-+@ Yellow Jacket @+-

Eh? What a title...



Art Credits:
Chyter by Jeffry Ransom, background by Holmberg
Evergreen Hyren by Jen Reed, background by Holmberg
Spiky Beeb by Austin Gardner, colours redone by Nov, background by Nov

Just a quick short (Ha! probably not!) blog today to keep all the people who read this (yes, all 2 of you) happy.

Nothing much is going on with MND. The tournament is still going on and a game was just played over the last 24 hours. I wonder how many people are excited about that... I think all that's left are just the good players since everyone who seems to be a beginner seems to have dropped off the face of the tournament. Oh well.

The 5th DJ contest ended today. I haven't posted up the winner yet, but the entries look interesting. This will be the penultimate contest though. Next month's DJ contest will probably be the last one... unless someone gets more artwork for it.

I actually updated the unofficial site with the 2002 calendars today. It's a small little section, but as the site moves on from the cards and the card game to the entire mythos of the world that is the moonlands, every little thing is going to start building up. About a score of people, or at least hits from a score of unique sites are being registered at least on a daily basis from across 5 continents... so...

I updated the plates post yesterday for a whole lot of things. Mark got 2 more games on his plate and one is already in closed testing on the engine. He's being going like a maniac with his games lately, which is a good thing IMO. He's also picked up his first board game - perhaps he's looking for a challenge?

Ed was busy with a new version of the engine, and this time there was a White Wolf version as well, so Martin got happy and decided to do major work on VTES. He figured out a few cool tricks for the game too that one of these days I'll have to add to my games. Hopefully this game will be made public soon.

Tony released a few hundred fan cards for WoT a few days ago... that must have taken ages to code by hand. He's even added a burb to B5 in his release too. It's funny though how B5 has got massive play while WoT doesn't really. Perhaps it's the quality of the WoT player, or maybe it's just the subject matter?

Talking about B5, the league is turning up quite a number of bugs and shortfall in the B5 programming... and I'm happily explaining to everyone how to use the defects report page on the website (not the forum). Well, I guess I'll start seeing an upswing in B5 defects over the next few days.

There was only 1 league game over the league weekend... and d1ngo won that game, so I suppose he'll be taking away the 5 copper tokens and stuff. Things seem to be going slower for league though as people begin to see how difficult it is to actually play a B5 game mega-competitively and to win on time. I've yet to play a game though... hmm... one of these days.

Bruce/deleriad has started templating cards for the next fan-made B5 expansion... and his first 2 cards got shot at rather constructively... hopefully those won't be the final versions... but it's always interesting to get new cards. I wonder if we'll get a new card template this time around. Probably not.

Mark Smith of Radical Racers fame from Lo'Jac Entertainment buzzed me about the new forums. I had to explain to him that the forums were destroyed and that the new forums is a bit more simple than the old ones. He's happy with the forums though, although I haven't seen him posting anything about Radical Racers on the forums yet. Maybe he's getting up to something.

Mike/Grover also asked me about the possibility of a DoomTown FAQ thread/post. I directed him to the CCG forum, because that's where all the "low post volume" CCGs should go. I haven't seen anything from him either on the forums, but there are better DoomTown mailing lists and bulletin boards out there.

I still have about 4 more Final Twilight images to colour for the next next next (or something) expansion. I wonder where I'll find the time to do that. I also have to finish up Hyborian Gates which has taken ages to do. Oh well, such is one with little to no motivation to adapt a complicated game... let's hope that motivation hits soon.

I bought the 40th anniversary version of Dune and read it. Made me understand more of the CCG now. Might even say I'm inspired to play the CCG again. Then again, thinking of the complex rules and the limited large number of cards... hmm... I guess I'll stick with the novel.

-+@ Charge! @+-

and that in more than one way describes Radical Racers...



Art Credits:
Hinko and Wasperine by Beth Zyglowicz
Greedy Kilm by Jen Reed with background by Holmberg/Nov.

