I'm back

Well guys, it's been a while. In fact it's been a little more than eighteen months... So, my blogging break was a little longer than I anticipated. The truth is that, although I love to talk, and write for that matter, I don't love writing the kind of things I talk about, lol. I'm working on it, however. I am actually going to try to keep up with this blog a bit better than I have in the past.

In order to help me do that I going to change one of the ground rules. I'm not going to focus on classic gaming as much as I did previously. I love retro-gaming (I mean what with starting Console Classix and all that I don't think I need any more proof), but I'm also interesting in a lot of other things. So, I plan to just talk about whatever I've got going on at the moment and see how it goes.

First, as coincidence would have it, I'm back to playing Dwarf Fortress. It really is amazing, as well as being fairly difficult to master. For those of you who would like a lighter version there is “A Game of Dwarves”. It was recently published by Paradox Entertainment. They were very open about the fact that the game was inspired by Dwarf Fortress. I think it's awesome that DF, which is basically an “elite” game, could be the philosophical inspiration for an almost casual game. It's just one of the interesting things going on in gaming.

In other news, I am still trying to get published. I've actually written another book since the book I was working on in my last blog. When I finally got that book to an agent it was his opinion that it didn't have enough popular appeal (it was a collection of my fairly humorous childhood stories). As I'm a nobody, nobody cares what happened in my childhood. I had to admit I could see his point. So, last fall I wrote another book. It's a fantasy that's just over 100k words. It should have a bit more popular appeal. Next week the manuscript is going to be e-shot out to a number of publishers.

I've handed over some of the Console Classix workload to another company. It's run by a close personal friend of mine. I think the injection of new blood (and new ideas) is going to be very good for us. There will probably be quite a bit of news in the near future. Keep an eye on the site.

I've also started working on game development. It's going very well. I'm currently coding a sort-of spiritual successor to Master of Magic entitled Worlds of Magic. We actually already tried (and failed) to raise enough money to produce it ourselves through kickstarter. Although the project wasn't funded it got me in touch with a producer. He runs Wastelands Interactive and is helping us raise the money we need to produce the game. It was originally going to be 2D just like MoM. However, having thought it over I decided to go with the Unity3D engine so I could add 3D elements where they made sense. (Like for the battle board for instance.)

There is a lot going on with the game right now. Artists are working getting us the resources to launch another (and almost certainly more successful) kickstarter project. I am working on a programmatic version of the D20 system for the core combat mechanics. I plan to talk more about it, but this has run long enough for my “I'm back” post.