-+@ 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...

-+@ Pop Quiz @+-

only because it seemed as if I was given one yesterday... more below...



All art by Boris Vellajo and Julie Bell.

More Hyborian Gates cards, only because I wanted to show that the game is not all with almost porn pictures. In fact the majority of the pictures are less risqué (a word just for Martin) than the selection posted in the last blog. I won't say that this selection is a representitive sample as well... most of the cards seems to be scenery and beastiary which makes it boring to be shown on a blog.

So, I finally found the gusto and finished adding in the 9 Hyborian Gates cards which I have images for, but do not actually own the physical cards. Some of the cards are less than optimal, but they are the best available images that I have so well, that's life. I thought it would take longer to code them in, but when I actually sat down and started coding, they were done in no time at all. I guess it's just a mindset thing.

There was a problem when I tried uploading it to the server though... a permissions problem of some sort. I need to check out with Ed what's the issue there, whether the "recent annoyances" of the engine has anything to do with it. Ah well, something to do.

I spent almost two hours yesterday chatting with some guy who goes by the online name of Sparke. No, nothing personnal, he was just full of questions about the engine in general and the adaptation of AvP and Terminator on the engine in particular. I had to answer question after question for about two hours... not fun at all. Hopefully, at the end of all this (of which the 2 hours last night was only the beginning), I'll get the clipped cards and templates for both games which will allow me to both games and the unreleased Atmosphere expansion online.

And others on the game coding front, Logan has been enthusiastically coding LMS in and out of season adding in things gleaned from Monster Mash. It seems LMS will be highly automated (and it is already pretty much automated). I guess this is a case where metal sharpens metal as Martin got his inspiration for coding Monster Mash probably originally from LMS in part coupled with his own uniqueness (after all, his name is half of the nipa-Martin Index)

I wonder if the next VTES expansion is ready though. The date makes me wonder if it's an April's Fool joke, so I'm sure there are other people out there trying not to be gullible who have a look at the date and wonder if they've been had. Well, it's all academic at this point in time though, but all indications points to the fact that it will probably be on schedule. Ah well, we'll have to see.

Tomi made minor tweaks to Mythos and James Bond over the weekend. He was also rather excited about obtaining the cardlist (and more) for the unreleased Q expansion for James Bond. I think he's probably set in motion the required stuff necessary for adding the said expansion into James Bond. I wonder what he'll do image wise. Perhaps he'll grab them from some fan made comic strip. Who knows.

Mark has been rather quiet though... I hope that's a good sign. I also hope that the releases of James Bond and Hyborian Gates has spurred him to complete his two games in development that are, I'm told, "close" to being public. I'm cheering for him though... he's the only developer to have a set goal (5 games) this year. (OK, I also do have a goal - 1 game, and I've fulfilled that goal!!! - but I don't think many would count that as a goal. My other goal though is to update B5, WS, WSS1, Urland and YNDT this year with the major changes Ed has just implemented. Notice my signature game, my favourite CCG and 2 licenses in that list.)

Ah, Origins rush. What would be nice though would be to be surprised in a nice way just before Origins. Monkeys going public for one would be interesting. Ditto for Cold War Naval Battles. And I would like to see a surprise new PL finishing a game in time for Origins too. And Lewis Carroll will probably tell me through poetry recited by the mouth of an Alice in Wonderland character "and pigs have wings!"

-+@ Lipstick @+-

and porn? Well, check out the images below...



Images by Boris Vellajo and Julie Bell, taken from Hyborian Gates.

That's right, Hyborian Gates is finally out for public testing, but I doubt it will get played much. It is after all "no frills" at the moment, and I don't forsee it getting any more advanced than that. There are still a number of cards missing in the game, but hopefully they will get added on as soon as possible, or when I get the time and the inclination to code in the cards, whichever comes first.

Hyborian Gates isn't the first game to go public this year though. The honours there were taken by James Bond. Grats to Tomi for getting that honours (yeah, take note of this, it'll probably appear in a future quiz by myself). It's out public testing, and is slightly above "no frills" since it has attachment and stuff. I haven't had a look at it yet though... I should at some point. That means though that all Target games are now on the engine.

Someone has also contacted me to offer to update Aliens vs Predator. With 5 games played over the last 30 days though, somehow I don't see how it would go beyond "no frills" as well. Nevertheless, any work on the game is always welcomed and said guy has taken it upon himself to update the images. Well, we'll see how much of that there is before his interest runs out - somehow I get the feeling I'm going to be stuck with something half done although I hope that feeling is false.

