-+@ It's Time to Party @+-

Yay! Paaaaaaarty!



Three different cards, Yukk's Feed the Dog, Hamlet's Ending cardback and YNDT's Skyscraper. It's a change though, but it's also apt for what I have been doing today. I spent quite a bit of time today, adding the YNDT and Hamlet infomation to the CCGW wiki. Why those 2? Well, because together with Yukk, they are the 3 Interactivities Ink games that I've adapted for CCGW.

The story actually began yesterday though, when Tomi asked for a slightly different format to the game box for Mythos. I played around with Doom's box and at the end of the day, Tomi was happy with the modifications I made. So that got applied to Doom and to Mythos as well. I see he has done Dark Ages after thatwith Dark Eden being blank. Of course, a change to the format means I had to go back to each and every page to add the necessary stuff. Not a lot of pages at the moment, but that will grow soon enough... at least I hope.

MND was the other page that I created yesterday and it was just a quick cut and copy from wikipedia for that though. Not too much infomation yet, but since these are easier to edit than webpages, hopefully, they'll get polished up to a good enough standard.

Talking about MND, I actually had a look at the tournament results today. It seems that some people are reporting their results on the forums, but not on the engine and vice versa, which means that there are now two different records of the tournament. It almost seems as if it's two tournaments running concurrently. Ack, I hope I don't have to clean up as well. Transition periods are tough though.

I actually did some game coding yesterday - can't mention the game here yet. Was going to do some Hyborian Gates, but realised that I didn't have the files here. Grrr... oh well.

Ed is still trying to figure out what's causing massive lag on the server. I thought it was an error in the collections script, but it turned out not to be so. Maybe it's just something random or maybe it's a hacker. Who knows? It's interesting though, because the lag can oft times disappear and then reappear for no reason. Perhaps the physical server is just being cranky?

And everyone else? I really have no idea though. It's the beginning of the year and there's a million things to be done. It's also a new year to make resolutions to complete a game you said you'll code 2 years ago. Perhaps that's why Aaron's been hanging out around the engine these days? Who knows... I have' also seen Craig online though, although he hasn't hung out on the engine for a while now. I guess he's gone on to other things.

-+@ Wheel of Torture @+-

The titles of this CCG makes great titles.



Art Credits:
Sloth Hyren by Jen Reed, Background by Rich Werner
Sandstone Hyren by Austin Gardner
Tornado Hyren by Jen Reed, Background by Matt Holmberg/Rich Werner

What a day, and it hasn't finished yet. Another 3 cards from EF of MND. The good news is that all the MND stuff I did in the past 24 hours was just to play a game with Freigabe/Christoph. He won, barely. I played with a Transformers deck that really didn't do anything spectacular, but it did help me get familiar again with the game after not playing for so long.

I spent quite a bit of today working on Yukk! It is the first of my games to get the Experience points system. Hopefully, people would play it more, but somehow I doubt it since it's only silvers/gold tokens. I also fixed a major error that made the game unplayable since the last update and updated the code a bit to make it a little more modern. Hopefully it would be played more.

Talking about play statistics, I finally did the December numbers. Surprisingly Star Wars still leads the pack, even with VTES on the scene - both are free. Shadowfist is not far behind. The game that was most played AND cost tokens was Doomtrooper, which was a surprise. MND lagged far behind games such as Doomtown and B5. Oh well. How the mighty have fallen.

I updated the plates post today, in preparation to update Go Fish. Sadly I ran out of time. Reversi also would probably get an update soon-ish and both of those games will get Experience points added to them. It's not too difficult to add expeerience points I have discovered with Yukk.

I saw someone (Kinam) offering a one-shot tour for Wyvern. Sorta interesting I think, but Wyvern is hardly played (and is still free). It's a pity that there are no takers though. There seems to be a dearth of players online these days, with the exception of probably the Star Wars players who keep pretty much to themselves.

VTES Online has its new URL these days - http://www.vtesonline.com. It was slow going when I checked there earlier, but there was a 3-player game going on. I wonder about the future of the game online. Yes, the game definately needs more sets, but Ed and Martin needs to get the permission for White Wolf to add those, and then there needs to be time to actually scan the images and code them. Hmm...

-+@ Threshold @+-

Threshold of what? Heh heh!



