Yes, it's an updated X-COM clone. Of course, updatedX-COMclones already exist, but they've failed to recapture the magic, and there's a real X-COM coming soon, but it's been simplified from the original, so there's still room for another attempt.
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Sunday, May 13
Purely Coincidental, I Tells Ya. Purely Coincidental.
Although the game may vaguely resemble a familiar family entertainment...
Okay, although the game may closely resemble a familiar family entertainment, it's not like it at all. It works rather in reverse, starting with a bustling happy city and proceeding toward the titular doom, the winner being the player bringing about their particular form of doom first.
And the special editions ($75 and up) come complete with pewter figures of the Elder Gods, which is not something you want to miss.
If you know what's good for you.
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Friday, May 11
Creatively Clouded
So Adobe's new software rental model is finally out, and a lot cheaper than the previous version. And I noticed that they're offering a significant discount if you sign up for a full year and already have a license for any of their professional products version CS3 or later. Given the number of applications and bundles I've bought over the years, surely I'd have something that will do the trick.
So, let's see (shuffle, shuffle...) Macromedia Suite Version 8? Probably not. Aha, Fireworks CS3 license key. Type type type... Achievement unlocked: 40% discount! Achievement unlocked: Adobe Everything!
I will of course be too busy to ever do anything with any of it, but that's not the point. The point is, mine!
Update: There we go, I now have working installs of CS3, 4, and 5 Design Premium, and CS6 Master Collection. Skipped over CS5.5; it didn't really seem worth the effort.
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Thursday, May 10
Things That Are Sort Of True #1
The last veteran of the Crimean War only died in 2004.
No servers are on fire today, so I can spare a moment to check over my Kickstarter pledges.* Only two of the projects I backed have failed so far. Bit of a shame in both cases; MetaCell II looked interesting, and Popchilla's World looks like a good idea and something worth developing.
Starlight Inception didn't look like it would make it until about an hour before it ended, when the pledge rate suddenly went through the roof.
These have reached their goals and are still open. I'm really looking forward to Grim Dawn, which has been in development for a couple of years and already looks awesome. And Almond Quest is as cute as a bug sandwich.
The others are all pen-and-paper RPG projects, which are just thriving on Kickstarter. Without the uncertainties and expenses of computer games, or the odd production requirements of board games, they can set small goals for quirky projects, and very often, exceed them by miles.
Together with Hasbro / WotC / TSR's remakably liberal licensing of the older versions of AD&D, this has generated a mini RPG boom.
And these still need your help!
Drifter is a space trading game in the tradition of Elite; it's mostly complete on iOS and raising funds for a Windows & Mac port. It's doing pretty well with more than 50% of the goal raised so far.
Kinetic Void is a spaceflight sandbox adventure thingy. I think the loose definition and the fact that it's at an earlier stage of development (so no gameplay videos) are hampering the pledge drive. Still, I was willing to toss $10 at a potentially interesting indie game.
Republique is an SF action game for iOS / Windows / Mac. They've already raised $300k out of an ambitious $500k, but with less than three days to go, it's looking shaky.
Light Table is an experimental free-form programming IDE, one that gets out of your way and lets you code. If you've seen a recent version of something like Visual Studio, or even something like PyCharm (which I use) you'd likely know why this interests me. Visual clutter is the order of the day; PyCharm is wonderfully functional by very annoying to actually use.
On a good day I can spend 10 hours in an IDE, so if something comes along that makes me even 10% more productive, or even just 10% happier, it will pay for itself in no time.
Light Table has nearly reached its goal, but they're looking to raise more money to added support for more languages, and Python is the first stretch goal.
Update: Last Minute Surges 'R' Us, and Republique crosses the finish line with 8 hours to spare.
* INAA.
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Saturday, May 05
Currently Hiring
Tech support fairies. Must have own wings and fairy dust.
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We Interrupt These Faces For
Drifter: A Space Trading Shut Up and Take My Money.