I was looking at the WSS2 stuff a few nights ago as well. I really have got to get the motivation to start taking photographs of these cards. Really. A scanner won't work since the cards can't be scanned, well, not the front anyways. I have already started somewhat, but it does need quite a bit of work to get everything finished up. I guess I can use Origins as my deadline to finish up WSS2.

Talking about Origins, quite a few things are happening in anticipation of it. Mark is getting his games ready - Attack and Crystal Authority - for public release before Origins and I know Logan is revamping LMS with all sorts of goodies. Next up on his list would be MoA, and I did offer to help out with the images there - not drawing them (ha!) but segue-ing (is that a word?) them together from multipart scans.

Ed was working on Milles Bornes over the past few weeks, and has been enjoying his work there. The game has gotten hugely popular though, although I wonder if it's because he's working on it. Frank's Zoo numbers are close to negligable, but Ed has plans to complete the game there. We'll have to see what happens. His work on 7th Seas seems to be done though and the game seems to be getting some volume, although not a tremendous amount.

Martin has been busy, first with a Doomtown update that was a few days late, but nevertheless was released. It seemed to have drawn more players to the game. Monster Mash I is now on the server as well, and I have no idea how much work has been done there, but obviously more than at the beginning of the year. And with April a scant 2 weeks away, I'm sure Martin is busy adding the next expansion to VTES ASAP.

Is that it? 6 people working on games for the engine? Sounds sad, it's true. People and people's interests change I suppose. Hence the fallen away of some. I guess that's how the cookie crumbles... or whatnot. That does give me an idea for a future blog...

And to end, lemme give a quick MND rundown - not much work on anything, but the tournament is progressing rather well and the new TG cards in a tournament setting is grabbing some interest. How long, how many, who knows? There's news of a MMO being developed for MND as well, so does that spell the end for the CCG? Only time will tell...

-+@ 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...

-+@ 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.

-+@ Path of Morpheus @+-

Move and change?



Art Credit:
Chana by Goodman (who else?)
Smot by Zastrow/Holmberg
Bigil by Strom/Whyrl

That's 3 more cards for Twilight War (TW). Chana is named after Goodman herself. No she's not blonde nor does she look like that, but that's one dolly that she's drawn and I thought it would be good to have her as a magi. Smot was originally Smits as named by Justin, but the name is a bit European so I renamed him slightly to sound like smote (paste tense of smite, old English word meaning kill). I did the Holmberg background maybe 2 weeks ago in anticipation of getting the right image for it. Bigil is a contraction of "Birdgirl" which is what Whyrl named this image. Well, she doesn't have the green skins that's prominant of the Paradans... so she'll need a background story as well... like the other Paradan emissary.

I went back to look through the RP cards and was surprised that the people there have added more images to the eXodus cards. Some of them are nice, others are so-so. Austin Gardner seems to be improving his skill at it while Beth Zyglowicz is drawing up her own style and is moving into her own. Even Jen Reed is contributing images to the set. I didn't template any of those though. Instead I did the 5 spells that Jeffrey Ransom picked out art for. They can be seen either at Novelty's Custom Card Forums (look under Fan Cards), at the RP section of Insiider or at MND at CCGW. As mentioned, none of those spells are going to make it into Exodus Flight.

gEngine stuff (and staff) is/are still quiet, everyone is probably enjoying summer and such. Even the forums are quiet and I'm not sure if that's a good sign or a bad sign. One good sign though is that there's a post in the AvP forums asking about deckbuilding and stuff. Seems interesting there and I hope the game picks up, but I doubt it.

I had an interesting thought today (well, that's one more than usual, I suppose) - which series of books would make a good CCG? I'm talking about true books only stuff, not, LotR, for example which only got playable because of the movie, or games like VS where the characters are in a whole host of media from movie to games to action figures. Mythos, perhaps is the best known and probably the most successful game of this genre, the direct book to CCG adaptation. Imajica and Wheel of Time are another two examples that are available for play on gEngine. Others include A Game of Thrones and Call of Cthulhu off the top of my head.

Well, I only have a Sci-fi/Fantasy background so here are some series of books which might make a good CCG.