Art Credits:
Clay Hyren by Jen Reed, background by Alison Strom/Whyrl
Himsmr by Cody Shipman
Circling Hyren by Jen Reed, background by Matt Holmberg

Another 3 cards for Exodus Flight. I've got people asking me when I'm starting work on that already. Well, I'm not going to even think about that until TW is in playtesting. Talking about TW though, there has been lots of activity centred around the 3 regions that have been reviewed so far, and I know people are working away busily on the other regions. This is going to be fun.

Hyborian Gates finally has the cardlist added, and even as I type this, the images are being uploaded to the server. All that's left are the dice and markers, the special stuff for the game and it'll be ready for release. Maybe a 1st Jan 2006 thing? Heh right... who knows?

I added the Yukk! rules onto the CCGW wiki today. While there, I noticed that people were posting the rules directly onto the main game pages, so I setup guidelines on how the game pages on the wiki should be structured. I have no idea if anyone will even follow those rules with the exception of myself. Anyways, when I do get the time, YNDT, Hamlet and Elemental will be getting their pages setup as well at some point in the future.

Oh and I just noticed that Mark has added the Aquarius rules to the wiki recently, so I wonder if that means the game is ready for release soon. I think he still has the final few bits of things to tweak before he's ready to make it go public. Well, if he does that would make it his fifth game this year, a record for him. Only myself, Tomi and Martin has done more games a year.

Ed posted that he made some changes to 7Sea and it seems good that the game is getting changes in more than just card images. I'm going to guess it's finally catching up with B5 and WoT. All it needs now is custom cards and something unique to it. Whee.

I only noticed that Alex has been made a shepherd instead of a PL, so I have to update the plates post. Bah! More work. And while I'm at it, I need to update Go Fish at some point as well. Maybe today... maybe later? well, that's the defination of s**n anyways.

Martin must be busy tweaking VTES in preparation for its big day in the sun. 8 more days to go give or take half a day due to the engine being on Central US time. Hopefully Ed will post up a time as to when the whole thing will launch as well. I'm going to have to hate telling the Australians and Europeans that it's not the 19th yet in the US...

-+@ Tropical Rain @+-

It's refreshing and stuff...



Artist from left to right: Holmberg, Bozyk with Holmberg Background, Holmberg. All three cards are possibly for Twilight War, which may or may not be made. I have no idea. The two on the right were made just earlier today, which is why they are showcased here. The middle piece is Gwen's second donation for custom cards. It looks good though I also got news that we have Holmberg's permission to use his artwork on the custom cards, as long as he's credited and stuff, so that's another piece of good news. I also got Zach drawing a TG card for me - a nice teardrop. He's doing that better than the Hyren he was drawing earlier. Relics aren't too difficult to draw, it's the creatures and the magi that are always a headache. Talking to Eric and he's getting tempted to do MND artwork again. Hopefully he'll contribute a piece or two to the new custom set. We'll have to see.

Not much activity for the MND tournament today, but 2 games were played earlier in the morning and Pirategirl got on the scorecard. That means it might be possible to get 8 games after all. We'll have to see how the tournament goes. I've got to nag WindRider to go play his games as well. Hopefully, I'll see him on.

I also did a semi-major MND update for the engine and added the new TG naroom cards, but forgot to add in the bit where if one plays a creature from discard or deck, it'll get a creature dice at zero. Well, next update probably. The update also saw the first errata for EL - Festive Furok got modified to make it friendlier in play. Hopefully people will play more with it now. That makes Amara, Beauty as the only other card that might need errata. We'll have to see. Also updated the Furok card on the website. Next up though would be to finalise SP by the end of next month.

Also updated Kings... it was a simple update until I tested it out in the soon to be released new build... where it broke. So I spent most of the day upgrading it to work for the new build. I've got to remind myself to do the switch-over manually when the new build is released as well. It wasn't fun doing the same change three times, since there are 3 different language versions of it.

Played Yukk and Bowling with Kari today as well and won at Bowling but lost at Yukk. I decided to upgrade Bowling a bit while he went on to play ToJH with Tomi and Ed. I think it's about time I removed the random number requester popup and I finally have an idea as to what to replace it with. Probably next month, I'll put it in... I know I said I won't work on it since it's a waste of time, but since it's turning out to be an interesting idea, I might as well put it in.

