I'm in the future. Like hundreds of years in the future. I've been dead for centuries. Oh, lovely, you're a cheery one aren't you?
Sunday, April 29
Software For The Talentless Hack
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.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
07:24 PM
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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.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
11:29 PM
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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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