Raymond E. Fiest and his Midkemia universe. There are almost 20 books in this series, starting with Magician: Apprentice, with the latest being King of Foxes in the Conclave of Shadows Trilogy. Two of the books in this universe are even the reverse adaptation of the 2 computer games; Betrayal at Krondor and Return to Krondor - the former was a trendsetter, the latter is forgettable. The world is large, the characters are plentiful and the artifacts, events, locations, etc. are there for the taking. And if that's not enough, there's always the world of Kelewan across the rift...

Peter F. Hamilton and his Commonwealth universe. OK, so there's only one book so far, but with 1144 pages, it's a rich world that he's painted with a multitute of races, over 40 locations and a cast of characters that needs a who's who right in the front of the book. The second book Judas Unleashed will be published later in the year (if you're a Brit or if you order from amazon.co.uk) or next year (if you're American).

Robin Hobb and the Six Dutchies. She's barely touched on the world she's set her characters on, even with three trilogies under her belt. Throw in the Chalced States, the Mountain Kingdom adn the Jamailla Empire with the Outislands and there's enough factions. Add in dragons and a fool and things turn interesting. Not to mention memory stone and a rooster crown... and liveships!

Janny Wurts and her neverending tale of the Mistwraith set on Athera. Two blueblood born with the gift over the elements, but not the usual elements. Lysaer, with his ability over light and Arithon, the Master of Shadow. From the mighty Fellowship Sorcerers, the Koriani Order and the clanborn vs the city folk, this tale (spread across 9 books, where it was originally supposed to be 3) has plenty to offer everyone.

Tanya Huff and her Quarter series. No, not the vampire stuff, which is set in a different universe and genre, nor the Valor series, which is currently too limited for a good CCG. I like the concept in the series, bards, singing and manipulating the elemental kythes (or however that is spelt) in a religious sort of capacity. Very interesting stories in the entire series, from political intrigue to romance and a whole host of other things.

OK, I'll stop there, 2 American, 2 Canadian and a Brit. I did think about Asimov's Robot series or even Le Gruin's Earth Sea Quartet, but the former is way too boring and the latter is a bit limited in terms of characters. My favourite Sci-Fi trilogy Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy didn't even make it into the list as I think the game would end up being really nerdy (very much like the books). Terry Brooks (Magic Kingdom for Sale!), David Eddings (Tamuli and topless women) Arthur C. Clarke (HAL2001) and Jack L. Chalker (Husaquahr) all didn't make it into my list for some reason or another. Oh well. Someone recommended RA Salvatore to me, but I've yet to read anything from him.

-+@ Flora @+-

Nice little flowers popping up in spring...



All artwork by Whyrl. These are the cards for the most probably going to be released fan-made set Twilight Wars. It all depends, of course, on what happens with Tainted Glimpses. Half of the TG cards are already on the engine and hopefully Bograth and Paradwyn will join them soon. I still have 12 more images there to create and the set will be ready to get onto the engine. Let's see what happens there.

The tournament wise, Nick (aka Itchi) was the first person to qualify today with his 7th game. However, if anyone else should join, he'll need an additional game to qualify. Team Marshfield is holding the top 3 spots which is cool since they said they were going to rule about a month ago. Nice to see them finally getting there.

Tony aka KQ#3 has also been getting a trickle of entries, as people attempt to design a good use for him. I have no idea which entry I'll pick as the winner for the moment if asked to choose. Some of them are interesting, others are extremely broken, but it's fun to see what people seem to want for a Universal magi.

Babylon 5 and AvP are the other 2 of my games that seems to be getting some play. Neither has been spectacular, and despite attempts to jumpstart a league in the former, nothing has come to pass there. AvP people are still hoping for more cards - I think they are bored with the current selection of cards. Perhaps once I've finished updating the games that needs an update, particularly the licensed games, I should relly look into expediating Terminator and Atmosphere for the AvP players.

Meanwhile, JC though has been very supportive of the Rage players, as they use the engine to playtest the current version of the next build. Things are being fixed as soon as they pop up, which is a good sign. The partnership between him and HC seems to be a strong one and its a good thing to have this "axis" on the engine, because it's increasing the number of Rage games played.

I do wonder if the DoomTrooper tournament is on life-support. Things seem to be moving rather slow there. Atticus dropped out from being a shepherd last week, so I think everyone is down to having as few tokens as possible. I think the collective DoomTrooper player pool should just go out and enjoy themselves with other games, or chase after the tournaments that Ed is holding every weekend. They are a bit insular as they are at the moment.

Talking about tournaments, the HotS one will be on tomorrow and I seriously hope more than 3 people will show up. I've been advertising them to the MND and the Rage players so hopefully some of them will take note of that and just join anyways for the fun of it. Someone should point it out to the Troopers as well... maybe a bit later when there are more of them on.

