Friday 19 July 2013

The Damned Map and Other Things

I know you are all hoping for more Warbirds updates, but things with printers move slow, so you're going to have to wait a bit more on that one. Sorry.

What I want to talk about today is the map for Remnants. When the game came out it had very little space for a map (that is one of the few problems with a 6x9 format). To make up for this, I spent a few hours in Photoshop labeling a high resolution map and then hosting it on our website.

My error, and it was a grievous one, was to host on my old website and then link to it from the far superior Remnants website. Things were OK until I forgot about my old site. It eventually crashed, and then the registration expired. The hosting company had the wrong email address for me, so I received no updates when it went down.

The first sign I had that something was wrong was when people started telling us that the Remnants map wasn't working. Confused, I looked into it, and eventually found the problem. I contacted the web host, renewed my old site, and discovered that all my old data was gone. I tried for a long time to recover it, but it's lost. Recently I thought I had someone who happened to download the map before it dropped, but no luck.

So, I finally went back to Photoshop and built a new map and hosted it in the right spot (with all the maps for Edge). You can take a look at all 2.6 megs of it:
Be sure to check out the full size map.
Going to Gencon
Cait and I are taking Outrider Studios to Gencon this year. We are bringing the Great Derek Breedon and the wonderful Desiree Barlow with us. We should also have Warbirds, Remnants, Broken Lands, and Edge with us. If you're going, you can come visit us at booth 1653. We'd love to meet you and give you a 5 minute demo of one of the games. 

Go See Pacific Rim
As a person who made a game about giant robots beating the shit out of giant monsters, I was pretty stoked to see a movie about giant robots beating the shit out of giant monsters. The movie exceeded my expectations. It was hundreds of tons of rocket punches, power swords, and armoured goodness. Go see it and watch the awesome.

Other Games
I backed Jason Pitre's Spark RPG and I have been reading through it. Jason has created a brilliant, intellectual game. If you remember my old Grognard/Warhol comparison, it falls squarely in the Warhol camp. It is a game designed around structured narrative building and examining deeply held beliefs. I have to admit, it is very different from the games I like to create. My games are about nostalgic wish fulfillment and focus on emulating a single concept in a fast and simple, but not too simple, manner (robots, dogfights, etc), and creating something beautiful in that narrow focus.

Jason is far more ambitious. He has created a setting generator that treats the setting as an expansive, powerful character. His pre-generated settings are full of contentious issues, moral dilemmas, and multiple layers of complexity. The characters reflect and are directly linked to the setting as well as each other. The mechanical system that pushes his game is simple and easy, and if you remember my previous posts about mechanics, his design hits all the high points. 

So, I am not in the business of game reviewing, nor do I intend to start, so I will not give Jason a score or any such thing, but if what I have said so far intrigues you, you might want to check out his game. Oh, and the cover art is pretty cool:
It took me 5 photos with my Iphone to get 1 that wasn't blurry

That's all for Now
I will update here the moment I have some Warbirds news for you.


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