Numenera itself was extremely successful; asking for $20k to get his pet project off the ground, veteran game designer Monte Cook ended up with, well, this:
Now, even before the game rules are complete, he's got a computer game tie-in. They're asking for an ambitious $900,000. How are they going on that? This is how:
You’ve got to be freaking kidding me!! We just funded in six hours!?!?!
Sometimes people aren't as dumb as other times.
Which means that we, the rabid fans of good quality stuffs everywhere, in just a few months have successfully Kickstartled both a spiritual successor and an actual successor to one of the best games of all time.
Okay....Can we get a true turn-based fantasy strategy game patterned after Master of Magic, instead of the alternatives the world has to endure for the better part of the last two decades?
Or maybe a true science-fiction/space opera turn-based/turn-based-like CRPG? Or one that is not related to Star Wars.
On the other hand, Torment will probably break their just-announced two million dollar stretch in a few hours. Heck, they apparently beat the Ouya Kickstarter for the 'fastest time to reach the one million mark'...
C.T.
Posted by: cxt217 at Friday, March 08 2013 12:29 PM (3sPDg)
2Master of Magic itself with updated graphics would be fine.
This is inXile's second hugely successful Kickstarter (the first was for Wasteland 2, a little under a year ago), and Obsidian, who were facing financial problems, also had a big success with Project Eternity. Shadowrun also got nearly $2m, making it four big isometric CRPGs in the pipeline. Grim Dawn (a post-apocalyptic steampunk ARPG from the developers of Titan Quest) got $500k. And Elite: Dangerous and Planetary Annihilation both got over $2m.
So with the right names attached to the project, the chances are pretty good, better than they've been for the past 20 years, anyway.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, March 08 2013 04:42 PM (PiXy!)
Gold Box games with HD graphics and isometric view would be great too, but that is asking a bit much. The Buck Roger XXVc CRPGs, using the Gold Box system, were probably the best scifi/space opera CRPG games I played, though.
I am a bit annoyed I missed out on the Elite: Dangerous campaign, if for no other reason than The Dark Wheel sequel that will come with it (Yes, I have a copy of the novella by the late Robert Holdstock from my Firebird copy of Elite.). With Wasteland 2, Shadowrun, and Project Eternity (As well as Dreamfall Chapters and now Torment, currently running.), it will be interesting once the games actually start shipping. At the very least, the Kickstarter games can not be any worse then a publisher-funded reboot like XCOM - which is another example of Firaxis muddling the development of a game with high ambitions. I really hope they will never reboot Alpha Centauri, for fear of what they will do to my favorite PC game of all time.
(Yes, I have been playing XCOM. How did you know?)
C.T.
Posted by: cxt217 at Saturday, March 09 2013 07:22 AM (3sPDg)
Wow! I did not look at the Elite: Dangerous Kickstarter page too closely before, because I would have notice the tier level where they offer a sequel to 'The Dark Wheel' novella that shipped with the original Elite.
Hmmm....That makes me dangerously eager to pledge, though how Kickstarter will handle the different currency from the dollar is another matter....
And finally - RIP Robert Holdstock.
C.T.
Posted by: cxt217 at Friday, January 04 2013 03:06 PM (or2/m)
As if GOG and Humble Bundle weren't providing me with enough games I don't have time to play.
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Wednesday, December 19
Expectations Exceeded
So on the 14th (Billy time) my little village joined the Ninja World War. At the time we had all of the upgrades available to us - 25 in all - as there's only so much you can do until you start fighting the Ninja War with other Ninja Villages.
On the 15th, I said:
8 upgrades in two days. So far.
There are 18 more upgrades we can buy while we stay safe in Tier 1. At our current rate, that will only take 4 or 5 days.
So let's do that, then get our Natural Resource Facility and join the big boys! (And girls.)
But plans change, and on the 16th:
Bought Natural Research Facility, Elemental Harmony! We've moved up from the Little League now.
On the morning of the 15th, I predicted 18 more upgrades in 4 or 5 days. Now, on the afternoon of the 19th the actual tally is 38. We set a crazily ambitious target and then more than doubled it.
Our daily announcement says it all:
Daily News (19 Dec): Please Collect. No Kaiju or Zombjas yet, that might not happen until tomorrow, sorry. Bought: Ninja Ambassadors, Medical Ninja Facility, Tunnel System, Elemental Shield, Special Forces (Genjutsu), Special Forces (Ninjutsu). Jonin and higher have access to S-Rank missions! Plus we should be significantly harder to invade now. Kaiju Upgrade: Needle Pits. Yesterday's drop: Hacksaw. Drop winners: Hypozeuxis. Raffle winner: Naksho. Raffle list: brikmuppet - 5, Dahemo - 4.
Yesterday's News (18 Dec): Please Collect and kill the kaiju! Bought: Verdant Fields, Temple of the Four Winds, Black Market, Invasion Defense, Ninja Beach, Nonja Lab, Television Studios, Summoning Circle, Lemonade Stand. We have Flower Wars and Mahjong! Kaiju upgrade: Wasteland Highway. Today's summon: Dakralai. Yesterday's drop: Tire Tracks. Drop winners: Hypozeuxis, Carrot 6. Raffle winner: Naksho. Raffle list: brikmuppet - 5.
So come join us! We have Burger Ninja and Pizza Witch, Hanafuda and Mahjong, Kaiju and Zombjas, BillyTV and BillyCon, Crafting and Summoning, Claw Machines and Darts, and Ramen and Lemonade!
Fractal Village: Because reasons.