-+@ Resonate @+-

and that's not just because I've just watched American Idol...



Well, time to showcase more artwork done over the past few days - they have been blogged about previously, but not yet shown here on this blog so I thought it's fair game to show them here. From left to right, pencils by Hicks, colours by Nov, background by Holmberg. Image by Burke. Flower by Nov, background by Holmberg. The two Ploombs are TG and will definately go onto the engine. They Pheygrin is TW and might not see play at all. I have no idea about TW so far... well, that's because there's 3 sets that needs to be finalised before then, but we'll see what happens for that.

Zach (ZaCkO) is supposedly doing a Cald Hyren for a card, not exactly for me, mostly for himself. I wonder how good he'll be. If he's better than Nick that would be a good sign. Frank is also trying to get into the card design business - he's got ideas aplenty I guess, it's just that I'm more hampered by art than I am by ideas so we'll see where those go.

Slumber ends in a few days time and I'm surprised by the quality of some of the entries. This is going to be one difficult competition to judge. The MND tournament is schedule to start tomorrow and I know there are people rearing to go, so I said they could start a few hours early on the 16th after I've given the word to go ahead. It's going to be an interesting evening that's for sure, for some people. I don't think it's so much the free tokens as the chance to play competitively.

Talking about free tokens, my Sandwich Shop event is schedule to start in 4 hours time. 5 free copper tokens if they beat me at a game... which isn't too difficult to do since I'll be using starters only. The thing is, would anyone even bother to ask me for a game? I somehow doubt it. Kev has uploaded the new stuff again, which is good. At least we can read the rules and stuff. Ed has said he'll ask me for a game later, and that's a good sign... I think.

I haven't been working much on the engine really, although I should. MND and HumAliens should really get new cards added onto the engine. Perhaps tomorrow, definately not tonight. I know I also have to do the bold text for B5 as well at some point, but that takes a weekend of sit down time to do the tedious work of sorting everything out. I'll have to schedule in the time.

Mark asked me about Terminator, and I offered him the job of doing it as a co-Lead or as a full lead. I really have no idea when I'm going to start on them... just the other day I was thinking that maybe I should clip AvP first before I add Terminator. The plan was to get a co-Lead all enthused about the game to do the clipping. We'll see where that goes.

Martin is still doing the final tweaks on VTES and if I haven't said it before, I'll say it again - it looks nice. I also told him that the J, Q, K images were still not fixed on the engine... and the reply I got from him was that he thought that they were already fixed. Hmm... maybe the image server ate something up.

I haven't got any news from Kari telling me about his LotRO purchases for... the past 24 hours now. Quite a change really. He's already spent a bomb on it, money which could be better spent on other things IMO, but hey, it's his money and he can do what he wants to with it. I hope he's gotten better at playing as well - you can only blame your losses on weak decks for so long (and yes, it is viable to make a deck with very few rares and still get it to win).

I've been playing LotRO myself. Testing out Dwarves currently and I'm not too impressed with them. I've paired them up with Besiegers and that's a novelty these days - I'm more often winning with a shadow kill (against solo Smeagol, against dwarves, against rainbow elf/men/hobbits, but not against straight/gay elves!) instead of the dwarves running to 9, something which I was doing with ease before BR came out. I guess Orcs and corruption is just too much for poor Gimli.

I've also been playing with gToons lately, although I'm less inspired there, since there aren't any new cards or new strategies. I lost to a very good PPG deck just today, but won a shadow-match against an animal deck, only because I had the better draws. I got quite a few cToons as well so that's a good thing.

Thomas just asked me about the kit. It seems he's having some trouble with it. I told him how to do what he wanted done manually and he seems happy to do it that way. Well, unlike Martin, for me if Plan A fails, there's always Plan B, then Plan C, then Plan D, ad infinitum.

Talking about Martin, I've been meaning to do a nipa-Martin for Tony for a few days now and haven't really got on to it. So what have I learnt about Tony? He's a coder first and foremost. I'm surprised at how easily he's taking up coding, as if he's had lots and lots of experience with it. All I have to do is to explain something once... sometimes just the first line of the solution and he gets it almost immediately. Hence he has a high nipa number. However, he's not too good with the layout things and hasn't been using the interface to solve his problems... so TonyLuzzi n6M1. I haven't seen Craig's coding yet, so I can't give skandall a number. It'll be interesting to see how that goes.