So, I've still have to finish up HG, WS, B5 and HumAliens. I like the slow pace of HumAliens so much I think I'm going to stretch it over the next few months. WS and the beginnings of B5 will probably get done tomorrow, I guess. Hopefully I'll h ave to time to work on them.

Played two games of LotR today, the first one with non-solo Smeagol, the second with the dwarves. Dwarves sucks against swarms and Naz... actually Naz can be really strong. I still enjoy playing Besiegers though - Gandalf and Elves are discarding their stuff, but I don't have to worry about the smirking Galadriel anymore because they X'ed her. I've got a hankering to play the bouncing Hobbits though...

Tomi was working on AD earlier and then on TOJH. I have no idea what he's up to. He's also offering X-Files away. Maybe he's just getting busy. Who knows what's next? Mythos to Alex maybe? Kapa has been busy playtesting everyone else's game. I think he should be made like official playtester or something. I saw Logan earlier as well working on CC, but I have no idea if an update is imminent.

Ed is hurrying out finish the next version of the engine, and to get VTES out ASAP. It's good to see a post about VTES on the forums... it'll stave off the questions from the players hopefully. Really though, some of those VTES players can be a bit impatient sometimes, but I guess they just really badly want to play. Martin said something about wanting whatever he's coded to be made available as well, so I am guessing that WW or Ed is the bottleneck. I have no idea there though and I'm not about to hurry them... afterall, perfection takes time!

Tony IM'ed me to say that the linked dice from Final Twilight works great. He's been upgrading WoT so much though, and when I tested it yesterday, the dice was too low-tech, so I suggested he get them upgraded as well. He's really burning it up with the updates. He's on errata now... and maybe later he'll be doing attachments. He's definately moving and shaking.

Haven't heard from Christoph lately, he's probably spending a bit more time offline now that Star Wars is done. Haven't seen Julien's Shadowfist update as well - I hope he gets that out soon, people are playing decks with proxy cards already. Someone should really ping Robert and Aaron to see if they are still alive. I haven't heard from either in ages.

-+@ Love's For Fools Wise Enough To Take A Chance @+-

Have I mentioned how much I like the site tracker thing? It's telling me that scroogey is visiting on a daily basis and Billy on an twice daily basis. Interesting stuff or not.

Let's go in reverse order for today.




Noticed that there was an entire roomful of Yukk people today for the tour as you can see in the screen capture above. Never seen a 5 player game before which is just so cool. Anyways, I would guess the people playing are probably those who are bored out of their wits.

Worked on the Bronx Project today... if Bug remembers to set it up, it'll be up for Alpha testing later today. I'm only doing the "no frills" version of it though which I hope would be good enough. It already does have a unique background. Next up would be to finilise the cards in play menu and scripts and to make the dice and markers for the game.

Got a few more results to the poll for the game I'd be adapting next year. I was going to call it Project Chelsea, but then decided it'd be rather stupid to give it a codename when people already know which game I'd be doing, so well, I'll see what happens then - it's still a few months away after all.

We are trying to guess which card in The Vorlons were designed by Tewart. So far it's been hinted that it's not a character, which I guess I already knew. Which non-Character though would be a bit more difficult to guess. We'll see.

Played quite a lot of LotR today. Found a good card for my deck that nobody uses... and it's proving its worth so far. Trying to get 2 more of them for my online deck. It's a rare though - Stone Trolls, but it's a rare that nobody uses. Still, it does not take regional restriction (or whatever the equivalent is in LotR) into consideration which makes it a very good card for the deck.

Photo-Edited Logan onto Keanu's body today just for laughs. It does look good though. It can be seen on the quiz thread in the forums... that thread also has a very fake picture that Thomas did in order to "get revenge". I don't think he succeeded. And someone has to tell him that Hulk is the guy with the green skin, Shrek is the ogre with the funny ears and large teeth.

nipa told me yesterday about his schedule over the next few weeks ... and on closer reflection, I wonder if he told me only because he felt he had to give an explaination for his prolong absence. Well, I have no idea, but there was absolutely no need for him to have told me his plans. Well, it's just weird now that I think back about it.

Oh, and Rage or Dredd? You decide.