-+@ Playa @+-

which obviously is supposed to mean "Player"...



Three cards from the missing Gen 13 Classic Trading Card Set for WS CCG. They were the last of the CCG cards printed, even after BoW, and are some of the hardest to find. A new CCGW user, Travis Bickle, noticed that they were missing from the engine and kindly suggested that he scan them for the engine. I acquised and he did them relatively fast, so I had to reward him by coding them in the same day that I got the images. While I was doing that, I added the extra kibitz messages as well. I like the cards. They are cool... and new, even to me, a veteran WS player. There's an ad to go along with it... but I don't think it turned out that great, so I'm not posting it anywhere...

And it seems to be a WS fest as I'm still crazily photographing the remainder of the WSS2 cards. I figured out how not to use the flash, but instead have natural sunlight such that the end result looks better. Well, they do, but not buy too much. I still have to crop them and adjust them, and do the cardback, before the images are done. Then there's more work coding the cards since I have to make up the stats for them as well. I was hoping to get things done this weekend, but life happens as usual, and long story short, they will probably be done before the end of next month.

MND work has been going slowly as well, because I'm on hiatus... I had to post up the tournament and contest because it's the end of the month, in preparation for next month... but ever since people found out about the XP system on the engine, I've noticed that the tournaments and contests aren't too much in demand... too much work for too little reward I guess. Oh well. It's a good thing that next month's MND tournament would be the last one... maybe for this year.

And end of the month means I have to do a whole lot of things. I've already submitted the verbal report to Ed about the statistics for the month... yay! As for the plates post, Go Fish definately need an update for that soon, but I'm waiting for MoA and/or CA to go closed/open testing respectively before I update that. It's gonna be another big update.

Yeah, Mark is busy with CA, which will probably be his first game to go live this year. That's what he's saying and I think he's close too. I hijacked him today though, by posting defects for 3 of his games yesterday, when I was going through all the games, downloading all the latest gMLs. He's working on Aquarius as I'm writing this, having already fixed Nodwick earlier. I must confess I'm a bit guilty for sidetracking him off to his other games...

Logan has spent the last few days working on the MoA boards, after I've stiched them together. He's making the lines thicker and easier to read, and then he has to code them. A large part of it is done though which is good, but I'm sure there's still quite a bit more to do before it can go public. Logan is definately busy though.

Tomi has been doing little things on his games, adding in the latest stuff to Yahtzee, Doomtrooper and Mythos mostly, although I think I saw a Tomb Raider update as well there. I won't be surprised if these updates are taking up a lot more time than it seems... maintaining a game is a huge task.

Martin just uploaded a VTES update yesterday, and I noticed that as I was downloading it. He's obviously keeping his attention on the game to keep everyone happy. The game is also the most played game on CCGW for the month of April, thanks in large part to the free game passes Ed has given out for the server problems. I hope there aren't too many complaints.

Ed has been busy trying to fix the server stability issue. He explained in techie talk what was wrong with it, which went all over my head. It seems to make things a lot better, but it still crashes the engine. Long story short - a new server is needed and I'm not sure if he has the moolah to afford it, especially not for the free games that is currently being supported. Hmm...

And that's it I guess. These days, there are only 6 PLs working on CCGW, or so it seems. Everyone else has other commitments, or is just feeling too left out and/or way behind the curve. Nevertheless though, a lot seems to be happening even with the existing 6. Perhaps that's all that's required - a handful of dedicated people churning out quality work instead of a lot of mediocre people wasting resources and producing nothing... ah, hobbits!

I did manage to get to Dan last night and we talked quite a bit. The real reason for talking to him though, was to get his permission to finish adapting Chess Wars for the engine, which he gladly gave. So that's my other game for the month of May besides WSS2, or that's the plan, at least. I've got to rev up the game to the latest technology, which will probably include things like automation, nice graphics and sounds. It would be good to get into that again.