I don't think we'll get updates from Tomi for a while. He's busy sailing and doing other things like meeting Queen Amidala and Jar Jar Binks. I doubt we'll see DoA fully playable till about winter time. Oh well. I hope I'll get surprised, but like many things these days, I'm just too big a pessimist.

Well, 2 more hours to go for me. Have a happy St. Patrick's Day tomorrow.

-+@ Diplomacy @+-

That's something I obviously lack...



Yes, I've only got 5 more days to go with the scanning and today I decided to get the Osirian cards done. So that's another 7 pages gone, 10 more to go. Hopefully, I'll be able to do them over the next 2 days or so, at my leisurely pace. Well, I thought I might as well showcase a badly cropped card... in this case the image on the left. You can tell it's part of a whole there. Maybe I should showcase an 70s hairstyle piece in future as well, particularly since Martin thinks the images are nice.

The main thing I did today was to update 2 cards for Tainted Glimpses on the engine, and to add the Core TG cards onto the engine, but I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit I think. Over the afternoon, someone decided to abuse Diplomacy and built a rather nasty deck based around it to prove to me that the card needs to be changed. Hence the change. I also took the opportunity to change out Phrup Jar as well, due to the change with Transmogrification. The Core cards are a walk in the park to do, I should be used to it by now... also did an ad for TG in general and posted it up on the front page of the engine. I guess there's no harm showing the ads for that and for TR, which I made a few days ago...

Logan was the second person to ask me to help with the What's Going On thing this week. Really though, people seem to think I'm like an expert on it. I'm not though, but since I did the trailblazing about 2 weeks back, I guess I've got 2 weeks more experience then anyone else. Hmm...

Ed actually uploaded Rock, Scissors, Paper to the engine tonight, making it the 92nd game to be added to the engine. Of course there are still 12 games in closed testing including it (Bowling was the 80th). I have no idea how soon it'll get public, but it's nice to know that almost 100 games have been adapted for the engine.

So, with that in mind, I made a quick update to the plates post internally, in preparation for the end of the month update. Yeah, I think this end of month I'll be very well prepared. I've already drafted out my February report, which still has a couple of blanks for the stuff that I'd be doing between now and the end of the month.

Otherwise CCGW has been slow... or that's how it seems anyways I guess. There's probably lots happening behind the scenes or something.

Didn't play gToons today, but I did try my hand at the auction. Really though, after using ebay for a while, the auction tools on gToons is a bit retarded. Didn't manage to get anything, which isn't really a pity, since I only have about 700 points anyways. I did manage to key in all the codes to get all the cToons yesterday... and for all of you who are looking for those codes, on the left you'll find a gToons section, the last 2 of which should have all the codes that you are looking for. If you are looking for a slam, I'm sorry, but I'm still trying to figure out how to get one of those.

Played some LotR today... 2 more days till fellowship block gets rotated out. There were a few... hard words said in the lobby when I entered. Well, the LotR players are a bit clique-ish I guess and since the implementation of the guilds, a bit confrontational as well. Gang wars and all. I'm the "anarch" of course, running around, trying to prevent myself from getting trampled and such. And what's this I've been seeing? Dwarves with Smeagol? I guess Gollum must really be a problem for Dwarf decks, because everyone seems to be splashing Smeagol. Of course, Smeagol is also good for controlling the site path, but still...

And the alienspredator.com site seems to be down. I wondered what happened. That was such a good site for AvP stuff, not to mention Terminator stuff as well. Oh well, its loss will be missed.

And for those of you getting this page via RSS feed beware the bottom feeder.

-+@ Turn @+-

If I'm making this hard, well, probably it isn't too hard to figure out which game the titles of this month's blog is from. 28 days this month, meaning that there's probably less for me to choose from.

Anyways...



Yup, more HumAlien images, this time from the Alien faction. Added these 3 cards to the engine... yes, that's all of the Alien faction for this expansion. I think this expansion focuses on the Clones and the Robots. I must say the art isn't too bad for a kiddie game. It's a pity it didn't have a cartoon to popularise it, but oh well. Anyways, that's just 8 cards out of 200+ added, I'm going to take it easy on this and add in less than 10 cards at a go. Next up, the Beast faction... but don't ask me when I'll be doing that.

Didn't play gToons today, but I did have a look at my cards and tried to build an alternate deck. Failing miserably won't even begin to cover the feeling. I did get a number of LotR games under my belt today though. Felt really good just practicing doing stuff in a game, if only to prepare myself for the release tournament at the end of the month. Yeah, that's always fun.