Three more for Exodus Flight, most of which can be viewed on the EF page. Work on the RP customs have slowed down quite a bit, but that's to be expected what with the end of summer and all. Still the customs are getting a bit of attention in other quarters, with TG getting some errata on the engine.

Of course, the SP tournament is still ongoing although the number of games have slowed down dramatically now that people have used up all their tokens. It's good to know that there are still people playing in the tournament that is almost running itself. There's been calls for more tournaments too, although I have to wonder how viable it will be come December.

The fourth Double Jeopardy contest ends in about half a day and there's been disappointing responses. Oh well, guess that's from the disappointing winners that have been chosen or something. I haven't yet picked a winner, although I do think that there are very strong entries in this month's competition.

The website is still going on... I'm still putting up the card scans on my site after the demise of everything on the official site. It's still getting crazy hits every day, and today, someone sent me a broken link report. I guess it must be getting bigger and stronger everyday. Quite a bit to do there - put up the alt art and the preview decks, then the Japanese cards before I can move to fiction. I think I've decided to post the fiction in reverse order - i.e. latest first - don't ask me why...

The B5 league started last weekend and up till today, only 3 games have been played. That might not seem a lot but bear in mind that each game lasts at least 3 hours (and can take up to 7 hours) and has at least 3 players, that probably means more manhours have been spent playing those 3 games than have been spent on the Doomtrooper league this month (that's a trick statement, there's no Doom league this month so no hours have been spent there). Alwyn is doing a good job running the league and my commendations goes out to Rune.

While I'm on the subject of B5, the next expansion seems to be going slower. Sure, there are some young turks who are so keen to get their ideas into the set that they are almost spamming the forums. The SWD players will probably tell them that they need "patience, my young padawan". Still, Bruce is probably mulling the cards over in his head and we'll hopefully get a list of about 180 cards by the end of the month or early November.

Both the two games mentioned above had updates in the past few days, although I still have been busily trying to finish up Hyborian Gates. The images are all clipped now and the spoiler is more than halfway done. I just have to push myself to get the spoiler done soonish and then to import the cardlist into the gML. Lots of work there... would probably take me 30 minutes to import everything and to get it working.... if I remember how to do it correctly.



The distraction of the week though is Radical Racers which went public beta today. That's after 2 days of not so hard work... but the game is one of the lowest standard adaptation I've ever done for the engine. It needs to be spruced up with bells and whistles (literally and figuratively) to get it running up to scratch (pun intended). Still the owner of the game has been rather pleased with what has been done so far. I know I can do better, but well, I need lots more time to do that.

Having said that though, it was a bit hairy at some points since rather than copy from an existing game, I actually wrote the scripts from scratch for this one. It's a lot more difficult than I remember it to be and I can just pity new PLs who are trying to get everything up to scratch. And what I am doing here is really, really basic... for me that is. No wonder people get hang-ups about automations and game design. It's not that easy after all.

So that's the second original game that has gone live in under a week. I've even updated the links on the right to include the game as well. These games are all good though since they have:
1) Finished cards, complete with art
2) Rules
3) A webpage where everything is hosted
4) Some support from the creators of the game.
Final Twilight shares all that of course which was why it was adapted so quickly. I pity those people who want to design a CCG to make money, but don't know how and need experience from the inside. There seems to be lots of those flying around, but they come up lacking somehow. Mostly. I haven't been blown away by the Original games so far though. Not even by some of the really high powered ones - Allegiance, for one... and the MTG clone Mystical Empires...

I was digging through my weekend bag and dug up a starter deck of Naruto cards and a booster pack of Spiderman cards. Whoa, I forgot I bought those almost a month ago. What do I think about the cards? I think one is a kiddie game and the other is unappealing at least to me. I'm just going to keep copies of them in my cardback collection file.