-+@ Reckless Charge @+-

Which is sometimes how things seem to happen...



Yeah, not MND cards for a change, that's because today I converted some boxes, a piece of cardboard and a digital camera into a photo studio. The reason I need to photograph the cards is because they are chromium and can't be scanned - when they are scanned, they just turned out all dark and uninteresting. Tip for card publishers who do not want their cards to be scanned and shown online - make all the cards foil!

Anyway, I've got about 18 more cards to photograph, and about triple that to crop and manipulate. Then there's the cardbacks which, unlike a CCG is different for each card, since these are trading cards akin to baseball cards, so each card has a story and the stats for the characters on the card. What cards are these? They are the Wildstorm: Set 2 cards which I'm adapting for WSS1, complete with fan made stats. Hopefully I would be able to finish everything by this weekend, but who knows if that's realistic or not... it's worth a try.

I haven't been the one that's been busy though... Mark is simultaneously working on three games, much to my surprise, particularly since he dislikes working on multiple games at the same time. Not that I'm complaining or anything though, I think it's good that he's able to multitask somewhat, not to mention the fact that he's getting more games done. Hopefully he's still aiming for that two before Origins, 5 before the end of the year, although at the rate he's working, as I have said previously, I'm sure he can easily finish off 10 before the end of the year.

Tomi hasn't been too much of a sloth as well, as game updates for Mythos (huge!) and Doomtrooper (good stuff!) compliment updates for James Bond and Yahtzee. These days, it's simply a case of open up a game, code it for whatever new stuff we get from each upgrade of the engine and then load it for the players, and that seems to be what he's doing. I won't be surprised if there's more update over the next few days.

Logan was busy working on LMS... until he started working on MoA. According to him the games are similar, which means the adaptation would share a lot of things between them. One of the things that the adaptation can't share are the boards, and because the boards are the typical larger than a flatbed scanner, they were scanned in bits. I volunteered to stitch them together though, so I spent much of the earlier part of this week doing that. I don't think the ultimate result is great, but at the end of the day, even on a big screen, the tiny things that annoy me probably won't show up... and of course, Logan can probably airbrush others of those away as well.

I have no idea what Martin is doing after that VTES update earlier this month, he's been pretty silent though, which means he's probably working on something significant. I asked him a few coding questions, but nothing on what he's been working on. Perhaps he's making headway on Monster Mash? I hope so... that game has given Logan a goldmine for LMS and indirectly for MoA.

Ed's been a busy bee himself, trying to track down the sources of the server crashes (I still think it's hackers!), while at the same time keeping an eye out on Mille Bornes, Frank's Zoo and now Capitol. I doubt he's making much progress on some of those games, as there are always more pressing concerns, but he did send me the scans for the Capitol board to "fix up" properly so that it looks better. I did that yesterday and sent it back to him. No idea if he'll update the game. I guess you can just call me "Sweatshop Nov".

And myself? Besides the WSS2 cards, and being "Sweatshop Nov", I've been testing out the cool new stuff that we've been given on the Engine in MND. And while there, of course, I'm adding the cards slowly for the next custom expansion. This expansion is probably rolling out slower than expected for playtesting, and I haven't even finished designing Weave yet. I'll probably have to do that some time next month I think, and then after that to finalise the cards for Double Jeopardy. I did however manage to finish the Calendar for next month...

And while I'm talking about the end of the month, I need to get ready the end of month stuff as well. I know Ed and Tomppa are the two people that probably care about the end of the month stuff, which is why I'm doing them I suppose. I'm not sure I care about them at all, but I don't want to miss out and regret in future though, which is why I'm doing what I'm doing.

It's a good thing I delinked updating the plates post at the end of the month... now I can do them whenever I want... add that to the fact that they are on the wiki... well, it only makes life easier... not just for me but for anyone who wants to modify any of the infomation that's available. I've also created a page on the wiki that's a potential replacement for the Games Page on the website. Whether Ed uses it or not is his perogative. The wiki has also been taking up my time and energy, but it's fun... while it lasts? I hope not.