I did play a few MND games today as well "just for practise". I haven't played so long that I've almost forgotten how to play, I guess. I built a stupid Cald swarm deck... with 3 Green Stuff just for laughs. It's funny how the deck can wipe out my opponents though... I guess their inexperience shows through here. Oh well - nobody expects 3 Green Stuff in a Cald deck for sure... it's just like mixing... mud with fire.

A couple more MND tournament results have trickled in today, so I made a nice table in the forums for people to see where they stand and who they need to play with and stuff. Nothing too complex, but I hope it'll encourage them to play more games and stuff. I wonder how successful this is going to be and if it's going to be worth it to have another one next month. We shall have to see.

11 days more until the end of the month. Means I have 11 more days to finish scanning Hyborian Gates and to get the Final Twilight counter modifications in. Hmm... they don't seem that daunting, but nevertheless they do seem to require a bit of time. I hope I can get them done ASAP though, I don't really want to drag them on into next month. I've got Portable Adventures encounter automation to do as well. Urgh, that is gonna shape up to be a big headache all the way around.

At least I DID get borders done. I can't think of a good way to add the icons though, that would have made it too much like UNO, so what I did instead was to put the special card names onto the popup text. Well, that's the best I can do I guess, I really want people to remember all the specials in the game though. Anyways, it's not a big deal as the players on the engine seems to prefer CCGs to the other games... card games like Borders and Go Fish aren't going to be very popular... since they are just "a waste of tokens" as one person told me.

And as for the gossip bit... let's see... one new expansion from 10tacle today, Timmie is still happily playing Star Wars on the engine with all the new cards. I have no idea what the triumvirate are up to, they seem busy (and rightly so) with their personal life. Mark is around doing something, what exactly I have no idea. Kev is probably monkeying around with Monkeys somewhere when he's free and he's up to it.

And wumpus should have his 3rd tour tomorrow. There's a funny story here. He was complaining about the draw to 13 being broken... the moment I heard his complaint, I knew it was because he's changed a card name and forgotten to edit it out of his deck, hence the draw to 13 was failing, because it was drawing a card that no longer exist. I'm just surprise that he still complains about it when it's such a common problem, especially with Mythos where things, and by that I mean card names, get changed around so often. Oh well... card name changes = bad idea generally, unless you have a good reason to do it.

Oh, and I had my first complaint about the name "Project CHuckie CHeese". Urm... that's just the project name and stuff, it's something that was coined to refer to the game that is in the works, while a name for the game is being figured out. "Secret Wars" is the current favourite, but nothing is written in stone yet, hence the need for a name to refer to the whole project. Urgh and double urgh about the complaint. Anyways, Chris is finally getting around to getting the decks decked out and stuff... we'll be playing our first game next Tuesday and stuff. It does sound interesting and stuff, we'll have to see. I already have Nate saying he'll have a look to see if Neo will do publishing and publicity for the game. Might as well do it under Neo since he's got the experience with Final Twilight. Nothing is written in stone there as well though.

And before anyone asks me (again) anymore about these... Terminator is a game I'm adapting for the engine, it's not a new game that I'm doing, rather, it's an expansion for AvP. However, because of the way those games are setup, things are a bit different there. I'm going to lump in the first Terminator scenario with the Countdown scenario for AvP... don't ask me when, it's definately not this month.

Highlander is a game that is NOT on my current to do list. Note the highlight and the underline. I haven't said I'll do it yet and I doubt I'll get there for some time. Hyborian Gates and Portable Adventures needs to be finished first and out the door before I can even consider doing it. And what about Tempest of the Gods and Scooby Doo and all those other icons that one sees on my desktop? Well, those icons are nice aren't they? There are more where those came from.

Oh, I had a talk with kari about the doomtrooper tournament. It was decided that since he and Thomas are both very capable of handling it, I should butt out because I'm not wanted... or something like that. Ah well, I'll let them progress at the pace that they want to go... at least I can say I offered to help, and I wish them the best.

I wonder if I have the time for a distraction this month though... Hmm...

-+@ Under its Gaze @+-

Well, everyone should know the drill by now...



