Page: News.News201207280732PM - Last Modified : Sun, 29 Jul 12 - 1833 Visits

Starcraft Invasions

The big news is that I have just finished making a Photo Guide for Starcraft invasion. Since it's a solitaire variant and since starcraft is very complex, I though of making a video about how to play the game. But due to my lacking of technology and skill at making videos, I decided to make a photo guide which illustrate most of the concepts of the game. The rules are much more complete than the guide, but sometime visual aid can help understand a few concepts since there is no pictures in the rule book. Here is a link on the guide:

http://bgd.lariennalibrary.com/index.php?n=Guide.StarcraftInvasions

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Wizardry Legacy

The wizardry legacy video game I started to work on in April had been released near the end of June. It can be found on the project's page here:

http://www.allegro.cc/depot/WizardryLegacy/

Most of the features that were in the previous version has been reimplemented. But many game concepts has been simplified and the database now run on SQLite which is much more easier to work with. I decided to make a pause in July since it's hot in summer and harder to work and since I had many other things to finish ... like the starcraft guide I have just talked above.

The game is still not playable, the next step will be to work on the combat system to make the game somewhat playable if I release it with an adventure. I will probably restart coding somewhere in August.

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Pacific Storm

Lately I had an idea to convert my pacific world war II game into a pocket version. The objective is that the whole board fit on a letter sheet page. So far, the results has been impressive and I have been able to keep many details in the game even with an over simplified board.

I also discovered with this idea that if you give yourself restrictions to your design, it is going to be much more easier to find ideas to solve problems in your game or implement features. After talking about it on BGG, it seems that everybody agrees that restrictions stimulate creativity. I might eventually write an article about it.

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Christopher Alexander

Speaking of article, I wrote and interesting Article about the 15 properties theory of Christopher Alexander. I believe that most of these properties could be applied to board game mechanics to make them simply look better. I am currently reading his books and since there is 4 volumes it might take quite some time. But if I have enough material, I might make a guide that details each property and explains how to apply it to board games.

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Web Traffic

Finally, I am exploring the possibility to add 1 banner add on the top of my website. I don't have tons of visits and I don't want visual pollution on my website. But according to my calculations, with 1 banner add I could make approximately 20$ per year. It's not much, but it could pay the domain name. I am also finding ways to increase traffic, I might be forced to subscribe to social networking web sites (like f*ck!ng facebook) to allow people to link my site on their profile. I am still exploring the possibilities.

So this is it, more news than I thought, I should have posted sooner.

Enjoy and have fun!