-+@ Sucka @+-

Fooled me once, shame on you, fooled me twice, shame on me.



Art Credits:
l'Cust by Zastrow, background by Holsten
Swalb by Katura
Trem by Zastrow

Three more magi for EF, and I do really like these magi. The first two seems dual-magi-ish though, which I suppose can be a problem for card design, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there I suppose. I continued and did a creature image today - it's a manip and not a new image, but it took absolutely ages to complete. I'm glad at the end result though. Since it's also an RP card, the RP version can be viewed on Insiider. So that means there's 7 more images to go, 6 Underneath creatures and a Nar magi.

I spent most of yesterday developing the list of changelogs for the Public CCGW wiki. It was a challenge creating a table that's visually appealing and organising the data so that it makes sense to someone who's looking for infomation and I think the end result isn't too shabby.

It's a holiday weekend for some people, and I'm guessing those people are busy coding away, either on their games or on the wiki, or even the website. Mark is still trying to get at least 2 games done before Origins and at the rate he's going, he'll probably get to do that. Logan is busily gearing up to get all the bells and whistles going for LMS. Those two of them have been doing crazy stuff and hours to get everything done by Origins.

I had a talk today with Tomi about card design. It seems DoomTrooper is suffering from a "runaway combo problem" where players with Uber decks can setup the game to win in one turn by playing a series of cards that combos to gain the required amount of victory points. Those aren't easy to stop though, particularly if one is new to the game, and every game seems to boils down to who can get their runaway combo to trigger first, which makes things boring. Perhaps that is why the number of games played for Doom, particularly over the tournament, is down.

I played two games of Auto Assault today with my two different decks. Basically, those are just "put whatever that's cool into the deck" decks since the deck building rules are not available anywhere. I won both the games against the same deck, using the same strategy, even though the decks I was playing with have different strength. I guess playstyle is important at the end of the day. Mine was to assault missions to win the game, while keeping my opponent on his toes by damaging his vehicle. The game seriously needs more answers to some of the problems, but at the moment it works and is semi-fun, so I guess it's good to go.

-+@ Brick @+-

That which makes things heavy.



Art Credits:
Mink by Beth Zyglowicz
Zeith by Beth Zyglowicz
Golizar by Mark Chmielewski

Three more magi for EF, I have been concentrating on the magi recently since I have to do major work on the rest of the other 7 cards. I did Golizar and 2 others yesterday and another 3 the day before that which means I have all but one magi for the expansion done. Considering that this is a 150 card expansion, as opposed to the usual 100 card expansion, there's quite a few more images that needs to be obtained for this. And the summary below:

Exodus Flight: Still collecting images, the status (for images) of each region are as follows:
Arderial: 1 spell, 2 magi, 6 creatures, 3 relics. COMPLETE
Bograth: 1 spell, 2 magi, 6 creatures, 3 relics. COMPLETE
Cald: 1 spell, 2 magi, 7 creatures, 2 relics. COMPLETE
Core: 1 spell, 2 magi, 7 creatures, 2 relics. COMPLETE
d'Resh: 1 spell, 2 magi, 7 creatures, 2 relics. COMPLETE
KT: 1 spell, 2 magi, 8 creatures, 1 relic. COMPLETE
Nar: 1 spell, 1 magi, 8 creatures, 1 relic. NEED 1 magi
Naroom: 1 spell, 2 magi, 6 creatures, 3 relics COMPLETE
Orothe: 1 spell, 2 magi, 8 creatures, 1 relic COMPLETE
Paradwyn: 1 spell, 2 magi, 7 creatures, 2 relics COMPLETE
Underneath: 1 spell, 2 magi, 2 creatures, 1 relic NEED 6 creatures/relic
Weave: 1 spell, 2 magi, 6 creatures, 2 relics Need 1 creature/relic
Universal: 2 spell, 1 creature, 3 relics COMPLETE

I have yet to update the webpage with all the magi, I suppose I can do that tomorrow or something, because I spent most of today working on the MND updates. The expansion though, is still on hiatus, but has 8 more images to go to get the images complete.