With all the cards lying around, I searched for the good part of the week for a good online store that will ship cardbox boxes for cards to me cheaply. Well, tough, there isn't any that I can find. Bear in mind that most online stores charge $70 for shipping. Urgh. Ebay proved no better either... nobody wanted to sell those boxes outside the US. So what did I do? Today, I cut up a huge FedEx box and made two 1200 card count boxes. I think they can take 1200 cards... I didn't count, but the boxes are long. They don't look too professional, but since they are just storage boxes anyways, I think they are better than having cards lying in piles all over the place.

It's almost the end of the month and things are going to go crazy... particularly with the anniversary the week after that. Mark has been busy on Monster Rancher and Tony is still plugging away at Fluxx so hopefully both those games will go public then. I hope Hyborian Gates will join them on that day too.

I still haven't got everything done for my top 10 list for the anniversary... I guess that needs work... and there's the usual stuff - plates posts, statistics and all the internals that nobody else sees.

One thing everyone will see, but hopefully not notice is that the forums are getting shorter. I've been merging some forums and getting rid of others in a quest to make the forums shorter. I don't think I've been too successful so far, but I guess I'll get there eventually. There's only so much that can be eliminated anyways.

-+@ Close Formation @+-

and a few things are close to fruitation too...



Art Credits:
Slea by Raegan Walter
The other 2 by Beth Zyglowicz

That's all for Exodus Flight, and that, along with all things Custom Card-wise seems to have taken a back seat for the moment due to the website shutting off all its resources to the fans. I think that left a number of people high and dry so I have moved in to fill the gap. Novelty's Custom Cards now has images of the printed cards, and what is outstanding will be added in over the coming weeks. After that is done, the fiction will be added in slowly as well. The errata list and the restriction list are already available on the site. Consequently, the number of hits on the page has gone up tremendously.

The Malovis challenge from last month did wonders for the game on gEngine, pushing it back up to top 5 again, which was a good thing. It was lingering in the doldrums over summer. I think we need a summer program of some kind to make it worthwile for people to play then. The new Shadowsfall tournament has started and I think most of the crazies (especially Doug) has already blown their quota of 5 tokens on their tournament games. It will be interesting to see how that goes.

The other thing that has started, or rather continued, is the 4th edition of the Double Jeopardy contest. People are definately improving there as they try to outdo each other to get the tokens and the tournament win from the contest. It's shaping up to be an interesting month.

I did say that nothing much custom card wise has happened, well, that's a bit of a lie. Freigabe did some testing on the Kintors in Tainted Glimpses, which were found to be very wanting, so Mitch did more revisions and they got added onto the engine. They still aren't great, but with more Kintors coming in future, it's hopefully going to get great. The other card that has been the focus of many a complaint is Darunia's Twist. It got overhauled so that it's now perceived as being balanced, although the powerlevel of the card is probably still the same as before. It's funny how people perceive certain things.

And what has 2i's website been doing? There's an announcement on the official MND site stating that the property has been licensed to be produced as an animated show, the when and where and who and hows are rather vague and sketchy and there aren't too many details there. The sad thing is that they took down all the resources that was formerly on the site. Hopefully, that won't kill the game in the interim.

And non-MND stuff... the titles of the blog for the last two months have been taken from Doomtrooper cards. Nobody guessed them. Anyways, it's time to move on. Starting this month, the title topics would all be from a different CCG... which one would be for the readers to guess.

The end of the month was a busy time as usual... statistics, plates update and a whole host of things I had to do on the engine. I didn't think anyone used them, but Ed and JC has proved me wrong so I'll continue working on them every month as long as I remain a PL. There are a few other things that really should also be update... the CCGW (geek) code page for one, but I don't really have time these days, what with...

Hyborian Gates is still in the process of being prepped. 36 more images to go, then the spoiler and markers and specialised menu items and it'll be ready, hopefully to go public on the anniversary date. It's still a month away, but I'm mindful that time is short. I hope I can make it on that date.

