-+@ Sudden Illness @+-

I think I'll continue the CCG for the rest of this month...



Final Twilight cards for a change. These are from the Ashcans which I will have to add to the engine once I finish colouring up two more images. I did one the other day, but I guess it wasn't in time to be included in the Ashcan release. Oh well, it'll definately be added into gEngine anyways.

Otherwise though, what I have labelled as "Entropy2" internally has been added onto the engine. Apparently 3 of the cards aren't finalised yet so those will be changed some time in the future. I'm a bit surprised though because the cards are available for sale as pdf versions already. Hmm...

The other thing has been this player from Poland has been after me to add in the Atmosphere cards onto the engine for AvP. He has been so enthusiastic that he's been getting the images and matching them with the text and creating all the new cards for me. Heh, hold the horses! Well, I really want to properly template the existing cards before I add any more cards, so I got him to send me current scans of the cards - proper 300 dpi ones - so that I can blank them properly to template them. He has. The next step would be to blank them, then do the templates properly, match the fonts, cut out the images and reassemble both the old expansions in addition to adding in Atmosphere. I have no idea where I'll find the time to do that, but I shall have to do it soon if I wanna keep his interest I guess. He and his one other friend has been going crazy with the number of games - the game is being played rather regularly now and I guess that qualifies it for some "frills".

Ed has been really good and has got Armageddon setup for me. The problem is, I haven't had the time to actually complete it and place it on the engine. Argh! I really need to get this going at some point though, but I just don't really have the time for it at the moment. The card art also haven't been finalised for all the cards, but I have got the spoiler and the rules and everything so one of these days, I really have to sit down and sort everything out. One of these days... I have no idea after or before I start revamping AvP.

Ed's also been good on a number of fronts - notice that Titans: Arena is back up on the engine? Well, he went to the game creator and got his permission to host the game on the engine so now it's back up. Hooray - that's one removed game that's now back on the engine. I guess the Netrunner fans and the Harry Potter crazies can start their campaign to get their games back on the engine now...

Since the cat's out of the bag, Ed has recently been working on a play by web (PBW) site called ludoholic.com . I've been busy on there playtesting (well, more play than testing) the interface and the programming of Capitol. I used to think that the Capitol adaptation on the engine was wanting. The PBW version is so much cooler, with the rules in a convienient form and the moves easily understandable, stackable counters and a point and click interface. Sure, the last thing isn't available on the engine yet, but hey, it's motivation for Ed to add them at some point in future... I think. Capitol is mostly done now, Urland is next on the list as is stated on that page so things are moving fast.

Everyone it seems is caught up in the craze. I saw Kev requesting to do Monkeys for PBW instead of the engine on the forums, and I know Logan and Mark are both also looking into adapting games for PBW. I guess I'm just the only person who isn't jumping with joy (or frustration?) about the whole deal, but I already have enough on my plate... if you can't already tell from the above.

The end of last month was crazy... eventhough I've streamlined my CCGW responsibilities, there was nevertheless a multitude of other things to do as well, mostly MND and thus nothing to do with CCGW. There's the calendar which had to be done. I can understand how Holmberg used to be up to at least a week late with them. They aren't that tedious to do, but it does take time to do them. And just because there's space for a mid blog picture:


That's available for download as a desktop image too.

And while tweaking around on a couple of pages on the custom card website, I discovered I had to update the status of the custom cards... and once that was done, to update TG and KQ up to the EL and SP standards. Eep! That's a huge load of work, and I've been steadily toiling away at it. SP received it's printer friendly pdf around the beginning of the month and KQ last night, with the remnants of EL. So that's less than a score done, a century more to go...

TW is still in playtesting and has been joined early this month by the first card for DJ and P2C. There's already been a tempest in a teacup (sorta-pun intended) with the first DJ magi and I added the second DJ magi last night. I wonder what will happen there. Perhaps people will fall in secret love with it or perhaps things will get frosty (no, not forestry). Who knows?

The MND players, as a collective, or should I say the vocal part of the collective have been calling for power escalation to be implemented on a number of cards. I have been wondering why that is so. Perhaps it's just inherent - people just want the best for the short term, not realising the worst that can do in the long term.

That DJ magi was added as part of the Summer League tournament which has sorta died out I guess. That's a pity though. I guess people only played for the prizes and when the prize runs out, there was no point in playing. That's a good thing though, people shouldn't be pigeon-holed to play something they didn't want to play I guess, but as it has shown, it means that they are being rather abusive (game wise) towards the newer players. Ouch. I haven't seen a new player last for longer than three months yet. Oh well.

Meanwhile, things continue to go busy with the cards in development. EF is firmly on schedule with 3 regions going out for comments at the beginning of the month and the other regions getting prepped for it. We've sorta changed the way this works and the designs are not so much in isolation now and hopefully, this would result in better quality cards being designed.

I've also started the AoD/AE image collection process and the subsequent templating to go along with it, and that is an even slower process. But then again, I guess the priority there is low. People have been coming to the forums asking to contribute... well, the main prerequisite for that is their capability to stick around for the long term. As I said previously, there aren't too many of the long termers recently. I guess people are just too much into the instant gratification thing... or at least the instant thing.

I was talking with Nate about this the other day, and he pointed out to me that he's experienced it as well on the forums he frequents. People (and by that he means underagers who are vocal on the forums he frequents) want the thing and they want it now, but they have no idea what to do or how to do it, because almost everything in life is done for them. Apparently he has written some sort of guidelines thing that's a must read on one of those forums. I've gotta remember to ask him if I can read it anytime soon.

And it's round about September/October, which means Tomi gets more time to spend on the engine... Doomtrooper got another custom expansion, and I know he's busy with the latest expansion that's in the work, but that's not the only game on the engine that got Tomi's love. Kult and Dark Eden and I think Mythos had minor tweaks as well, and of course, as mentioned above, Titan's back. Remember the Titans gets new meaning now!

It's nice to see a Shadowfist league has started up on the engine headed by a guy I know from LotRO. I guess his creative energies has to go somewhere and since LotrO is down, a SF league seems the next best thing? Julien has been forced to update the cards and stuff which is cool - at least SF is getting some attention, even if Zev is now focusing on Conan/Star Gate/whatever.

Oh and I got a huge load of cards the other day - a box each of Black Rider and Bloodlines and two each of Voice of the Storm and Nightmare Dawn. The latter 2 were mostly for making real world custom cards while the former 2 I got because they were really really cheap. I expect it'll get cheaper! Nevertheless, it does take time to open packs, sort cards and the like. That takes time too, which is one of the reasons why I haven't blogged in a while...