fixed in the next build.

The WW update also went up today. I wonder if this means it'll see public playing near the middle of the month as the 3 months beta period is up then. I suspect they'll probably extend it to the end of the month, they being WW. That would be an interesting development anyways. There aren't that many people braying at the doors, although I wonder how impressed/disappointed they will be when they finally see the finished product. Only time will tell.

I did the monthly stats yesterday. The engine is still getting played, although the status of VTES seems a bit poor, but I'm going to guess that's because of the limited pool of beta players. Hopefully things will go on the upswing once it goes public (or will it? Who knows?) I still have to update the plates post... that's something I haven't done. And I just realised that Ed has changed the codes for some of the games so the Codes that we all use for our signatures needs an update as well. Yeesh! That can wait though.