Also hoping to meet that target dates is Mark with Monster Rancher. I have no idea how many weekends he's giving up to get it done by then, but if anyone can do it, he can. Tony could probably slip Fluxx in before then. He's got it to alpha testing stage on the engine and I guess it's only the last minor testing stuff that he needs to finalise.

Ed himself wants to get RSP ready by then, but I have no idea if he'll meet that target date. He has been working on Frank's Zoo for the past couple of weeks and has got a large number of issues resolved on that game. I wonder if he'll finish up what he's doing there and go back to RSP or move over to Capitol next...

No news on when VTES will go public... I guess these things need time for WW to figure out how things are going. Still the players asking to play it seems to have dried out... I wonder if someone else has developed a better copy of something to play it online. Martin hasn't updated the game in a while as well.

Tomi has been making minor tweaks to his game, and last I heard actually worked on Duel of Ages. That game is complicated, but it seems fun. Can't wait to see it. I can't believe Ed still hasn't sent Logan a copy of Maul of America... almost 2 years after Logan has taken on that game. I suppose Logan is also waiting for the materials to Sheboygan. Well, the latter is a game I'm not too interested in, but it would be a milestone to adapt that game for the engine.

There are also a number of games that are being licensed, but due to a shortage of licensed game developers, or something like that, I think Ed is holding off on the announcements. Two games I know we won't be getting are Pokemon, where Mike Liesik told me in no uncertain terms that we won't be getting it, and the game by Mystical Empires, which apparently are in talks with World's Apart to adapt the game.

Over the past week or so, besides MND, I made a minor upgrade to B5 due to requests from the players. People are playing that again, and Alwyn/Heidi is trying to organise an online tournament with the (now defunct) Welsh-league tournament rules. Obviously Engine Rules with the 2 custom sets applies. The hubbub around the next set though seems to have died down. I think most things have been hashed out and now all we're waiting for is Bruce to do his magic.

I was talking to Nate about Final Twilight and he expressed interest in an online tournament over Halloween. He'll probably be swinging resources onto it. He's also published 2 games this year, the Supers and Imp, the former is a CCG with just line art, the latter is a boxed card game (I think). I didn't ask him for further info, although he did link me to the sales area at RPG.net. If he wants to get it on the engine, all he can do is ask, I suppose, but since he hasn't, I didn't push him. He did mention he'll be getting the licensed agreement back to Ed soon, which means I'll have to do a bit of work to upgrade FTWIL to a licensed game standard - attached cards and deck-legality checking comes to mind. I'll leave out the automations though... they might spoilt the game. I was also requesting more cards for the game since it's getting rather stale, especially with the small amount of cards. Well, a shoestring budget would only get people so far, so I offered to do art for the game. What am I getting into? It'll probably be chronicled here in the blog.




The other "Independent" game that have come knocking on the doors is by an outfit called Lo'Jac Inc. with a racing car game of some sort called Radical Racers. The graphics are shown above. I think the game is slightly different from Mille Bornes in that it's more a CCG than a boxed game set. I'ven't contacted him yet, but I did leave a message on the forums in reply to his post asking him to contact me via PM. Let's see if I get anything.

Also got an IM from Nick Szankovics today saying he got 800k in a court case. Well, he'll get to keep over half a million even with the contingency fee and all. I wonder if that means he'll finally have the encouragement to finish up the images for Tanshihana? Well, only time will tell.

Yesterday, I got my second box of Shadows boosters and the 4 starter decks for Shadows... almost a year after it was released. It's interesting to note that I got better cards online than offline again. The plus is that this box of boosters had one more rare foil than the first box that I got ages ago. I've been trying to pick up a box of Bloodlines and Black Riders, but with no success. Ah well, I'm always down and out.

I'm also looking for more card storage boxes - I'm getting to the point where I need more for the MND and LotR cards that I'm amassing a-plenty. I wonder if there's a good online place that I can pick these up for cheap. Ebay has some nice ones, but they want way too much for shipping than I'm comfortable with.