-+@ 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.