Art Credits from left: Holmberg/Vega/Shreve/Christopher/Nov, Nov, Nov with backgrounds by Holmberg. Well, as I said, it's hard times now as we go towards the final stretch. Note that I have my hand in all 3 cards... well, of course I tweak most of the cards... but I've been drawing more and more as images get scarcer and scarcer. Of course, I've got a whole lot more confidence after finishing that Dion picture below. I did the halo in the Transmo picture, the whole of the Taint picture (but that was the easiest), and the seedling and sunlight in the photosynthesis card. I like drawing the last card, it was fun.

So, those 3 cards means that 6 regions have been finished now - Orothe, Core and Weave joins Cald, Underneath and Universal. KT, Naroom and Arderial still have one each to go, and if I do two of those three, or any two cards in fact, I'll be at the 3/4er mark. That's a milestone I'll be glad to finally stake my claim on.

I updated the TG cardlist on my custom card site (link to the left as usual) with the comments received so far and upgraded the look slightly by adding in the region colours so that it matches the rest of the site. I like the look now. Also renamed Cwm to Dartette, so I'll have to redo that card sometime soon, with a new image too.

Well, now that I have the cards for 6 regions finished, I guess it's about time that it gets added to gEngine for playtesting. That would be fun.

AvP has been getting a lot of traffic recently. People are asking for Atmosphere and Terminator and I had to pour water over the proverbial fire to cool these people down. I doubt I'll have the time or the inclination to do those sets anytime soon, at least not until after I've finished Bowling.

Talking of which, no, I didn't work on Bowling today, but I might do some work a bit later on the remaining outstanding graphics - namely a bowling bowl, some buttons and text and numbers for the score board.

-+@ Ghost Image @+-

Well, Neo had some OK reviews today from the MND crowd. The main critique was that he was too matrix-like. Duh! Oh well, I know I can't please everyone.

Today has been a slow day. I'll just show the 3 cards I did today...



As usual art credits from left: Werner/Gillette/Holmberg/Nov, Werner/Gillette/Holmberg, Holmberg/Nov. Yes, that's a Cliff Hyren and yes, I drew that peak. Yes, those are the TR card images, some of which have not been seen in public before. Yes, I drew the ugly mound of dirt there.

I really had fun putting together Glimpses. All those TR Core card images, most of which have not been publicly revealed yet. The Dark Twins take centre stage, but who are those others? Is that a Wawek? Agram? What's Poad doing there??? Heh, well, peop,le'll just have to wait for TR to be released I guess.

Card counts 70/104, 67% of the images for TG completed. That's 1 card more than the 2/3rd mark so I've finally finish my goal for this week. 8 more cards to the 3/4er mark. If this keeps up, I might be able to do 8 cards during the remainder of this week. We'll have to see. No, that Glimpses card was not the last Core card, I didn't manage to count the promos when I did those 1 more card per region counts, but anyways, the following are the counts if anyone is keeping track.

3 Regions completed - Cald, Underneath, Universal
4 Regions with 1 more card to go - Arderial, Core, Orothe, Weave
2 Regions with 2 more cards to go - Naroom, Kybar's Teeth
1 Region with 5 more cards to go - Paradwyn
1 Region with 6 more cards to go - Bograth
1 Region with 7 more cards to go - Nar
1 Region with 8 more cards to go - d'Resh

Yes, I have started on Bograth, and will probably do a Paradwyn card or two in the next batch of 8 (or 9). I'm still waiting for the images to complete Arderial and Naroom has the extra promo which bumps it up to 2 cards left. At the rate this is going, I might get the remaining 34 cards out in about 2 more weeks! Yikes!

Yesterday and today I did the boring CCGW admin stuff - Shepherds, BOT, updating the CCGW (geek) code, minor stuff like that. An interesting observation is that there has been an upsurge of people requesting for more "other" games. Well, the requests might be there, but once those games are adapted, nobody shows up to play them much anyways... the exception has been AvP though which has been surprising. I wonder how long that will last. We'll have to see.

-+@ 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.

-+@ 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.

-+@ Promise Keeping @+-

Just came off working on the MND update, and I must say I'm rather pleased with the new in-game background. It's Underneath this month so it's a bit rocky down there, with what looks like 2 bands of sulphur trapped between the rocks. Really cool effect there.

Also added Auriolis and Gort'n to the game. Auriolis was shown some time back. Gort'n is shown below. This is the draft copy though, somehow Photoshop messed up and cut off a few pixels from this image, but the updated image on the engine is hopefully the good one. Art for this card was done by Jen Reed, with the background from a Malaysian whose deviant art handle is "No-Wing".