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Monday, December 17
Memetic Plague Warning
(And yeah, I've heard about Psy's earlier, idiotic and repugnant lyrics. That sort of thing is why I appreciate artists for their art, and not for their political views. Also, was it windy here last night or what? My laundry basket is at the bottom of my garden; last night it was on the back porch.)
1
I think it's a good thing she's fast, because I'd think that that routine would be immensely annoying to fellow competitors. Being a winner makes a lot of those obnoxious habits acceptable.
Having said that... fwoar!
Posted by: Wonderduck at Wednesday, December 19 2012 11:01 AM (cymHZ)
Not not you, the other one. No, behind - yes, you. Hi, what's your name? Cool.
Yes, ninjas like you, with poorly-defined boundaries and non-integral dimensionality, hidden depths of self-similarity and, um, the time to log in once a day for a few minutes to help out a village in its finest hour.*
So click on that banner, sign up, and come join Fractal Village, the only village with hidden depths hidden in its hidden depths!**
Fractal Village: We have cake. Sometimes.
* May not contain actual finest hours.
** Apart from Recursion Village, the bastards.
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Cheapjacked
Just discovered that the entire Repairman Jack series and Adversary Cycle (by F Paul Wilson) can be bought on Kindle for sixty bucks. Update: Unless you live in America, in which case you're outta luck. That's for twenty novels, seven or eight thousand pages. And it's good stuff.
If you've never read any of his books, I suggest you start with The Tomb, a standalone novel* and the first Repairman Jack story. Just $2.99, assuming you have a Kindle or something with the Kindle app on it. If you like it, you'll very probably like all the rest.
It looks like the ebooks have been self-published by Wilson, which is is just how things should be, and a slap in the face for companies like Hachette, who need to be slapped in the face as often as possible. The one downside is that publishers still provide some useful services to authors, such as, oh, cover design...
Update: Also, a new Repairman Jack novel, Cold City, first in a new trilogy, is out. $2.99 for me! Since the series is complete** these are prequel stories, and apparently not supernatural/horror, since Jack's first brush with that sort of thing happened in The Tomb.
* Standalone in the sense that it tells a complete story and assumes no prior knowledge of the characters or their world. It wasn't planned as the first volume in a series; that just sort of happened.
** The final Repairman Jack novel, The Dark Before the End, immediately precedes the final Adversary Cycle novel, Nightworld, and Wilson has always made clear that there would be no continuation of the story beyond that point. Which makes sense, since it's the story of the end of the world...
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Interesting. When I click on the link I get the $2.99 page with a notice "This title is not available for customers from: United States."
However a quick search finds an equivalent Kindle edition for $7.99. The page includes a notice "This price was set by the publisher."
Posted by: Jonathan Tappan at Thursday, December 06 2012 11:17 AM (poC8e)
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Ah, that's unfortunate. Usually it's the other way 'round - the cheap version is US only and I end up paying more than the hardcover price for the ebook.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, December 06 2012 11:31 AM (PiXy!)
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I never got into his horror stuff, but read most (all?) of his early SF--partly because Baen reprinted a bunch of it some years back (from before Webscriptions)
Posted by: Kayle at Tuesday, January 22 2013 09:36 AM (M7tH0)
Cools! I loveds the original flash games. Civilizations Wars Ones is also availables for iThings as Supremacys Wars. I'm hopings for deepers gameplays this times; they alreadys nailed the designs with theirs quirkys arts styles and musicals scores, as you can sees froms this videos.
P.S. I've been sicks with the flus for the past weeks, hence the lacks of postings. About halfway betters nows, aparts from the coughings ups of buckets of phlegms.
Power is out at one of our new datacenters - ReliableSite in New Jersey.
The servers, however, are still up. They switched over to generator power without so much as a hiccup.
Which is how things are supposed to work, but there's a world of difference between the best-laid plans and a real live hurricane. So well done ReliableSite!
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They can still run out of diesel fuel or get submerged in the flood, once the surge starts rolling back.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Tuesday, October 30 2012 02:53 PM (RqRa5)
2
True. If they eventually have to shut down following a storm of this size, I'd understand that.
For the new server rollout I've gone for four small servers to replace our current one large server. (Total cost is about the same, and total capacity is much greater, yay technology!) Two are in New Jersey, and the other two in Dallas, with backups between the two sites. So if something like this happens once we're live on the new hardware, in theory I'll be able to just switch over to the other location.
Assuming DNS behaves itself, no major internet links are down, the backups and database replication are all up to date, and so on...
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, October 30 2012 03:34 PM (PiXy!)
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They report they have three days of fuel on-site. That should be enough - by then, either power or fuel should be available.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, October 30 2012 04:26 PM (PiXy!)
Posted by: Old Grouch at Wednesday, October 31 2012 04:37 AM (3kTEs)
5
This most recent spammer has also nailed Wonderduck and Brickmuppet.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Wednesday, October 31 2012 06:24 AM (+rSRq)
6
Gotta love the old, let's put the backup generators in the basement, meme. What could possibly go wrong with that?
PS. Commenting still has the problem of losing (note to programmers the world over, it's not spelled <i>loosing</i>) name/mail form fields on preview (for me at least, using Chrome).
Posted by: Tombei The Mist at Wednesday, October 31 2012 06:58 AM (hGCqM)
1
The box in the first vid, I've seen on...ugh, I can't believe I can't think of the domain at the moment, geeksomething.com. I'm sure you know it.
The last one is even funnier than bowlercoasting, which, for those who haven't seen it, is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQrC_C6SexI.
Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, October 27 2012 04:24 PM (WQ6Vb)
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Hey Pixy, I always forget you have a blog! I love the drifting video. I think I has that guy last time I took the Green Line in Boston.
Posted by: Truman North at Sunday, October 28 2012 12:21 AM (I2LwF)