Okay, sometimes the developer isn't the ideal spokesman for the game, so here's some footage of the game itself:
The game is already well into development for iOS (iThingies); the Kickstarter project is to raise funds to do Windows and Mac ports. They've raised 20% of their target in 20 hours, so it's looking promising. Just $10 for the digital download.
I wonder if this game is supposed to be a modern reboot of "Frontier: Elite II". That's sure what it looks like.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Saturday, May 05 2012 03:56 AM (+rSRq)
3
Dang. I hate to bother you for like the 5th time, Pixy, but I just got this message while trying to post at Ace's:
Your IP address (207.191.102.33) has been banned. If you feel this is in error, please contact the blog owner by email.
Now, as you and I know, I can be a douchebag in the comment section. But I'm fairly confident that I haven't been rude in ANY comment section since you and Den Beste belittled me on this site, almost a year ago. Can you fix this?
Thanks in advance.
Posted by: Kevin at Saturday, May 05 2012 10:22 AM (3o64G)
4
There's an automatic filter that will ban you if you trip certain switches (it takes 5 points for a comment to be rejected by the spam filter, I think it's 25 points for a ban).
I'll get you unbanned now.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, May 05 2012 12:48 PM (PiXy!)
5
Steven, yes, they have Elite/Frontier very much in mind with this. I'm happy to throw $10 at them to see if they can recapture the Elite magic.
They've made a good start with the musical score, and it looks pretty, if a bit aseptic.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, May 05 2012 12:50 PM (PiXy!)
Yeah, there are projects where that is only barely a parody. Fortunately, they've failed.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, May 05 2012 12:56 PM (PiXy!)
7
Thanks much. But it still didn't work. I typed in 'test' followed by clicking 'post', and it still said:
Your IP address (207.191.102.33) has been banned. If you feel this is in error, please contact the blog owner by email.
If you can fix it, that would be great. But it's not that big of a deal. Ace.mu.nu is ridiculous. It's so frickin' big! You've created a monster, Mr. Misa.
Posted by: Kevin at Saturday, May 05 2012 01:19 PM (3o64G)
8
Regarding the failed project, that guy needs to hire someone to be his spokesman. He's even uglier than I am.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Saturday, May 05 2012 01:24 PM (+rSRq)
9
Sorry Kevin, got distracted by a pack of wild monkeys. Should be good to go now.
And the credit for Ace of Spades really goes to Ace and his crew; I just change the light bulbs.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, May 05 2012 01:32 PM (PiXy!)
10
Fixed! Of all of the Pixy Misas in the world, you are by far my favorite Australian one.
Thanks!
Posted by: Kevin at Saturday, May 05 2012 02:09 PM (3o64G)
I've been tinkering with RPG Maker VX Ace the last hour or so.* It's a system for building old-school JRPGs - think Final Fantasy III or thereabouts.
It's got the usual tools you'd expect, like a tile-based map painter, event triggers, a database where you can define characters, classes, skills, monsters, equipment and so on, and a neat little character designer that creates a portrait and matching sprite like so:
Yes, a winged bunny girl.
And it's programmable in Ruby. It doesn't have the full Ruby standard library - for good reason, because that would make it too easy for games to mess up your system - but it has the full language and a useful set of game libraries.
If you don't mind the old-school graphics, it looks like it's a very flexible system. You can alter all the standard character classes, skills, spells and so on to fit your own design, and anything you can't create directly in the game tools can be scripted in Ruby.
So if you're a programmer with no art skills to speak of looking at creating an early 90's JRPG of your own, you might want to give it a whirl.
* While waiting for athree failed RAID arrays to be repaired.
The Grim Dawn project on Kickstarter is doing okay - they're up to 44% after three days - but I want to see them at 440% so they can make the game extra double awesome.
If the idea of a slick steampocalypse action RPG appeals to you, hop on over and sign up. $18 gets you the game, DRM-free, and a sense of smug self-satisfaction for sticking it to the lizard. It's from some of the creators of Titan Quest, which I picked up for $3.74 on a Steam sale and then played for about seventy hours.*
Do it. You know it's right.