Things have been rather quiet on the engine otherwise, but the number of games is almost hitting 100 per day. I guess that's a good sign. I do miss those days when you could log on and play MND at anytime you wish (or observe a MND game). Sadly those days are gone.

There are still a large number of "angry" players on LotR Online though. Some sort of Credit Card fraud thing. It's interesting though to see and guage the reactions there. I did some more trades and got some really cool cards for a new deck idea. Apparently everyone has the same idea as well it seems. Oh well. Will build that deck when I find the motivation. Basically it's a rather interesting one. Might also build a true Rainbow Archer deck with nothing but archers on both sides. That might sound interesting. I wonder if I have enough cards for those.

Tomorrow is Ed's birthday. He'll be ... older. I wonder if he'll put in time to do CCG Workshop stuff like he has for the past 3 years or so. I hope he would, there are a number of easy things that only he can do, like adding screenshots and setting up the folders for Checkers.

I got to get a screenshot from a teaching AvP game yesterday and that could go up on the game page. It's a pity I can't link it in eventhough the images are on the server. I also talked with 3 Shepherds to let them know about one shot tours, how to arrange for vacation modes and things like that. The 3 of them are really keen at promoting the games that they play so I guess that's a good thing. One of them is also branching out into other games as well, which is a good sign.

Anyways, time to get back to MND. And message for Scroogey - soggy fish and chips is a developed taste!

-+@ Stars in Alignment @+-

Nope, no Wildstorms update for those who was expecting one, things just didn't line up for me to do them. I know I was supposed to do it and I even though about how it could be done, but when the push turned to shove, the tough gets going...

I did update the AvP rules so that they now link to the correct scenarios... and as Ravage pointed out, a location deck would be required for most other scenarios except for contact. I guess contact is what people will be forced to play for a while then since I don't really have plans to add in a location deck, but I guess that will be added sooner or later... hopefully sooner... and hopefully by someone else.

I also prodded Martin about VTES not having any development infomation made public for 2 months so hopefully he'll post a screenshot or something. People don't realise that it takes ages to adapt a game, particularly a full version for a licensed game. Sure, one can do a "no frills" version like AvP in a day or two, but as the players are finding out, such a version isn't "fun" to play at all as it'd probably be missing huge gaps like AvP currently, but hey, AvP's still playable.

Have I mentioned that Logan has been busy on LMS and Crypt? A lot. More than usual. That's considering that he's got real life and things are "going South" for him, literally as well as figurately. He's also got an important date coming up - I posted a card manip on the forums which he enjoyed. Heh.

Besides Martin and Logan and (sorta) myself, I don't think anyone else is actively coding games. Thomas seemed to be stuck on Frank's Zoo, although with a bit of help he could get it finished real soon. Tomi still hasn't got his internet connection setup yet and Kev as usual hasn't got much motivation to code his games these days. Tim seems more interested in selling his LotR cards rather than workin on Hoth, the next SW set, which seems to be a pity, since there was demand for the game about a month back when ANH came out and he didn't follow it up. Oh well. So we're practically stuck with 3 game coders (if you count myself and T & S has half each) and we still produce as many games as we have been doing when there were at least triple that amount of game coders... which I guess is surprisingly. Hopefully, Tomi and JC will come back to the coding fold soon.

Oh, I haven't mentioned why I didn't work on WS today... that's because I was sorting out my stacks of unsorted cards. There's Sim City, which I finished opening yesterday, then there's a while stack of X-Men cards, Hyborian Gates, which I just dump into a box (but I'm still waiting to get a good card box, so they are sitting in a pile at the moment), the custom MND cards (and I had to get ready the package to send to Stephan), the commons and uncommons from Mount Doom (while I sorted out the cards to trade with some german guy). That took up most of my coding time today. Well, another day won't hurt WS too much I suppose. And given the fact that I'm more likely to break it than add something new...

I'm almost LotR'ed out. Played a short game and won because I raced to 9 and killed off all my hobbits. Hobbit sacrifice works, although I'm more reluctant to do it. I've got to learn how to play ruthless sacrifice like I do with MND Cald. Anyways, let's show some Shadow cards just to fill up the space and make this post pretty...


Aragorn was the one released today along with 3 other cards and there are people talking on the Decipher forum about his picture, how big his chin is, how fat he looks, etc. I should be glad it's not Legolas and I don't visit a Legolas forum. 13 more days to go for the online release of Shadows... and counting.

Well, it's raining here so I have no idea if the stars are in alignment... but at least I know the cards I just posted are in alignment.