TG now has finalise text and if there are no more comments will be tournament legal starting May. Ditto with KQ promo. Hopefully, that will get more people interested in the tournaments. The KT cards for TW went up at the same time, as requested by Bobby as his "reward" for having the best deck in last month's competition, but I have still to finalise the Weave cards for TW. I'm not in a hurry to do so though, although, I should do it before the month is out. Also, Cure for All Seasons probably needs to be spoilt this month as well.

Those weren't the only things that got added online, a whole bunch of defects also got fixed, not to mention a couple of new things on the online game. One of the things I'm rather happy with is that there are now more colours for cards in the browser and deck manager so that I can afford to differentiate between the Custom cards and the Playtest Customs. The Japanese Promos and the Unreleased Cards also received new colours so that when deckbuilding, it's easier to see at a glance what is the status of a particular card.

Last month's tournament had 20 games played that counted, and another 7 more that didn't count. Which isn't too bad for a tournament. This month's tournament is Highlander format and it's interesting to see the type of things people are doing. There's already a significant number of games that has been played, which is normal since it is the beginning of the month. Hopefully more will be played.

Now that MND is done for the month, I should probably be looking at some other game for the rest of the month. I think focus should still be on YNDT and I'm wondering if it would be possible to do a mini-map for it. I think more of the cards can also be automated now that the engine is more powerful. It's definately time to look at it again anyways.

Tomi has been busy with his games, Doomtrooper got updates, and word is that he's making more custom cards. 108 cards is what he's looking at. I wonder where he's getting the images for all of them. Mythos and Tomb Raider have also had updates recently - he seems busy working on his games which is a good thing.

Logan has also been busy with LMS, new boards and tweaks and all sorts of good stuff. The rules page is being updated to a wiki version specifically for the engine and that is continuously being worked on as well. That is so cool, but I'm sure it's lots of hard work. I suppose MoA will begin after all this is completed.

Mark updated Aquarius earlier this month, and he's still busy working on CA and Attack to get them out in time for Origins. I hope he's doing OK on them at the moment. He's got all sorts of crazy but clever ways of tracking things and he's busily coding away.

Martin had Final Nights up on schedule and is to be praised. Thanks to a free month's worth of free pass that Ed gave out just before the month was up, the number of games played has skyrocket there. Games there are healthy... I wish the same could be said of the server.

Ed has been busy tracking down that server bug, but I think he finally managed to fix it today with Logan's input on various things here and there. Hopefully things will hold steady after this. The update/upgrade of Mille Bornes that Ed did a while back was a good thing as well... play went up for March on that particular game and it's probably due to his great work on that game.

Play was down for Doomtrooper though, despite (or was it because of) a tournament and although the tournament is still going on this month, there's even less games being played. I wonder why. On an unrelated note, Thomas has decided to call it quits as a PL due to other things happening in his life, and if he reads this, know that I wish him well.

I've been playing a lot of Auto Assault lately, mostly to just kill time. It gets boring after a while and the lack of all cards to build decks is probably what I don't like about it. The other thing that I don't like is that the deckbuilding rules are still non-existant which is a drag (no pun intended). Still, it's a good game to kill time... if I can find players to play with.

Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for Stargate and BattleStar Galactica CCGs to be released. The latter is supposed to be released next month, but I wonder if it'll be delayed in time for the cons. Perhaps I'll find out during Origins.

Oh, and last month's titles were all from Portable Adventures. It's a new month, so titles are from a new CCG. I'm getting into a stage where I can't remember which CCG I've quoted from, so I think this might be a repeat, but maybe not.