This message brought to you by the It's Not an Addiction Council for the Promotion of Neat Stuff on Kickstarter.
* In the game, you walk from Greece to China. This takes a while.
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Tuesday, April 17
One Door Closes, You Know The Drill
Wasteland 2 is safely under way with nearly $3 million in hand (actually, just over $3 million counting separate Paypal contributions).
And the long-awated Grim Dawn, from the team that created Titan Quest, has just launched its own Kickstarter project.
Plus, the Shadowrun project is still running, comfortably over a million dollars and going strong.
Oh, and there's an intriguing post-Ragnaroktic role-playing/turn-based-strategy game called The Banner Saga closing in the next few days.
Of course, the first of this generation of big crowdfunded game projects only launched two months ago, so none of them have actually delivered anything yet, and it's possible they could all fall short of their promises even as they are funded beyond their goals. But given what a mess the existing game publishing industry is making of things, that would still be better than the status quo.
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Is apparently out in English by way of Germany, retitled for unknown but clearly stupid reasons The Train Giant: A-Train 9.
The site that had those wonderful hi-res screenshots has since bit the dust, and they don't seem to be up anywhere any more. I have many of them squirreled away somewhere, though, and might upload them here if I can find them.
Available on Gamer's Gate for thirty bucks, and as far as I can tell, not for sale anywhere else at all. Which is nuts. If they got it on Steam they'd have ten times the sales. It's as if they didn't want to make money from this.
Hmm. GOG have just started selling not-so-old games, and they have an announcement scheduled in (checks time) two and a half hours. Fingers crossed!
1
Leaving your fawn below the high tide mark == not very smart.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Wednesday, April 04 2012 01:06 AM (+rSRq)
2
Don't know what was going through mama deer's mind at the time, but who needs brains when you're that cute? All it has to do is meep plaintively and there will be a dozen camera crews fighting each other to rescue it.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, April 04 2012 12:26 PM (PiXy!)
3
Darn shame about the Philip Glass-ian soundtrack, but awwwww dewiddlemeeps!
Posted by: Wonderduck at Thursday, April 05 2012 10:44 AM (PVVuW)
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Reverse Order
Reverse date order, not reverse coolness order.
So that's where all my money went.
(Actually, most of the money I've spent on Kickstarter went to just two projects: OotS and Erfworld. But that's as it should be. At least until Obsidian launch Torment 2.)
So far, not one project I've backed has failed to receive funding. Looks like that situation's only going to last another 12 days.
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Sunday's Greatest Thing Ever
Side-scrolling platformy action adventurer for the PC. There's no shortage of side-scrolling platformy action adventurers, but mostly they're not on the PC. This one is. And it looks really cool.
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April Oneth
Adblock. Nice one.
Oh, and the PitP forums too.
Google Maps is cool, but perhaps a bit over-egging the pudding.
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Friday, March 30
Today's Greatest Thing Ever
A macabre fairy tale? As if there were any other kind.
In other news, I have a llama. Arrived this morning as a freebie with some t-shirts. Which were greatly discounted, then over-charged, then over-refunded, so they worked out being reasonably priced even with international shipping.
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09:19 PM
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Thursday, March 29
Still No TV
ac ai bz fm gs im io li lk me ms mx nu pt sc sh vg vu
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, March 29 2012 04:29 PM (PiXy!)
5
I don't understand. What's wrong with "mee.au"? (Besides the fact that it sounds like a catgirl?)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Friday, March 30 2012 01:25 AM (+rSRq)
6
So, will mee.mee.me be a Miss Piggy tribute site?
-j
Posted by: J Greely at Friday, March 30 2012 01:29 AM (2XtN5)
7
The Australian domain registry only lets you register domains under .com.au, .net.au, or .org.au. But yeah, mee.au would be cool.
As for mee.mee.me.... Maybe.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, March 30 2012 11:16 AM (PiXy!)
8
Try to get .su. It was supposed to be shut forver, but then two years ago someone registered pant.su. No idea how.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Friday, March 30 2012 12:07 PM (5OBKC)
