Sunday, June 21, 2009

Episode 20

We humans tend to see special significance in big round numbers, due the to completely arbitrary fact that we have 10 fingers, and therefor developed a base-10 counting system.

Not that '20' is all that big, but it's getting there. Feel free to allow your imagination to conjure up images off all sorts of amazing significance when I get to Episode 100.

I can just imagine my hypothetical 11-fingered readers going, 'what's he talking about? Surely he means Episode 121'.

Major progress on the Semi-Secret MMO. Combat is in, and I'm just finishing up a pass on the combat system to make it balanced the way we want. We're also starting to get ambient sound and musical theme tracks from my friend Jason Rosenblum, and they're terrific. He has a blog at http://adaptablearts.com/, though he hasn't updated it in a while, the scoundrel!

What else. Oh, I'm gonna be the co-host on today's Atheist Experience show. The public access studio is closed for renovations, so we're webcasting from Matt Dillahunty's place. Should be interesting.

We went to see 'Drag Me To Hell' this past weekend, which was quite good despite not being a carbon copy of Raimi's earlier 'Evil Dead' movies. And no Bruce Campbell. But STILL, very good indeed!

Until next time... um... do whatever it was that you were gonna do anyway.

-Jeff Dee

Sunday, June 07, 2009

Episode 19

Curious. It seems like the longer I procrastinate, the easier it becomes to continue procrastinating. What an amusing little experiment this has been! But now, back to blogging.

Let's see. What have I been up to? Mainly, I've been dealing with car troubles. First my beloved red PT Cruiser (with the flames down the sides) developed electrical and brake problems. I had those fixed (at the dealership, no less!), and two days later the transmission died. I mean, completely. That has turned out to be hideously expensive. But hey, once I'd opened the veins of my credit card, it became easier and easier to say 'yes' to the mechanic. I'm just glad he didn't suggest that I needed him to strap on some JATO engines, because I'd probably have agreed to that, too.

The good news? The dog's medical issues seem to have cleared up. So I have a much happier doggie. Oh, and Lulu Press, the web-based print on demand service that I use to publish my paper RPGs, just put Living Legends and Quicksilver on Amazon.com. If any of you have played (or at least read) these books, I'd really appreciate it if you'd post reviews:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002AD73UU

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002AD5KKA

The Nemesis Games crew is still hard at work on the Semi-Secret Mini MMO project. We're *very* close to getting combat to work, which will be a major milestone. Right now we're having trouble getting both sides in a fight to attack each other. We're not sure whether the problem lies in the AI or in the combat code. Anyway, we hope to be at a point where we can launch our web site [nemesisgames.net] and make an official announcement to the press by the end of June, followed very closely by closed alpha testing.

Have a good one!
-Jeff Dee